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Core Human Values
I know I know I know I know I know I know that people are probably getting tired of the subject of the Collapse and of me critiquing the anarcho-primitivist critique of Civilization. Cause honestly, I’m tired of it too. But I feel like it’s such a meaty issue that it needs to be thoroughly chewed and digested before I will be able to move on to other things. And at this point, I feel like I have learned and received so much through the conversations here over the past few weeks, that I need to start integrating - if only for myself - it all into a more coherent picture.
One of the main lessons I have taken away from it all is that systems won’t save us. Thoughts and concepts won’t keep us warm at night. Philosophies do not offer salvation because they are constructed of language and language is riddled with contradictions. It’s inescapable (and possibly for our own benefit). I’ve also learned that history won’t save us. It already happened. It’s over. We can learn from it sure, but that won’t save us. The future, likewise, won’t save us. Because, frankly, we can’t wait. We need help right now to know what’s going on and to find our place in all of it.
So where does that leave us? It leaves us here, right now, alone, or together. We are humans. We are trying to find our way. We have each other and we have ourselves. And we have life and somehow we have to make that be enough. And with any luck, and any courage, it will be.
It turns out that the core values of the human race are not in forming tribes or in reverting to hunter-gatherer societies, or in any philosophical or organizational position. The core values of the human race are laughing, crying, loving, looking, wondering, worrying, smiling, dancing, yelling, jumping, fucking, singing, arguing, fighting, worshipping, thinking, feeling, talking, eating, shitting, sitting, sleeping, dreaming, living, and yes even dying.
That’s it. That’s all we have to work with here, individually or together. Thank God or Nature or the Universe that contained within those simple things are so very much, that contained within those simple things is actually everything - everything we could ever possibly need or want to find salvation. It’s all built right into us. We don’t need to take on or cast off anything to access any of it - except our bodies, except our lives and identities as humans. It’s all we got. It’s all we need.
God bless and Godspeed.
September 24th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
Thanks Tim very much for this. I have looked around at gnostic and primitivist sites today and have seen new religions, new priesthoods, new scriptures, new duties, schisms and heresies - all pretty much like the old ones.
Personally, in order to reach what’s built-in without filters and fog, I have found it necessary to cast off lots of conditioning, manipulation, lies and habits to appreciate fully all those core values that you listed.
September 24th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
It is a challenge being a human when as Yves says, there is always someone out there that wants to trick us, including ourselves sometimes.
All the basic things are the best things. Freedom of and from belief is the best thing.
We reach out for meaning with Science, Art, Poetry, and yes prayer. All these are tools to reconcile this time we spend here, with our little fragile egos that we nurture despite our doubts. Of those things listed none is really more important. All are attempts at finding some kind of peace. Peace of mind.
September 24th, 2006 at 5:53 pm
Which one is it? Because if it’s “laughing, crying, loving, looking, wondering, worrying, smiling, dancing, yelling, jumping, fucking, singing, arguing, fighting, worshipping, thinking, feeling, talking, eating, shitting, sitting, sleeping, dreaming, living, and yes even dying,” well, that’s just the long form of saying “tribalism.” What we call civilization is the ongoing attempt to squelch those things–or, when we’re feeling more godlike and hubristic, to “transcend” such “foibles.” Primitivism is about embracing such things, and glorying in them.
September 24th, 2006 at 10:47 pm
‘What we call civilization is the ongoing attempt to squelch those things–or, when we’re feeling more godlike and hubristic, to “transcend” such “foibles.” ‘
I honestly don’t see how civilization is trying to squelch or transcend most of those, though I personally could do without the shitting and dying.
‘Primitivism is about embracing such things, and glorying in them.’
And doing it without any style at all, I take it…
September 25th, 2006 at 12:13 am
You’ve established a manifesto there, Jason, and I can imagine the world being split into a new divide. Civilisation versus primitivism. Is this what you want? A new dogma in which you accuse your enemy of being evil in order to encourage your tribalist troops?
You’ve opened my eyes, just as I was starting to be seduced by “tribalism” and “primitivism”. But not now. I am not going to embrace anything which depends for its rationale on trashing the way of life of most of my brothers and sisters.
September 25th, 2006 at 12:30 am
I mean, I hate the evils of this world as much as you but to call them “civilization” which is “attempting to squelch. . . laughing, crying, loving, looking, wondering . . . ” you are creating a sinister doom-myth, whose logical consequence is a new hero who renounces laughing, crying, loving, looking, wondering etc in order to fight to the death, by fair means or foul, for these values to be preserved for everyone else.
Whereas in practice these core values, as hinted at by Tim, have no possible sense or meaning unless practised by each individual in the here and now whilst we can.
They are not values to kill for or die for but to be seized in all circumstances. I used to correspond with a prisoner on Florida’s Death Row, who was almost certainly guilty of the crime he was banged up for. The punishment was inhuman, but he managed to cling to humanity himself, more so than his jailers, and do all the things on the list but one.
September 25th, 2006 at 2:07 am
The more complex a society becomes the more machine-like it must be to continue to function. Hence the technocrats and their dream of solving all our problems by engineering more effective social mechanics.
But humans make poor cogs. These messy “core human values” must be repressed in order to make a human as predicable as a machine. They get pushed to the unconscious mind were they can be manipulated by propaganda and advertising.
The core values of civilization are vastly different than ours. There is some irony that a vast machine made of people and tools made by people does not share the values of those people.
Civilization represents a neurotic desire to control one’s environment, and the first ground that it claims is the minds of the people in it. Tribalism is a mode of social organization with customs that evolve to fit the values of the people.
I sincerly hope that the societies of the future are not civilizations. I would wager that whatever they are, they will be a form of tribalism.
September 25th, 2006 at 3:03 am
I wish we could dispense with the current dialectical vocabulary we’re using in this debate and find new words to approach the same basic dilemma.
September 25th, 2006 at 6:35 am
Yes, perhaps it would be helpful if the core values of civilization were defined also, to see who subscribes to them, as opposed to those who put up with them because there seems to be no alternative, or they don’t want to cut off the very branch they are sitting on.
I was once in a cult & it’s a bit like what you call civilization. How do we distinguish perpetrators from victims?
September 25th, 2006 at 8:56 am
Well, there’s one fine example: the shame we attach to normal bodily functions. But more importantly, civilization introduces the value of hard work, servitude, of working earnestly for another as some noble goal. From “dying for your country” to “be proud of your work,” to “respect the office even if you don’t respect the person,” the values of civilization are contradictory to the values of humanity. Maintaining hte normal, healthy relationships in which “laughing, crying, fucking,” etc. flourish takes a certain amount of time and energy–the very things civilization takes from us in the largest portions. By the time we’re done with the day’s labor, it’s all we can do to simply prepare ourselves for the next day of it. In the most intensely civlized (industrialized) societies, the family is stripped down to the nucleus, and sometimes even less than that. Social isolation is growing.
