As for the concept of the armed primitivist revolution, if you have some time, you should check out “Endgame” by Derrick Jensen. It’s his massive argument for using terrorism to bring civilization down. It’s two giant volumes; to save time, you can skip all but the following chapters:

BOOK ONE:
- Counterviolence
- Bringing Down Civilization, parts 1-4 (part one is in book one; parts two to four are in book two)
- Love Does Not Imply Pacifism
- Violence

BOOK TWO:
- Dams, parts 1-4
- Pacifism, parts 1-4
- Symbolic and Non-Symbolic Actions
- The Crash

That’ll give you a good idea of what he thinks should be done and, more importantly, what he’s telling others to do. He doesn’t spend a lot of time wrestling with the morality of killing innocent bystanders except to briefly say something like, “Well, they’re killing salmon!”

As you can tell by the last chapter in the list, Jensen has, in fact, begun discussing the crash, though he mostly discusses it as something that will only happen if people start blowing up dams and such.

While I deeply appreciate the spirit of this discussion, I must correct something regarding the views of Derrick Jensen (I can’t speak for Zerzan). The fact is, Jensen does not speak of the crash as something that will happen only through eco-terrorism. In fact, his seventh premise (his premises appear in front of both volumes) states:

The longer we wait for civilization to crash–or the longer we wait before we ourselves bring it down–the messier the crash will be, and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during, and for those who come after.

The ideas presented in Engame are his interpretation of how the continuing damage to the earth from civilization can be minimized before the inevitable crash. Blowing up dams and protecting old-growth forests are Jensen’s particular areas of focus, mostly because he lives in an area where these are the primary ecological concerns.

Whether or not his suggested tactics have merit is worthy of discussion, but let’s not mistate his argument.

I know I am nitpicking, but Giuli, unless I am misunderstanding Quinn, I don’t remember Quinn ever mentioning anything about Dunbar’s Number, or his end point involving civilization splitting off into small, sustainable communities. I don’t remember Quinn mentioning much about what sustainable settlements would look like. That was all up in the open for him.

My impression of the mainstream Peak Oil community is that they see that industrial civilization is untenable, not civilization per se, and foresee a return to pre-industrial civilization, or agrarian life. Whether or not this is viable is another question, but I think you have misunderstood much of the Peak Oil community.

But I agree–arguing values is different than arguing the flawed nature of a system. In fact, it is our duty to separate our emotions from our research–that, to me, is why some people are percieved as genocidal maniacs in this community while others are not. William Catton wrote the book on overshoot–yet he’s not called a genocidal maniac! I believe that is in part because he is talking about research versus whether or not the system that is collapsing is good or bad.

Take a look at the “mainstream” Peak Oil community. They believe that civilization is good–the highest achievement of our species, even. They also see that it’s untenable.

Most of what I have heard from the “mainstream” Peak Oil community concludes that modern civilization is untenable, not that civilization itself is untenable.

No system based on perpetual growth can survive indefinitely in a finite universe. This is about as basic as it gets. I don’t anticipate any arguments against it.

Also, there is little argument as to whether our current status could be maintained even if we do not expand any further. Therefore, the question is can our modern civilization reduce itself without collapsing? Otherwise it will collapse. This is not a value judgement, merely an observation. If someone drops a porcelain vase from twenty feet on to solid granite and I say “the vase will be fine until it hits the rock, then it will shatter.” I’m not judging the vase as weak, or rock as strong, or gravity as all powerful, or anything of the sort. I know rock is hard. I know porcelain is weak (not because it is broken or wrong, its weakness is a feature of the material itself, same as granite’s hardness). And I know gravity pulls down. I’m not judging the value of the vase, or the rock, or gravity. I’m merely observing the situation and drawing a conclusion.

If I said “whooo hooo! That vase is going down!” That would be making a value judgement. If I said “we’ll be better off once the vase is shattered,” that would also be a value judgement. But merely observing the vase will shatter is not a value judgement. If my argument said we made the vase wrong and that’s why it will shatter, that might be a value judgement. But my argument is the “flaw” in the vase is not actual a flaw but a feature of the vase. Inherent to a porcelain vase itself.

