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Primitivist Terrorism
Reading around a bit about John Zerzan had lead me to start to suspect as much, but Jason Godesky (my new favorite source of fuel for conversation) made the leap which I have been waiting to see all along:
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.
Viewed in this light, what they are trying to do at Anthropik takes on a whole different tone to me. As I said, I suspected that taken to it’s ultimate conclusion that primitivism could yield us a bumper crop of homegrown ‘green’ terrorists. But I’ve never seen it solidly painted out like that. Compared to that, the Anthropik idea that collapse is merely “inevitable” and “regretful” really does seem like a shiny happy alternative. (See their views on violence here)
And yet, I can’t allow myself to stop there either. Better than the worst case scenario is still very bad… It could also be convincingly argued that by creating a trimmed down version of this philosophy that all you are really doing is creating a softer landing for people who are new to these areas. The Anthropik version is nicer and happier and then when people wear it through because of its logical inconsistencies and start looking for more, they go to somebody more extreme like Jensen or Zerzan. Does that make Anthropik a recruiter for them? I don’t think so, but it’s a difficult road to tread either way.
PS. I have one more solid post about all this shit later today and then I am going to move on to greener pastures…
- Prev: Your Tribes
- Next: “This Means War!”
September 22nd, 2006 at 1:57 pm
If they truly believe this, what a bunch of deluded, ego-maniacal, pathetic losers cloaked in piety.
Humanity couldn’t destroy all life on earth even after detonating every nuclear weapon that exists.
This planet and its total ecosystem will take any abuse we throw at it.
Whether we’re around to see the new eras of Earth, well, that is very much in doubt, but the planet itself is going to be fine–maybe not for our existence, but we’re not and never will be nearly as strong as it is.
September 22nd, 2006 at 3:20 pm
You’re right, this particular block of rock and iron is quite impervious to our destructiveness. And no matter what we do, at least single-celled organisms will survive. That’s not what we’re talking about. Life is but a fragile green rust around this big ball of dirt, and multi-cellular life a tiny sliver of that, precariously balanced at higher trophic levels against the energy economics of EROEI. But we’re currently in the middle of the sixth mass extinction in this planet’s history. The cost of 6.5 billion people is 40% of the earth’s surface dedicated to a single species, the extinction of 200 species every day, global warming, the loss of our topsoil–the very basis of all life on this planet, that thin green rust that we all live in. Civilization is actively, and successfully, laying waste to that as we speak. This is the worst mass extinction this planet has ever seen, and it’s being driven forward by a single species: us.
I’ve been accused of ignoring the suffering collapse entails, of a blind spot in my moral calculus, but in all the posts that Tim’s made this week criticizing my position, he’s not yet raised an issue that we haven’t brought up and considered ourselves. What’s worse, there’s a glaring blind spot in the other view being espoused by so many here, because none of you have dealt with the raging destruction that civilization has brought to this planet.
If we were in a city with hundreds of thousands of people, and one of them was killing 200 people every day, what would you do? Would you stop that person? Or would you let him go on killing 200 people every day, because restraining him would not be kind? It’s absolutely true that such restraint is not kind, but then, neither are 200 vicious murders a day.
That analogy breaks down in that unlike our crazed mass murderer allowed to roam free, we are dependent on the ecosystems we’re so rapidly destroying. What’s at stake with civilization is the survival of multicellular life on this planet–including our own survival. Civilization will end. The question is, will we survive it, or will we be the last species it wipes out?
I do not think there is anything more worth fighting for, and if it would make an ounce of difference, I’d have already blown up a dam like Jensen’s always writing about. But that wouldn’t stop it. That would just make the whole thing worse. As I wrote in the article referred to above:
People want to tell me that it’s worthy to fight for my country–a meaningless abstraction used simply to control people. How much more worthy is it to fight for the survival of our whole species, of the ecosystems we’re part of, of multicellular life on this planet?
Make no mistake. Take a good look around. This is not hyperbole. That’s exactly what’s at stake.
Tim wants to know if we’re just an elementary school for would-be terrorists. I say no. We offer an alternative. It’s civilization that’s created this disaster. If facing the reality of what we’re doing to the community of life we’re part of is enough to make people want to go blow up dams, then I don’t think the fault lies with those who are willing to face those facts, but with the system that created that disaster in the first place. The devastation we’re causing is not a matter of philosophy–it’s a basic matter of fact. What we do with that, what we make of those facts, is where philosophy comes into play.
What is the alternative? To ignore the facts? To pretend that we’re not in the midst of the worst mass extinction in this planet’s history, with a higher extinction rate than when an asteroid the size of Texas carved out the Yucatan penninsula and blotted the sun out of the sky all around the world? That was a mild mass extinction. We’re even beating out the Permian extinction, that wiped out 95% of all life on the planet. The alternative is to bury your head in the sand and pretend it just isn’t so because admitting otherwise might lead to some nasty implications.