Now, no civilization is pure. We have friends, we have parties, and so forth. But these are not things of civilization; these are relics of tribalism that endure in our civilization in spite of the pressure civilization places on them. As Steve Thomas wrote for the Anthropik Network in “The Face of Anarchy“:
Or, if you prefer, the insight of the medieval Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun:
So, civilization must exist within certain limits of tolerance for the human being, a tribal animal. Some elements of tribalism must be afforded, or the system will be intolerable. But what Tim’s identified as the “core human values”–and I’m largely in agreement with him on this–are exactly what we mean by “tribalism,” what Ibn Khaldun called “the tribal values.” Civilization is what acts against those values. No society can exist solely by civilization’s pull, but the two systems are as much set against one another as the opposing poles of a magnet.
Now, the key thing to bear in mind here, before someone suggests that tribalism may require a civilized counter-balance, is that tribalism did just fine on its own for two million years. In fact, it did better. Civilization remains disastrous; it tolerates just enough tribalism to make the system tolerable, not to make it “good,” much less “workable.”
Civilization and tribalism are opposed systems. One’s “evil” and the other “good” depending on whether you share the “core human values” Tim suggested, or if you think humans should be gods to “transcend” such “foibles.” This is what makes me a primitivist, but one could really go all-out and embrace the mad dreams of domination.
But most importantly, these aren’t two camps of people. They’re two different systems, two different ways of organizing society. Yes, all of your friends and relatives, and you yourself, and me too, were raised in the civilized way. When we recogize its shortcomings, and its self-destruction, and we realize the preferable nature of tribalism, what sense does it make to gather “the primitivist troops” and march off to war against those who, like us, have been victimized by civilization? What sense does that make? Sure, like the victims of child abuse, they’ll make excuses for civilization, and cling to it, and insist that civilization only beats them because it loves them, but primitivism is not a war on civilization. It’s a call to build something better, to move beyond civilization, and to set an example that it doesn’t have to be this way–that it’s okay to be human.
Exactly. That’s what primitivism is all about. To sieze those values, not to fight for them; to practice them, not to die for them. That’s a civilized attitude, the very attitude we renounce.
Of course, that’s also the only attack on civilization that would ever possibly succeed against it: not a violent assault, but a war waged with laughter and tears, a demonstration that living as a human being is not some unattainable fantasy or dream. Look at the things people have said this past week; despite the fact that tribalism worked for two million years, that it’s the only system that’s ever worked, we have people saying it’s a dream, a fantasy–that what’s realistic is the system that’s destroying itself right now in record time, setting a new record as the most monumental disaster in the known history of the known universe. Has any evolutionary system ever failed this quickly, or this spectacularly? But it’s this–not the time-tested and still working system of tribalism–that’s realistic? People won’t see the alternative until they see someone with skin the color of unbaked cookie dough lives it, obviously (and probably not even then–abused children always side with their abusers). But if you want to convince people to abandon such an awful way of life, the only way you’ll ever do that is to live a better life.
Hear, hear, Jake; I agree with everything you wrote. Well said.
Civilization tells us that people exist to serve others: a corporation, or a nation-state, or a church, whatever. Civilization tells us that the value of a person is the value of his labor, what he can contribute to society. Civilization tells us that hierarchy is normal and inevitable. Civilization tells us that it is virtuous to listen to our “superiors,” and the highest calling is to die at their command.
Civilization is a type of culture; a system. If you’re talking about a flesh-and-blood human being, you’re talking about a victim. If you’re talking about a concept or an idea or a belief or a technology, you’re likely talking about a perpetrator. Even the elites are victimized by civilization–why do you think they’re so often killing themselves?
September 25th, 2006 at 9:33 am
I am now totally convinced that primitivists will say almost any damn thing as apologists to defend their stripping of culture outlook . Why. ?
From a logical point of view it is not defensible.
It seems like just about the most jaded thing now to me that I have run into lately.
How is it it takes so much defense.? Why is it that it only appeals to a certain academic niche. ?
It is obvious to me that this is a cult. People in this cult have to study it carefully to understand the rudiments. Then suspend other belief systems, and be a part of this one.
Jake , I have no idea how or from what you formed your ideas about Technocracy , buy I can assure you , you are either an ignorant person that likes to make up their own definitions to suit their imagination, or you are an anti-intellectual person that does not care for any truth.
Unlike the primitivist stuff, we advise people to read our study course. People can make of it what they will. We don`t care. We just put the information out for people that are interested.
There is no propaganda , or advertising in a technate.
There are many educated fools, but no fools that are educated.
September 25th, 2006 at 10:10 am
It’s not a “stripping of culture.” Tribes are also cultures, and they have as much culture, by every measure, as any civilization.
Saying it over and over again don’t make it so.
By that criteria, what isn’t a cult? By that criteria, Technocracy is a cult too. Hell, so is existentialism. But primitivism doesn’t require careful study–primitivism is actually just the normal human instinct. You do need to study it carefully if, like me, you want to answer the sophistry used by progressivists who try to debunk it, but that’s a very different thing. Anything you want to be sure of for yourself is going to need some careful study.
As for a cult–wouldn’t we need a leader for that? Isn’t our constant questioning of anyone who assumes such a position of prominence proof that we’re not a cult in any meaningful sense? We tolerate no leaders whatsoever.
I’m really tried of this style of rhetoric, Skip. You don’t have any evidence, you just make bald assertions (a logical fallacy), and then accuse anyone who doesn’t agree with you of being ignorant or worse. How’s THAT for a cult?
“You are either an ignorant person that likes to make up their own definitions to suit their imagination, or you are an anti-intellectual person that does not care for any truth.” I don’t know any primitivist who doesn’t encourage other people to find out for themselves. We have whole libraries of books and studies to support our position, and you’ll notice I drop citations left and right.
But maybe that explains your rhetoric better than simple logical fallacy: projection. You charge me with everything you’ve been doing. You accuse me of underhanded techniques like putting words in your mouth (because I asked you a question); you accuse me of not wanting people to question me, and you get bent out of shape when someone questions you. Hmmmm.
Certainly looks like a lot of propaganda now….
Any educated X is an X that has recieved an education, that has been educated. If someone is an educated fool, then he IS a fool that is educated!
September 25th, 2006 at 10:18 am
You know, I think that much of the problem here is language. Jason, you’ve ended up defining anything negative within modern human culture as “civilization,” and everything positive you ascribe to “tribalism.” Why is this useful? It seems bound to instigate defensive reactions among the majority of people, for whom the term “civilization” is not defined as a system of domination, hierarchy, etc. but rather just as “the system in which I live.”
September 25th, 2006 at 10:23 am
The answer to both questions is: because everyone uneducated in ecology and anthropology seems to think that hunter-gatherers lived short, painful, disease-ridden lives and that exponential growth is perfectly sustainable. It takes someone with an academic background to figure all this out.
