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What’s the Point If We Can’t Have Fun?
- GenresPhilosophy
Unknown Binding
Published January 1, 2014
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About the author
David Graeber
96 books4,956 followersDavid Rolfe Graeber was an American anthropologist and anarchist.
On June 15, 2007, Graeber accepted the offer of a lectureship in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he held the title of Reader in Social Anthropology.
Prior to that position, he was an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, although Yale controversially declined to rehire him, and his term there ended in June 2007.
Graeber had a history of social and political activism, including his role in protests against the World Economic Forum in New York City (2002) and membership in the labor union Industrial Workers of the World. He was an core participant in the Occupy Movement.
He passed away in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
On June 15, 2007, Graeber accepted the offer of a lectureship in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he held the title of Reader in Social Anthropology.
Prior to that position, he was an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, although Yale controversially declined to rehire him, and his term there ended in June 2007.
Graeber had a history of social and political activism, including his role in protests against the World Economic Forum in New York City (2002) and membership in the labor union Industrial Workers of the World. He was an core participant in the Occupy Movement.
He passed away in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 5, 2024
”If I can’t dance, I don’t want your revolution!”
That quote is attributed to famed anarchists Emma Goldman, though what she actually said was considerably less pithy. (Anarchists printer Jack Frager created that line as a t-shirt slogan, boiled down from an entire paragraph of Goldman’s writing.) It survives with its attribution because it expressed the spirit of what Red Emma actually said, and because it can fit on a t-shirt.
This essay by famed anarchists scholar and idea juggler, David Graeber, is only tangentially about anarchism. But it bears the same importance, the same relevance to the subject as did Goldman’s take on dancing. For radical freedom is the essence of anarchism, and nowhere is that expressed more directly than in the concept of fun.
The idea Graeber was challenging was expressed most directly by philosopher Daniel Dennett:
”Yes, we have a soul. But it’s made of lots of tiny robots.”
Graeber attempted to refute the idea of a robotic universe, and takes on all who have promoted this idea, from Herbert Spencer to Richard Dawkins. Graeber attributes this mindset to making initial assumptions that:
”reduce all living beings to the equivalent of market actors, rational calculating machines trying to propagate their genetic code”
In making his alternative case, Graeber ranged wide. He cited everything from Peter Kropotkin’s challenge to Spencer’s grim “survival of the fittest,” to Friedrich Schiller’s contention in On the Aesthetics of Man that:
”Man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word a man, and he is only wholly a Man when he is playing.”
He even reaches back to an old Taoist koan to illustrate his point.
Graeber concludes with an admission that he is playing with ideas rather than proposing answers. But he suggests that we switch up the basic assumptions that current orthodoxy demands:
”I don’t deny that what I’ve presented so far is a savage simplification of very complicated issues. I’m not even saying that the position I’m suggesting here—that there is a play principle at the basis of all physical reality—is necessarily true. I would just insist that such a perspective is at least as plausible as the weirdly inconsistent speculations that currently pass for orthodoxy, in which a mindless, robotic universe suddenly produces poets and philosophers out of nowhere.”
You can find Graeber’s essay on line Here
That quote is attributed to famed anarchists Emma Goldman, though what she actually said was considerably less pithy. (Anarchists printer Jack Frager created that line as a t-shirt slogan, boiled down from an entire paragraph of Goldman’s writing.) It survives with its attribution because it expressed the spirit of what Red Emma actually said, and because it can fit on a t-shirt.
This essay by famed anarchists scholar and idea juggler, David Graeber, is only tangentially about anarchism. But it bears the same importance, the same relevance to the subject as did Goldman’s take on dancing. For radical freedom is the essence of anarchism, and nowhere is that expressed more directly than in the concept of fun.
The idea Graeber was challenging was expressed most directly by philosopher Daniel Dennett:
”Yes, we have a soul. But it’s made of lots of tiny robots.”