I don’t find anything laudable in that approach. I’d rather face the truth, and the consequences of the way I’ve lived my life. I don’t think hope and optimism lie in burying my head in the sand and hoping that nasty realities will just go away–I think the root of optimism is finding opportunity in every crisis, and hope in every tragedy. That’s why I reject the label of “pessimist.” I think I’m quite the optimist: as optimistic as anyone can be. To be more is no longer optimism–then, it’s simply ignoring the facts because it makes you too uncomfortable. There’s nothing laudable in that.
September 22nd, 2006 at 3:22 pm
I agree with David. “We are in the midst of a mass extinction” would make great line in a hardcore punk song, but the reality is much different… that is, unless you live in Rwanda or Pol Pot’s Cambodia or Darfur.
Where do these primitivists live again?
September 22nd, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Pittsburgh!
September 22nd, 2006 at 3:39 pm
Wait, so what’s your alternative again? I have seriously lost sight of it…
Good, then that means you are actively thinking about things, which is the right approach to take. The point you seem to be missing in all this is not that YOU haven’t thought about all this before, but that *I* haven’t thought about this before and that’s the real reason I am writing about it.
Well, yes, that’s exactly my standpoint as well. But what I think you are doing is using crisis and tragedy to give you hope and opportunity, when I think we can have hope and opportunity everywhere.
September 22nd, 2006 at 3:43 pm
I dont see any reason to say that terrorism is logically implied in primitivism. The idea that we should live in a certain way - hunting and gathering, for example - does not imply what tactics should be used to establish that way of life. I havent been reading your blog for long enough to know what solutions to world problems you stand for, but what ever they are, a version of them could be created which says “we need this to happen fast, so lets there with violence.”
In any case, violence is sometimes called for. I think Ran Prieur’s essay “Violence Unraveled” provides some needed clear thinking on this topic.
James: Jason is talking about the number of different species that have gone extinct and are currently going extinct, and he’s totally right. Look it up yourself. The situation is dire enough that it does threaten our own species survival.
September 22nd, 2006 at 4:15 pm
MUCH DIFFERENT? The current extinction rate is HIGHER than it was in any previous mass extinction. We’re wiping out 200 species EVERY DAY. This is the very definition of a mass extinction.
Stop trying to save the whole world. Basically, you could call it, “be the change you wish to see in the world.” Create small communities. Or, to pick up Thoreau, even if you can’t do something good, at least don’t participate in something evil. “Walk away,” as Daniel Quinn put it, and create a new culture, a different culture. Draw inspiration from the way humans lived for millions of years. You’re not going to end civilization by attacking it, but you can end it by abandoning it.
More importantly, I’d like to turn the magnifying glass around a moment. You’ve alleged that we’ve not considered the effects of collapse (which we have), but I notice an abscence in your criticism that’s even more chilling: why haven’t you dealt with the current mass extinction going on right now? That’s taking a far greater toll than any collapse would, and yet in a whole week of criticizing primitivism on ethical grounds, you have yet to raise the single most important ethical problem in this entire discussion. You’ve brought up a lot of good points (points we’ve considered and, I think, answered adequately), but when you charge us with glossing over the horrors involved, I think there might be a case here of what Jesus was referring to in Matthew 7:3: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”
And in my opinion, you’re ignoring the reality of the situation simply because of the implications. We could go ’round and ’round with such accusations forever and get nowhere, which is why I try to avoid discussions like this–they are almost without exception, fruitless.
September 22nd, 2006 at 4:31 pm
Once again:
Jason, I sincerely applaud any effort you and your compatriots make to live in a different way (are any of you actually doing that right now?). But it might cut down on your distress if you let go of the idea that it can become the recipe for humanity at large. It can’t.
Mass extinction, if it’s going to threaten our survival, is something we either have to deal with when our backs are against the wall, or, perhaps less likely, avoid if we can through what little intelligence we possess. But the “canary in the coal mine posture” you espouse means you can only sing very softly, and perhaps not for long.
September 22nd, 2006 at 5:17 pm
No! Never! Nyah-nyah!
September 22nd, 2006 at 5:18 pm
That’s the grim truth. In 200 years, all of humanity will live primitively. This is not a matter of revolution, but evolution. Either we will all die out, and there will be no humans alive at all, or we will find some way to transition to primitive life, and survive. The sad truth, though, is that it’s more likely to be the middle road of natural selection: civilization will destroy itself (the only end it could ever have), and those who are dependent on it will die, and only those who make themselves independent of it will survive.
All the same, I have to do what I can. The gradual deflation scenario may be unrealistic, but I have to do what I can to bring us as close to that possibility as I can, and that means doing everything I can to convince as many people as I can that another way of life is possible. If nothing else, I have to spark the imagination for what might lie beyond civilization.
September 22nd, 2006 at 5:29 pm
Don’t you find it just the least bit hubristic to think we can save the whole world? That’s precisely the kind of arrogance that got us in so much trouble in the first place.
Anything you do to save the world will have one of two possibilities. Either it will have the effect of slowing or stopping civilization’s growth, or it will not. I’m sure we can agree on that much, yes?