Civilization’s strength and advantage is in its numbers. A population that continually expands. The result of such a feature is the failure of the system. This makes it unsustainable, not flawed.

Now, I do put a value on sustainability, which is one of the reasons I believe, as smart as we humans think we are, we can do better for ourselves than civilization. And, in part because of this, I do not think highly of civilization as a method of organizing people. But civilization’s eventual collapse is not a value judgement, only an observation. Whether peak oil, climate change, water troubles, etc will do it or not is, of course, another issue entirely.

On an earlier issue, I agree with Miranda. Aftermath is more of a resource for information and ideas than a primitivist blog.

So then you do admit that it is a matter of belief then, and not one of fact? If it were a matter of fact, we could verify it only by it’s actual occurrence…

Overshoot is a fact well before it actually occurs. The procession of the equinoxes, too, is a fact. I can tell you that Polaris will not be the pole star in several hundred thousand years, and that is a fact, even though it hasn’t actually occurred yet.

By the same token, your belief in a fact is quite different from the fact itself. Civilization will collapse. This is a fact, because it is a tautology. Civilization is a culture founded on ever-expanding complexity, i.e., growth, and nothing can grow forever in a finite universe. Civilization’s collapse is tautological, just like any other case of overshoot. Whether or not you believe this fact is another matter entirely. I can believe that the procession of the equinoxes is just an astronomical conspiracy all I like. If I referred to my belief in the procession of the equinoxes, would it be valid for you to then say, “So then you do admit that it is a matter of belief then, and not one of fact? If it were a matter of fact, we could verify it only by it’s actual occurrence…”?

Belief in collapse is a belief that our current situation is untenable and therefore will terminate in collapse. The belief that our current situation is untenable means that you believe as well that there are certain things wrong with our current situation which are causal factors in any supposed collapse. This is most definitely a value judgement!

Take a look at the “mainstream” Peak Oil community. They believe that civilization is good–the highest achievement of our species, even. They also see that it’s untenable. They believe this is a superlative tragedy, whereby we are denied from continuing the glorious cause of civilization into perpetuity as we were fated. So, there is no necessary value judgment involved in saying that a system will collapse. You can believe that system to be good, bad or indifferent; that’s an entirley different question from whether or not you think it will fall apart.

Most primitivists do not believe in collapse, and most people anticipating collapse are not primitivists. So the distinction is very important indeed.

So then you do admit that it is a matter of belief then, and not one of fact? If it were a matter of fact, we could verify it only by it’s actual occurrence…

No, it’s entirely possible to believe in something real. I believe in gravity. I believe in evolution. Belief is not the same thing as faith; you can believe in something because you’ve been swayed by solid evidence.

As for actual occurrence, there are many examples of collapse scattered throughout history. Joseph Tainter’s book “The Collapse of Complex Societies” is the most respected theory of how and why collapse happens. A solid foundation in ecology and anthropology, along with a study of past societies that have collapsed, will give you the means by which to evaluate the tenability of our current situation. You don’t have to see collapse as it’s happening (though, honestly, we’re in the early stages already) to verify that it’s collapse any more than you need to put your hand on a hot grill twice to verify that it will have the same painful result the second time around.

Disagree here. Belief in collapse is a belief that our current situation is untenable and therefore will terminate in collapse. The belief that our current situation is untenable means that you believe as well that there are certain things wrong with our current situation which are causal factors in any supposed collapse. This is most definitely a value judgement!

So everyone who knows about Rome’s collapse is a primitivist? Easter Island’s? It is possible to acknowledge that there are problems within an otherwise workable system that can lead to collapse without believing that the system itself is inherently unsustainable. Most people who foresee the coming collapse don’t believe that civilization can never work; on the contrary, they’re stockpiling grain to start the whole thing all over again.

And you’re implying that Miranda is a collapsist and not a primitivist - or maybe better, a survivalist - implying that we can experience a collapse and move past it into something else?

That’s how she identified herself in her own post, so I’m going to assume that’s the case.

belief in the coming collapse of civilization is not a philosophy.

