David Rolfe Graeber (/ˈɡreɪbər/; February 12, 1961 – September 2, 2020) was an American anthropologist and anarchist activist. His influential work in economic anthropology, particularly his books Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Bullshit Jobs (2018), and The Dawn of Everything (2021), and his leading role in the Occupy movement, earned him recognition as one of the foremost anthropologists and left-wing thinkers of his time.

  • ristoril_zip@lemmy.zipEnglish
    42·
    1 day ago

    it seems accurate to say that most people conceive only of “people i know well enough to fully humanize” and “all other humans.”

    I take a huge issue with the portrayal that all of us are willing to fuck over the second group all the time with no acknowledgement that over the centuries we’ve built elaborate customs and mores for interacting with strangers or within groups or between groups.

    The author focusing on hypothetical examples of monkeys mistreating monkey strangers exclusively is inaccurate to the reality we all live in. There are monkeys out in the real world who just help monkey strangers altruistically. Just stopping to help change a tire gives the lie to the author’s premise.

    Are there asshole monkeys? Sure. But we’re not all assholes to monkey strangers.

    AND even in small knit monkey communities sometimes there are “defectors” (game theory term) and the society can react to them in many different ways.

    • sinceasdf@lemmy.world
      1·
      3 hours ago

      It’s describing a psychological barrier, like you have a limited amount of mental space for a really ‘knowing’ people. People are complex and varying and it takes a lot of space and effort to learn their differences (and that’s important, some people can be dangerous or whatever). Once you run out of space (so to speak) their existence is mentally more abstract and less likely to come to your mind when you’re making your decisions. That negligence is the source of conflict, not you literally not thinking of them as people and harming them intentionally.

    • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      23 hours ago

      But we’re not all assholes to monkey strangers.

      Article says nothing of the sort, only that it’s understandable why we view things like a busload of dead kids in Iran as less tragic than our mom dying. I think you’re focusing on single trees, missing the forest.