This is the story of a young man who declares that he was ‘not created by God’, who then challenges God to some kind of contest to force him to acknowledge this, and, with the aid of some powerful magic, is ultimately successful. (He may also make off with a daughter of God, or rice, fire, or other essential elements of human civilization.) Let me give an example of one such story, collected around the turn of the last century in the Tanala region in the southeast (Renel 1910 vol. I: 268–74):
A man named Andrianonibe, they say, married a young woman and before long she became pregnant. Now, the child could already speak in his mother’s womb; at the moment of his birth, he pierced his mother’s navel, and it was through there that he came out into the world. He then spoke to the people assembled in the house: ‘I have not been made by God, because at the moment my mother gave birth to me, I came out of her navel; thus I will bear the name Andriamamakimpoetra, Andriana[9]-who-breaks- the-navel.’
Then he convoked the people, bid them follow him, and set out to climb a tall mountain. At the summit, he gathered together a pile of firewood; he also had an ox brought to sacrifice. Then he set the wood on fire and ordered his assistants to roast the quarters of the ox on them: an intense column of black smoke rose to heaven; after a few moments they had blinded the children of God, so he sent his messenger, named Yellow Eagle, to see what had happened. Once he was in the presence of Andriamamakimpoetra the messenger entreated him, on God’s part, to put out the fire as soon as possible, but the man refused, crying out angrily, ‘Go find your master and tell him that I will not obey his orders, because it was not he who made me. So I will not put out the fire, because it was me who came out of the navel of my mother, and I am called Andriamamakimpoetra. Have you, God, ever anywhere seen another man bearing that name?’
‘If that’s how it is,’ said Yellow Eagle, ‘I shall carry your words to God.’ Then it left
Andriamamakimpoetra and flew back to heaven, and told God everything the Andriana had said. God became very angry, and sent his messenger back to earth once more. This time Yellow Eagle carried a large ox bone; when he came before the great fire, still burning, he spoke as follows: ‘O Andriamamakimpoetra, you claim to have come out of the womb by breaking through your mother’s navel, if it is true that you have not been created by God, then you must turn this bone into a living beast.’
As you like,’ declared the other. He took the bone, put it to cooking in a large rice pot, with which he had mixed some ody [magical charms]. As soon as the rice began to boil, the bone transformed into a little calf that lowed, and by the time the rice was cooked, it had become a great bull that set about roaring toward cattle pen. Yellow Eagle, after having observed what happened, returned to his master. God, growing angrier and angrier, sent him back with a chicken bone and a banana leaf, and demanded he turn it into a rooster and a banana tree full of ripe fruit.
Then Andriana made a new pot of rice, in which he had placed some ody. When the rice was at the point of boiling over, the bone had become a young chick and the leaf, a young banana plant shoot. By the time it was done the chick had become a great rooster, and the shoot, a whole range of banana trees. The messenger once again returned to report what had happened. (ibid: 268–70)
God, stupefied and confounded, told Yellow Eagle to present Andriamamakimpoetra with a golden cane, and demand he determine which is the top, and which is the bottom. Now, the cane was of exactly the same size, top and bottom. When Andriamamakimpoetra had it within his hands, he threw it up in the air and allowed it to fall, and thus correctly identified the two ends.
This time God didn’t know what to do so; very confused, he left heaven to come meet Andriamamakimpoetra himself. The moment he arrived he made everything around Andriamamakimpoetra’s village turn pitch black, so that the villagers, even in the middle of the day, could not see a thing. Then he brought forth great flashes of lightning and terrible crashes of thunder, so that everyone was left astounded. Only the Andriana had no fear of anything, but delighted in the noise. He happily strode out of his house despite all the menacing lightning bolts, and he carried in his hand an ody that he turned towards each of the cardinal points, so that the lightning turned away from him harmlessly. Finally, he called out, ‘O God, come down to earth if you like, but stop frightening the inhabitants of this country.’
