0247 Throughout their book, Graeber and Wengrow wonder whether social scientists ask the wrong questions.  Social scientists ask questions about the material causes of state formation at one location or another.  Indeed, the authors do not wander too far from their colleagues, because they suggest that the “state”_2b manifests according to their definition of the term, “domination”_2a.  The material (perhaps, instrumental) causes underlying the term, “domination”_2a, includes controlling violence_1a, administrating information_1a, and charismatic influence_1a.

0248 Graeber and Wengrow suggest that these three instrumental potentials account for the state_2b.  They are correct, as far as definitions go.  But, in their correctness, they fail to draw from the foundational insights in layers A:A’ and B:B’.  It matters what people think.  These comments propose ways to visualize what people think.  People think triadic relations.  Diagrams of judgments and category-based nested forms allow the inquirer to visualize what people think.

0249 How is this possible?

Humans adapt into the ultimate niche of triadic relations.

0250 Graeber and Wengrow assert that social scientists need to rethink the premises of social evolution, as well as the very idea of politics, itself.

0251 What the authors do not know, thus cannot assert, is found in three masterworks by Razie Mah: The Human Niche, An Archaeology of the Fall and How To Define The Word “Religion”.

0252 The history of civilization is not the history of the state.

According to the German historian, Eric Voegelin (1881-1985 U0′), the history of civilization entails a search for order_1b.

Order_1b virtually situates righteousness_1a.

0253 Is this the lesson that the history of the state tells us over and over again?

0254 When the ill-fated indigenous Americans of the Eastern Woodlands critique late-medieval European civilization,they say that Europeans dominate one another.  Europeans are not righteous.  Europeans order one another around.  Europeans do not respect one another.  Europeans feel obliged to obey commands.

Surely, the indigenous people of North America practice sovereignty_3b, but they do not have states_2b, defined by the explicit abstraction, “domination”_2a.

These unfortunate people express the virtues of liberty, equality and fraternity.  And, they have no state_2b.