• in4aPenny@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Same as it ever was.

    Only since around 600BC when coin turned money from a quantitive measurement of debt into a protection racket against soldiers, mercenaries and thugs (military colonialism wouldn’t be possible without this redefinition of money). Yeah, there were always societies with ruthless hierarchies, but they weren’t the norm. Yeah, there was always inequality in wealth or physical ability, but wealth wasn’t always used to lord over and deprive from eachother. The norm for most of humanities 200,000+ years were societies of cooperation, a colourful carnival of experimental politics of the likes we couldn’t even dream of nowadays. Ruthless and brutal hierarchies famously collapse because communities actively decided to abandon them, move elsewhere, and create something new and better. Human history is marked by stories of societies who reject arbitrary authorities, the ability to go elsewhere, and most of all have the expectation that wherever they go they’ll be cared for. None of these freedoms exist anymore, so the question is how and why did we lose these freedoms? And who benefits from these losses of freedoms? After accepting that society is what we make of it, defined by rules on how to live amongst one another in a bottom->up direction, then why are we so eager to blindly accept arbitrary authority, stay put, and fear our neighbors?