0:00

Wonder E Plus subscribers can listen to Tides

0:02

of History early and ad-free right now. Join

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Wonder E Plus in the Wonder E app

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or on Apple Podcasts. Hi,

0:18

everybody. From Wonder E, welcome to another episode of

0:20

Tides of History. I'm Patrick Wyman. Thanks so much

0:22

for being here with me today. We're

0:25

often told that classical Greece lies at

0:28

the root of, quote unquote, Western civilization.

0:31

If we dig all the way down

0:33

into our intellectual and cultural past through

0:35

the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment to

0:37

antiquity, maybe we skip the inconvenient Middle

0:39

Ages along the way, then we'll eventually

0:41

wind up in Athens in the fifth

0:43

century B.C. Whether that

0:45

particular formulation of a civilizational genealogy is

0:48

valid in any sense, it's absolutely undeniable

0:50

that the classical Greeks exerted and continued

0:52

to exert a strong influence on a

0:54

variety of different ways. Philosophy,

0:57

literature, art, architecture, political

0:59

theory in all of these ways

1:01

and more, we're still living with the legacy of that

1:03

age. But there's a problem. Whenever

1:06

we step back into the past, we're

1:08

entering something fundamentally foreign in which people

1:10

thought about themselves and the world in

1:13

ways that differ fundamentally from our own

1:15

preconceptions and assumptions. So how

1:17

should we understand ancient Greece and the people

1:19

who inhabited it? Can we really dig into

1:22

their worldview? When we make

1:24

those assumptions about their place in our

1:26

cultural genealogy and their enduring influence, how

1:28

does that distort the reality of their

1:30

world? There is nobody

1:32

better to help us answer those questions than

1:34

today's guest. Greg Anderson is

1:36

professor of history and courtesy professor of

1:38

comparative studies at The Ohio State University.

1:41

He's a specialist on ancient Greece and the

1:43

author of one of my favorite books that

1:46

I read on that period and history more

1:48

generally when I was preparing my episodes entitled

1:50

The Realness of Things Past, Ancient Greece and

1:52

Ontological History. He's also the

1:54

author of The Athenian Experiment, Building an Imagined

1:56

Political Community in Ancient Attica, 508 to 490

1:58

BC. along with

2:01

numerous articles and book chapters. Professor

2:03

Anderson, thank you so much for joining me today. Well,

2:05

thanks so much for having me, Patrick. I'm delighted to

2:08

be here. There's

2:11

a lot to say when buying a new home

2:14

or car, but only one thing to say that

2:16

can help you protect them. Like a good neighbor,

2:18

State Farm is there. And just

2:20

like that, a State Farm agent will

2:22

be there to help you choose the coverage

2:24

you need, no matter where you are in

2:26

life. When you need coverage options, your State

2:29

Farm agent is there to help, on the

2:31

phone or in person. Like a good neighbor,

2:33

State Farm is there. So

2:41

what drew you to the study of Ancient

2:43

Greece in the first place? Well,

2:45

it's a long story and it didn't

2:47

have particularly auspicious beginnings. I have to

2:49

say, I wasn't a particularly good student

2:51

at school or even really

2:53

in college. I decided just that the

2:55

most fun degree to

2:57

do would be a degree in Latin.

2:59

And I was obliged to take Greek

3:02

language as well, as part of that

3:04

degree. And I'd never been

3:06

exposed really to the Greeks much before, but

3:08

I really loved the language. I got a

3:11

sense of the literature that this language was

3:13

used to represent. And I thought that sounded

3:15

way more interesting than the Roman stuff. And

3:18

so from then on, I ended up doing

3:20

an MA and ultimately coming over to the

3:22

States to do a PhD in originally in

3:24

Greek literature, it was meant to be, but

3:27

I gravitated more towards the history while I

3:29

was doing it and ended up being a

3:31

professor of history, originally

3:33

specializing in Ancient Greek history. So that's

3:35

the sort of short version. So you

3:37

say originally specializing, but over the years,

3:40

your interests have kind of changed. How

3:42

have they changed over the years? Well,

3:44

partly as a result of encountering the

3:47

problems with doing Greek history. And

3:50

these began for me when I was back

3:52

as a grad student trying to write a

3:54

dissertation, the problems of

3:57

basic analysis, the kinds of

3:59

categories. and tools we're

4:01

meant to use when we try

4:04

to make sense of ancient Greek experience

4:06

are largely products of

4:09

modern social science. And

4:11

so you are obliged,

4:13

for example, to always separate

4:16

political life from social life, from

4:18

economic life, and then there's this

4:21

thing called religion, which is off

4:23

somewhere in the margins. And

4:27

again, we tend to, you know, the field tends

4:29

to have people who specialize in one or other

4:32

of these different areas. But

4:34

where does that idea come from that,

4:36

you know, these places are just sort

4:39

of naturally divided into these different realms

4:41

of experience? Well, it completely comes

4:43

from our own modern experience, it's got nothing

4:45

to do with the ancient Greeks at all.

4:47

I mean, just to, you know,

4:49

give you a basic response to that,

4:51

it would be to say that, well,

4:53

we're studying here an ancient Greek polis.

4:56

And what is a polis? We

4:58

tend in the modern world to talk about

5:00

it as if it's a miniature nation state,

5:03

and that it has these public

5:06

and private political versus social

5:08

versus economic, all these different

5:10

realms dividing it up. But

5:12

that's not how the Greeks thought about it. They thought

5:14

about it as a kind of,

5:18

I use the word superorganism, if

5:20

you like, a social body made

5:23

up of households. And

5:25

if the nature of your polity is

5:28

that it is a social body made up

5:30

of households, it obviously makes

5:32

no sense to be drawing a

5:34

distinction between public and private, because

5:37

the public is the private and the

5:39

private is the public. And so, you

5:41

know, these very basic kind of analytical

5:43

terms start to be pretty meaningless when

5:46

you study somewhere like ancient Greece, even

5:48

more so when you study other places,

5:51

but they are just part

5:53

of that universal toolbox that we are

5:55

obliged to use, if we

5:57

want to write the kinds of stories.

6:00

about these past times

6:02

and places that will

6:04

get published in academic journals. If

6:07

you start to question some of

6:09

these very fundamental sorts of basic

6:11

tools and categories, then

6:14

people start to raise their eyebrows because

6:16

you're doing things differently to how they

6:19

think a good proper history ought to

6:21

look. And yet, I wonder

6:23

what sort of damage we're really doing

6:26

to these past times and places and

6:29

we impose this modern

6:33

style of social being

6:35

onto them. Because

6:37

in the end, what it involves is

6:39

completely re-engineering past experiences to make sense

6:41

to us so that we

6:44

can understand it. So it's intelligible and

6:46

commensurable with our own experience. But

6:48

if that's such

6:50

an extreme change that you're making, I

6:53

mean, are you really doing history anymore

6:55

at that point? It's

6:57

more like a kind of, I mean, to

6:59

look at it in as positive a way

7:01

as possible, it's more like a kind of

7:03

experiment, really, or subjecting these past times and

7:05

places to this modern modes

7:07

of analysis. Looking

7:10

at it in a less generous way, one could

7:12

say that this is a kind of violent, almost

7:15

colonial appropriation of

7:18

these times and places. That is,

7:20

you are literally forcing these past

7:22

peoples to live according to truths

7:24

and realities that would have made

7:26

no sense to them at all

7:28

at the time. So how

7:31

valid is that as a historical exercise?

