theluddite, 1 year ago

From Graeber’s The Dawn of Everything:

For instance, if Pinker is correct, then any sane person who had to choose between (a) the violent chaos and abject poverty of the ‘tribal’ stage in human development and (b) the relative security and prosperity of Western civilization would not hesitate to leap for safety. But empirical data is available here, and it suggests something is very wrong with Pinker’s conclusions.

Over the last several centuries, there have been numerous occasions when individuals found themselves in a position to make precisely this choice – and they almost never go the way Pinker would have predicted. Some have left us clear, rational explanations for why they made the choices they did.

Graeber goes on to give a couple of these accounts. They tend to mention a loneliness associated with “western civilization,” as well as a feeling that I think lines up very well with what Marx described as alienation.

Some emphasized the virtues of freedom they found in Native American societies, including sexual freedom, but also freedom from the expectation of constant toil in pursuit of land and wealth.

Later in the book, and I apologize that I can’t find the reference right now, he comes back to this topic for a little bit, and talks about the depths of relationships that these people describe, and how their relationships in the “civilized” world are more shallow and less satisfying. Deep human relationships are the opposite of fake, so I think here we have a point in favor of “yes.”

Add to that that the concept of “privacy” as we know it is relatively new. It’s been 10+ years since I read a book about this, the title of which I can’t even remember, but it argued that the expectation of domestic privacy, even from one’s own family, is a phenomenon from the last few hundred years, especially outside the elite. People lived far, far more communally, with the expectation that they just were in each other’s business more. I’d argue that it’s a lot harder to be fake if you can’t hide who you really are.

Between those two things, I think it’s reasonable to argue that yes, society has gotten more fake.