I grew up believing what most of us were taught, that people are competitive by nature and that civilisation is the thing that keeps us in line. Twenty years of living with Indigenous communities slowly took that belief apart, and in two forests, among the Penan of Borneo and the Mbendjele of the Congo, I came across something that changed the direction of my life.
This book is my attempt to make sense of what I found there, with the help of the anthropologists who have spent their working lives in those camps, and to ask what it might mean for the rest of us.
It’s still being written. More soon.