So then you do admit that it is a matter of belief then, and not one of fact? If it were a matter of fact, we could verify it only by it’s actual occurrence…

It does not imply any value judgment

Disagree here. Belief in collapse is a belief that our current situation is untenable and therefore will terminate in collapse. The belief that our current situation is untenable means that you believe as well that there are certain things wrong with our current situation which are causal factors in any supposed collapse. This is most definitely a value judgement!

It seems that you are making a definite distinction between what I’ve called collapsism and primitivism and I appreciate the clarification on the subject. So you’re saying you can be a primitivist without being a collapsist, and a collapsist without being a primitivist… And you’re implying that Miranda is a collapsist and not a primitivist - or maybe better, a survivalist - implying that we can experience a collapse and move past it into something else?

I’d like to start by mentioning that Aftermath is not a primitivism site. It was not our goal to be one and it never will be our goal to be one. Should civilization come crashing down without our lifetimes, it is our goal to have a chance, a small one, of survival.

I have to admit that I’m really not clear on the distinction you are making. To me, that is part and parcel of what primitivism (or collapsism) is, whether or not it goes by that name! How do you see these points as being distinct?

I’m not speaking for Miranda here, but I would like to make an important distinction: belief in the coming collapse of civilization is not a philosophy. It does not imply any value judgment (i.e., whether this collapse is necessarily good or bad), nor does it say anything about how humanity should live.

Compare that to primitivism. Primitivism is a philosophy that states that humans would be better off living in small-scale egalitarian forager groups. It does not necessarily require a connection to collapse; you can be a primitivist without believing that civilization is going to collapse (on the contrary, many primitivists vastly overestimate civilization’s strength and longevity). You can even be a primitivist without civilization existing; the millions of people throughout history who lived in egalitarian forager groups before the invention of civilization, and without knowing that civilization existed elsewhere, were all primitivists. (Though, of course, they didn’t assign a name to it - to them, it was just basic contentment with the way things were.)

Simply seeing that collapse is coming and wanting to survive it is absolutely distinct from believing that humans would be better off living in egalitarian forager societies. Note that not only did Miranda not state how she wanted to survive (through organic agriculture, horticulture, permaculture, hunting and gathering, etc.); she only stated that she wished to survive. And even if she does choose to survive via hunting and gathering, that doesn’t in and of itself imply that she believes that every human being should be a forager as a matter of course.

People who say they want their life to have a purpose never really mean it.

I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Was that a joke or serious?

People who say they want their life to have a purpose never really mean it.

so if this post sucks please remove it!

I wouldn’t dream of it!

The planet has been through a lot worse than us.

Absolutely! I don’t think primitivists would argue differently!

The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked.

Well that’s part of what I think the problem is: the people aren’t fucked. The people are only fucked if we don’t change our ways. Or rather, that is a definite possibility. But knowing that, we are empowered to actively make sure that we aren’t fucked. And one way in which we can begin to do that is by realizing the planet has seen worse than us, and that at the same time, the planet generated us for some reason, and thus if it will survive, we will survive as well.

The planet…the planet…the planet isn’t going anywhere. WE ARE!”

Where are we going? Outer space? Check this out:

http://billmon.org/archives/002724.html

“Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked. Difference. Difference. The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We’ve been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we’re a threat? That somehow we’re gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that’s just a-floatin’ around the sun?

The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles…hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worlwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages…And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet…the planet…the planet isn’t going anywhere. WE ARE!”

It means, simply, hanging over the edge of a cliff with a frayed rope, waiting for the moment when that rope breaks is the worst moment of your impending doom.

Seeing your life (and all life) in that ways seems so downdowndowner.
Are you super afraid of death?
Why?

If civilization does not collapse, that’s something to be very afraid of, because that means that it is continuing to grow exponentially. That means that mass extinction will continue, and that the disintegration of our ecology will be accelerated.

Again, that is one possible outcome if nothing changes. That is not *the* outcome. And it doesn’t speak to any conscious efforts to actively choose and change things!

Are we merely doing the same? I don’t think so, but then, I would think that, wouldn’t I?

Yes, you *would* think that and yes, you ARE doing the same. So are we all. It is an inevitable part of the human condition, that when we look around all we see is ourselves mirrored back in everything.

You wrote in the comments on your own site:

It simply prompted me to do some very healthy introspection and take a minute to wonder, “Hmmm, am I just seeing what I want to see?” I tend to think not, because it was exactly what I didn’t want to see when I first saw it.

