ARCHITECTURE: Israeli Eyal Weizman is the founder and director of Forensic Architecture – a research group that uses architecture as an approach to investigating state violence and human rights violations. The group collaborates with artists, architects, researchers, lawyers and journalists – and sometimes with a court. Their main areas of work are Palestine and now Gaza.
HISTORY: The researchers have claimed that evolution made men competitive and dominant, but the book Why Men? brings ample evidence showing the ideological, racist and sexist origins of this claim.
VIOLENCE: Is man fundamentally violent? History does not show exactly that. We have several examples of large societies in prehistory showing few traces of war and authoritarian rule. For example, the Stone Age can be essential for anyone who wants to say something about human evolution and nature.
DIRECT DEMOCRACY: We need a new social system with commons and decline. And it is possible to achieve it. We have enough experience and knowledge from previous times. It's just a matter of getting started, writes Yavor Tarinski in a recent debate book.
COVID-19: In a newly published interview anthology about the pandemic, Roger Waters says that war and climate change are killing us faster than anything else, but the breathing pause that began in March 2020 may still open up other alternatives. At the same time, the entire anthology presupposes digital technology – for which we can all be grateful.
Obituary: David Graeber died recently. MODERN TIMES chooses for once to bring an obituary – here over the anarchist who wanted to change our usual notions of what is possible and impossible, right and wrong, normal and strange.