A few minutes ago I had I was overtaken Well, Joe, that's a joke about me being a man.
So, the political question so we want to we just there was actual approaches and the other was is it possible to have a more democratic, more equal society? That was the question you were more interested in. Okay, great. And this is a good topic for ontological politics as well.
So, as often, we could start with classic political theory, which is divided into roughly two camps crudely, at least in modern times.
So one camp, I would call it the ontologically pessimistic, original-sin-esque camp. This says that humans are aggressive, competitive, or at least some of them are, and life in a state of nature without the state, without some law, without some ruler or state imposing rules would be nasty, brutish, and short. This is a very famous phrase, which comes from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. Hobbes was an English political thinker, he was a royalist he supported the King in the English Civil War, he was exiled, he wrote this book trying to justify why you have a king in this period. And the argument was, you needed this kind of sovereign organizing authority, because otherwise, you had an anarchic situation in the bad meaning of anarchy -- almost conventional meaning of anarchy, which is the war of all against all: there's disorder, there's pillaging, there's rape, there's all these bad things.
The other view, at the other extreme -- at least about original "man" and at least about our basic nature -- is now associated, although I don't think it's originated there, with Rousseau. He wrote an essay in 1754, or something like that, I've got the exact date right now. But it was an essay prize given out by Dijon kind of society arts and letters, for which Rousseau submitted the winning entry. Their question was something like: "was inequality the natural state of man". Rousseau argued for the vision of "the noble savage". That in a state of nature actually, we're innocent, kind, egalitarian, and we're corrupted by society in some way.
So the irony is that you could argue that both of these points of view, converge, at least for modern societies, because the Rousseau-ian view will be -- the noble savage view -- is that yes, in a more modern version of Rousseau there's been a lot of research in the last 50 or 60 years where we've learned a lot more maybe a century but certainly since the 50s and 60s, a lot more about the gatherer-hunter or hunter-gatherer societies, both from archaeology of the past, but also by studying those that remain. Now of course, there can be debates about whether those that remain are representative (obviously in some ways they are not representative because they often have to live in marginal areas, in areas that aren't representative, they've been kind of driven out of non marginal areas by others. For example, they are now in deep Amazonia, and jungles in the edges of the Sahara, called Hubzu, etc). The growing body of evidence from that was that yes, indeed, gather hunter societies are highly egalitarian. Their people share most things, in fact, there's a very limited sense of private property. There's a lot of rules even about, for example, if you as a hunter kill an animal, you need to share it out fairly equally with everyone else. If you given -- an anthropologist might give something to an individual, something valuable, like a lighter, or just something else, people often have a sense that it's shared, it's not "theirs", it can be taken by anyone else. Sure, you can take it back, but it's not like this is something that is theirs and they control it.
So there's been quite a lot of quite a lot of evidence [for egalitarian]. I wouldn't say it's fully egalitarian. So for example, the person who kills the game probably gets a bit, or people who are connected to them, their kin will get extra, the children will get extra. And that shows up that, for example, successful hunters get more women, let's put it that way, they get more success with women. In other words, there's still some degree of status and other things that show up, but dramatically less inequality than we see, let's say -- we have a society today where the richest members of it will be 10,000 times wealthier. And that if we didn't have Christianity, they might also have like, 100 times as many wives or children.
Before Christianity, and modernity there were societies where the emperor of China would have 5000 concubines. We have a sense that, for example, Genghis Khan via genetic evidence that at least some mongol leaders, had hundreds or thousands of times more descendants than other people.
So there seems to be kind of dramatically greater inequality than there was early modern gatherer-hunter society. The interesting point is that both Rousseau or both, let's call it the noble savage, the kind of gatherer-hunter egalitarianism, a state of nature before when it all began. It was much more egalitarian or we weren't like that, you know, we're not we're not cooperative, we're aggressive. We're like chimpanzees that we fight it out for dominance. Both of them converge as societies get more complex. When you get agriculture when you get exploitation for whether you like it or not, when you get to get into a moment, I should say, one of the big points that's traditionally made is when you move for good or bad reasons from gatherer-hunter to to agriculture, what fundamentally changes?
what's the what's the terms and how society would never would have obviously you don't have agriculture? Yeah. Would you want to get stronger or weaker?
