October 24, 2024 • 41 mins
Gather around the campfire for a ghost story about the most destructive monster in history: civilization itself.
In this episode, we delve into the countercultural writings of Fredy Perlman, whose strange 1983 book “Against His-Story, Against-Leviathan”—riddled with grammatical errors and misspellings—blends myth and history to explore the nature of power, subjugation, and the struggle between the rulers and the ruled.
Our journey takes us back to ancient Sumer, where egalitarian hunter-gatherer communities transformed into peasants and slaves bound by a mysterious force even the rulers couldn’t control.
We trace the rise of the first Lugals, the original kings of Mesopotamia, from Urukagina of Lagash, whose reforms sowed the seeds of his downfall, to Sargon of Akkad, who conquered all of Sumer only to become part of the Leviathan’s vast machinery.
Together, we’ll explore how power and control first took root in the world's earliest cities—and how those ancient systems still shape our world today.
This is a spooky episode. The hair on the back of your neck might stand up. But we can stay seated and relax. It is just a story after all. A fairytale, as Fredy would call it.
If you’d like to support Human Nature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever you enjoy your podcasts, leave us a review, and visit humannatureodyssey.com.
Join us on Patreon and get exclusive access to audio extras, writings, and notes.
CITATIONS
Against His-Story, Against Leviathan [book] by Fredy Perlman (1983)
Sargon of Akkad [article] by Joshua J. Mark (2009)
Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles [book] by Albert Kirk Grayson (1975)
Akkadian Empire victory stele circa 2300 BC from Louvre Museum
Music: Celestial Soda Pop
By: Ray Lynch
From the album: Deep Breakfast
Courtesy Ray Lynch Productions © Ⓟ 1984/BMI
All rights reserved.
1. Amazon: Celestial Soda Pop
https://amazon.com/music/player/albums/B000QQXURI
2. iTunes:
https://music.apple.com/us/album/celestial-soda-pop/3242445?i=3242425
3. Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/track/2THDVIVytLuGX7S7UghuC1?si=20ea63807bba401f
Additional Credits
Vanhan ajan sota, taistelu, miekkailu / Ancient, old time battle, combat, horses snorting and galloping, men shouting and barking, fencing, swords clanging, mix by YleArkisto -- https://freesound.org/s/258207/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
You were a peasant.
You work all day.
Just enough to get by.
You are so far
from where the real power is.
You may not call yourself a peasant.
(00:30):
For a long time in the so-called West.
Many no longer believe themselvesto be peasants.
But individuals.
And in the so-called West,
the individual is the most important.
The mighty, the powerful, the state
are here to serve us.
(00:51):
Industry and capitalismcertainly propel this myth
with all their advertising and messaging,
emphasizing the importance of ourindividual preferences and pleasure.
Our once needs democracy promisesthis as well.
It is written explicitlyin the United States Constitution,
a governmentby the people, for the people.
(01:14):
But as democracy weakens,so does this illusion.
Those living in authoritarian governments
may see the truth of the mattera little bit more clearly
in those countries.
The state obviously does not servethe individual.
It's the exact opposite.
The individual is here to serve the state.
(01:36):
It's expressed most clearly in monarchies.
The king,the head of state is the most important.
The rest are all peasants
like us.
I tell you this not to depress you.
I tell you this.
So togetherwe may see our situation more clearly
(01:58):
and act according.
Welcome to Human Nature Odyssey,
a podcastexploring the stories that help us
better understandand more clearly experience
the incredible, terrifyingand ridiculous world we live in.
(02:19):
I'm Alex.
(02:44):
Come,
let's sit by the firewhere some other peasants have gathered.
Freddy Perlman is about to tell a story.
Here he is now.
He's a peasant like us.
From the light of the fire.
You can see his unkempt, curly, dark hairthat falls just past his ears.
His large, brow lined glasseswith a thick top rim.
(03:07):
He wears a button down shirtand a pullover sweater.
He's going to tell us a ghost story.
It's a ghost story about peasants
and kings and
the destruction of the world.
(03:33):
So Freddy starts out by telling us
that this is a taleabout the destruction of the world.
And from one perspective, this storycould be a drama about a suicide,
as the death of the biosphereis coming from within.
From another view, the story is a murder
mystery with humanity as the killer.
(03:55):
But Freddy insistshumanity is not a bunch of evil doers,
but simply captives of something else.
He believes
it is a sort of monster,a malevolent being.
He calls Leviathan.
Freddy tells us Leviathan is, quote,
(04:16):
a beast whose artificial progenywould eventually swallow
all human communities and by our time
begin to eat the biosphere, unquote.
But Leviathan is not the ghost.
It's Freddy who's the ghost.
It's been decades now since Freddywas living, and thinking and writing.
(04:40):
He speaks to us nowfrom the pages of a book he wrote long
ago, published just a couple of yearsbefore his death at the age of 50.
A book he called Against History
Against Leviathan.
It's a strange book,
riddled with grammatical errorsand misspellings.
(05:01):
It was originally publishedby the Detroit based black and Red quote,
publishing books and pamphletswith an anti-authoritarian perspective.
Since 1968, unquote.
Since black and Red dawg is now
an online shopping site for cialis pills,Pearlman's book
was later published onlineas a free PDF on the Anarchist Library.
(05:24):
It's a book for us peasants.
I say this book is a ghost story
also because it is spooky.
The hair on the back of your neckmight stand up,
but we can stay seated and relax.
It's just a story after all.
A fairy tale, as Freddy would call.
(05:55):
As a ghost.
Freddy himself can't speak, but his words
on those pagesflicker in the flames of our fire.
Some of these words I shall read aloud.
Others I will retell in my own way,
as well as some respectful challenges.
And as always, a few things to question.
FreddyPearlman was born in Czechoslovakia,
(06:18):
just five years beforeit was invaded by the Nazis.
His family fledthe impending empire, spent several years
in a small town in Bolivia, and immigratedto the United States after the war.
It was thereFreddy lived the rest of his life
and would come to believethat, in a sense,
his family had fled oneempire, only to arrive in another.
(06:43):
No, that's not quite right.
His ghost corrects me.
It's all one empire.
Some of his words shimmer in our fire.
Quote.
The Nazis lost the war,but their new order didn't.
Unquote.
Freddy wrote his bookat a time of great crisis.
(07:04):
When the world was dividedby two great powers
who aimed their great weaponsat each other.
And if either one fired, the worldwould be consumed by flame,
while the wealthy grew more powerfuland their towers grew taller.
Famine, hunger, violence and unrest
plague the globe.
(07:26):
We too, were born into a world of crisis,
of great destruction and turmoil.
But Freddy tells us
it was not always this way.
To Perlman,
viewing the world's crisisin the context of the last hundred,
even 500 yearsis to not understand the world.
(07:46):
No more than looking at flowersallows you to understand the whole plant.
Look towards the stems, branches and root.
If our
contemporary civilization,with its contemporary problems
is the flowering,then Sumeria was its root.
That's where Freddie's ghost story begins.
(08:08):
In the ancient land of Mesopotamia.
There's a crackle in the fire,and Freddie's ghost
clears his throat.
Long ago,
between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Thereonce was a small community of people.