If it succeeds in slowing or stopping civilization’s growth, then you’ve succeeded in helping stop civilization’s relentless war on all life on this planet. But since civilization’s not growing, it’s collapsing. 6.5 billion people die.
If it does not slow or stop civilization’s growth, you spare us from collapse. Instead, civilization’s war on all life continues, ending with the deaths of 9 billion people (the population will increase before we hit this wall), along with all multicellular life on the planet.
This is why, in Ishmael, Daniel Quinn proposes that the fruit of the tree of knowledge only nourishes the gods: good and evil is something humans cannot understand. On global issues, our band-evolved minds, hemmed in by limitations like Dunbar’s Number, simply cannot make any kind of just decision. As Quinn points out, what is good for one is always bad for another; if a lion catches a gazelle, that’s good for the lion, but bad for the gazelle. If the lion does not catch the gazelle, that’s bad for the lion, but good for the gazelle. We are incapable of deciding these things; civilization, Quinn says, is what happens when we presume to know these things we cannot know, and decide that in each and every case, we should live, and everything else should die. You’ll note the immediate resemblance to Yaldaboath, the Demiurge: the presumption of divinity, and more importantly, the presumption of wisdom, when, in fact, he’s the biggest fool of all. That strategy–all for me and none for you–represented as much in the price schemes Technocrats deplore as in a basic fenced field and scarecrow–is self-defeating. It leaves us with nothing to support us, and in the end, our terror of death brings death; our fear of mortality brings mortality; our determination to avoid collapse ensures it.
So what’s good, and what’s evil? Is collapse good, or evil? Collapse is good for the planet (and ultimately humanity, too), but bad for the human generation that must endure it. Not collapsing is catastrophic for all multicellular life on this planet–but perhaps good for the microbes, and certainly good for the current generation, since there’s a chance we might not have to pay that price (but instead pass it on to our grandchildren, who unlike us, will not have any hope on the other side left, thanks to our selfishness).
Can you make that choice? Can I? I don’t think I can, so I don’t try. I stick to the things I can know, and the things I can judge. I spit out the fruit, and I stopped pretending that I knew good from evil, and I stopped pretending I had the kind of divinity it would take to save the whole world. I began to live, as Daniel Quinn put it, “in the hands of the gods.”
September 22nd, 2006 at 5:47 pm
Whoa, how can you say you don’t support violence when elsewhere on this site you say you support infanticide?
Wow man, seriously.
September 22nd, 2006 at 6:09 pm
I didn’t say I don’t support violence at all. I’m no pacifist. A healthy society has a place for violence. But on infanticide–where does life begin? Conception? Birth? How about age 2? Sure, a fetus is alive–just like a squirrel is alive. But where does human life begin? We can’t decide this in our own culture, so is it such a surprise that other cultures might have other answers?
Infanticide seems to be a part of any healthy culture. Our gut reaction of horror is part of our culture of growth, the philosophy of the cancer cell that’s instilled in us from birth, to take part in what Quinn calls “the culture of maximum harm.” Less harmful, more sustainable cultures do not share this arbitrary cut-off. They have a threshold that I think is perhaps much more sensible: when the child learns to speak.
Infanticide among foragers is exactly the same as abortion among us. All of the thresholds we consider are arbitrary; why is birth, or conception, superior to when this animal enters the human community by learning the means by which the human community communicates? Isn’t that when we really become human?
I “support” infanticide in the same sense that a pro-choice person “supports” abortion–as something that should be on the table, not as something that’s a really great pasttime.
September 22nd, 2006 at 6:16 pm
Wow. All your arguments about knowing what constitutes a “healthy” approach to life or to culture have just been thrown out the window, haven’t they?
In case anybody missed you saying that the first time!
If you really think that the thresholds of human life are “arbitrary” then there really is literally nothing to stop you from terrorism, murder, or worse. You can simply re-define your concept of when someone becomes “human” so that a person only becomes human when they finally come around to agreeing with you.
September 22nd, 2006 at 6:30 pm
How do you figure? If every sustainable, healthy culture has X, I’d say it’s a good bet that X is probably a crucial ingredient. Sure, from our cultural background we find a lot of things unsavory about sustainable cultures. But then again, the !Kung never committed a genocide. They never invented nuclear weapons. They’re not wiping out 200 species every day. You’re not speaking as an individual on this topic, but as a representative of your culture, the “culture of maximum harm,” but on what grounds does the most destructive, murderous culture the world has ever seen presume to judge the “harmless people“? Again, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”
A canard already tired by its service in “pro-life” circles. Isn’t it odd that there are no pro-choice terrorist groups, but such fanatical devotion to even the barest potential of human life breeds such disregard for fully developed people, such as we see with the Army of God? I find this an interesting corollary to how civilization’s fear of death causes so much death: those who espouse the broadest, deepest devotion to life cause the most death; those who take the middle ground cause less death; but the least destruction is caused by the ones who define the human being most narrowly. Ironic, isn’t it? I’m reminded of another verse, John 12:25, “He who loves his life will lose it.”*
*I tend to think of Jesus more in terms of a brilliant sociologist than necessarily a divine messiah–though I have some leaning towards a Gnostic Christology
September 22nd, 2006 at 6:38 pm
Wow!