Dude, seriously. LOL. So says Mr. All-You-Need-Is-Technocracy. I’m not calling Technocracy a cult, necessarily, but you personally gush about it with a cultish devotion. As for primitivism, you need to learn the difference between “people who disagree with me” and “people in a cult.” Neo-Nazis do not belong to a cult. This doesn’t make them not stupid. This doesn’t make them not wrong. This just makes them not a cult. It’s just like a lot of liberals who throw around the word “fascism” - even to the point of calling anarchists fascists. Words have definitions for a reason. Learn them and use them properly.
I love how soon this paragraph comes after the “primitivism is a cult” accusation. Unlike Technocracy, primitivists don’t have a “study course.” We encourage people to read everything - by primitivists and non-primitivists, academics and philosophers. Primitivists pretty much don’t agree on anything enough to even warrant writing a “study course.”
I’m not sure what information you feel we’re withholding from you, or what information you feel we’re somehow forcing upon you. This isn’t even a conversation we started or a blog we own.
September 25th, 2006 at 10:27 am
If I had actually done this, it wouldn’t be. But that’s not what I’ve done. I’ve actually spent a good deal of time defining civilization, because the popular view defines it as anything good (which is equally useless). I use the term in its precise sense, as related to its etymology in the Latin civis, or “city.” Civilization is defined not in terms of whether it’s “good” or “evil,” but insofar as it relates to a society’s complexity. Specifically, civilization is a culture which pursues complexity as the answer to all problems at all times. Tribalism is any other kind of culture.
Now, when you look at the consequences of a society that pursues that kind of strategy, what you end up with is pretty much everything we think of as “bad.” This makes sense: why wouldn’t our sense of what’s right be shaped by the evolutionary expectations of the tribalism we grew up with?
This is very useful, because then these problems are no longer unsolvable things that we simply have to tolerate, but consequences of a way of life out of step with human nature, and an unsustainable approach to complexity. It’s useful because it means our problems can be solved, and it shows us how to solve them, whereas otherwise, we simply have to accept them as the facts of life.
September 25th, 2006 at 10:33 am
Interesting that you will even fight over this old fashioned put down that really needs no explaining.
You fail as a compelling proponent of your cause.
Why.?
It just requires too much abstracted reasoning, which is belief in abstracted arguments that do not make any particular sense.
Don`t feel bad. I would chopped up , chew up , and spit out any one in your group. You did your best.
It is very difficult to defend a belief system.
I do admit that technocracy also is a belief system. It is based on fact though, and our social proposal is a secular/humanistic one. We do not need brainwash or convince people about it. Just try to educate as to our research. We also are survivilists. Very different approach.
September 25th, 2006 at 10:33 am
I most fully defined civilization in thesis #13. It would be helpful if people could read the terms in which I’ve actually defined civilization before ascribing definitions to me. I should also mention that this is not merely my definition; this is the technical definition of “civilization” used by anthropologists, those who study cultures, cultural systems, and how they operate, i.e., the most relevant field of study to such an inquiry.
September 25th, 2006 at 10:36 am
If it looks like a duck , and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck.
September 25th, 2006 at 10:52 am
Primitivism itself doesn’t require any abstracted reasoning whatsoever. If you trust your instincts and simply live your life, forming your communities as sustainably, elegantly, and simply as you can, you will be living primitively. Primitivism is what comes naturally to us. To do anything else requires abstracted arguments, and there’s the problem. We’ve all been subjected to baseless, “abstracted arguments that do not make any particular sense,” like Hobbes’ Leviathan. We’ve been trained to think of primitive life as “solitary, nasty, brutish and short.” So we don’t follow our instincts; we don’t live primitively. That teaches us not to trust our instincts in general. This leads to the denigration of our spontaneous thought, as Malcolm Gladwell addresses in Blink.
The “abstracted reasoning” we’re applying here is the salve to the wounds civilization’s inflicted, because it leaves us half-way. If we continue and press on, we come out the other side, and find out that cases like Hobbes’ were utterly devoid of all evidence. We keep on pressing, and find out that primitive life isn’t the squalor we’d been told–that, in fact, it’s actually a very good way to live. Primitive life comes naturally, but primitivism is needed to pull us along the rest of the way, to undo the damage that a little bit of civilization’s learning has done.
I don’t think you’ve done that with any of us. In fact, I find your arguments to be nothing more than the tedious reiteration of your claims without any substance or evidence. I think you’ve been “chopped up, chew up, and spit out,” because it’s so abundantly clear from our exchanges that you have nothing but bald assertion to back up your position. Where I’ve consistently cited the supporting facts, and multiple sources devoid of any ideological bias to back up my position, all you’ve done is tell us about your study guide.
And yes, I’ve read it. Its failure to account for diminishing returns leaves it DOA, as far as I’m concerned, and I found its approach to Jevons Paradox positively puerile.
We’re not here recruiting for primitivism. We’re just here to “keep the door open”–to put up an adequately strong front that at the very least, someone who might stumble on this might not be totally turned off by the misinformation and half-truths beng used to discredit it in this assault. As I mentioned, surviving collapse is a question of imagination, and we do what we can to spark as much imagination as we can. The attacks launched from this site have the effect of shutting down imagination, so we need to do what we can to keep that window as open as we can.
But your counter-attack here is laughable. Primitivism is the philosophical response to the facts discovered by modern anthropology, debunking the flawed assumptions that provided the basis of everything from Romanticism to Technocracy. Your study guide sure seemed like brain-washing to me; but primtiivism asks people to read widely, and not just from primitivist authors. Some of the authors we cite most often are not primitivists at all. So on what grounds can you call anthropological research “brain washing”?
September 25th, 2006 at 11:03 am
Definition by secular cult opposition:
Secular cult opponents define a “cult” as a religious or non-religious group that tends to manipulate, exploit, and control its members. Here two definitions by Michael Langone and Louis Jolyon West, scholars who are widely recognized among the secular cult opposition:
“Cults are groups that often exploit members psychologically and/or financially, typically by making members comply with leadership’s demands through certain types of psychological manipulation, popularly called mind control, and through the inculcation of deep-seated anxious dependency on the group and its leaders.”
“A cult is a group or movement exhibiting a great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea or thing and employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control (e.g. isolation from former friends and family, debilitation, use of special methods to heighten suggestibility and subservience, powerful group pressures, information management, suspension of individuality or critical judgement, promotion of total dependency on the group and fear of [consequences of] leaving it, etc) designed to advance the goals of the group’s leaders to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families, or the community.”
The common anti-cult definition summarised,
* Manipulative and authoritarian mind control over members
* Communal and totalistic in their organisation
* Aggressive in proselytizing
* Systematic program of indoctrination
* New membership of cults by middle class
– Wikipedia
That pretty much sums up the colloquial definition of the word “cult.” Now explain what any of this has to do with primitivism.
September 25th, 2006 at 11:04 am
I suppose this is the limitation of language. I agree with your ideas for the most part, but I do think that framing your arguments using the term “civilization” can be problematic, insofar as it’s not just a term for most people but a mythological one.
