I just found out that David Graeber died yesterday. He was the smartest guy I’ve ever had the honor to know. We met on Twitter during the revolution after I’d read his Fragments of An Anarchist Anthropology.
I used him as a sounding board whenever I thought my head was going too far. He was kind, always communicative, took the time to read the things I wrote, and we were always on the same wavelength.
When his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years was published, I devoured it and still recommend it to people as being, quite possibly, the most important book I’ve ever read. One more book of his is due to be released soon, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, a collaboration with fellow author David Wengrow, that I’m sure will be equally as brilliant as everything else he’s worked on.
He was one of the leaders of the Occupy Movement and just as disillusioned by the path of politics in the USA as I am now, just as repulsed by the imposition of the Bidens and Kamalas of the world on people who would rather have far better options.
He was a brilliant man whose compass never led him astray.
The last time we messaged was a week ago on Twitter. I told him I was going mad by events, and he joked, saying, “Don’t go mad, we need you!”
No, David, you’re the one we needed.