Graeber attempted to refute the idea of a robotic universe, and takes on all who have promoted this idea, from Herbert Spencer to Richard Dawkins. Graeber attributes this mindset to making initial assumptions that:
”reduce all living beings to the equivalent of market actors, rational calculating machines trying to propagate their genetic code”
In making his alternative case, Graeber ranged wide. He cited everything from Peter Kropotkin’s challenge to Spencer’s grim “survival of the fittest,” to Friedrich Schiller’s contention in On the Aesthetics of Man that:
”Man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word a man, and he is only wholly a Man when he is playing.”
He even reaches back to an old Taoist koan to illustrate his point.
Graeber concludes with an admission that he is playing with ideas rather than proposing answers. But he suggests that we switch up the basic assumptions that current orthodoxy demands:
”I don’t deny that what I’ve presented so far is a savage simplification of very complicated issues. I’m not even saying that the position I’m suggesting here—that there is a play principle at the basis of all physical reality—is necessarily true. I would just insist that such a perspective is at least as plausible as the weirdly inconsistent speculations that currently pass for orthodoxy, in which a mindless, robotic universe suddenly produces poets and philosophers out of nowhere.”
You can find Graeber’s essay on line Here
April 3, 2025
Play,
Ah, Lying down on my bed half naked, sweating in a woolen quilt yet waiting for the discomfort to be too much before I remove it, when I was a few pages in this essay, I realised, wasn't it
FUN, the reason I am doing this?
Why I have added 50,000 pages of ancient Philosophers and Mathematicians, who one could argue may not help me in my aim to understand the universe, mathematically, neither they are anywhere near or arguably, not related to my profession of developing softwares, yet, why?
Why without reading any of Plato, I feel as if I am cheating if I'm even reading someone talk about Aristotle, let alone to read his own words, nd why everytime I read them it hurts me that I have not acquired the Classical Greek yet, because of course I won't agree with translation if I knew it, degree of which may differ.
And without Homer, Illiad and understanding Greek Gods, how can one even hope to follow what was in minds of those ancestors of ours, not to mention the itch I'll have then to compare them with Sumerian, nd Indian Epics, nd since I used the word Mind, I can't help but view it with a lens of Neuroscience, without which, any interpretation of humanity and it's related aspects would be incomplete, nd sadly, neuroscience itself is incomplete. I don't ofc know all of Correct Knowledge on it, but I have hit the edge, nd fallen off, innumerable times.
I am tending to write an essay, which I didn't want earlier, but if I have to honestly, detail up why I read/ study what I read/ study, it's a web of links, where every word, links to all knowledge, there is, for it, and objects and abstractions it represents.
To a person who might have considered me a LUNATIC by now, I'd like to explain that you wouldn't watch/ read Second Part of your movie/ novel/ web Series before the first one, wouldn't it feel cheating to you??
Would you like if I force you to watch the lsst part first, nd only the last part? Future parts will not be accepted for a few decades, nd you'd mere see a mention of those parts, which had passed?
Would you read a Novel without first learning how to read, morph sounds and understand the semantics of a world, moreover, unless you experience or study, your connections to those words will be similar to that of something you may have a blurry acquaintance with.
Yet, THIS IS DISCOURAGED.
So much so, that if you're 12, nd you deny to learn the algebra because you have no idea where numbers come from, than you may have to suffer your entire life for the "DISOBEDIENCE".
FUN, as Graeber describes, is found across species, though it is not always NICE. By nice, he means MORAL nd gives an example of cat playing with mouse.
FUN & MORALITY, are independent component, yet they share a relationship.
What's NOT FUN, is IMMORAL.
Imagine, a DOG entering the small room where CAT plays with mouse, I've fed the dog more than enough, nd made sure with some black box stimulation to his brain, that he is in a mood to PLAY.
Would CAT Play?
IF the ants, that we daily crush, at least I do, or mosquitos that i kill whenever they are a few around me, gain conscious.....