No, no, it's like, Well, men can. Men's physical like... there's inequality like the the clock like job. Because like you're a woman, you can pick berries and provide equally but in a different way to men. Suddenly, it's all about agriculture, well become like a woman can't have as much physical strength.
Good point, I think, I would say in terms of actually, what we know about women in agriculture, women seem to contribute even in the fields almost as well. So I think you're on the right track about true gender equality.
accumulation.
Great.
profit like goods. Yeah, if you're a gatherer-hunter you just gather you have to eat and then you move on. There's no
relation exactly, is almost impossible. Other than what you could carry a sort of... which is why, what you carry is what they can take their trip. Did you see this one? There's this movie called Tuai about this indigenous group in the rainforest and I think Papua New Guinea. Anyway, watch that. Culture. You can accumulate surplus, and you can store it. And that can be a good thing. You'd have food for a rainy day. It was other things and what is you can accumulate.
What's the other thing? You can trade your surplus for others?
Yes, you can't move for at least six months. You're stuck because you need to plant, and you need to protect it and you need to harvest and you need to weed it and so on. Now what do those two things do together once you're sedentary and you have a surplus what is now possible?
Yeah,
well you have more kids that's true so you're going out you're going to help gather up to this because you reproduce more. That's a very good point.
livestock is just a bit oh
this is gonna start eating tissue if you want to do tissue if
you want Pinky
tissue make it good commission organize
another one
a bit of a bit of fresh air. Yeah
yeah.
Yeah, what happens with children? Imagine, at one point during the pay, I noticed something valuable. I don't know. Like, they've got all the toys. Before there's no toys, there's nothing they can do, there's now toys. And one child ends up with quite a lot of toys. And what can fight
fighting? For why? Because they want to have it or they want to have the same?
Yes. Can be extraction. There's surplus, it's stuck in a place. So I can come along and make you give me some. Right. I can say if you don't do stuff. I know I finally got 100 You come along and try like what am I gonna do? I'm gonna go to the nearest hill. Yeah. See you later. Yeah, I thought I'm not. In fact, one of the questions we know we can answer can do quite serious things to people who's trying to trying to be kind of dominating the team. Initially, they tease them or mock them. They'll say that they're not entitled to their kill in some way rather than trying to be big about it. Yeah, they'll denigrate stuff. At some point we even know they'll kill people. If someone gets like really big for their boots, he's trying to he's endangering the tribe like, gonna pick fights with another group. Because actually, there's quite a lot of violence going on between groups. They'll kill them, or exile them. But anyway, once you have surplus, and you're stuck in a place. That's extraction. Yeah. And once you have extraction you can have social stratification. You can have some people who are richer than you can -- there's both accumulation and extraction leading to social stratification, social stratification and inequality. So the story then goes, okay, well, sure. Maybe Rousseau and Hobbes disagree on this starting point, but once you get to a more complex society with words we got agriculture for good or ill whether we like it or not. Our society today can't go back to being gatherers. Because there isn't enough land. There isn't enough space. So it's not a very efficient way... We can't go back. So even if you breathe well, you know, in this day and age people will be more egalitarian it's not possible. So both of the stories in a way have a somewhat pessimistic implication. Obviously monotypes so to show that we can we can build off too long periods of increasing maybe inequality. We enlarge the last few years we've had dramatic reductions in potentially inequality released by the Board of Ed most people go hungry in most developed countries, even as a very rich people who voted for what really matters is that everyone has enough to have shelter. And it turns out that the conservatives to today even if you still are being conservative, you just like if you try and make things to equal you ultimately lead to anarchy or inefficiency, we're not going to be very productive. There's not enough incentives. We'll have no incentive to go to work. Again, notice the story is that humans work, or produce stuff because they have to, not because they want to, but because they need food on the table. That's why you go to work, you wouldn't go to work if you weren't getting paid for it.