This is not a problem with your argumentation, per se, but I think it can be an issue with your communicating your ideas. You essentially have to spend a lot of time redefining terms again and again and arguing with people over the validity of that definition, trying to apply logic and rational detail against deep-seated mythology and symbolism. Just wondering if there’s a better way, short of creating a counter-mythology and falling right back into the same trap.
Yes, I suppose it would. But you have to admit that you’re a pretty voluminous writer, and rather than digging through your thirty theses to find the information, it is a bit more convenient to extract implied definitions from your posts, whether or not that’s fair. Besides which, statements like this:
(1) go beyond your technical definition of complexity, having moral, psychological, and spiritual implications, which directly touch on the mythology of civilization and not just the narrower anthropological definition of it, and thus (2) may come across as moral judgments of civilization, even though you may only consider them logical extensions of your definition of civilization.
Anyway, I’m not trying to be combative here, though maybe having this conversation in the midst of a much more heated debate is not the best way to go.
September 25th, 2006 at 11:12 am
It’s funny that you mention this, because it’s something we’ve been talking a lot about. We both started on this path with Daniel Quinn, who made up new definitions in the very same interest of being unbiased. “Taker” was civilized; “Leaver” was tribalistic. What we found, though, was that these new terms made it impossible to research his claims; anthropologists used a completely different set of terms. And before starting a conversation about this with anyone who hadn’t read Quinn’s work, we’d have to go through a tiresome vocabulary lesson.
The benefit of just using the accepted anthropological terms is that at least academics know what we’re talking about right off the bat. And people unfamiliar with the field will at least know which terms to look up in various books to see if our claims carry any weight. If we made up new terms, a la Daniel Quinn, no one - not academics, not laypeople - would have any idea of what we were talking about. That would require much, much more explanation.
September 25th, 2006 at 11:21 am
And as a consequence, I’m often accused of playing a semantic game, but I see one major value in it: it is precisely that mythologization of “civilization” as humanity’s penultimate achievement that goads us into pursuing greater and greater complexity, no matter the cost to ourselves, our fellow human beings, or even our planet. Even if people could understand the detrimental effects of too much complexity on a Pleistocene alpha predator adapted to a simpler world, if that mythology is not deconstructed, then that’s simple the price we must pay for our glorious ascencion to godhood, our transcendance of the frail, “fallen” human condition.
So, I think we have to address that mythology, and the best way I know how is by keeping to the technical definition and pointng out that everything we think of as “good” about civilization is more than four times older than it, while everything “bad” about it is unique to it.
Quite true, which is why I’ve reiterated and condensed my position several times here for the past week. Understandable for anyone to miss, but it does get very annoying. I apologize for being short.
You’ll note that this was in response to someone asking what civilized values are, in contrast to human (or tribal) values. No, these are not part of the definition, but a solid definition is the beginning of the analysis. With this, I’m trying to move beyond mere definition, into the implications of such a system. What does a system like that value? What does it promote? What does it create? What are the moral, psychological, and spiritual implications of such a system? Those implications are not part of the definition, but they follow from it, just as moral, psychological and spiritual implications follow from our definitions of everything from “murder” to “wisdom.”
There IS a moral judgment here, of course. First, we define civilization. Then, we examine its implications. Then, we draw a moral judgment. Each step is a different thing from the other steps, but each one builds on the last. I do not think it is fair to say that I’ve defined civilization as “something bad,” but by the same token, I do think it is fair to conclude that civilization is fundamentally something bad. Does that make sense?
By the same token, I think we could define “murder,” then examine its implications, and then conclude that it is fundamentally bad, and I don’t think that would mean defining murder simply as, “something bad.”
September 25th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
So I’ve established a few things:
1. Primitivism is not the way to go — it plays into the hands of terrorists, misanthropes, and rich conspirators at Davos.
2. Technological civilization is also not the way to go — it plays into the hands of state terrorists, anti-life bigots, and rich people selling crap.
3. Giving up and jumping off a damn cliff is not an option — it plays into the hands of whoever benefits most from not having their schemes disrupted by our righteous action.
4. God frowns at the idea of killing a whole bunch of people in the name of an ideological utopia, even a primitivist one.
5. God also frowns at the idea of whatever the hell all that scary “will to power” crap was Nicq McDonald was talking about with the making new species and melding with machines and taking plans for the future from the Popular Mechanics edition of Paradise Lost.
6. God especially frowns at the idea of doing nothing and does not under any circumstances want you jumping off a damn cliff. Jeez, it’s hard to tell what he doesn’t frown at.
September 25th, 2006 at 12:47 pm
You’ll find someone who’ll tell you that about anything. I still don’t follow how “the implications of X might not always be nice” is a valid counterargument to X, though.
Good thing primitivists aren’t killing anyone–just trying to create a society that can survive when civilization kills itself.
Hard to say, since you can’t really trust anyone who claims to convey his will. I go by the one indisputable relic of the gods, however many they may be (1, 1000 or 0): the universe around us. I’d say that a good indication of the gods’ will is the way they created us, before we started presuming to be them.
September 25th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Yeah, what both of you are saying makes sense, although it’s still less than ideal. In one way or another, you’re still using a specialized lexicon that will cause confusion for some. Adding to this confusion is the fact that other people, even other primitivists, may not use the same definition of civilization, or may use it in a less technical or specific way, or may simply put the emphasis on the mythological rather than the technical. Not your fault, but still an issue. Really, language is so insufficient to communicate complex ideas. Especially written language.
Based on your definition of civilization, which I now understand better: Yes.
Although sometimes the distinction seems fairly subtle.
September 25th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
Indeed, but I think in that we’ve come down to a basic issue in any kind of communication, regardless of whether the subject is primitivism or anything else. Cue the existentialist critique!
September 25th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
Jlhart7 , I will tell you the honest truth. There is no god so don`t worry about that aspect of it. You do not need god to have some scruples.
It is perfectly normal to kill people. If it was not you could not do it. Nature provides our limitations , and god or Nature as you say, makes killing part of its work.
But is it a good idea.? Is it practical.? You would be doing a lot of that as a survivalist no doubt , post collapse.
That does not sound pleasant to me, or you.
If you do it someone will want to take revenge on you , and then it may be your turn to be be killed. Why not avoid this tact.
There is always someone with a bigger stick to hit you with.
It is just common sense to include everyone in the future.
Maybe after a while we could whittle down the population in a civilized manner. At least in North America.
Jason I assume you are a liar. I already know that you can twist and turn a hundred different ways to make the concepts of belief seem palatable. It is obvious that you did not read our 1934 Technocracy Study Course , which is available for free, other wise you would be more knowledgeable as to it.
That’s fine most humans are liars , I don`t hold it against you at all. You are probably so used to making up lying arguments for your survival ism , that it is second nature.
If you do actually want to look at it , it is www.technocracynow.org It is a free file for your computer. I suggest you read a chapter now and then , and keep it on your intellectual back burner. You also Lamanna.