(08:29):
Life was lived in natural rhythms,in keeping with the seasons,
and the other creatures of the earthwere known to be family.
Everyone was known and was taken care of.
All was shared.
Decisions were made together.
This was how these people lived.
Freddy tells us, because that'show all people lived back then.
(08:55):
But here,
in between the Tigrisand Euphrates rivers,
something began to changewhere food was once shared.
It was now carefully guardedby lock and key.
The natural world became seenas something to control.
Where there was once community.
Now there were institutions.
(09:16):
Before long, the first cities appeared.
Their names were Eric Eridu.
Well, gosh. And Earth.
And togetherthey are known as the First Civilization.
Sumer,
what had been a land of smallegalitarian communities,
became a land of cities and hierarchy.
(09:39):
Perlman asks.
What happened?
Hello?
Who's there?
Oh it's you.
This is Louis H.
Morgan. He's joined us by the fire.
(09:59):
He is a ghost as well,but not one Freddie thinks too highly of.
To the ghost of Louis H. Morgan.
These developments in ancientSumeria or humanity climbing
the ladder out of savageryto civilization.
This is his famoustheory of higher states.
In his 1877 book
(10:21):
Ancient Society, Morgan describedhow humanity advances
like rungs on a ladder from savageryto barbarism to civilization.
If you look up Louis H.
Morgan, you'll find the painting
of a distinguishedlooking white man in a suit and bow tie.
(10:44):
Next to this imagewill be the title American Anthropologist
and an article from botanica.com.
And if you read that articlefrom botanica.com,
you'll see that it says, quote,Morgan's ideas
about the development of technologyover time have come to be regarded
as generally correctin their fundamental aspects, unquote.
(11:05):
But then goes on to say, quote, his theorythat humans socialize advanced
from an initial stage of promiscuitythrough various forms of family life
that culminated in monogamy, has longbeen held obsolete, however, unquote,
to Britannica.
The idea that humanity advancesfrom promiscuity
to monogamy is ridiculous,but it's perfectly sensible
(11:29):
that humanity advancesfrom primitive to civilized.
But we have not gathered around the fireto listen to Lewis Morgan.
We're here for Freddy.
Freddy dismisses Lewis and
tells us, quote,this theory of higher states
can be taught to small childrenbecause it is a fairy tale, unquote.
(11:51):
Then he smiles and adds, but
there's nothing wrong with fairy tales.
Fairytales are meant to bring out a moral,
somethingdeeper than just a list of events.
And that's exactly what Freddy set outto write his own sort of fairy tale.
And unlike Louis H.
Morgan, who forgot his theory of higherstates, was in fact a fairy tale.
(12:15):
Freddy always remembers that his story is.
So Freddy would tell us,
don't think of his taleas the history of civilization.
Think of it as the story of civilization.
It's meant to elucidatesome interesting reflections
and insights, not present exact facts.
(12:37):
And unlike Louis H.
Morgan's fairy tales of humanity'smarch of progress from being primitive
to advance where our beginningswere an impoverished struggle.
Were better for having developedout of Freddy's fairy tale.
Didn't see our beginnings as primitive
at all. Quote
(12:57):
I wouldn't use the word primitive to referto a people with a richness of life.
I would use the word primitiveto refer to myself and my contemporaries
with our progressive povertyof life, unquote.
Now one could look at our civilizationtoday,
the supermarkets full of groceries, storesstocked to the brim
(13:19):
with tools and appliancesand every convenience
one could look at these things
and think, Freddy was a foolto consider this poverty,
especially compared to the so-calledprimitive hunter gatherers
who possessed far less foodand fewer tools and fewer conveniences.
But Pearlman was convinced
(13:40):
he had not been taught the truerichness of this other kind of life,
and that this way of
life was not just for exoticother cultures.
This was how Perlman's own ancestors.
All of our ancestors livedone way or another,
in small communities where everyone wasknown and was taken care of,
(14:00):
where life was in naturalrhythms of seasons and weather.
Where the other creatures of the earthwere known to be family.
When the colonizers
who Freddy describes as boundby the blinding armor of civilization,
encounteredpeople who lived without this armor,
the colonizers noted with disgust
that these people did not seem to work.
(14:22):
When not enjoying leisure,they danced while gathering fruit
and herbs from the field, and played gameswhile hunting.
And just as there was no distinctionbetween work and play,
there was no distinction betweena community and what we call a government.
People weren't governedby impersonal institutions.
They govern themselves.
(14:43):
And likewise, there was no distinctionbetween the secular and the sacred.
All was wholly but not in some kindof pure, untouchable way.
Freddy admits his story is idyllic.
In fact, he tells usit is, quote, deliberately idyllic.
The idyllic is what the Europeans
(15:06):
came to destroy, unquote.
Now, Freddy was not just a peasant.
He was an anarchist.
And so were our ancestorsin the timeless golden age.
He'd tell us
anarchy is sometimes
thought of as synonymous with chaos.
A society in anarchy has no order.
(15:28):
But under anarchism,there is still a sort of order.
It might be hardfor us to imagine a society
where order is not commanded and obeyed,
where order is decided collectively
and no one person dictatesthe lives of the masses.
An anarchist society is not leaderless,
(15:49):
but leader full, with each personenacting individual agency
over their livesand a more egalitarian power structure.
And this is how Freddie reminds usall of our ancestors
lived in one wayor another, in this timeless golden age.
For tens of thousands,hundreds of thousands of years,
(16:11):
Sumer was where that changed.
Freddy imagines how this emerged.
Remind me how it starts.
Oh, right.
The drought.
In the village of Urk 6000 years ago,
a small enclave of red and mudbrick homes.
(16:33):
There is a drought.
And in its aftermath, a famine.
The people are hungry.
Along with the gazelles, camels, elephants
and the many other animal cousinsthat lived there back then,
the old womenand the old men of the village
discusswhat is to be done to secure water.
(16:53):
One brings uphow their cousin, the beaver, builds
dams and guides the flow of rivers.
Perhaps they can do the same,but the elders
backs are soreand their bones creak in the heat.
The too old for such a task.
They call on the
youth of the villageto construct a dam, to gather water
(17:14):
from the trickling streams into a poolthey can depend on.
The youth are eager to help,but it is a complicated, arduous project.
The elders select one of the particularlystrong youth to supervise.
They choose a little God.
The Sumerian word for strong men.
He has a name.
(17:34):
But one day it will not be remembered.
One dayhe will only be remembered as Luga.
The Google studiesthe beavers devises a plan
and shares it with his peers.
Together, they construct a barricadethat floods with water,
and the village of Eric prospers.
(18:00):
Once complete,
the strong man that will go is treatedlike everyone else.
His leadershipwas contingent and temporary,
but the following yeargreat rains come and the dam breaks.
The village is flooded.
Great repairs are needed.
The Council of Eldersasks the Google to once again
lead his peers and the build back better.
(18:24):
Eric is rebuiltand the Google's leadership is celebrated.
Yet when the rains end,
the will God returns among his fellowvillagers and lives as all the rest.
The following year,the rains are harsher than before,
and the destructionthe dam break brings is even greater.
(18:45):
The council calls on the Google again.
This time the Google requeststo have a seat on the council.
Despite being considerably youngerthan the elders.
His insistence is convincing.