September 22nd, 2006 at 7:03 pm
So let me get this straight: Jason makes a long argument about something. You don’t respond to any of it; rather, you dig up a completely unrelated stray sentence from another long, unrelated argument from several days ago and refute that with, and I quote, “Wow!” Jason defends that. You respond with, “Wow!”
I’m no friend of infanticide (or abortion, for that matter) and I’m in the process of looking for a sustainable culture that did not allow it, to prove the point that it’s not necessary. But I must say, you’re not even making an effort at arguing your point. You basically just said, “So because sustainable cultures allow infanticide and you’re for sustainability, you must love killing babies and therefore I never have to respond to any argument you make ever again on any topic because you’re an evil baby-murdering bastard.”
Seriously, make an effort.
September 22nd, 2006 at 7:09 pm
Yes, letting go of the hubristic aspiration to god-like knowledge of good and evil can be a difficult process. I don’t think infanticide is “good” any more than abortion is “good.” It takes its toll. But to elevate the notions you grew up with to the level of unassailable cosmic truths simply because you grew up with them … well there’s a certain logical failing in that, isn’t there?
Our culture teaches us that infanticide is wrong. Our culture teaches us that clear-cutting is right. Our culture teaches us that killing 200 species a day is right. Our culture teaches us that other people are born to serve our needs. Our culture kills people and other living things at a rate that has never been matched in the planet’s history–not by solar eruptions, super-volcanoes, or asteroids that carve out whole seas.
Other cultures teach that infanticide is not wrong. Other cultures teach that everything is alive and valuable. Other cultures teach that humans are part of a living world. Other cultures teach that no one can coerce another. Cultures that have lived sustainably as part of a community of living things for millions of years, cultures that ethnographers have gone so far as to call “the harmless people.”
So who’s right? Us? Them? You’re amazed that I’m willing to give up my pretensions of godhood, that I don’t claim some divine knowledge of good and evil. You’re right. These things are beyond human knowledge, and while there are plenty of people here who seem to find the human condition fallen, stifling, or degrading, I find nothing wrong with being a human being, not pretending to be the judge of cosmic principles, and to instead live in the hands of the gods.
Wow, indeed.
September 22nd, 2006 at 7:50 pm
Yes! That’s completely 100% right!
Yes, because we aren’t dealing with logic here - we are dealing with human life! And who said anything about cosmic truths or that I had god-like knowledge of good and evil? I never said anything of the sort. And I’m not doing anything “simply because I grew up with them” but because they are right. Because I feel it in my heart and my soul, places where the sad tired arguments of logic appear finally as what they are.
I know, right? Wow!
September 22nd, 2006 at 8:12 pm
Actually, that’s rather the question, isn’t it? And what’s with this qualifier of “human” life? Is life more important if it’s human?
These two statements cannot exist beside one another. You claim to know what is right–something only gods know. So if you know what is right, you claim to have god-like knowledge of cosmic truths, like “right.” But if you don’t claim such knowledge, then you can’t say what’s right, either.
Hearts and souls are trained–and when they’re trained by a murderous culture, they develop murderous habits. Those that are loudest in their defense of life do the most to destroy it.
September 22nd, 2006 at 8:13 pm
How quickly that position falls when our hubris is called into question, no?
September 22nd, 2006 at 8:56 pm
Why do only “gods” know what is right? We’re humans. We’re strong, brave, beautiful, creative, imaginative, and we have a lot of faults too. But we can and should be able to determine what’s right.
No. That might be the case if I had shut down all conversation on the subject when you questioned my own interpretations of the matter. But far from it - I have encouraged it every step of the way!
September 22nd, 2006 at 9:18 pm
Why? There’s nothing in the world that’s not good for one thing and bad for another. How can we judge these things properly? I agree–humans are strong, brave, beautiful, creative, and imaginative. We evolved in a certain niche, and when it comes to dealing with the small, closely-knit communities we evolved in, we’re very good at figuring out what to do. But we’re limited. We’re not good at large scales. Dunbar’s number limits us from really understanding what’s happening. Most of all, we’re part of this world. How can we decide what’s right and wrong? Wouldn’t we try to always rule in our own favor? Humans can no more judge right and wrong than a judge can fairly decide a case that’s filed against him, himself. We need to recuse ourselves from this godlike judgment for the very same reasons.
Well, when I suggested that other cultures do things we find abhorrent but don’t think it’s wrong, yet they do not commit the global atrocities we do, you tried to pretty much shut down the discussion by just repeating “Wow.” But I’m curious, what do you suppose is wrong with the primitives that don’t understand right and wrong as clearly as you do? Is it a genetic failing? Are they simply bad people somehow? And what about the rest? Is your understanding of this cosmic truth proof that our culture is in all ways morally superior–so other things it has uniquely from these primitive cultures, like the Holocaust, are also absolute goods?
