Favorite Books: The Dawn of Everything

What if human beings aren't locked into a narrow repertoire of political and sociological options?  Rousseau and Hobbes have narrowed our minds about who humans are and what we are capable of being.  In this episode of Lead Balloons, Trent and Joel discuss a rebuttal of standard narratives about human "essentialisms" in Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity.  

Joel asks Trent why this book is one of his favorites, as well as how linear human progress may not tell the whole story.  Findings in anthropology and archaeology can open our eyes to the myriad ways humans have lived historically.  Trent enumerates three freedoms that Wengrow and Graeber claim prevailed through multiple epochs in human history.  If you are keen to wonder if human beings might organize themselves differently and experiment a bit more than we do currently, check out this episode!