7:33

And what's the alternative? Because, well,

7:36

I mean, when I was

7:38

coming through the ranks, there really isn't an

7:40

alternative. So I guess you

7:42

could say that my primary project as

7:44

a Greek historian was to try and

7:47

make one, you know, to

7:49

come up with an alternative way that

7:51

seems like it could produce more meaningful

7:54

and dare I say more ethically

7:58

positive, less ethical. perfectly dubious

8:01

results, and that is

8:03

to do this thing which the book

8:05

calls ontological history. What it really involves

8:08

is basically studying every past time and

8:10

place, every past people we know about,

8:13

on their own terms, in

8:15

their own worlds of experience. Now that

8:18

doesn't mean we're looking at all

8:20

these peoples in little silos, that they

8:22

have no contact with anybody else, or

8:25

they're just existing in kind of isolation.

8:27

Of course, there is interaction between these

8:29

different worlds, but I think if we

8:32

begin from the premise that they are

8:34

different worlds, we're going to produce more

8:36

meaningful results. I mean, at

8:38

the very least, on the most practical level,

8:40

the kinds of evidence that you read, obviously

8:44

if it's written evidence from the

8:46

time itself, the voices you're going

8:48

to be hearing are speaking to

8:50

truths or taking for granted truths

8:52

and realities which are meaningful to

8:54

them, which are going to be very

8:56

different from the kinds of truths that are meaningful to

8:59

us, the ones that have been so colored,

9:01

conditioned, shaped by modern scientific

9:03

thought. So

9:06

right away, the evidence is going to

9:08

start to make a bit more sense,

9:10

dare we say. You're going to be

9:13

not reading against the grain of it

9:15

all the time and saying, well, okay,

9:17

they talk about X, Y, and Z.

9:19

Isn't that somewhat similar or comparable to

9:21

X, Y, and Z in our world?

9:24

And then, as it were, substituting our world's

9:26

X, Y, Z for theirs and hoping that

9:28

it sort of makes enough sense. And of

9:30

course, it will make a sort of sense

9:32

to us. But if it isn't going

9:34

to have made any sense to the people themselves, are

9:37

we not misrepresenting their experiences?

9:41

What does writing a meaningful history

9:43

really involve? Should it

9:45

abide by what we recognize as truths

9:48

and realities or what the people at

9:50

the time recognize as truths and realities?

9:52

And I say pretty

9:54

uncompromisingly that it should

9:56

be the truths and

9:59

realities that were the time. That's what history

10:01

ought to be about. And if you

10:03

consistently do that across the whole

10:05

historical field and all these different

10:07

bibles back across the millennia, then

10:10

all of a sudden your whole sense of the

10:13

human story is going to change pretty drastically.

10:15

When I read your book, when

10:18

I read The Realness of Things Past, it really

10:20

appealed to me on a basic level because these

10:22

are problems that I deal with

10:24

all the time in trying to communicate

10:26

with a popular audience. So how

10:28

do you take these elements of past

10:31

experience and past lives and put them

10:33

in terms that are understandable to people

10:35

today? And one

10:37

of the fundamental things that

10:39

I find I have to avoid is the

10:42

idea of simplification. That if I'm

10:44

reading that there's this sense among a certain

10:47

kind of academic that writing for popular audiences

10:49

means kind of dumbing your work down. And

10:52

that's absolutely not true. What you're doing is

10:54

translating. But the act of translating

10:56

something, as anybody who's come up through a

10:58

classics department knows and has spent a lot

11:00

of time translating texts, that you are

11:03

not absent from the act of

11:06

translation. That your sense for what

11:08

matters is playing a

11:10

fundamental role in what you

11:12

emphasize, what you leave out, what you choose

11:14

to focus on. Even the kinds of things

11:16

that you select to talk about in the

11:18

first place, the kinds of source material that

11:20

you talk about, all of those things are...

11:22

And there's this idea, again, I think among

11:24

lay people about bias, that the sources are

11:26

biased or that the history is biased.

11:28

And it's so much more fundamental than

11:31

that, right? That it's baked into the

11:33

worldview. It is not separable from the...

11:36

There's no sense in which the content of

11:38

the texts is separable from the worldviews of

11:40

the people who were writing those things down.

11:43

Yeah, no, absolutely. And that's where

11:45

the challenge of doing this alternative

11:47

kind of a history begins. Because

11:50

so often the truths and realities that

11:52

they take for granted and live by,

11:54

and as you say, are baked into

11:56

their everyday life practices,

11:58

their normal... norms of thought,

12:00

their norms of speech, etc.

12:04

These aren't spoken about explicitly, because why

12:06

would you need to speak about them?

12:08

They're just taken for granted. And

12:11

so, of course, in the scholarly world, there

12:13

is this sense, well, if

12:15

it isn't written somewhere then there's no

12:17

evidence for it, which

12:19

is completely, in a way,

12:22

you're going to miss some maybe

12:24

the most important foundations of

12:26

life in that time and

12:28

place, because of course the people at

12:30

the time felt no need to talk about it, because

12:32

everyone knows this. So

12:35

that's part of the challenge.

12:38

The way I would describe the approach is

12:41

precisely that you have to look at

12:43

what people do in their everyday lives.

12:45

In other words, when you're thinking of

12:48

what are the Greeks' assumptions about what's

12:51

real and what's true, I would

12:53

say first of all, don't go on

12:55

what the philosophers tell you, because

12:57

the Greek philosophers are renegades.

12:59

For the most part, they're people who

13:01

are pushing against the grain of

13:04

what the common sense was at the time.

13:06

What we're interested in is what was the

13:08

common sense? And

13:10

Aristotle doesn't represent Greek thought. Plato

13:13

doesn't represent Greek thought. These guys

13:15

are pushing against the grain of

13:17

what Greek thought actually was. Yes,

13:20

indirectly they can reveal to us

13:22

what it was, because that's the

13:24

thing they're critiquing or pushing. It's

13:26

the implicit object of

13:28

their critiques. But

13:30

what, as it were, the lived

13:32

truths of the Greeks were is

13:34

what is baked into their

13:37

everyday life practices, and those begin

13:39

with ritual practices. Certainly,

13:42

the studies of classical Athens

13:44

are incredibly preoccupied with what

13:46

people call Athenian democracy, as

13:50

if that really is the central

13:52

truth, as it were, of the ancient

13:54

Greek, or certainly the

13:56

ancient Athenian experience. most

13:59

important thing that's true. Athenians spend most time

14:01

doing among all of their different

14:03

activities. What do they

14:06

invest most time in? What do they

14:08

invest most importantly, most of their resources

14:10

in? It is ritual

14:12

activities. These are going on all

14:15

the time at all levels, from

14:17

household levels, neighborhood levels, right up

14:19

to the big sanctuaries and the

14:21

great processions and sacrifices of the

14:23

Panathenaia, the main festival of Athena.

