It's an important growth moment to realise that the consequences of violating those "laws" are not delivered by the laws of nature but instead by the behaviour of humans. So you can be rude or arrogant, and the only punishment for that comes from people choosing not to work with you or similarly being unpleasant back to you.
Nazis had a lack of compassion and denied some people the (man-made!) rights of humanity based on race, ability, sexual orientation, and other categories. The consequences for that behaviour had to come from other people standing up to them.
I've met people who think that "the universe" will deliver just punishment for violating an ethical or moral code. In reality, every society and set of values is held together by people defending them and meting out punishing to violators. Sometimes formally (police, courts, armies, declarations of war) and sometimes personally.
Within the constraints of the materialistic assumptions underlying it, I do agree that the ideals of compassion and empathy are examples of best-case behavior but the humans who rise to the top in such systems are usually not encumbered with the capacity for either. They would push back on the constraints of such “objective ideals” anyway because they see no coherent place for them in will to power systems.
Unfamiliar term. Turns out it is Nazi political slang.
Harari write pop sci, a grand narrative with many liberties with both history and science.
Graeber's books are heavily referenced pieces of work. Debt: The first 5000 years ends at 73% on my Kindle, because the remaining 27% of the book (144/534 pages) is references and footnotes.
Their books are not in the same intellectual category.
I have no intention of reading Dawn of Everything but reviewers have noticed references that say the opposite of what the authors claim they say.
In the language of this essay [1], Graeber's work is legible, Harari's not at all.
[1] https://acesounderglass.com/2022/02/07/epistemic-legibility/
It felt like he set up a windmill separate from reality to tilt at.
I do agree that Harari is great for thought piece stuff, I put him in the same category as Gladwell. Entertaining to read, but not to be trusted as a singular source.
Graeber was a self-proclaimed anarachist. His books indeed have a different description of reality than the orthodox description of reality. If you don't agree with his description, then it will indeed look outlandish - the same way an atheist's and religious person's descriptions sound outlandish to each other. If you do agree with his descriptions, or at least that there are many different conceptions of the world, then his views are more reasonable.
Harari is not making scholarly arguments at all, so we cant even say much about his books.
See: quantum mechanics.
