Favourite books?

I’ve never been able to reread books but I like books that change your perspective or aid you to see things in a different light. I read three books in a series during lockdown that opened my eyes a lot. They were by Yuval Noah Harari, the first in the trio is called Sapiens followed by Homo Deus and lastly 21 Lessons. The books topics cover the very beginnings of humanity and religions to technology and what may lay ahead for the future of humanity referring to AI especially. 

Oh, Sapiens. 

It is a good book. I just felt it wasn't for me since it didn't mention the Toba catastrophe theory or the disaster in 535-536 CE. But good nonetheless!

Is there anything from this book you particularly enjoyed? 

Sapiens is good and vogently written but it could be the writer is a little too sold on the idea that our species is that war like and destructive. Recently I read a non academic who nevertheless did her homework and raised the idea again that Gimbutas may have been right about humans having been more peacefully matriarchal in the beginning. 

Thank you for that, I think we forget we are part of the animal kingdom and a lot more goes into our choices than conscious thought and acting out those thoughts. Obviously different levels of hormones between the species play a role too. We are much more advanced than our chimpanzees cousins thankfully but the movies like planet of the apes are a frightening play on those fears that we are not so different after all. 

I really need to get my hands on some Gimbutas books, my partner has them but they would be a bit difficult to lug over from the UK.

Have you read Before War from Elisha Daeva? She's not a formal academic, and she dies make the very interesting point that the world of academia can be very power driven. Start making unpopular claims and the gden doors of academia will close against you, and you will become a pariah, a laugh G stock. That is how dated paradigms become entrenched. I don't know if her imagination runs away with her too, she discusses her personal life rather a lot in her book, she's very much a 90's hippy. Must say she does also red like a breath of fresh air.

An acquaintance of mine corroborated the ideological/philosophical closed door in also producing a series of books on anthropology and philosophy under a pseudonym - he didn't want to be pilloried for supporting the more mystical side of Kant and William James either. This acquaintance is very much on the side of patriarchy as a necessary evolution though, where this was the path to getting away from human sacrifice. Good old Euripides.

I met thinkers such as Monica Sjoo who were critical of the more patriarchal side of a lot of New, Age thought, and the problematica side of this, though she was woke before her times too: she criticised my tarot artwork for not having enough Black peoe in my deck, though I did include Black characters.

Daeva is of the opinion that patriarchy evves under trauma, which could conceivably include mass dying off such as plague pandemic - and there is certainly scientific proof that Plague dud kill off thrici  Neolithic communities. But drought and famine could also be responsible.

It does seem that the harsh conditions of desert communities are often the matrix for authoritarian monolithic religions. A certain Vitaly Malkin sent me his book to review for free, on that topic. It's called The Ruse of the One God. 

The Venus figures are unmistable. So too is the fact that Micenean pottery is full of images of war and fighting, but Minoan art and frescoes show nothing like that. 

I think the writer who first drew attention to all that was Desmond Morris in The Naked Ape. Yuval in passing says that in social situations we behave embsssingly like chimpanzees. We do share so much of our DNA with them. There is another book worth reading, alas I don't remember the title, maybe it's to book you are referring to, that talked of the way males in each of our species can become lethally aggressive in party groups. That book also suggested we are a little split between a more aggressive chimp heritage, and the more friendly tendencies of the bonobo. Seemed a bit reflective of the Cain and Abel myth?

I think the writer who first drew attention to all that was Desmond Morris in The Naked Ape. Yuval in passing says that in social situations we behave embsssingly like chimpanzees. We do share so much of our DNA with them. There is another book worth reading, alas I don't remember the title, maybe it's to book you are referring to, that talked of the way males in each of our species can become lethally aggressive in party groups. That book also suggested we are a little split between a more aggressive chimp heritage, and the more friendly tendencies of the bonobo. Seemed a bit reflective of the Cain and Abel myth?

Thank you for that, I think we forget we are part of the animal kingdom and a lot more goes into our choices than conscious thought and acting out those thoughts. Obviously different levels of hormones between the species play a role too. We are much more advanced than our chimpanzees cousins thankfully but the movies like planet of the apes are a frightening play on those fears that we are not so different after all.