I know you two are smart as hell. We are an educational/research group. Once you took a hard look at our stuff , I think you would go for it. It does not require any belief, except maybe that it may be a good idea as real alternatives go.
I also suggest you keep an eye on our official site. www.technocracyinc.org
Just for fun you might also take a look at N.E.T. or Network of European Technocrats. They are doing some interesting things. Just google N.E.T.
September 25th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
So, wait … I took the time to read your cultwashed little “study guide,” and I didn’t buy it, so … I’m a liar? Mighty white o’ ya!
WOW! That’s quite a monument to self-important condescencion there! It’s like I’m being scolded by the Universal Archetype of the Jewish Mother herself!
September 25th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
Y’see, Skip, you have to allow for the possibility that someone might be able to look at your material and find them utterly unconvincing, without jumping to the idea that they must be ignorant or lying. Otherwise, well, you’re just being a cretin. Honest people can come to differing conclusions. I assume you read your study guide; you found it convincing. I also read it, and found it … well, I’ll be nice and just say, “not.” I also know that there are honest, educated people who don’t agree with me about primitivism. Notice I haven’t called you a liar, ignorant, or underhanded simply because you disagree with me. But you’ve called me all three of those things–and now I am quoting you–because I don’t buy into this “Technocracy” nonsense.
Which, oddly enough, is the kind of bullying attempts at coercive persuasion that most typically mark a cult–isn’t there someone you were accusing of putting together a cult recently, Skip?
September 25th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
I am not sure what you read or thought you read. You quote a Study Guide, that you apparently read.?
I am not talking about that. Our original Technocracy Study Course is what I said. Hear me.?
I am not sure but that may have been one of the rewrites of the techca site that has been mentioned a few times by me and a certain Dean Cameron , that has been discredited that you read.? You are mixed up a little I think.
Again that could explain this ignorance I mentioned. This is understandable if it is the case. As mentioned all humans are liars. Some are easier to spot and others more difficult.
September 25th, 2006 at 3:58 pm
I read the thing you keep linking to, and I thought it was a waste of my time, how’s that?
September 25th, 2006 at 6:43 pm
I still don`t believe you. You no longer have any credibility with me. I may have to become more forceful in exposing your fraudulent claims for your survival ism pet peeve theory , or groups theory.
I have been rather kind and allowing for you as I did not understand fully what hogwash you seem to like.
Also there are so many logical arguments in your thinking that I don`t think it is worth my time to even wade in . I just kind of skimmed some , mostly for fun.
I have not called you an idiot, yet. I have tried to restrain my self from going to far in that kind of direction, in fact I called you smart as hell. Lots of times idiots are smart as hell. If someone does call you an idiot, the first step if it is true , is to stop being an idiot.
Do you follow me.?
Your ingenious theories seem really anti human to me in a lot of ways , some of which I have touched on.
There is something called the dog mentality. You seem afflicted with that. It means ; If you can`t eat it, or fuck it , piss on it.
While I promote technocracy as an interesting alternative culture, you seem very dead ended , jaded, and hung up on the throw in the towel and give up, and go back to what you think of as a natural life.
I took a walk in the woods today by Minnehaha creek to go bird watching. Then I went to an Indian place and had some curried lamb. then I went shoe shopping. I had to fill up my tank . Tonite I am going to a discussion group.
This is all kind of fun. No possibility of that under survival conditions.
September 25th, 2006 at 7:57 pm
I’sa sawry, mah’stah, I’sa be goo’ nah….
No, I’ve noted how pedantic you are, so I stuck with “ignorant,” which you’ve already used. I know how keen you are on precise quotation.
Where? I’ve read you repeating that, but I’ve been waiting for some kind of rationale so I might have something–anything–to respond to.
Technocracy’s own of those big lies that tries to lull people back to sleep, to get us to stay complacent. If I let that go unchallenged, I’d be as selfish as people say I am and just looking out for #1. After all, it doesn’t diminish my imagination or survival, but it will get all of your victims killed one day.
What are you talking about? Aside from the shoe shopping and having to fill up your gas tank, that’s a pretty typical primitive day. Now, imagine that every day, without 8-12 hours of tedious labor devoted to someone else’s well-being, and you’l start to get a notion of what primitive life is actually like (as opposed to the misinformation spread by Hobbes & co.)
September 25th, 2006 at 8:14 pm
Wow, really?! Golly, thanks, mister! All you’ve done in every post you’ve made is declare how superior you are to us, how we might as well not even try debating you because you’ll beat us, hands-down, without even trying, and, in fact, you already have beaten us; we’re just too thick to understand your genius. Meanwhile, what have you actually said, aside from bluster and bombast? You’ve recycled tired old stereotypes about primitive life, all while referencing no one and ignoring all our citations. You’ve pushed Technocracy on us like some kind of afterschool special pothead. You’ve accused us of being cultish, then when I gave you a definition of the word cult and asked you to explain how primitivism has anything to do with it, you suddenly and inexplicably fell silent. And all the while, you’ve insisted upon your superior debating skills. Well, pardon me, but those skills of which you speak so highly are not visible to me here.
To have a “throw in the towel and give up” attitude would imply that we find something good in civilization to pursue, that we now feel is no longer possible. On the contrary: if given the choice between a primitive life free from civilization and the lavish life of, say, a Paris Hilton, I’d without question choose the primitive life. This isn’t “throwing in the towel.” This is wholeheartedly embracing a way of life that we’ve been violently and coercively kept away from for 10,000 years.
September 25th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
Well, in civilization’s own mythology, it likes to call itself a massive, generations-long project to create a happy life. Of course, we already had a happy life, so civilized mythology requires us to reject the obvious facts–that, or it tells us about some “Fall” that removed us from that happiness, and we now need to put forth all this effort to work our way back.
So from the frame of civilized mythology, we’re definitely “throwing in the towel”–giving up the civilized project, the most important thing Homo sapiens have ever done.
Of course, we reject that frame. Our argument is that this project moves us further from the goal it espouses, and that we’ve been moving further and further from the happy life we started from for 10,000 years. So from our frame, it’s not “throwing in the towel” at all. Rather, progressivists and primitivists pursue the same goal: it’s just that progressivists work very hard, and very stupidly, in a counter-productive manner that just pushes them further from where they want to be. We think of ourselves as taking the smart, easy way to that goal.
September 26th, 2006 at 7:57 am
When I was young, long before I knew what anarchism or primitivism or the internet was, I used to daydream about how cool it would be to be raised by wolves and not have to go to school. Later on I wanted to be an anthropologist, not because studying other cultures appealed particularly, but because I thought it offered the best opportunities for joining a tribe. Which, even back then, seemed to me to be a lot more fun and meaningful than having a job
So arguably, primitivism is part of my core values. I was (and still am) a big bundle of primitivist feelings independent of any manifesto or written philosophy or system or academic rhetoric. Those things have been useful for me to work through these ideas consciously though. (thanks Jason, Giuli, et al.)
To use a Zen analogy, The Tribe of Anthropik are pointing at the moon, their finger is not the moon.