I have a separate response to this prepared for later, but it may be that there are many different parts of you, some of which know better what you need and want than what you yourself are able to see. Would you admit that as a possibility?

I’d like to start by mentioning that Aftermath is not a primitivism site. It was not our goal to be one and it never will be our goal to be one. Should civilization come crashing down without our lifetimes, it is our goal to have a chance, a small one, of survival.

I have to admit that I’m really not clear on the distinction you are making. To me, that is part and parcel of what primitivism (or collapsism) is, whether or not it goes by that name! How do you see these points as being distinct?

Your other comment about how your original point was made versus how it was taken deserves its own separate post in response, I think!

It should never be forgotten that while we are for small, sustainable, egalitarian societies, we will not embrace every possible way of getting to that point, regardless of cost. It’s kind of the difference between Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary” and Martin Luther King’s civil disobedience. Although we know what we want, we also know who we are and the values we hold dear, and the latter things are things we do not want to give up.

I think that’s an extremely important and worthwhile point for you to make. But by the same token, it is not you that I am afraid of. It is the Malcolm X version of it that I find so threatening.

That means that it’s almost certain that humans are going to continue doing what humans have always done: running through their resources as fast as they can, until they’re exhausted and their population crashes catastrophically.

Dude, you keep saying “they’re” and “their” like you aren’t one of us.

(1) Our current pattern of growth cannot be continued indefinitely. As Kenneth Boulding put it, “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”

(2) We can’t stay where we are, either; we are already far beyond the scale of any sustainable way of life.

This leads us to one, inescapable conclusion: our population will shrink, and we will create smaller-scale societies. This may even mean extinction—the ultimate reduction in population.

What you are doing though is looking at existing patterns and extrapolating based on them. Extrapolation does not lead us to inescapable conclusions. It instead leads us to a range of possibilities. And yet we are not limited to those possibilities either though, if we maintain the mental flexibility to remind ourselves that we never see the whole picture, that our philosophy is never complete and all the facts can never be accounted for. Within that cloudy space, I find a treasure trove of hope.

Further, your insistence of one particular outcome based on your extrapolation seems to ignore the factor of human choice, of human rather than natural selection. Knowing what we know, we can actively choose and build a future which does not meet with the dire ends predicted by your apocalyptic extrapolation. In fact, we must choose! To deny that possibility, to say that the crash *will* happen removes our ability to choose and to control our own fate.

i’m starting to think that “The Collapse” is one of those words that has officially lost its meaning due to repetition.

Good! Then let’s repeat it until it means nothing at all and we can move past it! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse! Collapse!

predicating entire philosophical systems based on “the collapse” of “civilisation” grounds the entire argument in terms of a tenuous definition (”civilisation”)

This is a great angle that I hadn’t thought much about before in regards to this. You’re right. We can’t base a philosophy of life around a mental image of what two words mean. It’s going to lead us right to the same problems that we have already been in, in regard to the gulf between real human experience and abstraction.

And I know that some anarcho-primitivists (like Zerzan above) have actually gone that route of advocating that we abolish language and symbolic thought. But I sure as shit don’t see any of them doing that!

Prove me wrong! Ha - you can’t! Because in so doing, you’ll be using words and concepts that drive a wedge in between meaning and experience, thereby perpetuating the “problem.” The only solution then, it would seem, would be to embrace it as not being a problem at all.

Do we need to crash civilization or find the instruction manual for it? That seems to be the difference between primitivism and technocracy. I intuitively know there must be some third option though!

more later, when i have more time, but as someone who has written ‘anti-civ’ stuff, i’m lately wondering whether the whole thing needs to be reexamined….

great post & discussion, timbo.

M. King Hubbert was one of the leaders of the technocratic movement.

Ah, thank you. I probably should have actually read the article before commenting. (ahem) That said, the Technocrats’ envisioned future sounds terrifying. And I am reminded again of what a horrible, horrible writer H.G. Wells really was.

