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I've been waiting to update my understanding of Cortes and Moctezuma ever since Neil Young mistold it to me at a concert in 1986 in his equally hallucinatory take on the meeting in his song Cortez the Killer. This book doesn't have that crazy horse guitar solo, or the weird insertion of a woman into the lyrics that Neil knows is somehow "living there, and she loves me to this day. I still can't remember when or how I lost my way.", but it does have wicked and funny court farces and lots of Spanish buffoonery. I was sober at the Neil Young concert because I was 15 and went with a friends father who dreamed of an accountant son. If I could do it all over again I'd have ingested plenty of psychoactive plants or mushrooms at both the concert and my reading of this good book to help complete my white guy understanding of this historic moment in the only way it can be understood after empires fall and colonialism erases - as an inherently selfish hallucination.

I remember years ago watching two shows called Eureka and Stargate Atlantis. I call them bad militarized sci-fi, also known as fun sci-fi. Nothing dense like actual good sci-fi can be. The plots for each show basically followed the formula of:

1. scientist(s) discovers something amazing and/or has a big theory,
2. scientist(s) then egotistically mess around with discovery/theory, then,
3. scientist cause a rupture in the fabric of space or time or inadvertently cause a galaxy or universe wide extinction level event because they just can't control themselves. The whirlygig machine keeps spinning making more and more maniacal sounds, until...
4. scientist(s) with the help of their grunt military friends save the day and shut down the machine.

Then they wake up in the next episode and do the same damn thing, putting all of us once again in jeopardy of annihilation or some such. They think what they are doing is more important than all of us other people and we should just be grateful for their big brains.

And here's the thing about these type of shows: They're actually supposed to make you think that the scientists and their military backing are the heroes. But I couldn't help but think that the characters I grew to love were straight up terrifying MANIACS.

This book is just like these shows, except this book is very well written, entirely absorbing, sticks with you for days, has a much better point to its story, and the math and science are real. Bravo. Best book of 2024 so far.

Like a lot of good books this one gets boiled down in the last pages:

We began this book with a quote which refers to the Greek notion of kairos as one of those occasional moments in a society's history when its frames of reference undergo a shift, a metamorphosis of the fundamental principles and symbols when the lines between myth and history, science and magic become blurred and, therefore, real change is possible.

...our scientific means of understanding the past ...has been advancing with dizzying speed. Scientists in 2020 are ...encountering radically different forms of society under their own feet, some forgotten and newly rediscovered, others more familiar but now understood in entirely different ways.

In developing the scientific means to know our own past, we have exposed the mythical substructure of our social science. What once appeared unassailable axioms, the stable points around which our self-knowledge is organized, is scattering like mice. What is the purpose of all this new knowledge if not to reshape our conceptions of who we are and what we might yet become? If not, in other words, to rediscover the meaning of our third basic freedom. The freedom to create new and different forms of social reality.

That third basic freedom is really what Graeber wants us to follow - starting now, posthaste. And this book is a blueprint of questions and stories that show the way to continue to reconceive who we are and experiment with different social realties. Another way to look at this book is that it is a response to the typical status quo argument that basically says we should just keep hurtling forward with our current wildly unequal social reality because that hippy childlike indigenous shit is unrealistic and humans are greedy bastards, and history proves it. This book responds with a tilt of the head, "Are you sure about that?"

I tried. I got about 80% done and put it down because it was leaving a bad taste. I came back and gave it another 20 pages before quitting. It wasn't because the characters seemed to lack human-like motivations, not the wooden clunky story, or the cringy virtual reality game. It was its love of authority. You distill this book down and that's what it is, pro authoritarianism. I mean, I get it, communism bad. But, this... this is like a tech-bro version of scifi: unimaginative in its view of life and too high on its own game theory to care about people. Sure, the "science" is cool but it's boring because it's just part of the games instructions. It's too excited to hunt all those threats found in their poorly lit dark forest to tell a good story. One turn at a time. Linear.

It's strange to be so vehemently out of step with the vast majority of readers of sci-fi, but this is not good scifi. I know a lot of people really really like it. That's why I read it. Call me an optimist. But this just suck. I'm glad about one thing - my memories of it are quickly dissipating.

I'm convinced that most of my earlier life, let's say 40 years and younger, I was lied to over and over again by "authorities" of various subjects, even by anti-authoritarian authorities that decried authority. They mostly did it for the money, or the power, or because they are narcissists. But, you know who never lied to me, except when they knew damn well they were lying and made damn sure I knew they were lying to me? Kurt Vonnegut Jr., that's who! In this age of reality rewrites we need more and more funny untruths to help us understand what is true. This book is full of it!

Scads have been written about this book, so I'll defer the analysis to the qualified. But, I will say this is the first book I read when I was pretty young that made me love unreliable narration. At the time I didn't even know it was rhetorical device.

And here's something of a non sequitur, Vonnegut is kind, and he wants you to be kind even if life is hard.

I fed the above words into ChatGPT after I told it: "I want you act as an executive editor at a top book publisher. I will provide you texts and I would like you to review them for any spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors. Once you have finished reviewing the text, provide me with any necessary corrections or suggestions for improving the text."

Here's what the little shit had to say... and my god, it sounds like an American customer support "team member", always congratulatory and making sure you know you get a prize. It even has the audacity to say, "the reminder to be kind to one another is a powerful sentiment." No it's not you unthinking regurgitating monster -- Kindness is not a sentiment, it is action. Anyway, here's its response, which is really just me patting myself on the back by chatting with "AI" instead of making a real connection.

I appreciate your enthusiasm for Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and his writing. It sounds like his work has had a profound impact on your perspective and appreciation for the use of unreliable narration in storytelling. It's always fascinating to discover authors who resonate with us on a personal level.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s emphasis on kindness, even in the face of life's challenges, is a valuable and uplifting message. In a world that can often feel uncertain and overwhelming, the reminder to be kind to one another is a powerful sentiment.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and personal connection to Vonnegut's work. It's clear that his writing has left a lasting impression on you.