September 26th, 2006 at 8:13 am
September 26th, 2006 at 8:26 am
The same reason abuse victims defend their abusers.
Because we fear change–even change for the better–sometimes more than death. Humans are wired to accept the culture they’re born into–even if it’s a self-destructive, terrible culture.
Because the only way our culture can survive is by accepting on faith that life outside civilization is “solitary, nasty, brutish and short.” This is not a matter of evidence to most people, but of faith. It cannot be questioned, and no amount of evidence will make them consider otherwise, because it’s not an academic question. To question that recieved wisdom would be to question everything we’ve ever done with our lives. Many of us would rather clod along in misery, than think that we’d been had or used or abused for so long.
Those are two different questions. First, why no one wants to, because that myth above has succeeded. Life outside civilization is horrible, and it doesn’t matter how untrue that statement is, we will believe it to the bitter end because to do otherwise would be to throw into question everything we’ve ever known.
The second, because civilization has a good deal else in common with abusers, including the threat that if you leave it, it will kill you. Civilization is a jealous god, and will brook no other form of society.
You’ve confused their nature with their training. These people had to be trained methodically to reject such beliefs. We need to beat animism out of our children. We need to medicate natural-born hunters. The list goes on and on. That’s a very different thing from human nature.
People in civilization are victims of abuse, and abuse victims are very good at rationalizing their plight. We in civilization are very good at rationalizing our plight. We rationalize why war, or disease, or poverty, or hunger, or isolation, or wage slavery, or any of the rest of it is acceptable, or tolerable, or somehow unavoidable. We usually accept these as necessary evils, despite the fact that for 99% of our time on this planet, these “necessary” evils did not exist. It helps for us to isolate our history to only other civilized peoples who shared the same problems, and to project our problems into the past (like the “Overkill” theory).
I don’t know much about “good” or “bad” in terms of moral absolutes, but I know the effect that civilization has on real, flesh-and-blood human beings, and I know a justification of abuse when I see one. “Evil” seems about as apt a term as I can think of for the things civilization does to 6.5 billion people.
Of course–they had to. Everything they’ve ever known, everything they’ve ever believed, everything they’ve ever done depends on that myth being true, so we’ll continue to believe it’s true, no matter how much of a lie it’s exposed for. We have to.
September 26th, 2006 at 8:31 am
It just occurred to me the other night how I have often wondered whether any luck I have had or whether any situations where I have been saved as in - yeh it was shitty but it could have been a whole lot worse - or wherein I have always been saved from the worst - was due to the Chesed of my ancestors - on my father’s side. Chesed is similar to the Buddhist concept of merit.
So think on that - that perhaps your good fortune or your saving graces have been due to the Chesed of your ancestors.
But I suppose people prefer intellectual argumentation too much to just consider this on a contemplative level. It’s far easier to blast it apart with words and intellect and … ultimately … nothing.
No … really … contemplate it - it’s not rational - it’s not intellectual - you can’t really cogitate about it. It doesn’t work that way. No ritual works that way. No reaching to the infinite works that way. You can’t even really talk about it - you can only talk around it. And talking doesn’t do anyting anyway.
Try it. Shut your brain up and don’t be afraid. See what comes to you.
September 26th, 2006 at 9:14 am
That was supposed to go here. Peaknickster, my response got caught in moderation, so it’ll be a few hours before you see it. There were a few supporting statements I made as links to full essays we’d written on the topic, rather than rehashing the whole thing at length, so I guess it thought I was spamming the comments.
September 26th, 2006 at 9:35 am
Peaknickster, Thanks for pointing out the obvious. Seriously. I have been trying to make Jason and Lamanna think in the terms you point out here. I believe your thesis is right, as I thought Slomo was also right in his analysis.
As with any belief system, be it some religion or supposed cultural truism , people many times lose track of the fact that the things, they so called believe in, are not true. They are abstracted poetic concepts. Nothing wrong with that of course. To each their own.
While I tried to understand and be sympathetic towards these survivalist/primitivist ideas, at a certain point like you have just done, after contemplating them logically, It is better to just come out and give an opinion.
It is very difficult to defend belief.
September 26th, 2006 at 9:47 am
As I mentioned, I answered all of Peaknickster’s points easily–they’ve just been caught in moderation. It comes down to our enculturation. We accept our culture, and even defend it, the same way that a victim of abuse defends his abusers. It’s a well known syndrome on the individual level. Civilization simply moves that dynamic to the level of an entire society. The fact that the abused defend their abusers no more disproves abuse than when it happens in a dysfunctional family.
You mean like Technocracy? If you’re going to make grand claims like that without also including your own pet theories, you’re just being a hypocrite.
Then how do I do it so easily? Yes, it’s frustrating to have my answers blocked by moderation, but there’s not much I can do about that.
September 26th, 2006 at 9:51 am
Here’s my embargo’ed response, sans the supporting links, in the hopes that it will get past moderation so it can be seen. My previous post had a number of links back to essays we’d written on Anthropik, supporting contentions simply stated here, but that apparently was caught as spam. I’m posting this stripped version because the dialogue going on right now is being diminished for its absence, as evidenced by Skip’s contention that these ideas are unchallenged, or that primitivism is “difficult to defend,” a notion being lent evidence now simply by the vagaries of the site’s spam filter–hardly the rock-solid foundation a good discussion should begin with!
The same reason abuse victims defend their abusers.
Because we fear change–even change for the better–sometimes more than death. Humans are wired to accept the culture they’re born into–even if it’s a self-destructive, terrible culture.
Because the only way our culture can survive is by accepting on faith that life outside civilization is “solitary, nasty, brutish and short.” This is not a matter of evidence to most people, but of faith. It cannot be questioned, and no amount of evidence will make them consider otherwise, because it’s not an academic question. To question that recieved wisdom would be to question everything we’ve ever done with our lives. Many of us would rather clod along in misery, than think that we’d been had or used or abused for so long.
Those are two different questions. First, why no one wants to, because that myth above has succeeded. Life outside civilization is horrible, and it doesn’t matter how untrue that statement is, we will believe it to the bitter end because to do otherwise would be to throw into question everything we’ve ever known.
The second, because civilization has a good deal else in common with abusers, including the threat that if you leave it, it will kill you. Civilization is a jealous god, and will brook no other form of society.
You’ve confused their nature with their training. These people had to be trained methodically to reject such beliefs. We need to beat animism out of our children. We need to medicate natural-born hunters. The list goes on and on. That’s a very different thing from human nature.
People in civilization are victims of abuse, and abuse victims are very good at rationalizing their plight. We in civilization are very good at rationalizing our plight. We rationalize why war, or disease, or poverty, or hunger, or isolation, or wage slavery, or any of the rest of it is acceptable, or tolerable, or somehow unavoidable. We usually accept these as necessary evils, despite the fact that for 99% of our time on this planet, these “necessary” evils did not exist. It helps for us to isolate our history to only other civilized peoples who shared the same problems, and to project our problems into the past (like the “Overkill” theory).
