David Graeber Quotes
Almost all the work for this post was done by other people.
David Graeber himself, obviously, who said all these smart things.
But also the programmers who built the Ghost.org platform that I write on...
And the folks who turned his quotes into sweet graphics...
And everybody who helped Graeber spread his message...
Plus the hundreds of thousands {or millions?} of programmers who built the modern internet...
And the generations of scientists who's work the programmer's built upon...
And the families and servants and civil societies of those programmers and scientists, who facilitated their work.
And also those folks who layed the underwater cables, launched the satellites, mined the minerals and braided the cables that comprise the system that our data pings around on...
Plus all kinds of other folks who's contribution we can't quite see.
All I did was move some pixels around.
But I think (assume) Graeber would agree with me when I say that no one individual can really manage to take sole credit for anything.
Everything we humans do is a group effort. From sailing a boat across an ocean, to planting a farm, to growing a child. We work in a team. We build on each other's work. It makes no sense for a few to hog the credit and the rewards.
Our mission as a species is painfully clear. Reduces the suffering of our cousins across the globe, restore health to our ecosystems, learn to collaborate and share amongst ourselves and with other species.
This other thing we're doing is the agenda of a child.
Anyway, here's some David Graeber quotes, brought to you by a whole huge hell of a lot of people.
Thanks capitalism!
I don't really want to turn this page into a sales vehicle, but them's the reality's of the market economy!!
Want to read David Graeber's books? Please click the titles below to use my affiliate links. This sends me a cut of the sale, and you'll be buying through Bookshop.org, which supports small independent bookstores, aka people. Everybody wins except the trees.
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
The story of how 18th century powers began to push back against the criticism of their treatment of indigenous people by creating a story (plausible deniability) that thinks of early humans as brutish and childlike, and only modern industrial people as civilized. This story is false, and this book shows how much richer our history actually is.
Bullshit Jobs
The story of how many modern jobs make little if any meaningful contribution to society. So what are they for?
Debt: The First 5,000 Years
A book about debt, and how central it has been to the development of our societies and psychology.