As for the concept of the armed primitivist revolution, if you have some time, you should check out “Endgame” by Derrick Jensen. It’s his massive argument for using terrorism to bring civilization down. It’s two giant volumes; to save time, you can skip all but the following chapters:

BOOK ONE:
- Counterviolence
- Bringing Down Civilization, parts 1-4 (part one is in book one; parts two to four are in book two)
- Love Does Not Imply Pacifism
- Violence

BOOK TWO:
- Dams, parts 1-4
- Pacifism, parts 1-4
- Symbolic and Non-Symbolic Actions
- The Crash

That’ll give you a good idea of what he thinks should be done and, more importantly, what he’s telling others to do. He doesn’t spend a lot of time wrestling with the morality of killing innocent bystanders except to briefly say something like, “Well, they’re killing salmon!”

As you can tell by the last chapter in the list, Jensen has, in fact, begun discussing the crash, though he mostly discusses it as something that will only happen if people start blowing up dams and such. I don’t know about Zerzan; I’ve never really read his stuff.

http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/whoseunabomber.htm

Enter the Unabomber (he/she/they) with a critique, in acts as well as words, of our sad, perverse, and increasingly bereft technological existence. Unabomber calls for a return to “wild nature” via “the complete and permanent destruction of modern industrial society in every part of the world,” and the replacement of that impersonal, unfree, and alienated society by that of small, face-to-face social groupings. He has killed three and wounded 23 in the service of this profoundly radical vision.

There are two somewhat obvious objections to this theory and practice. For one thing, a return to undomesticated autonomous ways of living would not be achieved by the removal of industrialism alone. Such removal would still leave the domination of nature, subjugation of women, war, religion, the state, and division of labor, to cite some basic social pathologies. It is civilization itself that must be undone to go where Unabomber wants to go. In other words, the wrong turn for humanity was the Agricultural Revolution, much more fundamentally than the Industrial Revolution.

In terms of practice, the mailing of explosive devices intended for the agents who are engineering the present catastrophe is too random. Children, mail carriers and others could easily be killed. Even if one granted the legitimacy of striking at the high-tech horror show by terrorizing its indispensable architects, collateral harm is not justifiable.

Peak oil is but one of a host of problems converging to tear down civilization, and it is no one problem that will be our civilization’s undoing, but rather, the synergy of all of them together. Note the ways in which global warming and petroleum production converged in the case of Hurricane Katrina. Of course, this is no coincidence. It should be expected if, as Tainter argued in Collapse of Complex Societies, the collapse of civilizations stems from the diminishing marginal returns on complexity.

In a post titled, “Peak Oil and the Philosophers’ Stone,” “Big Gav” noted the tendency of Peak Oil theorists to find in peak oil whatever they most wanted:

Kunstler has a deep seating loathing of suburban sprawl and modernity in general it would seem, so he sees peak oil as resulting in a semi-collapse that returns us to a future that resembles small town america of 150 years ago (plus wasted large cities and pirates ravaging the coasts of course).

He isn’t alone in seeing what he wants to see of course - the Viridian camp sees a shiny green future awaiting us in the post oil world, old school oil guys like T Boone Pickens see a exploration and drilling bonanza, energy industry investors like Matt Simmons and Henry Groppe see soaring energy prices, gold bugs see rampart inflation and soaring gold prices, ferals and hippies see a return to living closer to nature, socialists see the revivial of marxism, conspiracy theorists see government/elite conspiracies and the rise of the new world order, primitivists see the collapse of industrial civilisation and human dieoff, libertarians see an opportunity for the market to bring new energy sources and technoloies to us, fascists see an opportunity for a return to authoritarianism and some of the uglier approaches to population control used by their ilk in the past, economists see suuply and demand issues being resolved by energy prices, military-industrial complex members see the need to militarily dominate the energy rich regions of the planet, end-times Christian fundamentalists see another symptom of the impending rapture and survivalists see an opportunity to say “I told you so” and finally get to use the skills and tools they’ve spent their lives practicing for.

Are we merely doing the same? I don’t think so, but then, I would think that, wouldn’t I?