14:26

And these involve vast investments

14:29

of time, effort, energy, resources.

14:31

I mean, something

14:33

like the Parthenon or even

14:36

the famous golden ivory statue of

14:38

Athena that stood in the Parthenon,

14:40

which apparently cost more to produce than the

14:42

temple itself did. But the Parthenon was

14:45

by far the most expensive

14:47

temple the Athenians had ever built and

14:49

may have been somewhat more expensive than

14:51

even the temple of Zeus and Olympia.

14:53

It was built a decade

14:55

or so later, a decade or two, I

14:57

think. It may

14:59

have been, it certainly was comparable expense. And

15:02

I once tried to work out in

15:04

sort of contemporary ancient terms what

15:07

it meant in everyday life terms. That

15:10

is, how long could a whole polis have lived on

15:12

with the money that it cost to build the Parthenon?

15:14

And it worked out as a polis of say 20,000

15:16

people could have lived for more than a year on

15:21

the actual expenditures on the Parthenon

15:24

alone. And that's just one temple.

15:26

I mean, these are colossal expenditures. Yes,

15:28

of course, the Athenians spend a lot

15:31

on their military endeavors, but this

15:33

is the central truth of their lives. The central

15:35

truth of their lives is that they are not

15:37

alone in the world. Not only

15:40

do they have all kinds of other humans

15:42

around, but they have this whole population of

15:44

non-humans. Some people say as

15:46

many as 200 different gods in Attica

15:48

alone. And of course, all of

15:50

those gods, they have to develop

15:53

relations with them. And relations

15:55

primarily are developed through ritual

15:57

activities. So the way

15:59

we should think about all of these

16:02

sacrifices and offerings and so forth, these

16:04

are ecological activities. They're not

16:07

religion in the sense of

16:09

piety and belief and faith.

16:12

It isn't even really a matter of belief

16:14

or faith. It's a matter of central truth,

16:16

as true for us as the law of

16:18

gravity is, you know, that God's

16:22

control, the conditions of all existence. You're

16:24

not here alone. They are immediately present

16:26

among us, and we have to get

16:28

along with them. So the rituals are,

16:31

in a way, a kind of

16:33

social interaction with these divinities, trying

16:35

to maintain good, positive relations. Of

16:37

course, they're asymmetrical because they're gods.

16:39

They're much more powerful than we

16:42

are. But that's the

16:44

central truth of Athenian experience. But you

16:46

wouldn't get that impression from reading most

16:49

modern source, you know, handbook

16:51

or textbook discussions of it because they

16:53

always begin with the political as if

16:55

that's the central truth. Because that's the

16:57

central truth for us because it's all

16:59

about power. Well, in

17:01

their world, human power paled into

17:04

insignificance beside divine power. And

17:06

the gods are the ultimate governors

17:09

of their world, and humans are

17:11

obliged to accept their

17:13

humble place in the scheme of things

17:15

and to get along with these beings

17:17

who are far more powerful than they

17:20

are. One of the

17:22

fascinating things about your

17:24

work and about this particular book is

17:27

the way in which it denaturalizes our

17:29

sense of what Athens was. And because

17:32

we have this whole complicated relationship with

17:34

classical Greece in general and Athens in

17:36

particular, and these kinds of insights

17:38

sound pretty shocking when they're talking about a

17:40

place that a lot of people think they

17:42

know really well, you know, it's like if

17:44

you go to like people who travel a

17:46

lot, if they go to London and wander

17:48

off the beaten path, they're going to find

17:50

a London that is quite different from what

17:52

they think they recognize it from movies. The

17:55

kinds of dynamics that you're talking about

17:57

with these other forces just omnipresent in

17:59

people. people's lives, it's almost easier to comprehend

18:01

when it's a place in the past that

18:04

you don't know as well. So I'm thinking

18:06

of Shang China, where there's this incredibly sophisticated

18:09

and complicated set

18:11

of relationships that exist between people

18:13

who are alive in the present

18:15

and ancestral spirits, natural spirits, and

18:17

that you have to be engaged

18:19

in a constant dialogue with those

18:21

spirits. And the really

18:23

the fascinating thing that has always occurred

18:25

to me when I'm reading the Oracle

18:27

Bone texts and good scholarship on them

18:30

is how insignificant even

18:32

the Shang King seems

18:34

in comparison to these forces that

18:37

he's desperately trying to juggle and

18:39

govern and appease with sacrifices of

18:41

various kinds. And

18:44

if that is your starting

18:46

point for understanding these

18:48

people, and as it should be our starting

18:50

point for understanding life in ancient Athens, then

18:52

that is a radically different thing than one

18:55

in which powerful political figures are assumed to

18:57

be in control of their own destiny and

18:59

standing at the apex of a socio-economic, socio-political

19:01

hierarchy. Absolutely. And so

19:05

a mistake so often made by Western

19:07

scholarship, because let's face it, even

19:10

people who do modern scholarship,

19:12

even if you're from Africa or Asia

19:14

or other parts of the world, you

19:17

are still obliged to talk in this,

19:19

what is ultimately a Western kind of

19:21

a way about these past experiences. And

19:24

so the mistake often made when

19:26

you think about, let's say, monarchies

19:28

of one kind or another is

19:31

that we assume all monarchs are

19:33

something like a kind of Henry

19:35

VIII or Louis XIV or some

19:37

all-powerful absolute monarch of more recent

19:39

times, that they're all sort of different

19:41

variant forms of the same thing. When

19:44

as you say, absolutely, often

19:47

the monarchs concerned are made of

19:49

a somewhat different substance from the

19:53

people that they have control over because

19:55

they may be descended from gods or

19:57

they may have some special mandate from

19:59

God. gods obviously in the Chinese

20:01

context, the Chinese imperial context, when the

20:03

emperor is a son of heaven and

20:07

given this role. And as you say, I

20:09

mean, right through, I'm not an

20:11

expert on Chinese imperial history, but I've studied

20:13

to a point for the Ming era quite

20:15

a bit. And I mean, as

20:17

you like you were saying before, the

20:20

amount of attention that has to be

20:22

paid to things like the movements of

20:24

planets and stars and so forth, because

20:27

this is the gods communicating their will

20:30

and the whole job of the

20:32

emperor is to align behavior among

20:36

all under heaven, particularly the

20:38

humans, with the timeless way

20:40

of heaven. So it's a

20:42

unified whole coordinated. And I

20:44

mean, to of course hierarchical,

20:46

but this is not some

20:48

individual being who is ruling

20:50

for himself and dominating for

20:52

his own purposes, as

20:55

would be the case maybe in

20:57

a more modern-ish type of a

20:59

context. This isn't a world

21:01

of individuals at all. Sure, you know, we can

21:03

look at the personalities of some of these

21:05

different rulers and see that some of them

21:08

are maybe kind of cruel or self-indulgent

21:10

or whatever. But ultimately,

21:14

their role there is shaped

21:16

by, in the Chinese case,

21:18

centuries of tradition about

21:20

what is expected of this

21:22

person. And you

21:24

know, it's all relational. It's

21:26

not about individuals at all.