September 22nd, 2006 at 10:18 pm
Ah, I see now why civilization must be thrown to the wolves. Nobody gets along. So, the sooner the better eh?
Jason and Tim, each of you feels passionately for the positions you take. Now, extrapolate that passion out to every single soul on Earth. What if everyone had passion? Follow me here if you will, but what would happen if every soul on Earth had access to the passion you two engage each other with?
Would we be facing collapse, would it be stasis or would we be on the verge of a “rebirth”? Who’s to say?
I’ll say this, none of us will be around for any of it — what we do now is akin to a butterfly flapping its wings as it takes flight from the back of a dinosaur. These jetsetting times have made us all, primitivist and status-quoers alike, pretty used to the idea that we will all enjoy one day the fruits of our labors. Yet at no time, at any point ever has it been possible to gain returns on essentially doing nothing to get it. So the point remains: The Anthropik Tribe is not a tribe, but an ideal, a fantasy. Fantasies often like to see themselves fulfilled.
The question is, to what ends? Is it one of prophecy self-fulfilled? Fantasy self-fulfilled? A vision for hope which also includes infanticide? I do not know. But I submit, neither does Jason Godesky or Tim Boucher. Tim, whom I know personally, stands squarely on the position that has been espoused by figures that run the gamut from Gandhi all the way to Carl Sagan. It is position of least resistance and it is the position of hope for those who have none.
Now I know, there is no hope for those “200 species a day which go extinct”. I know that and accept (but wouldn’t be surprised if it was a figure far in excess of longterm datasets) that a “mass die-off” is happening. Yet I wonder, is there is any way to fix the inertia of this ship. And I then wonder further, could it be that it is only us, humans, who are going away? Because frankly, I see no attempt to be human in primitivism and nor do I in the complexities of scientific fascism. In other words, when there is no hope, there are no humans. So then where are the humans? Apparently the most enlightened are jumping through the apologetic hoops that explains away and glosses over the hobbyhorse of barbarians everywhere — which is well, infanticide. Hahahaha. Good one.
Now apply infanticide Mr. Godesky, to when you were an infant and tell me whether this conversation would be happening or not a few decades later, as we have the conversation now on this intensely graphically rendered Internet.
It seems to me, primitivism is but a fairy tale that can only be implemented by believing in the unitary constant of the one. Is it any wonder that it comes on the heels of the US Army’s most contemporary schtick? An army of one! A tribe of one! If falling hook, line and sinker for some of the most inane propaganda this technocratic dystopian state can muster is a sign of primitivism, then I say, let it be. As a species, we are well beyond anything a primitive mind can think up — except one. And that is the wanton brutalization of innocents. People, plant and animal alike. But then again that’s not “primitivism” now is it?
But what then, is it? It sounds to me like a COMPLEX and brutal way to make the world into your technology steeped image.
September 22nd, 2006 at 10:25 pm
I’ll continue here a bit as my ending sounded a bit more harsh than I wanted it to:
I have one thought, which I brought up to Tim a bit ago. And that is, following along on the tangent that if something hadn’t or did happen in the past we wouldn’t even be here now talking about it — what if GM et al hadn’t bought up all the trolley lines in the US way back when?
Would any of this talk of collapse even be possible? The world would have gone on a completely different consumption trajectory.
I guess when I think of the beautiful things “primitivism” has in mind, I think we don’t have to go that far back, at least technologically, to have things be still pretty awesome.
Honestly, I think we’re all just bored and want something different. I don’t believe there is any reason to fight. . .
September 22nd, 2006 at 10:43 pm
Please let’s all just settle down :/
I tend to agree with Jason and Giulianna here. My personal philosophy values all life, though I also tend to have a chauvanistic preference for mammals (human and nonhuman). We are a murderous culture, with or without infanticide.
Again, where I take issue with primitivism is the process of getting there. The Anthropik people live in Pittsburgh, or in a suburb thereof. That’s a far cry from living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. And while you (J&G) may aspire to that life, I don’t see you living it now. And that’s not your fault. It’s just that there is nowhere to escape. You advocate abandoning civilization, but there is no geographic location where you actually can do that. Unless of course you’re very wealthy, in which case you were at the top of the food chain and part of the problem anyway. (I note that Kevin at Cryptogon has made enormous sacrifices to get back to an agrarian lifestyle in New Zealand, but it seems that even he had resources that are uncommon to the average American). Instinctively you realize that to take yourself out of Western culture is to put yourself in a chaos where survival is much less certain.
That’s why I say your vision is unrealizable right now. I agree with you that most of the world is already in collapse anyway, and in all of these places brutal local tyrrany is the rule. No free love and flowers, or even caribou and berries. Why do you refuse to talk about this? I mean, other than abstractly as a rhetorical weapon. Don’t you see that this is the immediate future in the wake of collapse?