Giuli makes an important point. The most influential primitivists—John Zerzan, Derrick Jensen, et al—do not believe that civilization is in collapse. Rather, they believe that civilization must be actively destroyed. I find this line of thinking utterly insane. Jensen raises a good point that the alternative is the end of all life on earth, and what could be worth fighting for more than that? Generals are always weighing “collateral damage” against the “greater good,” but then, I’m an anarchist. I don’t think generals are good people—and that’s why. To say nothing of the fact that the kind of terrorism advocated by Zerzan & Jensen is self-defeating; while it does a great deal to harm individual innocent human beings, it does absolutely nothing against the civilization they’re supposedly tyring to “take down.” (Actually, as I argued on Anthropik, it may well help it.)

We are in the midst of a mass extinction. Civilization doesn’t just threaten the survival of the human species, but could conceivably threaten the survival of multi-cellular life on this planet. I’m happy to hear that you’ve found primitivism online largely married to the notion of collapse; it suggests that we’re starting to turn that tide, and take primitivism away from those advocating a violent revolution and an actual, honest-to-gods, pre-meditated genocide of six and a half billion people.

But what’s the alternative, then? Civilization, I contend, is already in the middle of a very gory suicide. We can try to get out of its way, and we can try to help as many people escape it as possible, but those efforts don’t do much to change the fact that you’re right—I’m not doing anything to stop it. I’m not sure what anyone could do to stop it, frankly; worse, would we want to?

If civilization does not collapse, that’s something to be very afraid of, because that means that it is continuing to grow exponentially. That means that mass extinction will continue, and that the disintegration of our ecology will be accelerated. Civilization’s “best case scenario” is simply to escape this world and leave it bleeding at the side of the road until it dies. Of course, the nature of exponential growth being what it is, that generation will need two earths to satisfy its needs. The next, four; then eight, then sixteen, then thirty-two. The best case scenario for civilization—the alternative to collapse—is to become the aliens from Independence Day, hopping from world to world, stripping all of its resources, and then moving on, leaving a dead rock behind us. Of course, even that has an end point—collapse, with the whole universe dead in our wake.

That’s the really horrifying thing about this escalation. We almost collapsed at the end of the Bronze Age, but were saved by a technological deus ex machina (yes, sometimes it happens; more importantly, it usually doesn’t). If we had collapsed then, it would have meant the deaths of millions, and it would have left the Mediterranean devastated. Instead, we continued to grow. If we collapse now, it will mean the deaths of billions, and leave most of the earth devastated. But that’s still better than the alternative: a later collapse, with the deaths of trillions and the very real threat of the end of all life on this planet.

Nothing can grow forever, and this is a classic case of “the bigger they are, the harder they fall.” We’re already very, very big, and the fall will be very, very bad, but we know that there must be a fall eventually, and the longer it takes to happen, the worse it becomes. The longer we wait, the less likely it becomes that any of us will survive.

One way or another, the population will become smaller, and our societies will become simpler. Animal nature being what it is, I will be deeply surprised—but joyously so—if we do this voluntarily, but I cannot nurture much hope for that.

But, this is where I pin all my hope: how would you go about such a thing? You would need to encourage people to recognize the problem for what it is; you would need to encourage people to form smaller, more sustainable communities. You would need to encourage people to create tribes.

If a collapse is coming, the best way to survive it is to create a tribe. If we want to avoid collapse, and transition smoothly to a sustainable future, the best way to do it is to create a tribe. So I think, as pessimistic as I am about the possibility, we may be doing more than most to make that possibility more feasible.

So my question turns into, at some point: is Peak Oil a trojan horse meme subverting or modifying (intentionally or not) primitivist philosophy from what it was or could be, or to forever conflate the two together?

Hmmm… the thing is, it’s not so much subverting or modifying the philosophy as vindicating it. Primitivists have been saying for years that civilization is inherently unsustainable; now that it’s beginning to collapse, it feels like vindication. That is probably another reason why collapse is such a common theme in modern primitivism.

Can the two be unraveled?

Sadly, I doubt they can be while civilization is still around.

Is it necessary or worthwhile?

Absolutely. Without question. It should never be forgotten that while we are for small, sustainable, egalitarian societies, we will not embrace every possible way of getting to that point, regardless of cost. It’s kind of the difference between Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary” and Martin Luther King’s civil disobedience. Although we know what we want, we also know who we are and the values we hold dear, and the latter things are things we do not want to give up.