Then God came down before Andriamamakimpoetra’s house and told him, ‘Let us go forth together, if you like, to a country far from your home; we shall have a contest of wits, since you deny ever having been created by me.’
‘Agreed!’ replied the Andriana. ‘Let’s go then!’ And the two set forth upon their route. After a little while, God advanced ahead, and once out of sight, he transformed himself into a great flowing spring, beside which grew a large number of fruit trees bearing many fine fruits. Everyone who passed stopped to drink the water from the spring, and to taste some of the delicious fruits, hanging so thickly on the branches of the trees. Like the others, Andriamamakimpoetra approached the place and stopped to rest, but then he recognised it was really God, and said, ‘Cut it out, God, I know what you’re up to! Come on! Let’s get on with our journey, because I’m never going to drink from you.’
Then, in his turn, the Andriana went off ahead, and as soon as he was out of sight he turned into a great wild orange tree full of fruits. God, when he saw the tree, started to gather the fruit, but then he saw that it was really Andriamamakimpoetra that had changed into that form and he cried out, ‘Come on! Let’s get back on the road! Don’t even dream that you can disguise yourself from me, because I can see perfectly well that the orange tree is really you.’
Next, God went in advance and at a certain distance, he became a great plain, with enough rice growing from it that a great army of men could cultivate it for the rest of their lives. On this plain there were also many cattle and chickens. And it is from this time that human beings have known of rice and orange trees, and have raised cattle and chickens as domestic animals. But Andriamamakimpoetra recognised God; and in his turn, he went out in advance, and turned himself into a large village, with numerous houses occupied by rich inhabitants; and in this village, there lived three beautiful women. And God started searching for the Andriana, but he couldn’t find him. Now after a month’s time, he came up to the beautiful village, and stopped, and married one of the three women. And after a certain time she became pregnant. She developed the desire to eat rat meat, so she begged her husband to go and find her some. He turned himself into a cat and went beneath the floorboards to find some, and it didn’t take more than a few minutes before he’d caught four rats to bring back to his wife. She burned the hair off the four rats over the hearth, and when they’d been cleaned, chopped the meat into small pieces and cooked them. But she didn’t eat any of them herself, she gave them all to God to eat. Some months later, she gave birth to a child. God was extremely happy, but at the very moment of his birth, the newborn began to speak, ‘I am called Fanihy [a bird], because I am not the son of God. No, it is I, Andriamamakimpoetra, for whom God has been so long searching, without being able to find.’
Then the infant rose and began to walk, and mocked God, saying, ‘I made you eat rats, and you ate them! Is this not sufficient proof that I was not created by you?’
And so God, completely confounded, returned sadly home. But to this day he continues to think about the Andriana, and whenever he becomes angry, he thunders and makes it rain, and this is a sign of his anger towards Andriamamakimpoetra. Whereas, as for him, they say, he truly was never made by God. He created himself. (ibid: 270–74)
It looks like David Graeber supported a universal basic income and it also looks like he fell for the mainstream narrative over "Covid". I agree with him on the bullshit job front though. It's an interesting and provocative debate and I look forward to your further exploration. I just think it would be nice if we had less government intervention and were allowed some autonomy to grow our own food and have some livestock. Far better than UBI.
His position on UBI is surprising, to say the least, because it's very difficult to find a video in which he says anything stupid - the idea you singled out is his single worst idea. I have yet to read Bullshit Jobs, in which he presents that idea, so I'll reserve judgement until I do, but I will say that he may have been presenting it as a lesser of two evils - the fact of the matter is that most "work" done is first-world countries is completely unnecessary, and it would be better if people didn't waste their lives pretending to be working. It would be better if they literally just sat at home, pursuing their interests. I agree with him on that, but obviously UBI is a terrible idea, definitely not one that any self-respecting anarchist should ever advocate for.
I will say that he seems to have been very good at picking his battles. For instance, one gets the feeling, studying his work and reading between the lines, that he secretly had his doubts about 9/11, COVID, and the climate change narrative. But he just didn't come out and say so.
He does seems to have SOMEWHAT lost the plot in the last few years of his life, but not as much as you might think. But can you imagine the hell of being an anthropologist in the woke era?
Anthropologists talk about taboo - that's part of the job. And there's no such thing as politically correct anthropology, but things can only be politically correct from the perspective of one given cultural standpoint.
David Graeber was a an academic and did play the game of political correctness. I will point that he was fired from Yale before he got tenure, no doubt because they were afraid of the impact his ideas would have if he started speaking more freely. If you want to call him a careerist, fine. But he clearly played his cards well, because he's probably one of the bestselling anarchist authors of all time.
But please feel free to share stuff that is damaging to Graeber's reputation, including on COVID. I haven't been able to find much - mostly he seems to have just kept a low profile.
In any case, my point isn't to defend every single thing Graeber ever did or said, but to make sure that his best ideas do not fall into obscurity. They are essential for understanding where we as a society are at.
If you haven't read Debt, that is his magnum opus and the reason he deserves to be remembered for centuries. I doubt you will find anything to disagree with in that require book, which has already revolutionized the field of economics by debunking Adam Smith's myth of the primitive "barter economy".
If you don't time to read a big tome on economics, I would suggest reading Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, which is a very quick read. You can find it on The Anarchist Library and there's an audio version on Youtube.
I recommend the Revised and Updated audiobook version of Debt, which includes a very touching afterword in which David Graeber is very clear that he knows that he has achieved something that his hero, the French anarchist anthropologist Marcel Mauss, always intended to do. His inspiration in writing Debt was to write the work that Mauss would have written if he had lived long enough to do so.
I was struck reading it with a feeling of an awe - that the ideas of a great thinker can continue to resonate many decades after his death.
Observe the revival of Gustav Landuaer's fusion of anarchist mysticism by Paul Cudenec... It was tremendously obscure just a few short years ago, now Landauer's work has come back into fashion with the world's most forward-thinking radical intellectuals. It was necessary for the old paradigm to die before the world was ready for his ideas. Even if I fail to accomplish what I aim to in my lifetime, my ideas could resonate with people a generation hence, when secular materialism is a distant memory.
So here's my theory - Graeber ain't dead. He lives on through his ideas, which seek channels through which to work their magic. One gets the feeling, reading his work, that he never really truly showed his whole hand. He clearly had a highly refined sense of some form of intelligence higher than Reason - observe his theory of imaginary counterpower - but he never really came out with it. Perhaps he would have been treated like a crackpot if he had. He lived in a very hard time to be an anthropologist. As I have said before, there's no such thing as politically correct anthropology. Anthropologists necessarily must discuss taboo, and unlearn the prejudices of their own cultural programming. And that's the point of political anthropology - by comparing our own culture to others, we can expand our imaginations about the range of possibilities available to us.
Graeber was a utopian - he never stopped believing that that what we all believed at the height of the Global Justice Movement - that Another World Is Possible. He knew it to be true, because all anthropologists do. It is not an article of faith. It is a fact.
In interviews in his later years, Graeber often laughs slightly maniacally. I know why. Sometimes, the only choice one has is to to laugh, cry, or scream. Laughter is a way of dealing with pain. I make fun of the stupidity of our current political paradigm because it is easier to feeling the weight of the world upon me. The stupidity of casino capitalism is truly astounding - we are fouling our nest at a breakneck pace to convert the wealth of the natural wealth into digital bits on a ledger somewhere. It is astoundingly stupid, yet most people think we are the wisest, smartest, most advanced society there has ever been on the face of the Earth. It's maddening, saddening, and awful. Might as well laugh about it.
So if you watch the debate he did with Peter Thiel, and you wonder what it's laughing about - that's it. It's the breathtaking stupidity of it all. That a C.I.A. stooge like Thiel, seemingly intelligent enough to know that he is in the presence of a truly great mind, is too stupid to realize his own complicity with the system that is turning our beautiful world into a hell.
The fact of the matter is that it is our faith in the system that keeps it going. We are, in a sense, the sowers of own demise, because most people simply cannot imagine anything better. He could.
I do not mourn for David Graeber, though he wanted to live forever. As far as I am concerned, he has achieved something akin to immortality, because I have no doubt that he will be remembered for generations to come.
As for myself, I will honour his memory by making his message of a global Jubilee a central part of my political program. The system is held in place by mountains and mountains of debt that will never, ever be paid. We have before us two choices - one, we wipe the slate clean, or two, we consent to debt peonage in perpetuity. The choice is between salvation and annihilation. It's not a tough call.
Yet people refuse to believe, so conditioned they have been to see this fallen world as right, natural, and inevitable. Yet it is anything but, and deep down we all know this. Things are out of wack, and balance must be restored.
When Uncle Ted died, I wrote that it was not a tragedy, because he had already achieved his life's mission by accomplishing something truly great - overturning an entire paradigm. David Graeber did the same. It may take a generation for people to catch up with him. More likely, though, it will happen sooner, because the collapse of capitalism he prophesized is already upon us.
Bob Marley asked "How long will they kill our prophets?" and there's a simple answer: until we actually listen to to what they have to say, take it to heart, and apply their message to our lives.
The revolution must take place first in our hearts and minds. Nothing less is required of us now than TO CHANGE EVERYTHING.
I must say I really like Paul Cudenec. I went to see him at a book launch in London. It's definitely better to laugh than cry. I ended up working in a Hospital during the Covid Lockdowns. It was amazing how people wouldn't trust the evidence of their own eyes but were glued to TV and believed everything they were told. At some point I need to write a long essay about my own experience during that period. I've found the Youtube video of Graeber vs Thiel and I will watch when I get a chance.
Loved your story!
This is the story of a young man who declares that he was ‘not created by God’, who then challenges God to some kind of contest to force him to acknowledge this, and, with the aid of some powerful magic, is ultimately successful. (He may also make off with a daughter of God, or rice, fire, or other essential elements of human civilization.) Let me give an example of one such story, collected around the turn of the last century in the Tanala region in the southeast (Renel 1910 vol. I: 268–74):
A man named Andrianonibe, they say, married a young woman and before long she became pregnant. Now, the child could already speak in his mother’s womb; at the moment of his birth, he pierced his mother’s navel, and it was through there that he came out into the world. He then spoke to the people assembled in the house: ‘I have not been made by God, because at the moment my mother gave birth to me, I came out of her navel; thus I will bear the name Andriamamakimpoetra, Andriana[9]-who-breaks- the-navel.’
Then he convoked the people, bid them follow him, and set out to climb a tall mountain. At the summit, he gathered together a pile of firewood; he also had an ox brought to sacrifice. Then he set the wood on fire and ordered his assistants to roast the quarters of the ox on them: an intense column of black smoke rose to heaven; after a few moments they had blinded the children of God, so he sent his messenger, named Yellow Eagle, to see what had happened. Once he was in the presence of Andriamamakimpoetra the messenger entreated him, on God’s part, to put out the fire as soon as possible, but the man refused, crying out angrily, ‘Go find your master and tell him that I will not obey his orders, because it was not he who made me. So I will not put out the fire, because it was me who came out of the navel of my mother, and I am called Andriamamakimpoetra. Have you, God, ever anywhere seen another man bearing that name?’
‘If that’s how it is,’ said Yellow Eagle, ‘I shall carry your words to God.’ Then it left
Andriamamakimpoetra and flew back to heaven, and told God everything the Andriana had said. God became very angry, and sent his messenger back to earth once more. This time Yellow Eagle carried a large ox bone; when he came before the great fire, still burning, he spoke as follows: ‘O Andriamamakimpoetra, you claim to have come out of the womb by breaking through your mother’s navel, if it is true that you have not been created by God, then you must turn this bone into a living beast.’
As you like,’ declared the other. He took the bone, put it to cooking in a large rice pot, with which he had mixed some ody [magical charms]. As soon as the rice began to boil, the bone transformed into a little calf that lowed, and by the time the rice was cooked, it had become a great bull that set about roaring toward cattle pen. Yellow Eagle, after having observed what happened, returned to his master. God, growing angrier and angrier, sent him back with a chicken bone and a banana leaf, and demanded he turn it into a rooster and a banana tree full of ripe fruit.
Then Andriana made a new pot of rice, in which he had placed some ody. When the rice was at the point of boiling over, the bone had become a young chick and the leaf, a young banana plant shoot. By the time it was done the chick had become a great rooster, and the shoot, a whole range of banana trees. The messenger once again returned to report what had happened. (ibid: 268–70)
God, stupefied and confounded, told Yellow Eagle to present Andriamamakimpoetra with a golden cane, and demand he determine which is the top, and which is the bottom. Now, the cane was of exactly the same size, top and bottom. When Andriamamakimpoetra had it within his hands, he threw it up in the air and allowed it to fall, and thus correctly identified the two ends.
This time God didn’t know what to do so; very confused, he left heaven to come meet Andriamamakimpoetra himself. The moment he arrived he made everything around Andriamamakimpoetra’s village turn pitch black, so that the villagers, even in the middle of the day, could not see a thing. Then he brought forth great flashes of lightning and terrible crashes of thunder, so that everyone was left astounded. Only the Andriana had no fear of anything, but delighted in the noise. He happily strode out of his house despite all the menacing lightning bolts, and he carried in his hand an ody that he turned towards each of the cardinal points, so that the lightning turned away from him harmlessly. Finally, he called out, ‘O God, come down to earth if you like, but stop frightening the inhabitants of this country.’
Then God came down before Andriamamakimpoetra’s house and told him, ‘Let us go forth together, if you like, to a country far from your home; we shall have a contest of wits, since you deny ever having been created by me.’
‘Agreed!’ replied the Andriana. ‘Let’s go then!’ And the two set forth upon their route. After a little while, God advanced ahead, and once out of sight, he transformed himself into a great flowing spring, beside which grew a large number of fruit trees bearing many fine fruits. Everyone who passed stopped to drink the water from the spring, and to taste some of the delicious fruits, hanging so thickly on the branches of the trees. Like the others, Andriamamakimpoetra approached the place and stopped to rest, but then he recognised it was really God, and said, ‘Cut it out, God, I know what you’re up to! Come on! Let’s get on with our journey, because I’m never going to drink from you.’
Then, in his turn, the Andriana went off ahead, and as soon as he was out of sight he turned into a great wild orange tree full of fruits. God, when he saw the tree, started to gather the fruit, but then he saw that it was really Andriamamakimpoetra that had changed into that form and he cried out, ‘Come on! Let’s get back on the road! Don’t even dream that you can disguise yourself from me, because I can see perfectly well that the orange tree is really you.’
Next, God went in advance and at a certain distance, he became a great plain, with enough rice growing from it that a great army of men could cultivate it for the rest of their lives. On this plain there were also many cattle and chickens. And it is from this time that human beings have known of rice and orange trees, and have raised cattle and chickens as domestic animals. But Andriamamakimpoetra recognised God; and in his turn, he went out in advance, and turned himself into a large village, with numerous houses occupied by rich inhabitants; and in this village, there lived three beautiful women. And God started searching for the Andriana, but he couldn’t find him. Now after a month’s time, he came up to the beautiful village, and stopped, and married one of the three women. And after a certain time she became pregnant. She developed the desire to eat rat meat, so she begged her husband to go and find her some. He turned himself into a cat and went beneath the floorboards to find some, and it didn’t take more than a few minutes before he’d caught four rats to bring back to his wife. She burned the hair off the four rats over the hearth, and when they’d been cleaned, chopped the meat into small pieces and cooked them. But she didn’t eat any of them herself, she gave them all to God to eat. Some months later, she gave birth to a child. God was extremely happy, but at the very moment of his birth, the newborn began to speak, ‘I am called Fanihy [a bird], because I am not the son of God. No, it is I, Andriamamakimpoetra, for whom God has been so long searching, without being able to find.’
Then the infant rose and began to walk, and mocked God, saying, ‘I made you eat rats, and you ate them! Is this not sufficient proof that I was not created by you?’
And so God, completely confounded, returned sadly home. But to this day he continues to think about the Andriana, and whenever he becomes angry, he thunders and makes it rain, and this is a sign of his anger towards Andriamamakimpoetra. Whereas, as for him, they say, he truly was never made by God. He created himself. (ibid: 270–74)
Thanks, Mom!
Congrats on the engagement! Wishing you nothing but success in the new endeavor!
Thanks so much!
It looks like David Graeber supported a universal basic income and it also looks like he fell for the mainstream narrative over "Covid". I agree with him on the bullshit job front though. It's an interesting and provocative debate and I look forward to your further exploration. I just think it would be nice if we had less government intervention and were allowed some autonomy to grow our own food and have some livestock. Far better than UBI.
His position on UBI is surprising, to say the least, because it's very difficult to find a video in which he says anything stupid - the idea you singled out is his single worst idea. I have yet to read Bullshit Jobs, in which he presents that idea, so I'll reserve judgement until I do, but I will say that he may have been presenting it as a lesser of two evils - the fact of the matter is that most "work" done is first-world countries is completely unnecessary, and it would be better if people didn't waste their lives pretending to be working. It would be better if they literally just sat at home, pursuing their interests. I agree with him on that, but obviously UBI is a terrible idea, definitely not one that any self-respecting anarchist should ever advocate for.
I will say that he seems to have been very good at picking his battles. For instance, one gets the feeling, studying his work and reading between the lines, that he secretly had his doubts about 9/11, COVID, and the climate change narrative. But he just didn't come out and say so.
He does seems to have SOMEWHAT lost the plot in the last few years of his life, but not as much as you might think. But can you imagine the hell of being an anthropologist in the woke era?
Anthropologists talk about taboo - that's part of the job. And there's no such thing as politically correct anthropology, but things can only be politically correct from the perspective of one given cultural standpoint.
David Graeber was a an academic and did play the game of political correctness. I will point that he was fired from Yale before he got tenure, no doubt because they were afraid of the impact his ideas would have if he started speaking more freely. If you want to call him a careerist, fine. But he clearly played his cards well, because he's probably one of the bestselling anarchist authors of all time.
But please feel free to share stuff that is damaging to Graeber's reputation, including on COVID. I haven't been able to find much - mostly he seems to have just kept a low profile.
In any case, my point isn't to defend every single thing Graeber ever did or said, but to make sure that his best ideas do not fall into obscurity. They are essential for understanding where we as a society are at.
If you haven't read Debt, that is his magnum opus and the reason he deserves to be remembered for centuries. I doubt you will find anything to disagree with in that require book, which has already revolutionized the field of economics by debunking Adam Smith's myth of the primitive "barter economy".
If you don't time to read a big tome on economics, I would suggest reading Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, which is a very quick read. You can find it on The Anarchist Library and there's an audio version on Youtube.
I've ordered both books from the Library. Here's an interesting link. https://dorseteye.com/i-blame-covid-19-and-the-joke-government-of-boris-johnson-for-david-graebers-death/
Fantastic! You're in for a treat!
I recommend the Revised and Updated audiobook version of Debt, which includes a very touching afterword in which David Graeber is very clear that he knows that he has achieved something that his hero, the French anarchist anthropologist Marcel Mauss, always intended to do. His inspiration in writing Debt was to write the work that Mauss would have written if he had lived long enough to do so.
I was struck reading it with a feeling of an awe - that the ideas of a great thinker can continue to resonate many decades after his death.
Observe the revival of Gustav Landuaer's fusion of anarchist mysticism by Paul Cudenec... It was tremendously obscure just a few short years ago, now Landauer's work has come back into fashion with the world's most forward-thinking radical intellectuals. It was necessary for the old paradigm to die before the world was ready for his ideas. Even if I fail to accomplish what I aim to in my lifetime, my ideas could resonate with people a generation hence, when secular materialism is a distant memory.
So here's my theory - Graeber ain't dead. He lives on through his ideas, which seek channels through which to work their magic. One gets the feeling, reading his work, that he never really truly showed his whole hand. He clearly had a highly refined sense of some form of intelligence higher than Reason - observe his theory of imaginary counterpower - but he never really came out with it. Perhaps he would have been treated like a crackpot if he had. He lived in a very hard time to be an anthropologist. As I have said before, there's no such thing as politically correct anthropology. Anthropologists necessarily must discuss taboo, and unlearn the prejudices of their own cultural programming. And that's the point of political anthropology - by comparing our own culture to others, we can expand our imaginations about the range of possibilities available to us.
Graeber was a utopian - he never stopped believing that that what we all believed at the height of the Global Justice Movement - that Another World Is Possible. He knew it to be true, because all anthropologists do. It is not an article of faith. It is a fact.
In interviews in his later years, Graeber often laughs slightly maniacally. I know why. Sometimes, the only choice one has is to to laugh, cry, or scream. Laughter is a way of dealing with pain. I make fun of the stupidity of our current political paradigm because it is easier to feeling the weight of the world upon me. The stupidity of casino capitalism is truly astounding - we are fouling our nest at a breakneck pace to convert the wealth of the natural wealth into digital bits on a ledger somewhere. It is astoundingly stupid, yet most people think we are the wisest, smartest, most advanced society there has ever been on the face of the Earth. It's maddening, saddening, and awful. Might as well laugh about it.
So if you watch the debate he did with Peter Thiel, and you wonder what it's laughing about - that's it. It's the breathtaking stupidity of it all. That a C.I.A. stooge like Thiel, seemingly intelligent enough to know that he is in the presence of a truly great mind, is too stupid to realize his own complicity with the system that is turning our beautiful world into a hell.
The fact of the matter is that it is our faith in the system that keeps it going. We are, in a sense, the sowers of own demise, because most people simply cannot imagine anything better. He could.
I do not mourn for David Graeber, though he wanted to live forever. As far as I am concerned, he has achieved something akin to immortality, because I have no doubt that he will be remembered for generations to come.
As for myself, I will honour his memory by making his message of a global Jubilee a central part of my political program. The system is held in place by mountains and mountains of debt that will never, ever be paid. We have before us two choices - one, we wipe the slate clean, or two, we consent to debt peonage in perpetuity. The choice is between salvation and annihilation. It's not a tough call.
Yet people refuse to believe, so conditioned they have been to see this fallen world as right, natural, and inevitable. Yet it is anything but, and deep down we all know this. Things are out of wack, and balance must be restored.
When Uncle Ted died, I wrote that it was not a tragedy, because he had already achieved his life's mission by accomplishing something truly great - overturning an entire paradigm. David Graeber did the same. It may take a generation for people to catch up with him. More likely, though, it will happen sooner, because the collapse of capitalism he prophesized is already upon us.
Bob Marley asked "How long will they kill our prophets?" and there's a simple answer: until we actually listen to to what they have to say, take it to heart, and apply their message to our lives.
The revolution must take place first in our hearts and minds. Nothing less is required of us now than TO CHANGE EVERYTHING.
I'm David Graeber and I approve this message.
I must say I really like Paul Cudenec. I went to see him at a book launch in London. It's definitely better to laugh than cry. I ended up working in a Hospital during the Covid Lockdowns. It was amazing how people wouldn't trust the evidence of their own eyes but were glued to TV and believed everything they were told. At some point I need to write a long essay about my own experience during that period. I've found the Youtube video of Graeber vs Thiel and I will watch when I get a chance.