"The Best Response To Anyone Who Wants To Take Seriously Nietzsche's Fantasies About Savage Hunters Chopping

"The best response to anyone who wants to take seriously Nietzsche's fantasies about savage hunters chopping pieces off each other's bodies for failure to remit are the words of an actual hunter-gatherer — an Inuit from Greenland made famous in the Danish writer Peter Freuchen's Book of the Eskimo. Freuchen tells how one day, after coming home hungry from an unsuccessful walrus-hunting expedition, he found one of the successful hunters dropping off several hundred pounds of meat. He thanked him profusely. The man objected indignantly:

'Up in our country we are human!' said the hunter. 'And since we are human we help each other. We don't like to hear anybody say thanks for that. What I get today you may get tomorrow. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs.'

The last line is something of an anthropological classic, and similar statements about the refusal to calculate credits and debits can be found through the anthropological literature on egalitarian hunting societies. Rather than seeing himself as human because he could make economic calculations, the hunter insisted that being truly human meant refusing to make such calculations, refusing to measure or remember who had given what to whom, for the precise reason that doing so would inevitably create a world where we began 'comparing power with power, measuring, calculating' and reducing each other to slaves or dogs through debt.

It's not that he, like untold millions of similar egalitarian spirits throughout history, was unaware that humans have a propensity to calculate. If he wasn't aware of it, he could not have said what he did. Of course we have a propensity to calculate. We have all sorts of propensities. In any real-life situation, we have propensities that drive us in several different contradictory directions simultaneously. No one is more real than any other. The real question is which we take as the foundation of our humanity, and therefore, make the basis of our civilization. If Nietzsche's analysis of debt is helpful to us, then, it is because it reveals that when we start from the assumption that human thought is essentially a matter of commercial calculation, that buying and selling are the basis of human society — then, yes, once we begin to think about our relationship with the cosmos, we will necessarily conceive of it in terms of debt."

- David Graeber, from Debt: The First 5,000 Years, 2011.

More Posts from Godims0tired and Others

godims0tired

4 years ago

should i be writing my historical investigation? probably. am procrastinating on it by drawing this prick? yeah.

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one piece my stuff oh well DAMN... eustass kid i made his head to big you saw who i drew first you see my pinned post you can tell who i ship

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godims0tired

1 year ago

The Lyctoral Process remains unchanged for thousands of years with no alternatives, only for two 20-somethings in a trench coat to invent Paulymerization.

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godims0tired

5 months ago

It Was 20 Years Ago (ish) :: Empire Magazine Publishes The Lord Of The Rings: A Celebration, A Special

It was 20 years ago (ish) :: Empire magazine publishes The Lord of the Rings: A Celebration, a special booklet enclosed with the magazine's January 2004 issue, which was released in December 2003. The booklet carried interviews with the principal cast of the LOTR trilogy as well as a significant amount of the creatives involved. The photography was taken in Watford, New York, Wellington, London, Sydney, Los Angeles, Surrey, Melbourne, and Vancouver between February and October 2003. Shown here: Ian McKellen (Gandalf), Elijah Wood (Frodo), Billy Boyd (Pippin); John Rhys-Davies (Gimli/Treebeard), Dominic Monaghan (Merry), Sean Bean (Boromir); Orlando Bloom (Legolas), Sean Astin (Sam), Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn); Miranda Otto (Eowyn), Andy Serkis (Gollum/Smeagol), Liv Tyler (Arwen); Bernard Hill (Theoden), Christopher Lee (Saruman), Karl Urban (Eomer); Hugo Weaving (Elrond), David Wenham (Faramir), and Cate Blanchett (Galadriel). [Note: Dominic Monaghan's photo here is an outtake; the actual shot in the booklet can be seen here. These photoshoots provided several excellent outtakes that I'd be happy to share if there is interest.]

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godims0tired

6 years ago

When the teacher says “the bell doesn’t dismiss you, I do.”

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godims0tired

3 years ago

I Know This Isn’t Going To Happen In Film Red But That’s Not Going To Stop Me From Trying To Manifest

I know this isn’t going to happen in Film Red but that’s not going to stop me from trying to manifest it

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godims0tired

2 years ago

why are christian bale and patrick bateman the exact same person

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godims0tired

3 years ago

Kid pirates at Pride parade

Kid´s your local drag queen

he´s the kind of guy that you see in the train on your way that just looks more fab than anyone else you´ve ever seen

his wig styling game is on another level and you have given up trying to figure out how the fuck he walks with those boots

also he´s too buff to get jumped

cue drag queen protection squad

him and his crew will literally start a fight with homophobes and transphobes and curbstomp them

they literally act as bodyguards for other drag queens and accompany them to the toilet so they´re safe and nothing bad happens

Killer is the guy who throws around condoms like candy

preaching safe sex to everyone

also makes sure (especially Kid) drinks and eats enough, has all the snacks and water

also will not hesitate to elbow any disgusting gropers

they always mysteriously vanish into the night

Kid is an activist for queer youth protection so he always shows up with his ´my sexuality is not your fetish´ sign

okay but they all sing along the songs so fucking loud and yes they know every single word (and also keep up with new queer music)

their bold presence helps kids who are there for the first time ease up and feel like they belong

actually Heat is super kind (duh) and will go to the closeted kids and first timers and just talk to them

telling them about his experience, giving them advice

sigh, he´s such a sweetheart

meanwhile Wire will start a fight with literally anyone who looks at them the wrong way

literally any kid that comes along their way he´ll just go up to and be like: there´s nothing wrong with you, no matter what society tells you

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godims0tired

1 year ago

I should be doing homework jdslklkd anyways have this stupid thing I made in under 3 hours

original audio from here

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godims0tired

4 years ago

i sure fucking wish pharmaceutical companies weren’t permitted to bribe insurers into not covering their competitors’ more effective drugs! that sure would be cool! it would be especially fucking cool if i didn’t have to go for an infusion at the worst possible time, as colorado’s COVID-19 numbers skyrocket out of control and everyone continues to not take this seriously, just to ensure that i’m not stuck for ages without the drug that keeps my white blood cells from eating my brain

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non art reblog

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godims0tired

1 year ago