WHAT WOULD THEY THINK OF ME?
What would they think of my hypocrisy when they'd know I ponder about Morality, after killing them.
I kill them, because being bitten by them, is not FUN.
I kill ants, because it's convenient, to not check every ANT-VOLUME cubic mm of space for their existence on surfaces before maintaining contact with it, specially if you're driving, I suspect, we'd need to train some AI Models, nd imagine, being stopped for 2432 times for a half an hour drive, that number may be much lower or higher.
All that, is NOT convenient, it's work, it's NOT FUN.
Why do you do what you do for the end of it? Because it's fun? Yes. That's your morality.
Entire ANIMAL conflict, including us is very complex abstraction of differences between how much FUN something is for them.
FUN, can be traced back to our REWARD SYSTEM, which I know, thanks to my addictions, nd explorations of neuroimaging data.
WHAT can tweak or affect this Reward System?
As much as I'd like to lead a philosophical discussion here, I'd rather stick to concise Neural explaination, ie.
Sensory Input, Memories, Affects, Unconscious Patterns stored in neocortex, Associations, Semantics, Knowledge, etc, that can be summed up as "CONNECTOME", which along with BODY & BEHAVIOUR, can be termed as SUBJECT.
Connectomes of others, along with their behaviours, nd body, can be termed as OBJECTS.
For non livings, we have the term NATURE, given that they have at least one quantifiable quality.
Also, by BODY, I include the GENOME, TRANSCRIPTOME, Expressions, nd since i don't miss out histories, all those Magnetars/ Supernovae, Dwarfs in which the trace amount of Uranium you may have in your body was generated, (correct me if I'm wrong), nd ofcourse all the others, to some chemical reaction happening at 2 billion years ago inside an asteroid, to LUCA, nd the person you hate the most(as you two were one cell once, neither aware/ conscious of its existence),
ALL that, nd many more things, that are related.
Note that, these are inter-related, some are components of some nd so on, when quintillions of organisms, along with NATURE which goes on anyways, express themselves, which we call BEHAVIOUR.
Connectome, Genome, Transciptome, Gene nd Protein Expression, + other systems that make up SUBJECT.
How infinite SUBJECTS, with their subjectivity INTERACT.
These INTERACTIONs along with all other components of SUBJECTs, NATURE, generate AFFECTS in SUBJECTs.
AFFECTS, originates BEHAVIOUR. (Walking seems to be not affect directed by AFFECTs, but it was when you were doing it first, until those connections in your brain strengthened and the actions stored in your neocortex, as hard that you could even walk while you sleep!)
When behaviour is originated, why do it again? Why even remember it? Why there's so much repetition? Why world stagnates? Why we do same mistakes again? Why you have higher chances to win when you win? Why we have Children? Why we love? Why we kill? Why we,
DO EVIL? and
DO GOOD?
What is EVIL nd GOOD, none.
It's the AFFECT, that's PLEASANT or UNPLEASANT.
With our faulty, error prone, untrained in Logic, nd almost always uninformed minds, we deduce PARTIAL CAUSES at best, nd GOD at worst, for the,
CAUSE of AFFECTs,
ie. PARTIAL nd Unexamined CAUSEs of what's UNPLEASANT & PLEASANT to us.
These OBSERVATIONS, when happen iteratively, train nd shape our REWARD SYSTEM, which for all of us, define, WHAT'S FUN.
Fun, is merely an AFFECT, in the same set as Joy, Affection, Empathy, Grief, Hurt, Sorrow, Lament, etc..
One could argue, that they can re write my entire argument with replacing AFFECT, with REWARD SYSTEM, as the central object behind Behaviour, nd yeah, you'd be no less right than the argument I just made,
In fact, if I start laying out the brain connectivity analysis, along with behavioral sampling, we'd agree on a much more complex nd a bit less intuitive, but closer to truth, model appears.