I don’t know much about “good” or “bad” in terms of moral absolutes, but I know the effect that civilization has on real, flesh-and-blood human beings, and I know a justification of abuse when I see one. “Evil” seems about as apt a term as I can think of for the things civilization does to 6.5 billion people.
Of course–they had to. Everything they’ve ever known, everything they’ve ever believed, everything they’ve ever done depends on that myth being true, so we’ll continue to believe it’s true, no matter how much of a lie it’s exposed for. We have to.
September 26th, 2006 at 9:56 am
I’m going to see if I can post my supporting links individually. For wage slavery, see Why Work? For how we have to methodically train children away from the animism that comes so naturally to them, see Giuli’s recent post, “Of Animism and Animorphs.”
September 26th, 2006 at 9:58 am
On the topic of “medicating natural-born hunters,” see another of Giuli’s recent posts, this one on ADD, which Thom Hartmann calls an affliction of “hunters living in a farmers’ world,” “Human Tendency Disorder.” Giuli’s also working on an article that should go up later today, on how closely civilization resembles abuse on multiple levels. I’ll link that here when it goes up, too.
September 26th, 2006 at 10:01 am
And finally, on the subject of projecting our current destructiveness into the past, see my critique of the “Overkill” theory in “Overkill, Overchill & Human Nature.”
So in fact, primitivism isn’t hard to defend at all. I appreciate the points Peaknickster raises, but they’re not exactly the zinging indictments that Skip seems to think they are. From a primitivist perspective, they’re actually exactly what you’d expect. This kind of trauma doesn’t heal that easily–why would you expect it to? But it’s still very much our human nature. The fact that training us to expect anything less was so traumatizing for us should be evidence enough of that.
September 26th, 2006 at 10:11 am
I’ve got a lot of problems with Jensen, particularly when it comes to what he intends to do about the problem of civilization, but I also agree with a lot of what he has to say, particularly in addressing the nature of that problem. Jensen, a survivor of an abusive father who victimized both him and his mother, has written very openly about his experiences, and written extensively on the parallels between civilization and abuse. His writing is voluminous, so here’s an online essay that highlight some of what he means: “Insanity & Free Will.”
If civilization is a dysfunctional family, then what does a healthy one look like?
September 26th, 2006 at 12:14 pm
Okay, I’ll read this. I’m to be out of town for the rest of the week, so I won’t be responding to anybody.
September 26th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
But I will say one thing…
But those 6.5 billion people cannot exist without civilization. So how can we say that “evil” things are done to them if, quite frankly, they would starve to death if they tried to retribalize? I don’t know about you, but most people would prefer life over death, no matter how bad that life was.
So, in a way, leaving civilization would kill all those people–since civilization makes their existence possible, despite their meager existence.
Again, while I do not think of primitivists as genocidal maniacs, I just think that, if modern civilization was sustainable, then it would be unethical to try to stop modern civilization because of that requirement of mass death.
I’m fine with primitivists wanting to live in tribes, but they don’t have the right to force others to live that philosophy. The fact is, Jason, that you might feel that primitivism is a proper “ism,” but then, all “isms” feel their ideology is the proper one. Just look at agrarians who cite the same statistics about misery and abuse that you do, but draw the line at the Industrial Revolutions, and preach for a return to communal agrarian life. They are just as adamant about their beliefs even though you can see many problems with them.
I won’t argue about abuse. I disagree because abuse is subjective. For example, if I have sex with a 13-year-old girl, it is abuse in our culture, but it would not be in another culture. I also believe I must keep my mind open to people who might like civilization.
September 26th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Unless of course, there was a way to feed 6.5 billion people without modern industrialized civilization (and/or its agriculture). I’m not trying to argue that there is one, but I wanted to state the underlying basis for my moral argument I was making to challenge the “evil” concept. In short, if there was a way of feeding 6.5 billion people, and they could leave, then the moral arguments regarding primitivism would change (minus the arguments of civ’s unsustainability, that is).
September 26th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
Of course, they never would have been born in the first place had civilization not created them, so again, who’s the villain? Civilization created a mess it can’t clean up. It created a population it can’t support, and churns out massive numbers of people that it abuses. Many people are quite content to call a woman “evil” if she has more children than she can support; stretch that to its most insane extreme, and then make the woman the worst child abuser the world has ever seen, and you have a portrait of civilization.
Except civilization doesn’t make their existence possible, either. That kind of population can only be supported by methods that aren’t sustainable–that means that kind of population can’t be supported.
Indeed, if civilization was sustainable, you might have a point. You might have a point if up were down, black were white, or one were zero, too, but a sustainable civilization is a contradiction in terms. Humans exist at very high trophic levels, and the earth simply can’t support billions of us. It can support millions of us, but not billions.
Who’s forcing anyone? I’m just trying to spark the imagination of as many people as I can. The entire human species will live primitively by 2200, but this isn’t a matter of revolution; it’s a matter of evolution. Primitive life can’t support everyone, but most people aren’t going to hear this message anyway. The people with enough imagination to try is a much smaller population than what the earth could support primitively, and when civilization fails to support the people who depend on it, the only ones who will survive will be the ones with enough imagination to try living beyond civilization. Primitivism isn’t why so many people are going to die–that’s civilization’s fault. Primitivism is the reason that anyone’s going to survive.
Yes, but fairly lacking in evidence. I’ve gone head-to-head with them, as well. People have tried to find problems in my evidence, but I think I’ve refuted their arguments pretty completely. This isn’t about vehemence: it’s about evidence. We shouldn’t be swayed just by someone’s convictions, but by the supporting evidence they can offer for what they have to say.
No one likes civilization, though many say they do. They like some of the things that civilization tries to destroy but persist in spite of it, like art, music, etc.; they like some of the things they associate with civilization, like technology, that are in fact far, far older than civilization. But no one likes civilization–no one likes to be stuck in a hierarchy (not even the ones on top of it–they keep killing themselves), or used as a cog, or stripped of their basic human dignity and reduced to a mere unit of labor. People say they like civilization, but when you press them on what they like about it, they list off things that have nothing to do with civilization–things that are present, and often far more abundant, in the most primitive, uncivilized societies on earth, things that are at least four times older than civilization, and common to all human cultures, civilized and uncivilized alike. If I say I like civilization, and what I like about it is a list of things utterly irrelevant to civilization, do I actually like civilization, or am I simply defining everything good in my life in terms of my abuser?
That’s the connection with abuse, not some subjective definition of what constitutes abuse, but the fact that all the ways in which an abused child relates to an abusive parent, or an abused wife relates to an abusive husband, are the exact same ways that we relate to our culture.
September 26th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
My brother and I had a rousing discussion about Star Trek some time ago, and decided it was a sustainable civilization, because of the replicators. This could produce enough resources for their civilizations without draining their ecology, because the energy for them came from dilithium crystals. Not the dilithium known to chemistry, of course, but a fictional material that could be used in a matter-antimatter reaction.
