Again, not finished with the book, but the central thesis of the book that large scaled human endeavors (and society as a whole following the agricultural revolution) does not require hierarchical organization. I do not believe I have made it to the meat of that thesis yet but, up to this point, I have not been convinced by his evidence that there were long-lasting, large-scale human organizations (think city scale and higher) that operated without some hierarchy.
That said, there are some things that stand out that I am spending a lot of time contemplating as a result of the book so far:
* I now agree with him that there were likely societies operating at a reasonable level of scale (larger than the Band/Tribe stereotype) that were significantly more egalitarian than current societies or any others in the Greco-Roman/Western civilization lineage.
* There was likely significantly more experimentation around social structures in early human history than I had thought of or imagined.
* There were societies which operated with different types of governance based on the time of year and activities associated with that time of year. This is interesting to me since I believe there is no "best" political system, but I had not considered how to take advantage of multiple types without trying to recombine them in some way. I particularly want to think about this more in the context of corporate organizations, since they already do this in some ways without being as explicit about it. For example, I have worked with an organization that operated like a collective of empowered product teams for large portions of the year but operated more like a standard hierarchy during annual planning season or when there was inter-organizational conflict. At the time I perceived it as a faux front for a top-down organization, but now I'm not sure that's fair.
* This one is probably more philosophically obvious, but, there is an opportunity for me, personally, to rethink the version of "freedom" I value. In doing so I think I will reconcile some conflicts I have between my social and economic views. The book didn't give me a new definition for freedom that I want to use, but it presented at least one alternative definition that I think is valid and interesting.