We're dealing with the domains of Computational Neuroscience nd Computational Psychology here.
The point of it is,
Graeber, in this beautiful essay of his, while albeit marching forward in the correct direction, is incomplete, which, I too, am.
All of us are, since Maths, Physics, Chemistry, nd Biology are yet incomplete nd BEHAVIOUR is a very high level of abstraction, of which we only see the end product, nd we don't understand the components of.
Yet, with what we know, or what I have the idea of what humans have discovered by now, i tried to give an overview of,
WHY WE DO WHAT WE DO.
My answer, is shamefully incomplete, nd although I agree that, BUT, as Graeber
Birds fly for their own end, nd we are engaging in debates nd fishes, ants, enjoy for the ends of those things,
IS A FORMALIST's ABSOLUTISM. Things happen for their ends. I think, END, or as I would call it EXPRESSION, is almost never the CAUSE of itself.
I saw because I'm a seer. I'm a seer, since I see. Neither Strategic Thinking nd plan execution one that happens for its ends, is unique to Brains in lives evolved on earth, it's not a universal concept for every event; Nor, is the universality of ABSOLUTISM of FORMALISM, nd it's conversation is proved, rather its the contrary.
While, i agree with most of what Graeber argues in this beautiful essay, It's incomplete. Nd the central point that it emphasizes on,
ie. PLAY Principle, nd FUN,
could be argued as one single instance of different inputs in the same system, with its own uniqueness;
Or in more digestible abstraction,
could be argued as, mere Subclasses inside the umbrella of BEHAVIOUR, nd AFFECTS, which themselves, would be incomplete, without mentioning everything first. Thus, by no means, could this be regarded as a Principle, or Central Theme.
However, while I don't say that David is anywhere close to a principle here, I'd say, he has make an extraordinary pattern recognition among the series of observations, nd reached out to a shared belief, or conclusion,
(though I just wrote an essay on why this not might be a principle, but a part of much more complex system)
WHICH, I BELIEVE IN, AS IF ITS MY CALLING,
"What's the point if you are not having FUN?"
Also, the statement above, can be attributed to the many roots, using my framework, of the evils Graeber mentioned, in Debt, but a child, is beyond the notion of GOOD and EVIL, if studied in isolation with the tuning society applies, and also, I need to stop writing, as now I might be misusing the space in Goodreads server, for which they will serve me visuals to give them abstract notion for (Advertisement).
Thanks for reading,
Hope you had fun,
If not, why're you even here?
- - - - - - -
I'd love know your thoughts, on anything and everything,
since,
KNOWLEDGE is FUN.
COMMUNICATION is FUN.
Combination of those two, is pure delight, and has been the single most effective solver of most of humanity's problem.
Ah, Lying down on my bed half naked, sweating in a woolen quilt yet waiting for the discomfort to be too much before I remove it, when I was a few pages in this essay, I realised, wasn't it
FUN, the reason I am doing this?
Why I have added 50,000 pages of ancient Philosophers and Mathematicians, who one could argue may not help me in my aim to understand the universe, mathematically, neither they are anywhere near or arguably, not related to my profession of developing softwares, yet, why?
Why without reading any of Plato, I feel as if I am cheating if I'm even reading someone talk about Aristotle, let alone to read his own words, nd why everytime I read them it hurts me that I have not acquired the Classical Greek yet, because of course I won't agree with translation if I knew it, degree of which may differ.
And without Homer, Illiad and understanding Greek Gods, how can one even hope to follow what was in minds of those ancestors of ours, not to mention the itch I'll have then to compare them with Sumerian, nd Indian Epics, nd since I used the word Mind, I can't help but view it with a lens of Neuroscience, without which, any interpretation of humanity and it's related aspects would be incomplete, nd sadly, neuroscience itself is incomplete. I don't ofc know all of Correct Knowledge on it, but I have hit the edge, nd fallen off, innumerable times.