I want to save the animals and plants too. (In some ways, I prefer animals to humans anyway). But to just allow the collapse to occur basically says you’re willing to let the mass extinction continue unabated until it reaches a “natural” equilibrium point. I worry that that equilibrium point will be very low, much lower than can support humans or even nonhuman mammals, if chaos is given free reign. That’s why I support a more disciplined power-down. I don’t like it, but it is a preferable evil in my opinion.
September 22nd, 2006 at 10:45 pm
In what way?
You don’t see any attempt to be human in holding to human nature and what two million years of evolution has created in us?
A lovely ethnocentric conceit, but those cultures we typically call “barbarian” are agriculturalists. They abhorred infanticide. That’s how they became overpopulated, pressured off their land by the Huns, and overran the Roman Empire. But I’m sure that’s not what you meant; rather, you wanted to score a rhetorical point. If I knew less about the cultures you’re talking about, it might even have been a good one.
Again, a canard already tired from its use by pro-life supporters. I suppose condoms and masturbation are all wrong on the same basis?
What are you talking about? A tribe of one is no tribe at all. The Tribe of Anthropik is not just one. The line between primitivism and mere survivalism is drawn on exactly that criterion. Your criticism is baseless.
Your one exception is the one thing where we actually are “beyond anything a primitive mind can think up.” Primitive societies don’t know how to carry out the kind of destruction we do. But they have all of our art, all of our knowledge, all of our medicine, all of our longevity–greater health, greater liesure, greater community, greater freedom … so, in what way do we have anything except our brutality that’s “beyond anything a primitive mind can think up”? It’s contentions like this that confirm my conviction that criticisms of primitivism are all grounded in a willful, ethnocentric ignorance of what other ways of life are like.
Primitivism is simply considering that there might be a solution to problems other than greater complexity. It’s a preference for human-scale societies, the small-scale band-level societies that humans can actually operate in. Yes, I can certainly see how complex and brutal that must be.
September 22nd, 2006 at 10:54 pm
There are places to escape. We’re escaping to the Allegheny National Forest. I think that’s a fairly geographical location, don’t you?
You could make it work in a national forest. It’s harder without at least a little bit of land to camp on, but certainly possible. That’s free–no wealth necessary whatsoever.
No, that’s not it at all. But to step outside Western culture is to put us in its crosshairs. Living without civilization is easy; it’s living beside a rapacious civilization bent on our destruction where things become difficult.
I thought we were talking about it too much. The problem is, they haven’t collapsed. They’re propped up, caught in between. Just like our exodus, in between is the worst place to be. They suffer all the horrors of collapse, but because they’re propped up, it never ends. That’s the benefit of collapse: it ends. But this isn’t collapse. This is a peer polity, like Tainter discusses. This is what it’s like to be caught in between.
September 22nd, 2006 at 11:15 pm
How long are the park rangers going to put up with your tribe?
September 23rd, 2006 at 2:20 am
I’m sorry Jason, but “heeheehee”. You seriously are having a hard time determining what it means to be alive, now, not tomorrow or after that, but now. Love the long winded descriptions of the obvious. Yet, alas, here we are. You apparently are lucky enough to fully exist in the past as well as the future.
Was that a “goal”? What with rhetorical points and all. . .
September 23rd, 2006 at 4:56 am
Yeah I am uncertain how you will pull this off as well. You’re really going to have to get into specifics about how you intelligently expect to make this work. One of my roomates works for the parks department and when they find people there who aren’t supposed to be there the rangers call the sheriff and guess who goes to jail!
September 23rd, 2006 at 5:08 am
Can anybody clue me into what the hell Jeff Vail’s whole deal is? He writes of Derrick Jensen:
http://www.jeffvail.net/2006/09/derrick-jensen-vs-dalai-lama.html
So… who is Jeff Vail and what is he doing for the government…?
September 23rd, 2006 at 9:34 am
Jason and Giulianna: one thing I’ve noticed in these interchanges… and, I mean this in the kindest possible way… there’s a certain joylessness that permeates your writings. There is so much militancy in your position. Maybe you’re not so intense in real life…
I know I know: what’s there to be joyful about the loss of 200 species every day? About panoptic and genocidal civilization? I agree that this world we are living in today is pretty bad. (In fact, I agree with much of what you say, a point you have never acknowledged in these debates). But if you can’t maintain some minimal sense-of-humor and lightness, then what is the point of survival?
The most important quality of pre-civilized cultures is their joyfulness relative to ours.
September 23rd, 2006 at 9:46 am
As long as we abide by the law, and it’s entirely possible to survive as a forager in a National Forest and abide by the law, I’d guess indefinitely. I’m more worried about the logging and the pot growers.