In other words, magic. Not real magic, like David Abram writes about in Spell of the Sensuous, but magic in the sense of the suspension of the laws of physics. If some pesky, unassailable fact just weren’t so, civilization could be just fine.
You run into the same problem with perpetual motion machines, and in both cases, it always comes down to the same problem: the Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy.
So what? It might be possible in a thought experiment, but it’s not possible in this world, so what does it matter? In this world, civilization is unsustainable. In this world it is incapable of ever being sustainable. In this world civilization is the most murderous system that has ever existed, not only creating a population of billions of human beings it could never possibly support, but driving forth the worst mass extinction this planet has ever seen, and threatening the very survival of multi-cellular life on earth.
Next to that, what does it really matter if civilization could be sustainable, if the laws of physics weren’t in effect? They are, and we have to live inside them.
September 26th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
I fail to see the analogy here; since I would not consider that woman “evil.”
I have seen that asserted numerous times by you but I fail to understand the backing for such an absolute claim. You argue it is because it must expand–but I fail to see why. Why must civilization always expand? Again, while it is true that the evidence is important here, I fail to see the evidence as to why civilization must expand, especially since it is a human-created society and you have stated that it is not in our nature to expand.
This is a semantic problem I have with the word sustainability. Unsustainability does not equate impossiblity. If so, why are there 6.5 billion people today? Obviously they can be supported for a time, regardless of their sustainability, and they are currently existing. I think a more proper measure is not sustainability but how long something will last. Civilization did last for 10000 years regardless of its unsustainability.
It could if there was a sustainable way of cultivation that supported them. I’m not here to argue that there is; I’m just positing another thought experiment and I disagree that thought experiments have no merit–as the basis for all of our claims do start from thought experiments. We had to think about an idea before we verified it, after all.
But how is this so if you assert that civilization must always grow? With that argument, the Ancient Egyptians were sustainable because they were able to farm the Nile without draining their ecology. The Ancient Chinese were sustainable because they were able to farm the Yellow river without draining their ecology, and terracing stopped soil erosion. Terracing also stopped the Incas from draining their ecology as well.
But how if we see that not all civilizations at one time drained their ecologies? If civilization must always grow, how could Star Trek’s civilization be sustainable?
So you are basically saying that civilization comes against the laws of physics because of its need to expand. Again, you have based so many broad assumptions on that argument, yet I cannot see the backing for why a society like civilization must expand.
The mass extinction you mention only occurred when civilization industrialized and became global, not when civilization started. Sure, it led to it, but that wasn’t the way it was when it began. Also, while the overkill theory has been exaggerated, people did cause extinctions pre-civilization–you said so yourself, in Australia. This does not justify civilization’s existence, obviously, but it does show that sustainability is about finding a balance, not about whether or not you cause extinctions. The extinctions you mention is evidence of a failure to find a balance, but extinctions per se do not prove anything unless there is a return to a certain level of balance. And if a civilization was a sine curve of limited growth and collapse within a territory, that would be a balance since whatever extinctions in that territory occured would not spread worldwide.
This is where I must disagree with you. You cannot think outside of the box that people must hate civilization, yet so many others can, even other more moderate primitivists. How can you say that no one likex civilization? How can you make an absolute assertion? Who can? Have you talked to all 6.5 billion people on this world? This seems to me like blatant arrogance–people are unique and thus have different emotions. You cannot assert something like that which cannot be proven.
Besides, I can list things many people like about civilization–urban/suburban living, colleges, universities, movies, cars, computers–that did not exist prior to civilization. Most people I know who live in cities like living in those cities, as well as suburbanites. I have a friend that relocated to a small town of 2000 for work from a large city. He says that he feels alone in the small town, and visits his former city to retain his mental sanity.
And also, actions speak louder than words–regardless of how people feel, the fact that so few people actually walk their talk about their hatred shows that they justify the existence of whatever misery you feel you must think people have. I also told you that my father refuses to camp or live in any way resembling primitive, and would prefer civilized life. And I cannot see how you can deny the existence of an elite in civilization as not better than the forager’s existence–the elite man does not have to work, whereas the hunter still has to hunt and dry his meat by himself, and cut it himself. Even the civilized person can choose to do other work if he wishes. I can understand your argument for a person in a poorer area, but then, the fact that the person in the poorer area may like his life shows that just because you work harder does not mean you are miserable.
My friend went to Africa, where people are suffering due to civilization. She said that people there are quite content with their lot in lives, and know themselves much more than in America. I also notice there is little “openly primitivist” activity in Africa (despite primitivists talking about it so much). So maybe our discussions reflect that aspect of American culture where we are not content with our lives and thus we question and think about them.
Art, music, technology, etc. are older than civilization–but there are so many more numerous forms of it in civilization. In my civilized metropolis I have access to blues, cajun, reggae, rap, rock, country, and more ethnic music. I have access to modern art, impressionism, pottery, movies, comic strips, electronic art, and much more. I love movies, and they could not be replicated outside of civilization. I would not be having this conversation without the technology of civilization. I have access to writing and lots of different books and authors, and even though there are pre-civilized societies with writing (the horticultural tribes of the Phillipines).
But how does civilization try to destroy art, music, technology, etc.? Those things seem more diverse, as civilization is, with more complex ways for humans to live.
I do not see how reverting to a tribal existence will improve my life. I see that civilization enables me to do many things I could not do as a tribesman, and will live life to the fullest until civilization burns out, and die if civilization is inherently unsustainable. I am still mentioning that because again, while you think it is absolute truth, many other intelligent people have arguments to counter that, and your scenario that you mentioned of the entire human race living primitively (unless, a few pockets of civilization, maybe) only works if civilization is truly unsustainable. I don’t feel qualified to agree with anyone yet, you might be right, but so might your critics.
I like my large-scale society, and would feel stifled in a small band. In a tribe, you have art and music but are limited to a much smaller amount of it (it’s obvious that it’s more complex in civilization) and have access to people all over the world on the Internet. So how can you say that the forager existence gives you access to more art, music, philosophy, etc. when there is obviously so much more in civilization? And I’m in the middle of a career program to study to work in a school in a special-ed classroom. Without civilization, I won’t be able to pursue my dream job.
In fact, my life would be a lot easier if I just continued my life and stopped thinking about these ideologies. So I don’t see how primitivism has helped me at all.
Where is the backing that civilization cannot live within the laws of physics? I don’t see physicists stating that.
September 26th, 2006 at 3:06 pm
But if those 6.5 billion cannot be sustained except temporarily by unsustainable methods, I cannot see why they would think of civilization as evil if it is keeping them alive, and I was challenging your assertion that EVERY person thinks civ is evil.
In your previous post, you pointed out that civilization creates a myth that if you do not submit to it, you will die. Doesn’t the fact that 6.5 billion people can’t be supported by a hierarchal civilization that forces submission support that idea? How is it a myth if those people would die, and will die if civilization collapses!
Like I said. You cannot see civilization except only as abuse.
September 26th, 20