I am tending to write an essay, which I didn't want earlier, but if I have to honestly, detail up why I read/ study what I read/ study, it's a web of links, where every word, links to all knowledge, there is, for it, and objects and abstractions it represents.
To a person who might have considered me a LUNATIC by now, I'd like to explain that you wouldn't watch/ read Second Part of your movie/ novel/ web Series before the first one, wouldn't it feel cheating to you??
Would you like if I force you to watch the lsst part first, nd only the last part? Future parts will not be accepted for a few decades, nd you'd mere see a mention of those parts, which had passed?
Would you read a Novel without first learning how to read, morph sounds and understand the semantics of a world, moreover, unless you experience or study, your connections to those words will be similar to that of something you may have a blurry acquaintance with.
Yet, THIS IS DISCOURAGED.
So much so, that if you're 12, nd you deny to learn the algebra because you have no idea where numbers come from, than you may have to suffer your entire life for the "DISOBEDIENCE".
FUN, as Graeber describes, is found across species, though it is not always NICE. By nice, he means MORAL nd gives an example of cat playing with mouse.
FUN & MORALITY, are independent component, yet they share a relationship.
What's NOT FUN, is IMMORAL.
Imagine, a DOG entering the small room where CAT plays with mouse, I've fed the dog more than enough, nd made sure with some black box stimulation to his brain, that he is in a mood to PLAY.
Would CAT Play?
IF the ants, that we daily crush, at least I do, or mosquitos that i kill whenever they are a few around me, gain conscious.....
WHAT WOULD THEY THINK OF ME?
What would they think of my hypocrisy when they'd know I ponder about Morality, after killing them.
I kill them, because being bitten by them, is not FUN.
I kill ants, because it's convenient, to not check every ANT-VOLUME cubic mm of space for their existence on surfaces before maintaining contact with it, specially if you're driving, I suspect, we'd need to train some AI Models, nd imagine, being stopped for 2432 times for a half an hour drive, that number may be much lower or higher.
All that, is NOT convenient, it's work, it's NOT FUN.
Why do you do what you do for the end of it? Because it's fun? Yes. That's your morality.
Entire ANIMAL conflict, including us is very complex abstraction of differences between how much FUN something is for them.
FUN, can be traced back to our REWARD SYSTEM, which I know, thanks to my addictions, nd explorations of neuroimaging data.
WHAT can tweak or affect this Reward System?
As much as I'd like to lead a philosophical discussion here, I'd rather stick to concise Neural explaination, ie.
Sensory Input, Memories, Affects, Unconscious Patterns stored in neocortex, Associations, Semantics, Knowledge, etc, that can be summed up as "CONNECTOME", which along with BODY & BEHAVIOUR, can be termed as SUBJECT.
Connectomes of others, along with their behaviours, nd body, can be termed as OBJECTS.
For non livings, we have the term NATURE, given that they have at least one quantifiable quality.
Also, by BODY, I include the GENOME, TRANSCRIPTOME, Expressions, nd since i don't miss out histories, all those Magnetars/ Supernovae, Dwarfs in which the trace amount of Uranium you may have in your body was generated, (correct me if I'm wrong), nd ofcourse all the others, to some chemical reaction happening at 2 billion years ago inside an asteroid, to LUCA, nd the person you hate the most(as you two were one cell once, neither aware/ conscious of its existence),
ALL that, nd many more things, that are related.
Note that, these are inter-related, some are components of some nd so on, when quintillions of organisms, along with NATURE which goes on anyways, express themselves, which we call BEHAVIOUR.
Connectome, Genome, Transciptome, Gene nd Protein Expression, + other systems that make up SUBJECT.
How infinite SUBJECTS, with their subjectivity INTERACT.
These INTERACTIONs along with all other components of SUBJECTs, NATURE, generate AFFECTS in SUBJECTs.
