In The Details

“Accurate description of a subject society is vitally important to our work, and thus it is important to be aware of our descriptors as tightly-defined terms of art. For example, ‘primitive’ and ‘barbaric’ are not cognates: a society whose implicit economic scarcity requires people to labor in exchange for subsistence goods is primitive, but need not be barbaric. Contrariwise, the practice of taxation is in and of itself barbaric, but not necessarily limited to primitives.”

– An Introduction to Cultural Sophontology