What does primitivism really look like without it and without this idea that 6 billion people “need” to die?

It looks like the !Kung, the Inuit, the Blackfeet, the Aborigines, and many, many others. It looks like, “Hey, they’re happier and healthier than we are, so let’s go live like them.” It looks like a bunch of European settlers abandoning their village and leaving only a sign reading, “Gone to Croatan.”

Primitivism does not require a belief in collapse, as shown by the fact that, before Peak Oil got popular, this strain of apocalypticism was absent the philosophy. However, the reality of collapse, in my opinion, absolutely requires primitivism.

Certainly, primitivism existed before the concept of Peak Oil became popular. But - in my experience online - the philosophies and communities around primitivism did not start becoming consolidated until Peak Oil had thoroughly saturated that mindspace.

Likewise, the idea of Peak Oil is far more popular than Primitivism online because scare-mongering is more popular than solution-mongering. Learning about Peak Oil is a short potent orgasm of education, whereas developing an understanding of primitivism is more like engaging in a long intimate relationship.

That said, which of those two options is “easier” for people new to the scene? Which makes more sense for people coming from a consumerist rapid-fire instant-gratification background? Peak Oil, of course. What does that portend for the long term for Primitivism? To me it seems to open up many doors for philosophies and movements who coopt the quick “Peak Oil Effect” and offers a much quicker solution than the long deeply involved learning of primitivism.

Now that I have you guys here, have you done much reading regarding Technocracy, Inc - the movement that originated (as far as I can tell) in the 1930’s? Peak Oil was originated as a concept by a member of that group. Though there is a great deal of in-fighting online about what their true stance really is, they seem to be very welcoming of collapse, and are hoping to plug their own system in if and when that happens.

So my question turns into, at some point: is Peak Oil a trojan horse meme subverting or modifying (intentionally or not) primitivist philosophy from what it was or could be, or to forever conflate the two together? Can the two be unraveled? Is it necessary or worthwhile? What does primitivism really look like without it and without this idea that 6 billion people “need” to die?

The conversation looks to have started innocently enough. Accidentally, even. Miranda posted a personal piece about how she had a bad day at college, it seems, in which she included the line regarding the primitivist collapse fantasy: “I’m one of those people that say, ‘Well, come on already, Collapse Already!!!’”

I think the bold letters pretty much say it all.

Good luck escaping “the system,” oh enlightened ones. I think I’m going to order a culotte steak and drink a pinot noir.

Like Jason, the Ishmael series by Daniel Quinn was what first led me down this path (though I wasn’t a Catholic and, in fact, was already a hippie-leaning environmentalist). Quinn’s solution to civilization was essentially a similar version of Heinberg’s “powerdown”: he wanted people to voluntarily “walk away” from civilization, tell their friends so they too would walk away, and in this way, gradually civilization would split off into small, sustainable communities of no more than 150, no longer dependent on fossil fuels or “totalitarian agriculture” or constant growth.

It was years after I first adopted Quinn’s vision that I realized that a slow, gentle slide into primitive life simply wouldn’t be possible. States wouldn’t play by our rules any more than they played by the rules of the indigenous groups that came before us: they’d kill us off, expand into our land, and keep going until they had no more resources left to exploit. That’s how it was built to work; no exodus of hippies could weaken it, because we’d all just be replaced. The night I found this out was the same night I found out about Peak Oil. I found out that the rug under my feet couldn’t be gradually moved, inch by inch. It was going to be yanked out from under us all.

I give you the timeline of my changing ideas about collapse to illustrate a point: primitivism as a philosophy is not the same thing as collapse as an expectation, and the two can easily exist apart from each other. I believed that foraging tribes were the only sustainable level of society long before I found out about collapse. And there are many people on Peak Oil boards who believe that primitive life is “nasty, brutish, and short” but still recognize that civilization will crumble without a suitable alternative to fossil fuels.

Collapse and primitivism are married so closely, I think, primarily because the impending collapse gives primitivists a limited amount of time in which to learn the skills we all want to learn. It’s no longer a “I’ll start a permacultural eco-village with all native, wild plants and learn which are edible and how to make medicines and tan hides on the weekends!” Now it’s a “If I can’t march off into the woods with nothing but the clothes on my back and survive there for as long as I want before 2015, I’m a dead man.” It’s a terrifying thought, made even more terrifying by the knowledge that you also have to support and teach all your family members and friends who refuse to learn this way of life now. Essentially, collapse hit the gas pedal on the car we were already driving.

