Many of the key insights and concepts associated with the european enlightenment ideas of individual liberty and equality were heavily influenced by encounters with native americans. A hierarchy is a system where people or things are ranked according to some value. The word politics refers to decision making in groups, like i said earlier. We don't care that one person gets to have a lot of toys and roller coasters and another person gets to has less toys. Economic inequality translates into decision making inequality. For example, you and jeff bezos each have one vote, but jeff bases can hire an army of lobbyists who work 24 seven to influence how politicians think.
The European Enlightenment was heavily influenced by Native American critiques of European culture.
That European intellectuals reacted against this by developing the theory of “stages of human progress” where we went from from egalitarian hunter-gatherers to pastoralists to farmers to market civilization.
That Jean-Jacques Rousseau synthesized the Native American critique and the stages of progress theory into a seemingly egalitarian critique of European social hierarchies which resigns us to accept hierarchy as the price of civilization.
That this synthesis was the birth of the “intellectual left”.
That the concept of human equality has no meaning and should be discarded [these guys *really* needed to listen to this podcast before writing this…]
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