Most people who meet me in person are shocked. They say the voice in my writing is like night-and-day compared to my personality in meatspace. They tend to describe my writing as stodgy and academic, but IRL, I’m more often described as gregarious and fun-loving to a fault–even hedonistic. People say I joke and laugh too much. I don’t know why there’s such a huge distance between my demeaner in writing, and in voice, but I’d caution you about trying to psychoanalyze someone based simply on some online writings. Your conclusion that we’re “joyless” is pretty far off the mark. Don’t worry; these are the kinds of errors that normally crop up, even when trained psychologists try to psychoanalyze someone remotely. Of course, that’s why no trained psychologist would even try….
September 23rd, 2006 at 10:32 am
You can camp out in one place in a national forest for upwards of 14 days. Any more than that, and they get pissy. But any less than that, and you’re well within the law. Luckily, foragers are nomadic anyway. We’re also in the process of buying a small piece of land on the edge of the forest, to camp on for as long as we want and also to start a small permaculture garden.
The real worry is that more and more of the land will be sold to loggers and then clearcut. We can deal with park rangers; we can’t deal with the CEO of a major paper corporation, though.
As for Jeff Vail: Jeff used to be an intelligence officer in the U.S. air force. Now he’s an advisor to the Dept. of the Interior. Which is awesome because that means when he writes a blog post about what’s going on in the middle east, you know he’s got good information. I trust him more than CNN.
As for being joyless: by the same logic, I could argue that Stephen Colbert is incapable of being serious, because anytime I’ve seen him, he’s always joking and making fun of everything. The key is, I’ve only seen him in certain contexts: The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, and Strangers with Candy, all of which are comedy shows. You’ve only seen Jason and me writing about very serious issues online, and most recently, in the context of defending ourselves against a week-long attack on everything we believe. (And Tim, please don’t say you’re opening up a dialogue in the hopes of improving primitivism, and then post the trailer for a movie about Christian fundamentalists with a comment along the lines of, “And you thought primitivists were the enemy! These guys make primitivists look downright sane!” Oh, and also, the comparing us to an elementary school for terrorists thing. Can’t imagine how that could be misinterpreted as anything other than constructive criticism.)
Though I must say, I’m a bit hurt by the “joyless” thing. I thought Mike and I were pretty good at bringing the jokes.
September 23rd, 2006 at 1:30 pm
As I said,
I was commenting on your writings, not you as a person (which would be impossible since I don’t know you).
And, as I said before, I respect and admire much of your viewpoint and articulation thereof. Please take my criticisms as constructive feedback, in the spirit of helping to make your voice clearer and more palatable to the people who really need to hear it. This is largely an issue of rhetorical strategy.
September 23rd, 2006 at 2:39 pm
wow.
September 23rd, 2006 at 3:38 pm
Hehe.
September 24th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
I think we are making a grave mistake if we allow ourselves to feel that it is our duty to save the planet, and turn that into an imperative where we are tempted to think that some noble-seeming end might justify violent means.
A better focused value would be to remind ourselves that individually we are guests here between birth and death. The cumulative damage and ugliness caused by civilization, if we want to call it that, is simply an outcome of human behaviour, and that human behaviour is an outcome of—let’s call it a dysfunctional consciousness.
When that consciousness becomes healthy, the ugly is seen as ugly. From what I have been learning today about gnosis - thanks in particular to Dan’s Taognostic site for helping me catch up -
It’s certainly clear from this thread alone that it’s pointless ganging together for concerted action, to pursue any agenda. If further evidence were needed, there’s two millennia of Christianity.
September 24th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
slomo, it’s not your armchair psychoanalysis that bothers me nearly so much as Tim’s, and here, JK (who mentioned elsewhere being a friend of Tim’s beyond the sphere of this website). Please, stop trying to psychoanalyze me. You don’t know me, so besides being the very definition of an argumentum ad hominem, you’re also wildly off-base. That’s understandable, given that you have an all but non-existent data set to draw your conclusions from, but I’d appreciate if you could acknowledge that and stop trying to tell me who I am as a person based on how I defend myself from a coordinated, week-long, mob-style smack-down complete with torches and pitchforks. Jumping to conclusions about my state as a human being really belies your obvious intelligence. If you know enough about psychology to make such assessments, then surely you also know that you have far too little data to draw such conclusions.
National forests allow you to camp for up to 14 days at a time in one place. So, camp for two weeks, then move to a new campsite. This would make us nomadic. You can hunt in a national forest, and aside from a short list of proscribed species, you can gather wild edibles as well. You can’t touch any living tree, but you can collect deritrus. These make it entirely possible to live as a forager in a national forest, without the wealth we imagine it would take.
Of course, there are ways to make the transition more comfortable. We intend to buy a few small pieces of land adjacent to a national forest, and migrate between them. This gives us greater freedom in terms of how long we camp, and what we do with the trees. This costs more, but it’s certainly not prohibitive; this is the path we’re taking, and we’re certainly not wealthy.
The easiest (legally), but most expensive route is to buy your entire range outright. This WOULD take great wealth, and is something we’re in no position to puruse. I think this is what some others have in mind. It’s certainly what we’d be conditioned to think of first, but it’s a distinct lack of imagination which comes to this first possibility, notices its prohibitive cost, and concludes that rewilding is beyond the resources of the average person. The first possibility may be the most restrictive legally, but it’s quite possible, and being free, requires no material support whatsoever.
