Comments by "Chompy the Beast" (@chompythebeast) on "The Histocrat" channel.

@clownworldhereticmyron1018 This is a common layman thought/joke, but it's a rather unfair comparison to draw. We live in a world where we have tons of stuff. Material culture in early civilizations is important because they lived with greater restrictions, and the things they produced needed to be, by and large, more functional, one way or another. So while it's certainly possible that they could have produced dolls as toys and nothing more, it frankly makes more sense to assume that there is greater significance than that in instances where we discover such artifacts. Also, a thing can be a ritual object and a child's toy at the same time, I reckon. Even today, a well-loved toy might as well be considered a "ritual object", even if it doesn't involve incense and sacrifices
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@damo5701 In what world is communism completely disinterested in producing enough goods to fully satisfy the needs of its members? This is an ironic statement to make, considering that early societies like these very much resembled communes, certainly more so than modern capitalist enterprises. The video even made it clear that ideas of social stratification and ownership were clearly not central concepts in these early societies. This is a frankly ahistorical conclusion that speaks more to a modern prejudice than it does to an ancient reality
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@DeandreSteven I believe you misunderstood what you replied to. The commentor wasn't saying that communism was the government type of ancient societies such as those featured in this vid, they were merely countering the point that communism is somehow disinterested in producing healthy excess for the good of its members. As they correctly stated, without workers producing in excess of what they themselves consume, it would be impossible to provide for other citizens who cannot perform the same level of work. Communism therefore requires workers to produce more than they can consume in order to feed the entire community
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@ionia2376 "Fuck you, I've got mine" 10,000 BC Edition
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@breadman5048 They already had easier access to food before though, that's the whole basis of this conundrum
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@breadman5048 Very true, very true. But the change seems to have caught on and spread, so it wasn't entirely accidental everywhere. For probably most humans, there must have been some socio-political desire to rearrange society in such a way
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In these videos, you assert that social hierarchy is a defining trait of a city, or of civilization. But I don't understand how that's so important as to be defining. That genuinely sounds to me like the bias of a historian/anthropologist who lives in and thrives under a system of inequality. I don't see how egalitarianism is to be considered a thing divorced from civilization―and moreover, if the two things are incongruent, that I fail to see the benefits of so-called "civilization" over egalitarianism and equality. Again, I think that asserting that civilizations could only exist in ways that mirror our own present configuration, or that asserting that anything else isn't technically a civilization, is nothing more than a glaring bias on the part of the author. It essentially says "Humanity can't thrive without exploiting some of its own members in much the same way they exploit cattle," and I simply cannot accept that notion, it is ludicrous on its face. While such was obviously the systems of many early civilizations, once a state of non-scarcity is achieved, there is no obvious benefit to social stratification if the health and well-being of the entire community is considered the number one priority
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@Adsper2000 Modeling all definitions of civilization based upon the limitations of the past is narrow-minded, to say the least. A post-scarcity society should indeed be able to sustain far less hierarchy and far more equality than systems of the present or the past. I understand judging historical civilizations by these criteria, but continuing to look for them in future societies and deeming them not "civilizations" if they are missing one or more is rather like the builders of Stonehenge failing to appreciate the makers of skyscrapers because their cultures don't make monumental earthen mounds. There is much to learn from the past, but there is no need to carry over all its outdated baggage when we are shaping our future. We don't need to let old prejudices and preconceived notions dominate our understanding of what civilization can or should be. That is the realm of traditionalists and reactionaries, but it is not the lesson that history necessarily teaches us
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@danielcallahan4825 That book is quite unpopular amongst academic circles, not least of all because it's so popular amongst lay circles despite being a rather poor take on history and colonialism
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