We dive into chapter 4 – Free People, the Origin of Cultures, and the Advent of Private Property – of The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow. This chapter is bookended by discussions of two key political distinctions that organize societies in fundamentally different ways. We start with formal freedom vs substantive freedom. Or, freedom as an ideology (e.g. the land of the free; the pursuit of liberty; spreading democracy) and freedom as a practice (e.g. the ability to actually do things and live life in certain ways). We then conclude on the question of the origins of property. Here we indigenous conceptions of property in the form of sacred objects/knowledge based on relations of caring and sharing. Which evolve into contemporary conceptions (based on Roman law) of property as private possessions based on relations of domination and exclusion.

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