AFFECTS, originates BEHAVIOUR. (Walking seems to be not affect directed by AFFECTs, but it was when you were doing it first, until those connections in your brain strengthened and the actions stored in your neocortex, as hard that you could even walk while you sleep!)
When behaviour is originated, why do it again? Why even remember it? Why there's so much repetition? Why world stagnates? Why we do same mistakes again? Why you have higher chances to win when you win? Why we have Children? Why we love? Why we kill? Why we,
DO EVIL? and
DO GOOD?
What is EVIL nd GOOD, none.
It's the AFFECT, that's PLEASANT or UNPLEASANT.
With our faulty, error prone, untrained in Logic, nd almost always uninformed minds, we deduce PARTIAL CAUSES at best, nd GOD at worst, for the,
CAUSE of AFFECTs,
ie. PARTIAL nd Unexamined CAUSEs of what's UNPLEASANT & PLEASANT to us.
These OBSERVATIONS, when happen iteratively, train nd shape our REWARD SYSTEM, which for all of us, define, WHAT'S FUN.
Fun, is merely an AFFECT, in the same set as Joy, Affection, Empathy, Grief, Hurt, Sorrow, Lament, etc..
One could argue, that they can re write my entire argument with replacing AFFECT, with REWARD SYSTEM, as the central object behind Behaviour, nd yeah, you'd be no less right than the argument I just made,
In fact, if I start laying out the brain connectivity analysis, along with behavioral sampling, we'd agree on a much more complex nd a bit less intuitive, but closer to truth, model appears.
We're dealing with the domains of Computational Neuroscience nd Computational Psychology here.
The point of it is,
Graeber, in this beautiful essay of his, while albeit marching forward in the correct direction, is incomplete, which, I too, am.
All of us are, since Maths, Physics, Chemistry, nd Biology are yet incomplete nd BEHAVIOUR is a very high level of abstraction, of which we only see the end product, nd we don't understand the components of.
Yet, with what we know, or what I have the idea of what humans have discovered by now, i tried to give an overview of,
WHY WE DO WHAT WE DO.
My answer, is shamefully incomplete, nd although I agree that, BUT, as Graeber
Birds fly for their own end, nd we are engaging in debates nd fishes, ants, enjoy for the ends of those things,
IS A FORMALIST's ABSOLUTISM. Things happen for their ends. I think, END, or as I would call it EXPRESSION, is almost never the CAUSE of itself.
I saw because I'm a seer. I'm a seer, since I see. Neither Strategic Thinking nd plan execution one that happens for its ends, is unique to Brains in lives evolved on earth, it's not a universal concept for every event; Nor, is the universality of ABSOLUTISM of FORMALISM, nd it's conversation is proved, rather its the contrary.
While, i agree with most of what Graeber argues in this beautiful essay, It's incomplete. Nd the central point that it emphasizes on,
ie. PLAY Principle, nd FUN,
could be argued as one single instance of different inputs in the same system, with its own uniqueness;
Or in more digestible abstraction,
could be argued as, mere Subclasses inside the umbrella of BEHAVIOUR, nd AFFECTS, which themselves, would be incomplete, without mentioning everything first. Thus, by no means, could this be regarded as a Principle, or Central Theme.
However, while I don't say that David is anywhere close to a principle here, I'd say, he has make an extraordinary pattern recognition among the series of observations, nd reached out to a shared belief, or conclusion,
(though I just wrote an essay on why this not might be a principle, but a part of much more complex system)
WHICH, I BELIEVE IN, AS IF ITS MY CALLING,
"What's the point if you are not having FUN?"
Also, the statement above, can be attributed to the many roots, using my framework, of the evils Graeber mentioned, in Debt, but a child, is beyond the notion of GOOD and EVIL, if studied in isolation with the tuning society applies, and also, I need to stop writing, as now I might be misusing the space in Goodreads server, for which they will serve me visuals to give them abstract notion for (Advertisement).
