First Thoughts on The Dawn Of Everything by Wengrow & Graeber

This is a huge book- both in its ground-breaking content and its physical size! Here the authors challenge the entrenched narratives that the pre-agricultural world was either a primitive Eden of small egalitarian hunter-gatherers (Rosseau) or nasty, brutush and short, requiring heirachy and governance to quell our worst natures (Hobbes).

For someone like me researching and working with narratives it underlines the importance of #stories and narratives in the process of understanding the world and learning to act in it. We often talk of needing new narratives for a #postgrowth, #climatechange world but books like this help support the view that above all the #Sustainability #Crises is not overall a technological crises but one of perception.

#Narratives are #patterns describing #complexsystems. ‘New’ narratives are the surfacing or resurfacing of patterns. A #storyteller reminds us of the patterns we were once part of and challenges us to renew our aquaintance.