21:28

They've derived their power from

21:30

outside. It's not something that's just a property

21:33

of their own. And they

21:35

can't just rule for themselves as individuals.

21:37

They are ultimately trying to

21:39

keep a whole cosmos going is

21:41

really what the, at least in

21:44

theory, that's what it's about. Not to

21:46

say that some emperors may not have

21:48

violated some of the principles. I'm sure

21:51

that happened. But the theory is what

21:53

matters. And I think our job as

21:55

historians, first of all, is to establish

21:57

the theory of how things are meant

21:59

to work. work. And then we

22:01

can start to measure actualities

22:03

against that. But the theory will be

22:05

very different from anything a modern social

22:08

scientist is going to tell you that

22:10

it is. So let's begin from the

22:12

assumption of complete difference rather than beginning

22:14

from the assumption of some commensurability. Begin

22:17

from the assumption of complete difference and

22:19

build it up from the bottom of

22:21

the ground, foundations of being coming

22:24

first, looking at the practices. What

22:27

kind of a world do those practices

22:29

take for granted? What would the world

22:31

have to be like for those practices

22:33

to be meaningful exercises

22:36

in sustaining the life of a population?

22:38

That's the sort of question you have

22:40

to ask to try to get inside,

22:42

as you put it, the way these

22:45

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bluenile.com, code AUDIO. There's

24:01

something that occurs to me as we're

24:03

talking. I just finished writing an episode

24:05

about the early imperial ambitions of Carthage,

24:07

and so part of that

24:09

was the Battle of Hamera in 480

24:11

BC, and the Carthaginian general, during that

24:13

battle, all of the accounts say

24:15

that he was sitting in camp conducting sacrifices.

24:18

And when you read modern accounts of this, there's

24:20

kind of almost this like sneering tone of, well,

24:22

he wasn't out on the battlefield, he was sitting

24:25

back there conducting sacrifices. But

24:28

even though this guy lost the battle, it was a

24:30

disastrous battle for the Carthaginians, set their ambitions

24:32

back decades, if you think that's what Carthage was

24:34

up to. I'm not convinced about, but that's a

24:36

whole other thing. The Carthaginian celebrated

24:38

him. He became a kind of a national

24:40

hero, and there are statues of him, and

24:42

there are people naming their children after him,

24:44

and you know, this is a celebrated figure,

24:47

because he was doing exactly what he was

24:49

supposed to be doing. He's the general in

24:51

charge. He's supposed to be looking after the

24:53

kind of cosmic well-being of this body of

24:55

people. The way that you do that is

24:57

by sacrificing. That's not a distraction from the

24:59

job of commanding your troops in battle. That

25:01

is the job, and it's not something I talked

25:04

about much in that episode, but it occurs to

25:06

me as we're chatting about it, I'm like, this

25:08

is, oh no, he was perfectly fulfilling the role

25:10

that he thought he was, the kind of cultural

25:13

role that he thought he was supposed to fulfill

25:15

in that moment. Absolutely, and there's

25:17

an Athenian example of that as well,

25:19

a similar kind of thing with the

25:21

Sicilian expedition so-called 415 to 413. The

25:23

Athenians go off

25:26

on this, well, a

25:29

chaotic enterprise to Sicily, which

25:31

ends up being utterly disastrous,

25:33

right in the middle of

25:35

the Peloponnesian War. All they

25:37

do is succeed in creating

25:39

yet more enemies, enemies who

25:41

ultimately catastrophically defeat them, such

25:43

that their whole navy is

25:45

destroyed in the harbor of Syracuse, and

25:47

they end up having to try to

25:49

escape across land, not knowing even

25:51

how they're going to get back to Athens.

25:53

And of course, it all comes to a

25:55

horribly violent and gory end, and

25:58

the Athenian commander, Most often blamed for

26:01

that fiasco is Nikias, the guy who

26:03

was trying to persuade them not to

26:05

go in the first place. One

26:07

of the things that is held that can be held against

26:09

him or is held against him is the

26:11

fact that, very similar to your

26:14

Carthaginian general, he delayed

26:16

the Athenian departure by boat from

26:18

Sicily, recognizing this was a futile

26:20

enterprise, by, I think, 27 days

26:24

because the omens were not right for leaving.

26:28

Now I don't know all the ancient sources

26:30

that ever talked about this, but I'm

26:33

guessing that probably not all

26:36

of them would have found fault with him for

26:38

doing that because, again, as you say, that's sort

26:40

of what he's obliged to do. To

26:42

our modern eyes, it looks like, well,

26:44

what a fool, you know, what a

26:46

superstitious idiot for delaying what was obviously

26:48

an escape from an

26:51

incredibly perilous situation such that the

26:53

escape ended up being – the door ended up

26:55

being slammed shut and they couldn't escape in the end.

26:58

But in a way, you know, he was doing

27:00

what he thought was the right thing to do.

27:03

And of course, the soothsayers

27:05

and so forth in the camp, they're

27:08

human and they're fallible, so maybe

27:10

they were misinterpreting the signs. But

27:13

he was following the right procedures, and

27:16

we probably shouldn't blame him for that. Sticking

27:19

with this example of ancient Greece

27:21

here, because there are so

27:23

many people over such a long period of

27:25

time who have been so invested in seeing

27:28

ancient Greece and Athens in particular as

27:30

the beginning of something, right? How

27:33

does that impact the

27:35

way that we read the sources themselves, the way

27:37

that we understand this particular time and place? So

27:40

I mean, on a basic level, we're

27:42

inclined to see more familiarity than difference for that

27:44

reason, but what are the implications of that? How

27:46

do we get – and how do we get

27:48

around it? No, a

27:50

very good question. And I think

27:52

obviously, probably the thing that most

27:54

– the modern, both scholars and

27:56

lay people are most preoccupied with,

27:58

the Athenians in particular. is

28:00

democracy. That

28:03

really is the, yes,

28:05

we honor their drama,

28:07

their tragedies, comedies, philosophy,

28:09

oratory, their

28:11

artwork, architecture even. But

28:14

it's the democracy that really makes it all

28:16

so much more meaningful and resonant for us,

28:18

I think. And so

28:21

when modern scholars read democratia

28:23

in an ancient text, they

28:25

automatically translate it as democracy.

28:27

Because of course, we get

28:29

our word from the Greek

28:31

word. But the

28:33

problem is that democratia

28:35

means something radically different in antiquity

28:38

than it would do in the

28:40

present. Because the worlds are

28:42

different. They belong to different worlds. And

28:46

I think we just have to accept that fundamental

28:48

thing. You know, a modern

28:50

democracy, as we understand it, with

28:52

our enlightenment style of values and

28:54

ideals and so forth, is all

28:57

about empowering individuals. It's

28:59

about one person, one vote, and all of

29:01

that is sacred constitutional rights

29:03

to vote. And largely, our citizenship

29:06

is a political, legal kind of

29:08

a citizenship, guarantees of rights to

29:10

be represented and to vote. So

29:14

we assume that's really what's at

29:16

stake in ancient democratia. And

29:18

it isn't, to put it very

29:20

bluntly. Democratia is

29:23

an example of what the Greeks call

29:25

polytia, a way of managing a polis.