I strongly disagree with Zac, if only because primitivist philosophy neither calls for, nor passively waits for, the deaths of 6 billion people. Primitivism does not require a belief in collapse, as shown by the fact that, before Peak Oil got popular, this strain of apocalypticism was absent the philosophy. However, the reality of collapse, in my opinion, absolutely requires primitivism.

We’ve been carrying on much of that discussion at Anthropik, but it’s too important a discussion to be confined to any single community.

Hey Jason, thanks for your thoughtful response! I was hoping to be able to broach this subject without starting ANOTHER flame war. Or even, to have many small online flame wars to maybe one day prevent a real live war with actual flames over these very subjects. And the only way we’ll do that I think is by framing the issue and contextualizing and exploration all the emotional and rational implications of the whole thing as best as possible. We most certainly need to be discussing this among many communities, among as many different groups and kinds of thinkers as possible.

I guess, for myself, I’m still very much sorting out just how I think and feel about it.

I agree that there’s a huge ethical dilemna in primitivism that cannot be avoided. At the same time, I think there are two basic facts that we need to bear in mind:

(1) Our current pattern of growth cannot be continued indefinitely. As Kenneth Boulding put it, “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”

(2) We can’t stay where we are, either; we are already far beyond the scale of any sustainable way of life.

This leads us to one, inescapable conclusion: our population will shrink, and we will create smaller-scale societies. This may even mean extinction—the ultimate reduction in population. I don’t think it will, though; human foragers florish today in environments even cockroaches fear to tread. I cannot believe that some of us will not survive to continue the species, and bring its numbers back into a sustainable maxima.

Notice I didn’t say how that transition will occur. Richard Heinberg’s idea of voluntary powerdown is the most hopeful I know of. Voluntarily, gradually deflating the scale of our society and population through negative growth rates would be the best possibility we could look forward to. Unfortunately, I have utterly no faith in its ability to work. Individuals may have the capacity to “powerdown,” but this is essentially a cartel: you’re asking everyone to voluntarily forego possible growth. All it takes is one group to betray that pact and grow, giving that group ascendancy over everyone who remains loyal to the pact. This is why cartels never work.

That means that it’s almost certain that humans are going to continue doing what humans have always done: running through their resources as fast as they can, until they’re exhausted and their population crashes catastrophically. To be fair, this is the same thing any other animal would do, as well—just look at the reindeer of St. Matthew’s Island.

So what does that mean, ethically? Morally? I can’t tell what that is for anyone else, and I can’t tell you what kind of effects those basic facts will have on the thinking or morals of others. As this episode highlighted, there is a definite slimy underbelly to it, an inevitably misanthropic connotation that can be derived.

So what do we do? Ignore the facts? Pretend that growth can continue indefinitely in a finite universe? Or do we face the fact that we’re just as subject to physical limits as reindeer in the Bering Sea, and try to find some way to cope with the implications of that?

I think that primitivism can be the most life-affirming, humanistic view possible, but you’re absolutely right that there is a danger there, as well. That’s one of the ongoing issues we try to navigate at Anthropik: how to come to terms with what we’ve done, and the implications of that.

You’re right that my view has a certain echo of original sin. I’m a recovering Catholic, and I came around to this line of thinking when I read Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, which presented agriculture as the original sin. It’s a myth, yes, but I think we all put our facts in a mythical framework, don’t we? Is it any less mythical than the idea that human invention and technology will save us from whatever ill, as a deus ex machina who comes on the right hand of the Market? How better to understand our position here—if we stop growing now, we crash for all the growth we’ve already seen, but if we keep growing, we just make the crash that much worse when it finally does happen.

This is a very important discussion to have, and I thank you for opening it. We will need to deal with the limits to growth, most likely in our lifetimes. How do we come to terms with that? What are the implications for our ethics and morality? These are important questions. We’ve been carrying on much of that discussion at Anthropik, but it’s too important a discussion to be confined to any single community.