The irony is the left or the more like radical left, we take it, we're showing you the other way. But whatever it is has corrupted human nature. And the more optimistic then that Marx was, it will go back to this kind of cooperative deal. You can see the resulting by our nature where we're kind of sweet to children. If only we won't have the oppressive aspect of capitalism, so you can see this idea showing off, if only we took away whatever it is, thanks, whatever it is, it's kind of deforming us. We'd go back to this childhood innocence state of love and cooperation. We'd all kind of hold hands and sing Kumbaya to the sunset and the conservatives meanwhile, laugh at them laugh and laugh and say you fools. You naïve idiots, you go down that route. You don't get kumbaya, you get worse authoritarians destroying the liberal protections that we feel -- protections are human rights, liberty, property, and so on, particularly, the Conservatives often believe of this kind of the connection with the private property and liberty are very connected and when you make a... the mind kind of political connections.
So if you look at building day, I always say that, to some extent, the majority of the of our society, ideology has ended up a mild version of conservativism. Yeah, it is gone. We try these radical restructurings under Marxism, they were disastrous, at best inefficient, worst, completely disastrous for human liberty, just to check on you to get off. Not this one. But the next one. Yes, but at the same time, we're not as in 1892, or whatever. In England, when they bought in the first thing, income tax, you know, there was talks about this is the end of society. So we can have debates. You know, radicals can say we can look at these terrible tax havens, we can have much more redistribution. But essentially, it's redistribution within a basically political framework. Whereas if we're not going to do too much experimentation, you know, we might have higher income tax rates, we might have higher capital gains tax, we might not. But essentially, we accepted the logic that rather cool. social orders in which results are much greater degrees of participation, of greater equality and equality, maybe not of just money, but of power, everything, the thing that many of them, anarchists from just radical critics will say, what's what's disturbing, it's not simply that Bill Gates or Elon Musk have all this money, in a way the money once you have enough to eat, that translates into vastly differing capacities to influence and control and have a say, in our societies. And that is unjust, and in fact, is a form of maybe milder form of tyranny. Yeah, just as in the old days, the king of the emperor would have this vastly different say, to the point of controlling maybe what you live or die. That that tyranny still exists in milder form. But we live in an age that resides in a way to some version or merge of the hawks and risoni view But implying that the bottom of society is normally a lot of alternative the state we can't do anything too radical in terms of how we organize ourselves and I suppose on the left and be a bit of a more like humans are they more like deep down they're more likely to a child on the conservatives that be a bit more pessimistic the canned phrase out of the cricket tip of the nose straight thing was ever made therefore as I said you operate within the iPhone upgrade version of capitalism you can have capitalism which is an economic but also social political structure. You're gonna have you can make tweaks, you can have a bigger screen you can have three cabinets or two cabinets we can make improvements to that but we're not going to hold to the basic structure of what we're doing. and it is obviously work why would you anyone who was at least I don't know excited or radical or passionate who see no reason to engage with politics that much because I mean, okay, yes, you can there are clearly were poor The Dispossessed or there are maybe issues like climate change but the basic organization of society sort of has nowhere to go we wiped it out
is that true is it true that we must always resign ourselves to exactly that fate personally and politically
I don't think so either. I think the question is what is mistaken in that view? What's that looks the logic seems quite compelling Why is it a mistake
so before asleep
boys in New Zealand it's radical radical just sitting there can be is to suggest that you might have a capital flight might one day maybe have a capital gains tax because that wasn't the case 50 or 100 years ago so people really have come to accept this narrative of if I can create invisible walls... The analogy I sometimes I think I find that landmark use was the nine dots problem of nine dots in a cube. A tic tac toe, an XO game. I say can you cover all four, nine dots with a pencil or a pen with only using only four lines and not take your pen off the paper
if you try that game, you will discover oh look at that...