After all, is he notthe one who most understands dam building?
His guidance could help preventfurther problems in the future.
(19:06):
The elders relentand the Google joins the council.
Meanwhile, in the nearby
village of Earth, people take notice.
They too have struggled with the famineand the rains,
and they admire their neighbors.
Ingenious new dams.
Their elders choose their own strongman to lead a similar project.
(19:26):
And over in the growing
settlement of a gush,the people do the same.
Years pass, and Freddy tells us,
one elder of Ericand then another die of old age.
They are placed on the councilby newcomers, unquote.
But the little girl whom the eldersfirst chose is himself
(19:48):
now an elder, and caresnot for these new members of the council.
Why should he listen to them?
What do they know of building damsand canals?
His hardiness does not stop there.
We're told he even dares
to tell an old grandmotherwhere not to plant her seeds.
Oh, can you imagine?
(20:08):
Well, everyone in Eric and her and Lagash,and even their neighbors
in Urduknow not to try and boss a grandma around.
So Google is found dead the next day.
Reportedly killed by a deitywho favors grandma's.
Freddy adds with a wink.
But someone must look after the complexdams.
A new strongman.
(20:29):
Another Google is chosen.
And to not insult him.
Also given a seaton the Council of Elders,
he makes surenot to ruffle as many feathers, but
the grandmothers are still cautiousaround him.
The villagesexpand and more dams are needed.
Generations pass.
Leadership is passed from one Googleto another.
(20:53):
Over time,the Wiggles become a new kind of leader,
a ruler.
Many societies have leaders
who inspire, organize, facilitate, teach.
But a ruler is something different,
and the people of the Sumer communitybecome something different as well.
(21:13):
Initially, farmerswere asked to spend some of their time
helping construct wallsthat benefit all from floods.
But what was donevoluntarily by one generation
is expected of the next and is imposed,unquote.
The temporary division of laborbecomes permanent and forced
(21:34):
gifts given to the
girl out of gratitudebecome obligatory tribute.
A leader asks, but a ruler commands.
And when a ruler commands,they must be obeyed.
The people of Sumerare now something else.
(21:55):
I was calling them and us peasants.
But Freddy has another name in mind.
Since this new phenomenon
will continue throughout the entire storyof civilization.
Freddy thinks it's perfectly fairto borrow a term from the far future
when people will toilin Gulag prison camps
in the Soviet Unionduring Freddy's own lifetime.
(22:18):
These incarcerated workers will be called
Zeke's, and Freddy arguesthat while the Soviets
may have invented this name,the Sumerians invented the position.
But there are only so many peoplein Sumer to work for the Google.
(22:38):
Wars are declared around
foreigners from the Zagros Mountainsand Persian plains,
are captured and enslavedand sent to Sumer to work insects.
These wars devastate the landscape,
which only strengthensthe legal refugees of these wars.
When nothing left to live onand their homelands migrate to Sumer
(23:02):
as a survival necessityand volunteer to become sex.
And it's in Sumer
where the first writing will be invented.
Inspired
by fragments of what can be knownfrom the first Sumerian writing,
Freddi notes that the eventual cuneiformtablets will be, quote,
(23:22):
mysteriously silentabout the deeds of the women
and eldersat the time of the first two gods.
And as time goes on, the tablet scribeshelp people forget
that Sumerian women were important,that elders once sat and counsel
that there was agebefore the first struggle, unquote.
Freddy tells usit was the birth of history.
(23:48):
Not human history,
but his story of patriarchal domination.
Freddy goes on. Quote.
It is not enough to say thatpeople are constrained.
The first captured sex may do it onlybecause they are physically constrained.
But physical constraintno longer explains why
the children of sex stick to their levers.
(24:11):
It's not that constraint vanishes.
The constraint is internalized, unquote.
Over time,the workers and managers, quote,
become increasinglylike the springs and wheels
they operate.
Perlman pauses there.
He can see us squirm by the fire.
(24:34):
I told you the ghost story was spooky.
But this tale is not just one of commentand captivity,
but of thosewho never stop trying to break free.
Freddie's words again.
Pick up in the flames. Quote.
Here we reach a problem that has plagued
people since the age of the first or
(24:55):
the problem of resistance.
If the blue goal is to control the sex,
the Google needs help.
But how can the Google get helpruling over the sex
without sharing his own power?
The Google needs an intermediarybetween himself and the sex.
(25:16):
The Google needs an NC.
An NC in Sumerian
came to be known as a boss,but not a boss.
Always subordinate to the Google.
A regional manager of sorts.
Picture a Sumerian NC
presiding over the constructionof a great ziggurat.
(25:38):
His job is to ensurethat Zeke's are assembling the baked
bricks properly,and to punish them if they did not.
It's a hot day.
The Zeke's trembleunder the weight of their toil.
Some collapse in exhaustion.
Many faces are covered with expressionsof resentment and discontent.
The NC watches all this carefully
(26:01):
and strange thoughts come to the senses,
mind unquote.
They're more than noises, he notices,
and certainly many more sectsthan will gods.
Yet the insects still followthe enemy's orders,
just as the noises follow the wiggles.
(26:23):
There are rebellions, of course,
but the NC is surprisedthat they're not all the time.
And even more surprising,and far more perplexing,
is the fact that during such rebellions,
very few activitiescame to a complete halt,
even during the interregnumbetween wagons, unquote.
(26:45):
It's as if the city has caught
a will of its own,but he knows it doesn't.
The only one in town with a willis the little girl.
The next,when we execute the lugares will.
And if the zerks have awill at all, it is a will to break out.
The NCRconcludes that it's pointless to think.
(27:06):
Thinking is the job of priestsand oracles, unquote.
But the NCR was on to something,
even if it was just outside his grasp.
Something does have a will of its own,
but it's not just a city,
it's Leviathan.
(27:27):
Thomas Hobbes,
the English philosopher,will use this name.
He will write a book called Leviathanin 1651.
Thousands of yearsafter Sumeria is buried in sand.
Hobbes will write to quote
that GreekLeviathan, called a Commonwealth or state,
which is but an artificial man,though of greater stature and strength
(27:51):
than the natural, for whose protectionand defense it was intended,
and in which the sovereigntyis an artificial soul,
as giving life and motionto the whole body.
The magistrates and other officersof Judea chair an execution.
Artificial joints.
Reward and punishment are the nerdsthat do the same in the body.
(28:13):
Natural.
The wealth and riches of allthe particular members are the strength,
the people's safety, its business
counselors, by whom all things needful
for it is to know or suggested unto it,
what are the memory, equity, and laws,
and artificial reason,and will Concord health,
(28:33):
sedition, sickness and civil war, death,
unquote.
That's what NC was seeing.
The birth of the Leviathan,an artificial creature
whose parts are built out of peoplewho are no longer
free.
(28:54):
Hobbes will imagine that in the Leviathan
there is, quote, one freeand whole man, unquote, to Hobbes,
that is the monarch, the ruler,
the will. God.
But Freddy shakes his head.
Our fire burns quote.
(29:15):
Even the Google, the freest man in earth,cannot go hunting in the morning, fishing
in the afternoon, and dancing at nightas his own spirit moves him, unquote.