September 24th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
If it’s simply because of the innate fallenness of humanity–in that we’re the only species that doesn’t “work right” with the rest of the world–then why did we not have any of these problems for the first 99% of our time on this planet? Why didn’t we have this problem for the first 30,000+ years in which we enjoyed art, music, philosophy, religion, knowledge, medicine, etc. equal to anything we have today? And why did the consequences of our “dysfunctional consciousness” only appear in the last 10,000 years, when we added to that list overpopulation, armies, and domination by a tiny elite that compelled us to obey them on pain of death? Why, given this progression, should I believe that it is a fundamental matter of humanity’s “dysfunctional consciousness,” and not the pattern of domination we call civilization?
September 25th, 2006 at 1:25 pm
“Jason is talking about the number of different species that have gone extinct and are currently going extinct, and he’s totally right. Look it up yourself. The situation is dire enough that it does threaten our own species survival.”
No, it doesn’t. After all of this, myself (nor many others) are convinced. I think what’s really going extinct is the tendency to mute hysteria in the afcve of facts.
In 1999, I got paid to go on a nationwide tour where I was supposed to dole out facts to junior high school kids in order to get them to recycle. I had to get up in front of these kids and say (with a straight face) that by the year 2000 1/4 of our water supply would be undrinkable.
As you may or may not know, it’s almost 2007 and our water supply is doing fine. As for animals going massively extinct: historically humans have a knack for doing that. I’m more concered with the mass extinction of humans, not animals. Call me insensitive, but I’m sure the men who killed off the dodo were campers and survivalists also. Same with the buffalo. They lived in camps, slept outdoors, and probably had more primitivist ethics than anyone here.
Watch Herzog’s “Grizzly Man” and see what happens to people who exploit environmentalism for their own selfish personal agendas.
September 25th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
James, I’m afraid you’re deeply misinformed. Our water supply is not doing fine. For Water Week 2006, we covered a number of the emerging water crises, from China to Africa to the good ol’ U.S. of A., where water supplies are dwindling so quickly it’s leading to full-blown wars. As I argued before that, Israel’s recent invasion of Lebanon was over access to the Litani River–in fact, securing Israel’s water supply has been the single most pressing military motivation for the Jewish State since 1967. You might have thought you were exaggerating the problem once upon a time, but if you do, then I’m afraid that can only be explained in terms of ignorance of how bad the current situation is. It is every bit as bad as you originally told those kids.
As for mass extinction, no biologist doubts that we’re currently in one. To quote my own thesis #17:
As I also argue there, this is qualitatively different from previous extinctions humanity has been part of. The overkill scenario has been vastly overhyped as part of an ideological agenda of painting humanity as innately destructive, as an excuse for our present destructiveness. See my other article, “Overkill, Overchill and Human Nature” on this topic.
Now, I have no doubt you mean what you say when you say, “I’m more concered with the mass extinction of humans, not animals,” as monstrous as it sounds to my ears, but let me make the connection you’re obviously missing: even in the most purely selfish terms, this is still a crisis. Our delusions of grandeur are just that: delusions. Regardless what we like to fantasize about, we remain dependant on the ecosystems we are part of. Their death is our own. A mass extinction on this scale is a direct and momentous threat to the survival of the human species. Collapse means the deaths of billions and the survival of the human race. The alternative means the deaths of billions, and no one survives.
I don’t know how to put this any more starkly. The current mass extinction is the greatest threat to the survival of the human species that we have ever faced. If there is no collapse in the next 100 years, then Homo sapiens will be extinct by 2200.
They were sailors and settlers. They were thoroughly civilized, and dedicated to expanding civilization.
September 25th, 2006 at 3:38 pm
You may be right but how do you know what problems our ancestors did or didn’t have when all we know about them is what we have dug up and deduced?
As far as I am aware, every culture has myths about its Golden Age, but the substantive evidence may be elusive.
September 25th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
(There’s a long reply to James currently in moderation…)
Because what we’ve dug up tells us a lot. We know, just from what we’ve dug up, that they had no leaders, and no cities, and no overpopulation, and no war, and if they had disease or starvation, it was so incredibly rare that we’ve yet to find any evidence for it at all. So we actually know quite a bit about what problems our ancestors didn’t have. We also know they were foragers, and we know that there are some ways in which foraging determines some things about a culture: it’s going to be nomadic, and it’s going to be tribal. And we know some of the things those imply. We have some of their art, and some of the things they made, like the caves of Lascaux, or the Venus figurines.
Well, all agriculturalist societies have a golden age myth–most foragers have some kind of “Dreamtime” coterminous with the present; i.e., they believe they’re living in the golden age.
But the evidence is abundant, if you go out and look. It’s called anthropology, and they’ve assembled a significant body of evidence.