want to see another YouTube short
so nine dots that are put as a form of a square
333. And you can you've got to cover them with your pen. You can't take your pen off the paper. The paper it's easy to do three lines. You can't take your pen off the paper and you've got to cover all nine dots with four lines. So can you do it
in five before we do it yeah
yeah
can you do it and I need to try
know what a piece of paper
yeah
two hours later
that would be the next tattoo
Oh we got the head Again
what about you so
you say you can't do it right okay so here's the solution you're thinking outside the box of crayons, imagine you can draw outside very very very very long by a slight diagonal down through these three but a very very slight
through this three but a very very slight
there other three
okay yeah
let's go to the phrase, the phrase device that's where it comes from. The point is there's a frame rate in other words, you go from seeing something one way to different so it okay people live inside the box once you have the story about human nature you're living inside the box about like what's possible. Yeah. So for example, the story human nature in one way or the other is sort of fixed Yeah. Whether we have a debate is he truly good who is
much richer story
that's why it's called ontological politics because what is our view of being so the story to say
say you're both right and kind of both wrong. He's very close to some very profound truth it was on other problems. I want to mention this analogy. Do you have a self is there a better way? We'll take another example is that is the North Sea Yeah What's the question? So the North Sea isn't all see the same like the atoms there are make up the North Sea today? Are the the same
which will come assuming Yes.
Is it made up of the same atoms it was made up of a million years ago? Yeah. All of those atoms have evaporated, become clouds, fallen as rain somewhere else.
Good. So maybe some of the other Okay, so
how many? Let's say your blessing your body? Is your body made up of the same atoms as when you were born? Your entire body recycle? Yeah.
Over a period of what I feel like seven years.
Yeah. Do you I mean, you are wanting to like antiA Yeah. Are you the same person? No. But then what sense is there the same Bethany?
like you don't even have the same thoughts right? No. And there's certain cases where you'd almost if for example, you lost all your memories. People might you might well say no a lot better he's no longer there. Right?
Yeah.
I mentioned this because this is a very difficult Do you have an essence obviously in Christian and many traditions would you have this soul essence that somehow is there and then migrates off to heaven or somewhere but really has your personality means what are the things when Christianity like your personality seems to develop? But in heaven like you're just like an eternal version Why he's put them on the floor.
But you're gonna get I think,
I don't think anyone will see you can take my T shirt.
Okay, good. You'll need to hide. Okay. You see the blue car over there?
Friends
Yes, very good. Mommy holds you when it's good. Mommy will pick you back up again.
Three minutes. Three minutes
very good twitch.
30 seconds are you awake as
you can
Is there such a thing as the North Sea or the dedoigne or you because you're constantly changing? Yeah. Okay, so there's this full baby. Okay, well, the the content, the atoms that make you appreciate you but there's a form called Death is a form of them with ask questions like where did the form come from? At some point there wasn't? There wasn't a Bethany, not in at least recognizable form. Who were your boys your face before your parents were born? Where did you can't like think of a cloudless sky somewhere. Cloud doesn't exist, but then forms droplets start forming. It comes into existence and kind of dissolves. Yeah. But to what extent is there some Is there any essence of that cloud? It doesn't seem there's any essence? And it's kind of it's kind of? Yes, there's form that we call the cloud. But it's constantly evolving. Yeah. So the Buddhists came up, West got tortured by this in a way for the software, never really resolved it. One story of that went the Christian was somehow there's some eternal essence. And it comes from Plato. Plato has the story that there there is this kind of in fact, everything has this kind of goes in the forms these kind of perfect representations which everything is sort of like an off copy of the slide. There's a perfect version of you. There's a perfect version of the square there's, there's exemplar which this is kind of ultimate form of tree. And all of these things are sort of like there is this kind of essence things have identity.
And then that becomes like a soul and Christianity and other things. It just has, it does seem to have just really big
philosophical problems as I just described, because things are constantly changing the Greeks had this wonderful story of thesis. Thesis a ship, so Theseus I don't know if your story of Theseus and the minotaur. Theseus went off to kill the Minotaur in his lab but he came up with a ship and there was of course his ship got stored and they kept repairing it they replaced every eventually they replaced every part of the ship was it still Theseus' ship, it was a debate brings her
anyway, Buddhists resolve this by saying well, we're gonna say you know the herself
them because I don't know if they're already at the restaurant or we pick them up during