One Google Eric
Agena of oh gosh, perhapsmore than any other will go
before him, would have learnedthe true limits of his power.
(29:37):
After generations of all Gaulswho ruled by the whip,
Eric Agena of oh gosh, claycuneiform tablets will tell us
that he becomes, quote,the first documented reformer,
unquote, and champion of what will one daycall the working class.
Perhaps Eric Agena recognizesthe work that keeps Lagash running
(30:01):
is that of the sex,not the elite who rule over them.
For example,
one such reform was not allowing elitesto force Zack to sell goods to him.
If the Zack refused,this was a real reform,
and the clay tabletdecreeing it survived into our time.
But Ursa
minor of legacies reformsdo not last for long
(30:24):
because neither does Eric Agena.
You see, Eric Agena had a rival in NCfrom the nearby town
named Ziggy's.
And Freddie wasn't making these names up,by the way.
Ziggy once lived as much as you and I,
and Ziggy's was sick of being in NC.
(30:46):
He wanted to be a.
So we devised a plan.
Ziggy
could see how Erica Geithner's reformshad angered the elite civil.
Gosh.
In fact, the elites were fuming.
Sure, the Xqcs were happy,but who cares about them?
(31:08):
Ziggy realizedhe could potentially seize power
without even using his own soldiers.
He wouldn't even have to invadeif he could promise
to end the reformsand return power to the elites of Lagash.
They would invite him in.
And that's exactly what happened.
Ziggy's recognized what Erica.
(31:28):
Nina didn't.
There is more power in supporting wealththan there is in supporting justice.
Yet wasn't Erica Nina the ruler?
And doesn'tthe ruler get to decide what to do?
It turns out there are forces
which rule even the googol.
What happened to Erica? Nina?
(31:50):
Perhaps he was executed.
Maybe he ended his own life
to avoid capture once he sawhis own elites had turned against him.
All we know is that Erica.
Nina was finished, and that in his place,
Ziggy's became legal as well. God.
The united all of the citiesof the Tigris, Euphrates valley
(32:11):
for the first time.
Sumer was a single unified kingdom.
The Leviathan
and Google's legacy may think that he is
now the ruler,that he is the one in control.
But when Ziggy is wipedfrom the face of the Earth,
the Leviathan he temporarily helpedgrow will continue on unscathed.
(32:32):
The Leviathan, Freddy tells
us, is not run by people,but by something new to people.
Institutionswhich are impersonal and immortal.
Perlman calls the collectionof these institutions the Immortal Worm,
an artificial being, yetwhich grows and consumes, like the living.
(32:55):
Quote.
Institutions are not a part of life,but a part of death,
and death cannot die and die and die.
But the labor gang lives on.
Generals and soldiers die.
But ers army lives onand in fact grows larger and deadlier.
(33:15):
Death's realm grows, but the living die.
This creates problemsthat resisters have not so far
been able to deal with, unquote.
A cold wind howls and we shiver.
(33:38):
But the fire grows stronger.
Freddie's words through the fire.
Tell us, quote.
Dead things have powers.
Living beings lack
the Leviathan quote.
Neither breathes nor breeds.
It is not even a living parasite.
It is an excretion. Unquote.
(33:58):
Life will be gobbled up.
Forests cleared.
Predators slain.
Mountains, mind.
Life will go in one end. Leviathan.
And come out the other as resources.
This excretionwill be a new kind of trade.
And Freddy says that outside of Leviathan,quote,
(34:18):
trade is somethingpeople do to their enemies, unquote,
not with their kin, as gifts are given
and received, not exchanged.
There are two ways of reading this.
One is the bright sidethat a market economy
allows enemies to live togetherwithout being kin.
Or, as Pearlman emphasizes,the nefarious side.
(34:42):
A marketeconomy creates a society of enemies.
And as he explains, when trade encompasses
all facets of society,it is no longer just trade.
It is called business.
A businessman, Freddy
says, is, quote,a human being who thrives in
(35:02):
and on the leviathan's material entrails,unquote.
And one day business will becomeanother force of the Leviathan.
Beyond even the supposed ruler's control.
Hugo's, Ziggy's
and his trusty elitesconsider none of this.
(35:25):
And how could they really?
It's all so new.
The incoming resources, the tribute,the power.
And here they are.
The rulers of the great Sumeria.
They're on top of the world.
But further
north, up the valley, in a landcalled a cod.
The river.
(35:45):
The man who may not have spokenthe Sumerian language,
but was fluentin the ways of Sumerian power.
His name was Sargon.
Born to a humble gardenerwho worked his way up
to be cupbearer to the king.
But Sargon of a card had ambition that would lead him far beyond gardens and cups.
(36:08):
Up until now, it was the SumerianLeviathan
who conquered much of the land aroundit had fallen under its sway.
But for the first time,Sumer would soon be conquered itself,
and it would be Sargon of a godwho would do it
wherever.
(36:29):
One by one, cities fell.
First Cimarron, then along, then Mari.
And the conquering continueduntil Sargon s army marched into Iraq
and defeated lugares like easy.
We're told from the cuneiformthat Zack Gizzy was captured,
and Sargon led him in a colorto the gate of his Akkadian god.
(36:51):
There's an engraved stone slabfrom the time that shows the Gezi
imprisoned, being hit on the headwith a mace by Sargon.
And Sargon did not stop there.
He conquered Earth in Amir Lagashand Umma.
He conquered out to the cedarforests of us up to the Silver
Mountains of Ladakh, eastout to the Gulf, and west out to the sea.
(37:17):
A Babylonian chronicler wrote,
quote, his splendor over the landsit diffused.
He brought it under one authority.
He set up his statues there and ferriedthe West's booty across on barges.
He marched to castle and turned Castleinto a ruined heap.
So that there was not even a perchfor a bird left,
(37:38):
unquote.
Sargon of a god
had destroyed the wallsand cities of Sumeria,
but the Leviathan was now more powerfulthan ever before.
Like the Gizzy before him, Sargon nowbelieved he was the head of this power.
Sargon himselfboasted in cuneiform, quote,
(38:00):
all the lands revolted against me,and they besieged me and a god.
But the old lionstill had teeth and claws.
I went forth to battle and defeated them.
I knocked them overand destroyed their vast army.
Now any king who wants to call himselfmy equal wherever I went, let him go.
(38:25):
The fire spits and tumbles.
The Leviathan is a cannibal.
Freddy says, quote,it eats its contemporaries
as well as its predecessors.
Its enemy is everything
outside of itself, unquote.
Sargon the Conqueror thoughthis major achievement
(38:48):
was in defeating Sumerand in creating the Akkadian Empire.
But his true achievement is helping ussee Leviathan more clearly.
You see this monster,
though, brought to the world by Sumer,
no longer belongs to Sumer anymore.
The immortal worm has no nationality,no ethnicity.
(39:10):
It is a beast benton the total consumption of the world.
Sargon thought he was the ruler,
but Leviathan was the ruler.
Sargon was Leviathan's regional manager.
As Freddy says, quote, Earth is now.
(39:31):
It is not exotic at all.
It is our world.
6000 yearslater, there will still be little Gauls
that they will call themselvesnew names, unquote.
The Leviathan still haunts us today.
Thanks for listening.
(39:52):
Against history.
Against Leviathan is an epic storyspanning thousands of years.
This was just its first chapter.
Perhaps one day we will return and letFreddy continue his story from here.
But up ahead on our odyssey,we will be traveling in time, all the way
to the present to look at the beastLeviathan eventually became,
(40:16):
and the world system it created.
Until next time.
I hope you won't have nightmaresabout spooky worms.
Remember, this was just a fairy tale.
And though it's onethat's haunted us for thousands of years,
perhaps you'll consider betterstories that could come true instead.
So the fire we
(40:37):
peasants have gatheredaround is growing dim.
It's best we let it die down. For now.
But the campfire is always burningon the Human Nature Odyssey Patreon,
wheresongs and stories are always being sung.
You can come join us around the fire.
There, share your thoughts,make your suggestions, talk
with your fellow peasants.
(40:57):
Have access to bonus episodes, transcripts
of episodes, and audiobook readings.
Your support makes this podcast possible.
Thank you to Gary and Michaelfor your feedback on this episode.
And as always,our theme music is Celestial Soda Pop
by Ray, which you can find the linkin our show notes.
(41:18):
Talk with you soon.
You were a peasant.
You work all day.
Just enough to get by.
You are so far
from where the real power is.
You may not call yourself a peasant.
(00:30):
For a long time in the so-called West.
Many no longer believe themselvesto be peasants.
But individuals.
And in the so-called West,
the individual is the most important.
The mighty, the powerful, the state
are here to serve us.
(00:51):
Industry and capitalismcertainly propel this myth
with all their advertising and messaging,
emphasizing the importance of ourindividual preferences and pleasure.
Our once needs democracy promisesthis as well.
It is written explicitlyin the United States Constitution,
a governmentby the people, for the people.
(01:14):
But as democracy weakens,so does this illusion.
Those living in authoritarian governments
may see the truth of the mattera little bit more clearly
in those countries.
The state obviously does not servethe individual.
It's the exact opposite.
The individual is here to serve the state.
(01:36):
It's expressed most clearly in monarchies.
The king,the head of state is the most important.
The rest are all peasants
like us.
I tell you this not to depress you.
I tell you this.
So togetherwe may see our situation more clearly
(01:58):
and act according.
Welcome to Human Nature Odyssey,
a podcastexploring the stories that help us
better understandand more clearly experience
the incredible, terrifyingand ridiculous world we live in.
(02:19):
I'm Alex.
(02:44):
Come,
let's sit by the firewhere some other peasants have gathered.
Freddy Perlman is about to tell a story.
Here he is now.
He's a peasant like us.
From the light of the fire.
You can see his unkempt, curly, dark hairthat falls just past his ears.
His large, brow lined glasseswith a thick top rim.
(03:07):
He wears a button down shirtand a pullover sweater.
He's going to tell us a ghost story.
It's a ghost story about peasants
and kings and
the destruction of the world.
(03:33):
So Freddy starts out by telling us
that this is a taleabout the destruction of the world.
And from one perspective, this storycould be a drama about a suicide,
as the death of the biosphereis coming from within.
From another view, the story is a murder
mystery with humanity as the killer.
(03:55):
But Freddy insistshumanity is not a bunch of evil doers,
but simply captives of something else.
He believes
it is a sort of monster,a malevolent being.
He calls Leviathan.
Freddy tells us Leviathan is, quote,
(04:16):
a beast whose artificial progenywould eventually swallow
all human communities and by our time
begin to eat the biosphere, unquote.
But Leviathan is not the ghost.
It's Freddy who's the ghost.
It's been decades now since Freddywas living, and thinking and writing.
(04:40):
He speaks to us nowfrom the pages of a book he wrote long
ago, published just a couple of yearsbefore his death at the age of 50.
A book he called Against History
Against Leviathan.
It's a strange book,
riddled with grammatical errorsand misspellings.
(05:01):
It was originally publishedby the Detroit based black and Red quote,
publishing books and pamphletswith an anti-authoritarian perspective.
Since 1968, unquote.
Since black and Red dawg is now
an online shopping site for cialis pills,Pearlman's book
was later published onlineas a free PDF on the Anarchist Library.
(05:24):
It's a book for us peasants.
I say this book is a ghost story
also because it is spooky.
The hair on the back of your neckmight stand up,
but we can stay seated and relax.
It's just a story after all.
A fairy tale, as Freddy would call.
(05:55):
As a ghost.
Freddy himself can't speak, but his words
on those pagesflicker in the flames of our fire.
Some of these words I shall read aloud.
Others I will retell in my own way,
as well as some respectful challenges.
And as always, a few things to question.
FreddyPearlman was born in Czechoslovakia,
(06:18):
just five years beforeit was invaded by the Nazis.
His family fledthe impending empire, spent several years
in a small town in Bolivia, and immigratedto the United States after the war.
It was thereFreddy lived the rest of his life
and would come to believethat, in a sense,
his family had fled oneempire, only to arrive in another.
(06:43):
No, that's not quite right.
His ghost corrects me.
It's all one empire.
Some of his words shimmer in our fire.
Quote.
The Nazis lost the war,but their new order didn't.
Unquote.
Freddy wrote his bookat a time of great crisis.
(07:04):
When the world was dividedby two great powers
who aimed their great weaponsat each other.
And if either one fired, the worldwould be consumed by flame,
while the wealthy grew more powerfuland their towers grew taller.
Famine, hunger, violence and unrest
plague the globe.
(07:26):
We too, were born into a world of crisis,
of great destruction and turmoil.
But Freddy tells us
it was not always this way.
To Perlman,
viewing the world's crisisin the context of the last hundred,
even 500 yearsis to not understand the world.
(07:46):
No more than looking at flowersallows you to understand the whole plant.
Look towards the stems, branches and root.
If our
contemporary civilization,with its contemporary problems
is the flowering,then Sumeria was its root.
That's where Freddie's ghost story begins.
(08:08):
In the ancient land of Mesopotamia.
There's a crackle in the fire,and Freddie's ghost
clears his throat.
Long ago,
between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Thereonce was a small community of people.
(08:29):
Life was lived in natural rhythms,in keeping with the seasons,
and the other creatures of the earthwere known to be family.
Everyone was known and was taken care of.
All was shared.
Decisions were made together.
This was how these people lived.
Freddy tells us, because that'show all people lived back then.
(08:55):
But here,
in between the Tigrisand Euphrates rivers,
something began to changewhere food was once shared.
It was now carefully guardedby lock and key.
The natural world became seenas something to control.
Where there was once community.
Now there were institutions.
(09:16):
Before long, the first cities appeared.
Their names were Eric Eridu.
Well, gosh. And Earth.
And togetherthey are known as the First Civilization.
Sumer,
what had been a land of smallegalitarian communities,
became a land of cities and hierarchy.
(09:39):
Perlman asks.
What happened?
Hello?
Who's there?
Oh it's you.
This is Louis H.
Morgan. He's joined us by the fire.
(09:59):
He is a ghost as well,but not one Freddie thinks too highly of.
To the ghost of Louis H. Morgan.
These developments in ancientSumeria or humanity climbing
the ladder out of savageryto civilization.
This is his famoustheory of higher states.
In his 1877 book
(10:21):
Ancient Society, Morgan describedhow humanity advances
like rungs on a ladder from savageryto barbarism to civilization.
If you look up Louis H.
Morgan, you'll find the painting
of a distinguishedlooking white man in a suit and bow tie.
(10:44):
Next to this imagewill be the title American Anthropologist
and an article from botanica.com.
And if you read that articlefrom botanica.com,
you'll see that it says, quote,Morgan's ideas
about the development of technologyover time have come to be regarded
as generally correctin their fundamental aspects, unquote.
(11:05):
But then goes on to say, quote, his theorythat humans socialize advanced
from an initial stage of promiscuitythrough various forms of family life
that culminated in monogamy, has longbeen held obsolete, however, unquote,
to Britannica.
The idea that humanity advancesfrom promiscuity
to monogamy is ridiculous,but it's perfectly sensible
(11:29):
that humanity advancesfrom primitive to civilized.
But we have not gathered around the fireto listen to Lewis Morgan.
We're here for Freddy.
Freddy dismisses Lewis and
tells us, quote,this theory of higher states
can be taught to small childrenbecause it is a fairy tale, unquote.
(11:51):
Then he smiles and adds, but
there's nothing wrong with fairy tales.
Fairytales are meant to bring out a moral,
somethingdeeper than just a list of events.
And that's exactly what Freddy set outto write his own sort of fairy tale.
And unlike Louis H.
Morgan, who forgot his theory of higherstates, was in fact a fairy tale.
(12:15):
Freddy always remembers that his story is.
So Freddy would tell us,
don't think of his taleas the history of civilization.
Think of it as the story of civilization.
It's meant to elucidatesome interesting reflections
and insights, not present exact facts.
(12:37):
And unlike Louis H.
Morgan's fairy tales of humanity'smarch of progress from being primitive
to advance where our beginningswere an impoverished struggle.
Were better for having developedout of Freddy's fairy tale.
Didn't see our beginnings as primitive
at all. Quote
(12:57):
I wouldn't use the word primitive to referto a people with a richness of life.
I would use the word primitiveto refer to myself and my contemporaries
with our progressive povertyof life, unquote.
Now one could look at our civilizationtoday,
the supermarkets full of groceries, storesstocked to the brim
(13:19):
with tools and appliancesand every convenience
one could look at these things
and think, Freddy was a foolto consider this poverty,
especially compared to the so-calledprimitive hunter gatherers
who possessed far less foodand fewer tools and fewer conveniences.
But Pearlman was convinced
(13:40):
he had not been taught the truerichness of this other kind of life,
and that this way of
life was not just for exoticother cultures.
This was how Perlman's own ancestors.
All of our ancestors livedone way or another,
in small communities where everyone wasknown and was taken care of,
(14:00):
where life was in naturalrhythms of seasons and weather.
Where the other creatures of the earthwere known to be family.
When the colonizers
who Freddy describes as boundby the blinding armor of civilization,
encounteredpeople who lived without this armor,
the colonizers noted with disgust
that these people did not seem to work.
(14:22):
When not enjoying leisure,they danced while gathering fruit
and herbs from the field, and played gameswhile hunting.
And just as there was no distinctionbetween work and play,
there was no distinction betweena community and what we call a government.
People weren't governedby impersonal institutions.
They govern themselves.
(14:43):
And likewise, there was no distinctionbetween the secular and the sacred.
All was wholly but not in some kindof pure, untouchable way.
Freddy admits his story is idyllic.
In fact, he tells usit is, quote, deliberately idyllic.
The idyllic is what the Europeans
(15:06):
came to destroy, unquote.
Now, Freddy was not just a peasant.
He was an anarchist.
And so were our ancestorsin the timeless golden age.
He'd tell us
anarchy is sometimes
thought of as synonymous with chaos.
A society in anarchy has no order.
(15:28):
But under anarchism,there is still a sort of order.
It might be hardfor us to imagine a society
where order is not commanded and obeyed,
where order is decided collectively
and no one person dictatesthe lives of the masses.
An anarchist society is not leaderless,
(15:49):
but leader full, with each personenacting individual agency
over their livesand a more egalitarian power structure.
And this is how Freddie reminds usall of our ancestors
lived in one wayor another, in this timeless golden age.
For tens of thousands,hundreds of thousands of years,
(16:11):
Sumer was where that changed.
Freddy imagines how this emerged.
Remind me how it starts.
Oh, right.
The drought.
In the village of Urk 6000 years ago,
a small enclave of red and mudbrick homes.
(16:33):
There is a drought.
And in its aftermath, a famine.
The people are hungry.
Along with the gazelles, camels, elephants
and the many other animal cousinsthat lived there back then,
the old womenand the old men of the village
discusswhat is to be done to secure water.
(16:53):
One brings uphow their cousin, the beaver, builds
dams and guides the flow of rivers.
Perhaps they can do the same,but the elders
backs are soreand their bones creak in the heat.
The too old for such a task.
They call on the
youth of the villageto construct a dam, to gather water
(17:14):
from the trickling streams into a poolthey can depend on.
The youth are eager to help,but it is a complicated, arduous project.
The elders select one of the particularlystrong youth to supervise.
They choose a little God.
The Sumerian word for strong men.
He has a name.
(17:34):
But one day it will not be remembered.
One dayhe will only be remembered as Luga.
The Google studiesthe beavers devises a plan
and shares it with his peers.
Together, they construct a barricadethat floods with water,
and the village of Eric prospers.
(18:00):
Once complete,
the strong man that will go is treatedlike everyone else.
His leadershipwas contingent and temporary,
but the following yeargreat rains come and the dam breaks.
The village is flooded.
Great repairs are needed.
The Council of Eldersasks the Google to once again
lead his peers and the build back better.
(18:24):
Eric is rebuiltand the Google's leadership is celebrated.
Yet when the rains end,
the will God returns among his fellowvillagers and lives as all the rest.
The following year,the rains are harsher than before,
and the destructionthe dam break brings is even greater.
(18:45):
The council calls on the Google again.
This time the Google requeststo have a seat on the council.
Despite being considerably youngerthan the elders.
His insistence is convincing.
After all, is he notthe one who most understands dam building?
His guidance could help preventfurther problems in the future.
(19:06):
The elders relentand the Google joins the council.
Meanwhile, in the nearby
village of Earth, people take notice.
They too have struggled with the famineand the rains,
and they admire their neighbors.
Ingenious new dams.
Their elders choose their own strongman to lead a similar project.
(19:26):
And over in the growing
settlement of a gush,the people do the same.
Years pass, and Freddy tells us,
one elder of Ericand then another die of old age.
They are placed on the councilby newcomers, unquote.
But the little girl whom the eldersfirst chose is himself
(19:48):
now an elder, and caresnot for these new members of the council.
Why should he listen to them?
What do they know of building damsand canals?
His hardiness does not stop there.
We're told he even dares
to tell an old grandmotherwhere not to plant her seeds.
Oh, can you imagine?
(20:08):
Well, everyone in Eric and her and Lagash,and even their neighbors
in Urduknow not to try and boss a grandma around.
So Google is found dead the next day.
Reportedly killed by a deitywho favors grandma's.
Freddy adds with a wink.
But someone must look after the complexdams.
A new strongman.
(20:29):
Another Google is chosen.
And to not insult him.
Also given a seaton the Council of Elders,
he makes surenot to ruffle as many feathers, but
the grandmothers are still cautiousaround him.
The villagesexpand and more dams are needed.
Generations pass.
Leadership is passed from one Googleto another.
(20:53):
Over time,the Wiggles become a new kind of leader,
a ruler.
Many societies have leaders
who inspire, organize, facilitate, teach.
But a ruler is something different,
and the people of the Sumer communitybecome something different as well.
(21:13):
Initially, farmerswere asked to spend some of their time
helping construct wallsthat benefit all from floods.
But what was donevoluntarily by one generation
is expected of the next and is imposed,unquote.
The temporary division of laborbecomes permanent and forced
(21:34):
gifts given to the
girl out of gratitudebecome obligatory tribute.
A leader asks, but a ruler commands.
And when a ruler commands,they must be obeyed.
The people of Sumerare now something else.
(21:55):
I was calling them and us peasants.
But Freddy has another name in mind.
Since this new phenomenon
will continue throughout the entire storyof civilization.
Freddy thinks it's perfectly fairto borrow a term from the far future
when people will toilin Gulag prison camps
in the Soviet Unionduring Freddy's own lifetime.
(22:18):
These incarcerated workers will be called
Zeke's, and Freddy arguesthat while the Soviets
may have invented this name,the Sumerians invented the position.
But there are only so many peoplein Sumer to work for the Google.
(22:38):
Wars are declared around
foreigners from the Zagros Mountainsand Persian plains,
are captured and enslavedand sent to Sumer to work insects.
These wars devastate the landscape,
which only strengthensthe legal refugees of these wars.
When nothing left to live onand their homelands migrate to Sumer
(23:02):
as a survival necessityand volunteer to become sex.
And it's in Sumer
where the first writing will be invented.
Inspired
by fragments of what can be knownfrom the first Sumerian writing,
Freddi notes that the eventual cuneiformtablets will be, quote,
(23:22):
mysteriously silentabout the deeds of the women
and eldersat the time of the first two gods.
And as time goes on, the tablet scribeshelp people forget
that Sumerian women were important,that elders once sat and counsel
that there was agebefore the first struggle, unquote.
Freddy tells usit was the birth of history.
(23:48):
Not human history,
but his story of patriarchal domination.
Freddy goes on. Quote.
It is not enough to say thatpeople are constrained.
The first captured sex may do it onlybecause they are physically constrained.
But physical constraintno longer explains why
the children of sex stick to their levers.
(24:11):
It's not that constraint vanishes.
The constraint is internalized, unquote.
Over time,the workers and managers, quote,
become increasinglylike the springs and wheels
they operate.
Perlman pauses there.
He can see us squirm by the fire.
(24:34):
I told you the ghost story was spooky.
But this tale is not just one of commentand captivity,
but of thosewho never stop trying to break free.
Freddie's words again.
Pick up in the flames. Quote.
Here we reach a problem that has plagued
people since the age of the first or
(24:55):
the problem of resistance.
If the blue goal is to control the sex,
the Google needs help.
But how can the Google get helpruling over the sex
without sharing his own power?
The Google needs an intermediarybetween himself and the sex.
(25:16):
The Google needs an NC.
An NC in Sumerian
came to be known as a boss,but not a boss.
Always subordinate to the Google.
A regional manager of sorts.
Picture a Sumerian NC
presiding over the constructionof a great ziggurat.
(25:38):
His job is to ensurethat Zeke's are assembling the baked
bricks properly,and to punish them if they did not.
It's a hot day.
The Zeke's trembleunder the weight of their toil.
Some collapse in exhaustion.
Many faces are covered with expressionsof resentment and discontent.
The NC watches all this carefully
(26:01):
and strange thoughts come to the senses,
mind unquote.
They're more than noises, he notices,
and certainly many more sectsthan will gods.
Yet the insects still followthe enemy's orders,
just as the noises follow the wiggles.
(26:23):
There are rebellions, of course,
but the NC is surprisedthat they're not all the time.
And even more surprising,and far more perplexing,
is the fact that during such rebellions,
very few activitiescame to a complete halt,
even during the interregnumbetween wagons, unquote.
(26:45):
It's as if the city has caught
a will of its own,but he knows it doesn't.
The only one in town with a willis the little girl.
The next,when we execute the lugares will.
And if the zerks have awill at all, it is a will to break out.
The NCRconcludes that it's pointless to think.
(27:06):
Thinking is the job of priestsand oracles, unquote.
But the NCR was on to something,
even if it was just outside his grasp.
Something does have a will of its own,
but it's not just a city,
it's Leviathan.
(27:27):
Thomas Hobbes,
the English philosopher,will use this name.
He will write a book called Leviathanin 1651.
Thousands of yearsafter Sumeria is buried in sand.
Hobbes will write to quote
that GreekLeviathan, called a Commonwealth or state,
which is but an artificial man,though of greater stature and strength
(27:51):
than the natural, for whose protectionand defense it was intended,
and in which the sovereigntyis an artificial soul,
as giving life and motionto the whole body.
The magistrates and other officersof Judea chair an execution.
Artificial joints.
Reward and punishment are the nerdsthat do the same in the body.
(28:13):
Natural.
The wealth and riches of allthe particular members are the strength,
the people's safety, its business
counselors, by whom all things needful
for it is to know or suggested unto it,
what are the memory, equity, and laws,
and artificial reason,and will Concord health,
(28:33):
sedition, sickness and civil war, death,
unquote.
That's what NC was seeing.
The birth of the Leviathan,an artificial creature
whose parts are built out of peoplewho are no longer
free.
(28:54):
Hobbes will imagine that in the Leviathan
there is, quote, one freeand whole man, unquote, to Hobbes,
that is the monarch, the ruler,
the will. God.
But Freddy shakes his head.
Our fire burns quote.
(29:15):
Even the Google, the freest man in earth,cannot go hunting in the morning, fishing
in the afternoon, and dancing at nightas his own spirit moves him, unquote.
One Google Eric
Agena of oh gosh, perhapsmore than any other will go
before him, would have learnedthe true limits of his power.
(29:37):
After generations of all Gaulswho ruled by the whip,
Eric Agena of oh gosh, claycuneiform tablets will tell us
that he becomes, quote,the first documented reformer,
unquote, and champion of what will one daycall the working class.
Perhaps Eric Agena recognizesthe work that keeps Lagash running
(30:01):
is that of the sex,not the elite who rule over them.
For example,
one such reform was not allowing elitesto force Zack to sell goods to him.
If the Zack refused,this was a real reform,
and the clay tabletdecreeing it survived into our time.
But Ursa
minor of legacies reformsdo not last for long
(30:24):
because neither does Eric Agena.
You see, Eric Agena had a rival in NCfrom the nearby town
named Ziggy's.
And Freddie wasn't making these names up,by the way.
Ziggy once lived as much as you and I,
and Ziggy's was sick of being in NC.
(30:46):
He wanted to be a.
So we devised a plan.
Ziggy
could see how Erica Geithner's reformshad angered the elite civil.
Gosh.
In fact, the elites were fuming.
Sure, the Xqcs were happy,but who cares about them?
(31:08):
Ziggy realizedhe could potentially seize power
without even using his own soldiers.
He wouldn't even have to invadeif he could promise
to end the reformsand return power to the elites of Lagash.
They would invite him in.
And that's exactly what happened.
Ziggy's recognized what Erica.
(31:28):
Nina didn't.
There is more power in supporting wealththan there is in supporting justice.
Yet wasn't Erica Nina the ruler?
And doesn'tthe ruler get to decide what to do?
It turns out there are forces
which rule even the googol.
What happened to Erica? Nina?
(31:50):
Perhaps he was executed.
Maybe he ended his own life
to avoid capture once he sawhis own elites had turned against him.
All we know is that Erica.
Nina was finished, and that in his place,
Ziggy's became legal as well. God.
The united all of the citiesof the Tigris, Euphrates valley
(32:11):
for the first time.
Sumer was a single unified kingdom.
The Leviathan
and Google's legacy may think that he is
now the ruler,that he is the one in control.
But when Ziggy is wipedfrom the face of the Earth,
the Leviathan he temporarily helpedgrow will continue on unscathed.
(32:32):
The Leviathan, Freddy tells
us, is not run by people,but by something new to people.
Institutionswhich are impersonal and immortal.
Perlman calls the collectionof these institutions the Immortal Worm,
an artificial being, yetwhich grows and consumes, like the living.
(32:55):
Quote.
Institutions are not a part of life,but a part of death,
and death cannot die and die and die.
But the labor gang lives on.
Generals and soldiers die.
But ers army lives onand in fact grows larger and deadlier.
(33:15):
Death's realm grows, but the living die.
This creates problemsthat resisters have not so far
been able to deal with, unquote.
A cold wind howls and we shiver.
(33:38):
But the fire grows stronger.
Freddie's words through the fire.
Tell us, quote.
Dead things have powers.
Living beings lack
the Leviathan quote.
Neither breathes nor breeds.
It is not even a living parasite.
It is an excretion. Unquote.
(33:58):
Life will be gobbled up.
Forests cleared.
Predators slain.
Mountains, mind.
Life will go in one end. Leviathan.
And come out the other as resources.
This excretionwill be a new kind of trade.
And Freddy says that outside of Leviathan,quote,
(34:18):
trade is somethingpeople do to their enemies, unquote,
not with their kin, as gifts are given
and received, not exchanged.
There are two ways of reading this.
One is the bright sidethat a market economy
allows enemies to live togetherwithout being kin.
Or, as Pearlman emphasizes,the nefarious side.
(34:42):
A marketeconomy creates a society of enemies.
And as he explains, when trade encompasses
all facets of society,it is no longer just trade.
It is called business.
A businessman, Freddy
says, is, quote,a human being who thrives in
(35:02):
and on the leviathan's material entrails,unquote.
And one day business will becomeanother force of the Leviathan.
Beyond even the supposed ruler's control.
Hugo's, Ziggy's
and his trusty elitesconsider none of this.
(35:25):
And how could they really?
It's all so new.
The incoming resources, the tribute,the power.
And here they are.
The rulers of the great Sumeria.
They're on top of the world.
But further
north, up the valley, in a landcalled a cod.
The river.
(35:45):
The man who may not have spokenthe Sumerian language,
but was fluentin the ways of Sumerian power.
His name was Sargon.
Born to a humble gardenerwho worked his way up
to be cupbearer to the king.
But Sargon of a card had ambition that would lead him far beyond gardens and cups.
(36:08):
Up until now, it was the SumerianLeviathan
who conquered much of the land aroundit had fallen under its sway.
But for the first time,Sumer would soon be conquered itself,
and it would be Sargon of a godwho would do it
wherever.
(36:29):
One by one, cities fell.
First Cimarron, then along, then Mari.
And the conquering continueduntil Sargon s army marched into Iraq
and defeated lugares like easy.
We're told from the cuneiformthat Zack Gizzy was captured,
and Sargon led him in a colorto the gate of his Akkadian god.
(36:51):
There's an engraved stone slabfrom the time that shows the Gezi
imprisoned, being hit on the headwith a mace by Sargon.
And Sargon did not stop there.
He conquered Earth in Amir Lagashand Umma.
He conquered out to the cedarforests of us up to the Silver
Mountains of Ladakh, eastout to the Gulf, and west out to the sea.
(37:17):
A Babylonian chronicler wrote,
quote, his splendor over the landsit diffused.
He brought it under one authority.
He set up his statues there and ferriedthe West's booty across on barges.
He marched to castle and turned Castleinto a ruined heap.
So that there was not even a perchfor a bird left,
(37:38):
unquote.
Sargon of a god
had destroyed the wallsand cities of Sumeria,
but the Leviathan was now more powerfulthan ever before.
Like the Gizzy before him, Sargon nowbelieved he was the head of this power.
Sargon himselfboasted in cuneiform, quote,
(38:00):
all the lands revolted against me,and they besieged me and a god.
But the old lionstill had teeth and claws.
I went forth to battle and defeated them.
I knocked them overand destroyed their vast army.
Now any king who wants to call himselfmy equal wherever I went, let him go.
(38:25):
The fire spits and tumbles.
The Leviathan is a cannibal.
Freddy says, quote,it eats its contemporaries
as well as its predecessors.
Its enemy is everything
outside of itself, unquote.
Sargon the Conqueror thoughthis major achievement
(38:48):
was in defeating Sumerand in creating the Akkadian Empire.
But his true achievement is helping ussee Leviathan more clearly.
You see this monster,
though, brought to the world by Sumer,
no longer belongs to Sumer anymore.
The immortal worm has no nationality,no ethnicity.
(39:10):
It is a beast benton the total consumption of the world.
Sargon thought he was the ruler,
but Leviathan was the ruler.
Sargon was Leviathan's regional manager.
As Freddy says, quote, Earth is now.
(39:31):
It is not exotic at all.
It is our world.
6000 yearslater, there will still be little Gauls
that they will call themselvesnew names, unquote.
The Leviathan still haunts us today.
Thanks for listening.
(39:52):
Against history.
Against Leviathan is an epic storyspanning thousands of years.
This was just its first chapter.
Perhaps one day we will return and letFreddy continue his story from here.
But up ahead on our odyssey,we will be traveling in time, all the way
to the present to look at the beastLeviathan eventually became,
(40:16):
and the world system it created.
Until next time.
I hope you won't have nightmaresabout spooky worms.
Remember, this was just a fairy tale.
And though it's onethat's haunted us for thousands of years,
perhaps you'll consider betterstories that could come true instead.
So the fire we
(40:37):
peasants have gatheredaround is growing dim.
It's best we let it die down. For now.
But the campfire is always burningon the Human Nature Odyssey Patreon,
wheresongs and stories are always being sung.
You can come join us around the fire.
There, share your thoughts,make your suggestions, talk
with your fellow peasants.
(40:57):
Have access to bonus episodes, transcripts
of episodes, and audiobook readings.
Your support makes this podcast possible.
Thank you to Gary and Michaelfor your feedback on this episode.
And as always,our theme music is Celestial Soda Pop
by Ray, which you can find the linkin our show notes.
(41:18):
Talk with you soon.
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