29:28

And it refers, as numerous

29:30

ancient sources will tell you, to a

29:33

much broader field of experience than what

29:35

we today call political. It's

29:38

a whole, we can call it way of

29:40

life, would be a better translation for polytia.

29:42

So democratia is a way of life. And

29:45

what it really is about is how a

29:47

demos, which conceives of

29:49

itself as a unitary

29:51

body of people, our

29:53

united body of households, as we

29:56

said before, or like where

29:58

the households are the cells of this world. The

30:00

organism. And so

30:02

democracy here is really about

30:04

how the cells and the

30:07

whole manages itself. From.

30:09

Day to day. So. The cells

30:11

are managing themselves in their households

30:13

and this of causes where women

30:15

make some of their major contributions

30:18

to the lives of the policy.

30:20

And it's why the Athenians coal

30:22

women or the T Days members

30:24

of the Bullets either. So often

30:27

you read it in modern scholarship

30:29

about how women were denied citizenship

30:31

and ah, you know, will refuse

30:33

citizenship when the seasons themselves Cold

30:35

women Politi days the exact feminine

30:38

equivalent of poly tie which means

30:40

male. Members of the Polish The Gym

30:42

we always translate as citizens. So.

30:45

Modern scholarship is very inconsistent on

30:47

that, and it really has no

30:49

way of making sense of female

30:51

citizenship. In scare

30:54

quotes because. It

30:56

sees citizenship in Athens in largely

30:58

political terms. If you vote your

31:00

citizen, if you don't, you're not.

31:03

When. Again and we have

31:05

to see it. And as the Athenians

31:08

understood it, this is about a or

31:10

a way of life. That's what Democracy

31:12

years. It's the version of apology the

31:15

Athenians subscribed to. Women are members of

31:17

the most. They. Manage the

31:19

households with jobs to cells

31:21

of the social body without

31:23

which the social body will

31:25

die. And so. I

31:28

mean, that's hardly a more important role

31:30

to be playing an Ancient Athens. They.

31:33

Are literally in a way governing. The.

31:35

Cells of the D most

31:37

itself. So that's where democracy

31:39

of really begins at home.

31:42

With all the things women in particular

31:44

do. To. Make life

31:46

possible. Then you have

31:48

the neighbourhood level. the so called deems.

31:50

There were one hundred and thirty nine

31:53

neighborhoods and advocates which really are. Groups

31:55

of households coming together to manage themselves. They

31:58

can leave and make their own law. They

32:00

have their own sacrifices. Are you know there

32:02

is a real level of sort of autonomy?

32:04

Their. Then. When we

32:07

get groups of deems coming together to form

32:09

the ten tribes. And they

32:11

all the bodies that are responsible

32:13

for supplying regiments for troops, squadrons

32:16

of cavalry and they provide contingents

32:18

for the council of five hundred,

32:21

which is where the agenda for

32:23

the assembly meeting saw, as I'm

32:25

sure you know, ah is prepared

32:28

be no continually. Ah, the

32:30

council A five hundred is like this. Body.

32:33

Which is the sort of relay between the

32:35

d most of Athens and the outside world

32:37

you want to do business. Words as seen

32:39

in the most. You've gotta go through the

32:41

council and the council fixes the items that.

32:44

D most can discuss when it

32:46

meets to make it's final decisions,

32:49

about what we'd call policy laws

32:51

and so forth. Then you get

32:53

the D most as a whole

32:55

Meeting which takes place outdoors on

32:57

top of the Panic's Hills roughly

32:59

forty times eight years. as many

33:01

as five to six thousand usually

33:04

show up for these meetings. And

33:06

of course, this isn't the entire

33:08

male population of Athens, but. They

33:10

are understood to be acting in

33:13

the name of the whole. Services.

33:16

As it's they were all that. So.

33:18

They don't bother counting who's there for

33:20

how many voted for eggs and ham

33:22

and he voted for why. The final

33:25

decision is really all that matters. and

33:27

it's a majority vote and whatever d

33:29

most votes for by majority is what.

33:31

The people of Athens have voted for.

33:34

And is the same in the law courts.

33:36

The judges the judge panels there again are

33:39

all acting in the name of the most

33:41

as a whole they're not. They're as individuals

33:43

there that to be de mots to be

33:46

acids. And. So.

33:48

This is democracy or in action

33:50

and it's sort of at all

33:52

levels from the households, neighborhoods, tribes,

33:54

and then finally up where you

33:57

get these situations where. A

34:00

critical mass of Athenians are present who

34:02

are acting as d most so there

34:05

would also include festivals of course the

34:07

big ones like the planets in a

34:09

for Athena itself and you've got women

34:11

and balls that they are, you know,

34:13

full members of demons as so. You.

34:16

Know, I've pushed back very strongly

34:18

against those who insist that women

34:20

are excluded from the citizen bodies.

34:22

Well, you know that's because with

34:24

thinking about citizenship in modern times

34:26

political terms and we absolutely have

34:29

to get past that idea because.

34:32

They don't look at it like that. In

34:34

their, well, it's all relational. The

34:36

household can't exist as units by

34:38

themselves, nevermind individuals within ourselves. The

34:41

Ross know a senior and individuals

34:43

in the modern sense. Everyone's depends

34:45

for their lives, on their households

34:47

and on their Pollard's No one

34:49

can exist without those things. And

34:52

of course, the Polish depends on

34:54

the God supporting it and the

34:56

lens mother Arctic Air as it

34:58

were supporting and nourishing the people.

35:00

So you've got this book. What

35:03

I call in the book, a

35:05

cosmic ecology. The. You have to

35:07

think about. That's really what the

35:09

policies. It's nothing like a modern

35:11

nation state at all. It is

35:13

a cosmic ecology of God's land

35:15

and people. There's. A

35:17

lot that I want to unpack there. and

35:19

that's the best explanation I've ever heard of

35:21

what a polish actually is for. Think it's

35:23

it's, it's it's because there's. Even.

35:25

Quite sophisticated. Modern.

35:28

Analysis or explanations of.

35:31

Greek. Political life and especially of Athens. They

35:33

always spend time talking, but the apparent contradictions,

35:35

right? This while you have this, this is

35:37

a radical democracy. How can these people be

35:39

left out? Or how can these people not

35:41

be included? How can women? I think this

35:43

as like. You're asking the wrong

35:46

questions at that point right year he

35:48

are. You are looking at this through

35:50

the wrong set of lenses because there

35:52

is no apparent contradiction. When. viewed

35:54

from their perspective said these things just arts

35:56

and trying to i was running up against

35:59

us from recently I was trying to talk about

36:01

what it means to be a citizen of a polis,

36:03

and that you can't switch your

36:06

membership from one polis to another

36:08

that this is, this

36:10

is at fundamental odds with what that means,

36:12

because you are not an individual who's picking

36:14

up these categories of identity, that is, at

36:17

the root of who you are and why

36:19

you matter and how you fit exactly which

36:22

is in relationally with all of these other

36:24

things, whether those are, you know, what we

36:26

would consider to be supernatural forces or ecological

36:28

forces, place, like that those are all bound

36:31

up together, you can't separate them out like

36:33

strands on a loom. Absolutely.

36:35

And, you know, again, we're

36:37

best emphasizing about

36:40

the relationship between the people and the

36:42

land itself. Of course, the Athenians had

36:44

this, I mean, in

36:46

modern texts, refer to it as a

36:48

belief. But to them, it's just taken

36:50

for granted presupposition that their ancestors ultimately

36:53

were born literally from the soil of

36:55

Attica. And so every

36:57

household there is a kind of lineage

37:00

in the sense that, I mean,

37:02

we could call it crudely, a sort of family business,

37:04

if you like, that you are born,

37:06

it's something that already pre-exists

37:08

you, you're born into it. And if you're

37:10

female, you leave your birth

37:12

house to marry into your husband's

37:15

house to perpetuate his household, his

37:17

oikos, as the word they would

37:19

use. And so it's

37:22

the continuous life of all these

37:24

lineages that are made possible by

37:26

the land that nurtures them all.

37:29

And that's, again, as you say,

37:31

the relational basis of it all. So

37:33

in other words, the Athenians themselves, in

37:35

a way, they are made of something

37:38

different from even their closest neighbors, you

37:40

know, because they're made of a different

37:42

land, even though the gods they

37:44

relate to, we could

37:47

say they're the same gods as the

37:49

gods, the Megarians, or the Thevens relate

37:51

to, but they are, in

37:53

a way, there's a metaphysical boundary,

37:55

I think that's what I would call

37:57

it, between Athens and other polys. Because

38:01

the Athenians behave as if they

38:03

have their own pantheon of gods,

38:05

their own Athena's, their own Apollo's.

38:07

And there are multiple Athena's, there's

38:09

not just one, different avatars, if

38:11

you like, of Athena, as many

38:13

as 200 altogether. And

38:16

yes, some of them may look very like the

38:18

Athena's and the Apollo's of all the other Polys

38:20

as well. But as far as the

38:22

Athenians are concerned, they have their own Athena and

38:24

their own Apollo and their own Zeus. So

38:28

they are, to a point, a

38:30

certain, like a self-contained microcosm. And

38:33

so you could talk then about

38:36

a Greek macrocosm, I suppose, where

38:38

you've got lots of similar related

38:40

kinds of practices and

38:42

behaviors, ways of life going on.

38:45

And that in turn is distinctly,

38:47

metaphysically different from the Persians and

38:49

from the Scythians and the Thracians

38:51

in the world, the non-Greeks in

38:53

the world beyond that. But

38:56

I think it is meaningful to talk about

38:58

even Athens itself as, to

39:01

a point, a self-contained world of

39:03

experience with its own kind of

39:05

metaphysical rules. So

39:08

for example, when someone,

39:11

let's say a traitor or a

39:13

murderer, they are

39:15

executed and their body is thrown beyond

39:17

the borders of Attica, because that would

39:19

be a polluting, polluting force to bury

39:21

in the soil of Attica, the very

39:24

mother which gave birth to us. Does

39:26

this body not then pollute next door,

39:29

the neighbors that you're chucking the body

39:31

in? No, it doesn't.

39:33

No one cares about that, because in

39:35

a way, Athens has its own metaphysical

39:37

laws of being that prevail only within

39:40

that polis. Of course, the

39:42

laws are similar to the ones that other

39:44

polis use too. But there

39:46

is a recognition of a

39:48

separation between these different polis

39:51

worlds. And. It would

39:53

be the same with the Romans in

39:55

Italy as well. They have their homarium

39:57

and their various, which is effectively a

39:59

metaphysical world. landry around the edge of

40:02

Roman soldiers. The physical once. And

40:04

they would recognize themselves as being a

40:06

fundamentally different world from budget. How the

40:08

say binds the Etruscans. A you know

40:11

all the other retaliate people. so us

40:13

and a guy. I think this is.

40:16

Just a much more common feature

40:18

of zone modern experience than modern

40:20

scholars have recognized. so. If.

40:23

We begin from the assumption that these are distinct

40:25

world's I think we're going to make a lot

40:27

more sense of. whom. What they

40:30

were and. It may

40:32

make it harder for us to

40:34

tell stories about cultural ancestors. like

40:36

the Athenians, you know we are,

40:38

that's descendants. Well. I

40:40

have a good I. I. I

40:42

would say that from this alternative

40:45

perspective we clearly it aren't what

40:47

we take to be the League.

40:49

Greek is what people in the

40:51

early Modern age, the Enlightenment age

40:54

determined was what the Greeks were

40:56

all about and. You

40:58

know, shaped modern life accordingly but it

41:00

was so conditioned by it's a modern.

41:03

Sensibility, Your sense of what

41:05

the world is ready made of That.

41:08

Is pretty unrecognizable compared to the

41:10

as it were the ancient original.

41:17

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Pod to Five Hundred Five

42:06

Hundred That's audible.com/wonder He Pod

42:08

or text wondering Pod to

42:11

Five Hundred Six Hundred. Ever.

42:21

Think about the saw it for for

42:23

a whole bunch of different reasons but

42:25

the the desire to. Find parallels

42:28

in the Ancient World. The find parallels

42:30

and roots in the Ancient world. It's

42:32

good business. It would be good business

42:34

for someone in my line of work

42:36

and or amid being totally honest like

42:38

I could write could turn out a

42:40

steady stream of pieces talking about the

42:42

parallels between this particular thing that happened

42:44

in the ancient world and today I

42:46

am from make pretty solid living a

42:48

doing that but I think. If.

42:50

You're actually trying to understand things

42:52

that are happening in the United

42:54

States in the Twenty First century.

42:57

It's You're probably better off reading

42:59

about reconstruction for reading about the

43:01

immediate Antebellum period reading about Chauncey

43:03

Calhoun. Or you're better off reading

43:05

about. You know, the. Banana

43:08

Wars in the Nineteen twenties

43:10

and Eighteen thirties. Those are

43:12

far better. Parallels.

43:15

For modern experience because they're so

43:17

much closer inside? Yeah, No, absolutely.

43:20

And and I would add that

43:22

I do note from having been

43:24

pursuing this kind of general line

43:26

of inquiry now for many years

43:29

from boredom fifteen years ah and

43:31

trying to educate myself as far

43:33

as possible about all kinds of

43:36

other non modern people's posts a

43:38

extinct an extent both past and

43:40

present. My general sense is that

43:42

you know the Athenians. Actually, the

43:45

end of a lot more in common

43:47

with lead say indigenous Amazonians than they

43:49

do with us because there are certain.