Thanks for reading,
Hope you had fun,
If not, why're you even here?
- - - - - - -
I'd love know your thoughts, on anything and everything,
since,
KNOWLEDGE is FUN.
COMMUNICATION is FUN.
Combination of those two, is pure delight, and has been the single most effective solver of most of humanity's problem.
July 7, 2024
I like to think that Graeber’s (relative) obscurity as a pop scientists is a sign of his virtue as a thinker–if he were less iconoclastic, he would be more widely embraced.
However, Graeber’s world is almost always one that I would prefer to live in, and this essay adds yet another bit more flesh to that more free, more accountable reality, the one that emerges as we “unthink the world around us.”
“What’s The Point If We Can’t Have Fun” is yet another Graeber entry that exposes the social ideation that underlies (and undermines) so called “hard science,” in this case, neo-Darwinian evolution–the idea that evolution is driven by the “self interest” of gene. Specifically, here Graeber posits that, if we would like to live in a world wherein organisms behave according to economic rationality, a human construct, then we are obligated to consider alternatives, for instance, a world where organisms are motivated by fun, or “the exertion of powers for the sheer pleasure of exerting them.”
Graeber anchors his argument (while admitting that it “is a savage simplification of very complicated issue.”) within a pragmatic framework: that is, given two possible worldviews, neither of which is well supported by scientific evidence, which world would you prefer to live in? One in which the actions of every bird, every ant, every lobster are determined by market logic, driven by maximum extraction in the insurance of survival for certain chunk of DNA, or one in which life is driven by agency, and the joy derived from interacting with, playing with, the material world and other living things?
I am drawn to thinkers who ask me to reconsider not just my assumptions but the world that my assumptions create, both within myself and beyond myself. And I would prefer to live in a world of atomic, molecular, and organismal fun. And I would like to thank Graeber endlessly for the play at the foundation of his thought, and the risks it allowed him to take. Rest In Power.
However, Graeber’s world is almost always one that I would prefer to live in, and this essay adds yet another bit more flesh to that more free, more accountable reality, the one that emerges as we “unthink the world around us.”
“What’s The Point If We Can’t Have Fun” is yet another Graeber entry that exposes the social ideation that underlies (and undermines) so called “hard science,” in this case, neo-Darwinian evolution–the idea that evolution is driven by the “self interest” of gene. Specifically, here Graeber posits that, if we would like to live in a world wherein organisms behave according to economic rationality, a human construct, then we are obligated to consider alternatives, for instance, a world where organisms are motivated by fun, or “the exertion of powers for the sheer pleasure of exerting them.”
Graeber anchors his argument (while admitting that it “is a savage simplification of very complicated issue.”) within a pragmatic framework: that is, given two possible worldviews, neither of which is well supported by scientific evidence, which world would you prefer to live in? One in which the actions of every bird, every ant, every lobster are determined by market logic, driven by maximum extraction in the insurance of survival for certain chunk of DNA, or one in which life is driven by agency, and the joy derived from interacting with, playing with, the material world and other living things?
I am drawn to thinkers who ask me to reconsider not just my assumptions but the world that my assumptions create, both within myself and beyond myself. And I would prefer to live in a world of atomic, molecular, and organismal fun. And I would like to thank Graeber endlessly for the play at the foundation of his thought, and the risks it allowed him to take. Rest In Power.
August 7, 2024
More of a pamphlet than a book! Only 18 pages! But the PDF is online— highly recommend. It lights up your brain like a happy little spark plug. Or whatever. For the sheer pleasure of reading Graeber!
May 7, 2025
Part of the collection The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World
February 4, 2025
Brilhante, um ensaio divertido, brincando com diversos debates em jogo
May 16, 2021
Many ideas, many of which were beyond me. But it's such an insightful perspective to offer to the world of academy, so brave and charming on equal parts.
Very pleasant read!
Very pleasant read!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews