Hi,
There are many ways to organize a culture, a civilization, or an economy. We should be exploring all three paradigms because we are going through a time of wrenching upheaval and metamorphosis. We hope to emerge better equipped for the future. One track of exploration is to look to the past for clues.
dL
a indigenous American who lived in what is now NE U.S. and SE Canada:
Kondiaronk (1649 - 1701), a Huron chief at Michilimackinac, key strategist & statesman of the Wendat Confederacy, a coalition of 4 Iroquoian-speaking peoples. {his name literally meant ‘the muskrat’ and the French referred to him as simply as ‘Le Rat".}:
"I have spent six years reflecting on the state of European society and I still can’t think of a single way they act that’s not inhuman, and I genuinely think this can only be the case, as long as you stick to your distinctions of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’. I affirm that what you call money is the devil of devils; the tyrant of the French, the source of all evils; the bane of souls and the slaughterhouse of the living. To imagine one can live in the country of money and preserve one’s soul is like imagining one could preserve one’s life at the bottom of a lake. Money is the father of luxury, lasciviousness, intrigues, trickery, lies, betrayal, insincerity, — of all the world’s worst behavior. Fathers sell their children, husbands their wives, wives betray their husbands, brothers kill each other, friends are false, and all because of money. In the light of all this, tell me that we Wendat are not right is refusing to touch, or so much as to look at silver?"
our first Republican president: (oh, so putrified has this contemporary political party become!)
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865): "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy."
"No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent."
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." Lincoln's First Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1861.
“Nations do not die from invasion; they die from internal rottenness.”
the prelude to the inception of civilization may not be as simplistic as we have been taught
David Graeber (2/12/1961 – 9/2/2020), an American anthropologist, anarchist activist and author: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, co-written with archaeologist David Wengrow, © 2021
Three Primordial Freedoms
1.) Freedom to move or relocate
2.). Freedom to obey or disobey orders as deemed fitting. No arbitrary compulsion.
3.). Freedom to create new and different forms of social reality, to transform social relationships.