43:52

Basic. i mean i'm talking at

43:54

a very very very kind of

43:56

foundational level here basic kind of

43:58

laws of being that Athenians would

44:00

subscribe to and that Amazonians

44:03

would subscribe to, that we

44:06

moderns have broken with to

44:08

make this thing we call

44:10

modernity basic ideas about precisely

44:13

relational basis

44:16

of social being. So for

44:18

example, the idea that we

44:20

have fundamental relations with the

44:22

particular lands that make our

44:24

lives possible, or that

44:26

we are surrounded in our

44:29

world by non-human beings, whether

44:31

they are gods or

44:33

whether they are animals

44:37

and plants and trees and winds and

44:39

stones and rivers that have a personality,

44:41

a personhood of their own. The

44:44

humans are not by themselves. They have

44:46

to get along with all of these

44:49

non-human others, however one

44:51

conceives of them. And

44:53

therefore, we are accountable to all of

44:55

these non-human others. We can't just do

44:57

what the hell we like. And

45:01

it seems to me one of

45:03

the signature features of our modernity

45:05

is precisely this thought that the

45:07

whole world is just this arena

45:09

where we can shape that arena

45:11

to our best interests, regardless of

45:13

the interests of all the other

45:15

non-humans there, whether we are thinking

45:17

of them as spirits, gods,

45:20

or plants and animals that have

45:22

their own personalities and interests.

45:24

And I mean, in the end, I

45:26

suppose the most fundamental difference between the

45:28

modern and non-modern ways of being are

45:32

that the non-modern ways try

45:34

to adapt human practices to

45:38

the fabrics of the planet, whereas

45:41

modern ways adapt the fabrics of

45:43

the planet to human practices. The

45:46

other way around, in a way, it's

45:48

kind of reversing the causal arrows there.

45:51

You know, so many of the so-called

45:53

achievements of modernity that we

45:55

celebrate are about our ability

45:58

to manipulate the fabrics of

46:00

the planet. the planet, whether

46:02

it's agricultural, industrial, technological,

46:04

or right down to

46:07

cellular levels. Obviously,

46:09

some of these things have been useful

46:11

and helpful in productive things, curing certain

46:14

kinds of diseases. But it

46:16

is clearly a patent in modernity, which

46:18

is this sense of

46:20

humans as this all-powerful kind

46:22

of beings, and the

46:26

planet for us is just this sort

46:29

of clay for us to

46:31

mold to fit our own

46:34

interests, particularly capitalist interests, because that's

46:36

obviously the way of life on which

46:38

our lives are all staked, whether we

46:40

like it or not. Whereas

46:42

with non-modern peoples, whether it's

46:44

the Egyptians, the Greeks, the

46:47

Chinese, or Amazonians, or

46:49

Andeans, or Native American peoples,

46:52

they tend to be, because

46:54

they are not inhabiting the

46:56

world by themselves. They

46:58

don't see creation as something there

47:01

for humans to use for their

47:03

own interests. They see

47:05

instead massive populations of non-human

47:07

beings with whom they have

47:09

to get along. And those

47:11

non-humans have their own processes

47:13

of life, etc., to which

47:15

humans have to adapt themselves.

47:17

So human practices will always

47:19

be adjusted to the needs

47:21

of the fabrics of the

47:24

planet, as we would see it, whereas

47:26

we adjust the fabrics of the planet

47:28

to our human needs. That

47:31

to me is as fundamental as it gets

47:33

as a difference. Now, people might say, that's

47:35

so broad brush, it's almost pointless or useless,

47:38

but I do think there is a general

47:40

plan that can be identified. It's

47:43

hard to overstate how much

47:45

the world changes when everybody

47:47

is an individual, and that's

47:49

your fundamental unit of social

47:51

being, versus you

47:53

matter as an individual, as part

47:56

of broader sets

47:58

of overlapping communities. Like

48:00

that is dramatically different. And this

48:02

is like, it's the hardest thing

48:04

to explain as a pre-modern historian

48:06

to modern people about the

48:08

past is that you're not just on

48:11

your own. Like there are no libertarians

48:13

in the past in

48:15

the deep human past. They just don't exist. Because

48:17

like, I remember I did

48:19

an episode on John Calvin

48:22

in Geneva, which seems from the modern

48:24

point of view, or a 21st century

48:26

point of view, to be this incredibly

48:28

dystopian survey like panopticon of existence

48:31

to live in where if you find yourself

48:33

needing to go to the bathroom on the

48:35

way home and you stop in an alley

48:37

out of sight and you relieve yourself, you're

48:39

going to wind up in front of a

48:41

court and you're going to end up in

48:43

massive trouble. And just trying to understand,

48:45

I got a lot of questions from

48:47

people trying to understand how could people live in this? Why

48:49

would they subject themselves to this? Why would they

48:51

do this? Why would they move from long distances

48:53

away to be part of this community? And

48:56

they did it because you're

48:58

not an individual. Your

49:00

actions affect the collective

49:03

salvation of everybody who is involved

49:05

in this project. And if

49:08

that is the moral and spiritual

49:10

valence of every action that you

49:12

take, then of course the whole

49:14

community has to surveil you at

49:16

all times because their spiritual well-being,

49:18

which is the highest possible thing

49:20

that you can be concerned with,

49:22

depends on it. And that's

49:25

pretty, you know, that's 400, 500 years ago. That's

49:27

not that long ago. No, not long ago. And

49:30

obviously that is at the time when things

49:32

are starting to change. You

49:34

know, I mean, clearly the Protestant

49:37

Reformation has a significant role to

49:39

play in the formation of what

49:41

ultimately is going to become secular

49:43

modernity. But no, you're absolutely right.

49:46

And that brings up another point

49:48

really, which is that often

49:50

for the peoples that we might study from the

49:52

past, whether it's 500 years

49:54

ago in Geneva or whether it's thousands of years

49:56

ago, some other time and place, they're pretty much

49:59

in the same place. occupations are not

50:01

just with their immediate material everyday lives.

50:03

There is a whole other life, and

50:05

obviously for Christians, a far more important

50:08

life that is the everlasting eternal life

50:10

that they devote their earthly

50:13

lives to seeking and to

50:15

ensuring. And so, you know,

50:18

does social science, modern social science have

50:20

within it the kind of tools that

50:23

can really make sense of experiences like that? Well,

50:25

of course it doesn't because the tools are all

50:27

secular, and they take for granted that there's no

50:29

such thing as God, there's no such thing as

50:31

heaven, no such thing as eternal life. So

50:35

again, the limitations of these modern

50:37

tools are just so striking. And

50:40

I guess I can only say that I

50:43

hope people over time will come to recognize

50:45

these shortcomings. Not to say they aren't of

50:47

any value at all, but that

50:49

they seriously can distort

50:51

the accounts that you're

50:54

trying to produce of past existence

50:56

when, you know, the

50:58

life you're trying to study is actually of

51:00

only secondary importance to the people actually living

51:02

it, because the primary life is the life

51:04

to come, in the world to come. So

51:07

we have to take the existence of that

51:09

world to come seriously if we're going to

51:11

take their lives seriously. See,

51:14

this is exactly what I have enjoyed

51:16

about reading your work and talking

51:18

with you about all of this is the

51:21

idea of taking that seriously, of

51:23

taking their categories of understanding

51:26

the world, their concepts, their

51:28

perspectives, of treating that as

51:31

the object to be recovered

51:33

instead of an obstacle

51:35

in the way of what we're actually trying to

51:37

get to. Yes. You know, that's,

51:40

I really appreciate that. And I've taken so much

51:42

of your time here before we finish.

51:44

Can I just quickly say something, Patrick? And

51:47

not because I don't want to give the

51:49

impression that I'm some, you know, virtuosic theorist

51:52

type of person here. You

51:54

know, I should say that in other disciplines, people

51:57

have been moving in this direction for quite

51:59

a while. cultural anthropology in particular

52:01

for more than 20 years. I'll

52:03

be honest, and I confess, I wasn't aware

52:06

of that when I first started going this

52:08

direction myself as a historian. But

52:10

this kind of approach, this

52:12

what I would call a

52:14

pluriversal or many worlds approach

52:17

to understanding human life in

52:19

the past and the present and maybe the

52:22

future, is I wouldn't

52:24

say it's become completely mainstream,

52:26

but it's certainly fairly commonplace

52:28

in cultural anthropology now, and

52:30

it is in various other fields. Of course,

52:33

in fields like indigenous studies,

52:35

particularly where the academics

52:37

involved have an indigenous background, I

52:39

mean, they know better than anyone

52:42

that humans have lived in a

52:44

pluriverse of many different worlds, not in

52:47

a universe of just one. And

52:50

I have to think, and I hope, that

52:52

this kind of perspective will

52:55

become more widespread

52:57

over time, be more conventional,

52:59

because it's very hard to

53:01

see what's really wrong with it,

53:04

why we shouldn't think of it this way.

53:06

There are all kinds of reasons why we should, which

53:09

I could list for you. But anyway, I'm sorry

53:11

I interrupted. No, no, no, no. I

53:15

was trying to find a way to kind of put a bow

53:17

on it, and I think that does a really good job of

53:20

it, because even if it

53:23

can feel frustrating to have to

53:25

abandon categories that seem so familiar

53:27

and safe to us, to abandon

53:29

the idea of universals or easy

53:31

translations, it can be really

53:33

hard. I mean, I had one

53:35

more anecdote. I

53:39

had this really eminent Irish professor of history

53:41

when I was doing my master's degree, and

53:43

I remember him freaking out, literally

53:45

freaking out, because this manuscript that he

53:47

thought was a particular date turned out

53:50

to be that that date was

53:52

wrong, but they didn't know what the right date was.

53:54

They couldn't figure out the right date. And this was

53:56

so disturbing to him that he kept

53:59

using the date that he knew to be wrong,

54:01

because the idea of not having a

54:03

date was so bothersome to him. And

54:06

a truly eminent guy and a

54:08

wonderful historian, but he was so

54:11

bound to needing to know when this

54:13

manuscript had been compiled, that he was

54:16

willing to make what is

54:18

what was obviously a mistake in order

54:20

to hang on to it. And I think that's

54:22

the problem writ large is like, we talk ourselves

54:24

into thinking that these categories are useful, because

54:27

we're like, well, what better option do

54:29

we have? And you're pointing

54:31

toward a more difficult, but honestly, in the

54:33

long run, a better option. So for that...

54:36

I mean, I hope so. And

54:38

again, the implications go way beyond academic

54:40

history. I mean, again, and this would

54:43

be where it's, you know, it's helpful

54:45

to read what people in other fields

54:47

are, how

54:49

they are developing these ideas and pursuing them.

54:51

And again, of course, we have all kinds

54:54

of, you know, indigenous

54:56

activists and artists and intellectuals

54:58

out there who are

55:01

fighting for their very existence to preserve

55:03

their existence as peoples, not just in

55:05

the US, but all over the globe

55:07

at this point, these decolonization

55:10

projects where, you know, in this

55:12

ultimately, I guess you could say

55:14

the fight is to not

55:17

just for their culture or to preserve

55:19

sacred artifacts and these sorts of things,

55:21

the way modern people might look at

55:23

it, but to preserve what for them

55:25

counts as a world in the first

55:28

place, to a world of

55:30

their own choosing, as

55:32

it were, rather than having to

55:34

submit to the modern techno scientific

55:37

capitalist world that has been forced

55:40

upon them from every different direction for

55:42

hundreds of years now. I

55:44

mean, it's remarkable the kind of resilience

55:46

one sees here. But that's ultimately what's

55:48

at stake there. And quite

55:51

a lot of the scholarship in other fields

55:53

which pushes

55:55

this more pluriversal way of thinking is

55:59

studied. interactions

56:01

between contemporary indigenous peoples

56:03

and modern authorities, and

56:05

how the indigenous claims

56:08

are often translated into modern

56:11

terms and thereby diminished

56:14

and made easily dismissible because

56:16

it seems to be that those

56:18

claims are just based on folklore

56:21

or primitive beliefs when of

56:23

course the modern authorities know what's really

56:25

true and what's really real. Well,

56:28

I don't know, there's a certain level

56:30

of arrogance involved there and I

56:32

think it is quite possible

56:34

to make the case that what

56:36

we take to be reality in

56:38

this modern techno-scientific world of ours

56:41

is no more ultimately real than

56:43

all these other different worlds that thousands of

56:46

other peoples have lived by across time

56:48

and space. One

56:51

can make the argument on a philosophical

56:53

theoretical grounds. It's not as if the

56:55

idea of an objective reality has not

56:57

been challenged many, many

57:00

times over at least the past hundred

57:02

years or more. But

57:06

in the end, you have to want to go there.

57:08

As you say, particularly academics I've

57:11

found tend to be the most resistant

57:13

because they may be partly because they

57:15

have a stake in keeping things as

57:18

they are. Their careers are

57:20

built on the conventional

57:22

ways of doing things so they feel

57:25

threatened by this alternative. Maybe

57:27

it's an inherent conservatism. They like to think

57:29

they're experts in something and all of a

57:31

sudden the rugs pulled out from beneath them

57:33

as it might feel. And it's

57:35

like, whoa, we have to start again. Who

57:37

wants to do that? I

57:40

also find young people are much more receptive to

57:42

these kinds of ideas than older people tend to

57:44

be. I did a

57:46

TED talk which has been seen by quite a

57:48

few million people at this point from all over

57:50

the world. And it's clear that

57:53

the positive reception from younger people

57:55

is very forthcoming.

57:59

And I just find it with my own students on an everyday

58:01

basis at Ohio State that they are more

58:04

receptive than they used to be to these

58:06

alternative ways of thinking. Those are all

58:09

reasons to feel optimistic. Yeah. And

58:11

when your new book is done

58:13

on the Pluriverse, I cannot

58:16

wait to read it. Professor Anderson, thank you so

58:18

much for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure

58:20

chatting with you. And likewise here, Patrick. Thanks so

58:22

much for having me. Thank you. If

58:27

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