I think primitivism is inherently self-limiting in terms of securing a following. The idea of dispensing with technology is so self-evidently undesirable to the overwhelming majority of humanity, you just don't have to spend much time arguing the point.
What an horrendously closed-minded comment about representation, which says a lot about the narcissism of the anarchist creed. Representation begets sublimation, which in turn opens our eyes to our common humanity by offering us a shared profound experience with the creator and the audience.
Its an interesting question about how psychedelics may have contributed to Zerzan's primitivistic outlook. There are other intellectual's who agree that drugs have helped them. Susan Blackmore believes that she couldn't have done the work she did without the aid of marijuana.
Yes, but how many people of various stripes, including the mainstream who are of that age, roughly, have done the same things? We know that Gore, Bush, Clinton, and Obama all used drugs.
Every time he talks, he just seems so much more rational to me. A lot of it is having to come to my own conclusions I guess, but I can understand some of his perceived detriments of language (we're out of tune with our bodies, the land, and so fourth).
Anarcho-primitivism is a horrible idea! It's worse than anarcho-capitalism and that's saying something. We need to have a speedy, advanced and technological process of widely distributing resources and we ought to have it without our hierarchical restrictions we have today. The negative results of industrialism should be challenged with newer, cleaner technologies. Advance the technology, clean the industry and drop the state. Anarcho-communism is the only realistic anarchism.
i'm not sure if it's definitely the case that primitivism is always a bad thing. Our technological advancement has already exceeded perceptible morality is getting to the point of exceeding rationality. what i mean is, we already create things that without considering the ethical implications and we are getting to the point where we cant even explain why we are doing it.. Atomic weapons, the CERN and the HARRP are two examples of this.
Anarchism must place means over ends as the only basis for anti-authoritarianism, the best possible outcomes must be those resulting from freedom. It should be focused on How to provide the Means for maximal, experiential and expressive, personal liberty supported by a systemic mutual aid. How will/should people want to live after that? Lets find out. What we need is the freedom to learn and decide for ourselves, not another group defining freedom, and the correct outcomes of freedom, for us.
it's not that we don't believe in solidarity- it's just that we cannot deceive ourselves about how deep the problems go. many anarchists do not even pay much attention to environmental issues, or indigenous rights, etc. we cannot fall into the trap of thinking that the world's problems can be fixed by simply by re-arranging our social structures. we must also address the culture that underlies civilization and technology. this goes way beyond anything the chomsky's of the world ever mention.
When you say "many anarchists" I just don't buy it. Maybe SOME, but people who truly describe themselves anarchist are by default radical environmentalists and support indigenous peoples, etc. They are already passionate about those issues because one leads to the other.
No one is saying take over the system of production and leave it the way it is, NO ONE. The point is to create an anti-authoritarian environment and then dismantle what needs to be. I think primitivism is unnecessary.
In my view, primitivism is a theoretical perspective that focuses on the flaws of human technological solutions such as intensive agriculture, cities, etc.
From this theoretical vantage point, primitivists are developing many different ideas about how to move culture away from the technical machine. Personally, I think permaculture is a good starting point. Others think we have to go further than that. But we all agree that industrial civilization needs to go.
Great questions! I've never heard of a syndicalist who wanted to dismantle technology long-term, but it makes total sense. I'm just afraid that necessary ecological diversity won't survive that long.
I didn't say I wanted to dismantle technology long-term. I just raised the possibility of people choosing to do so after they took control of industry, which I would totally respect.
Capitalism gives rise to technology made in it's own image, so we have the most incredible technology for killing people but we haven't found a cure for cancer yet.
Nevermind that cancer is largely a civilized phenomenon, increasing sharply since the industrial revolution. Cancer doesn't occur in traditional cultures on traditional diets. So is the solution to cancer to trust in technological progress and hope for a cure in the future, or to stop the very processes that caused the cancer in the first place?
You are a fool. The reason cancer rates have risen so much in post industrial society is because life expectancy has risen sharply. Old age correlates very strongly with cancer for reasons I should not have to explain.
"Cancer doesn't occur in traditional cultures..."
I am pretty sure you are just making that up or that is baseless hear-say. Cancer has been documented way back to the time of the ancient Egyptians. Carcinogens are rather common in nature and are not purely man made.
Not to mention that Louis Leakey has found evidence of a tumor in a pre-homo sapien species of human--a homo erectus. There's much more, such a homo sapien recovered from the bronze age with a tumor.
You guys should look at everything that technology has done for us before you go out and pursue an idealist society that will result in the preventable deaths of billions. Anybody that dogmatically spouts nonsense about how preindustrial or primitive societies are healthier than...
No one's saying there was NO cancer before. Just that the incidence of cancer is dramatically correlated with being civilized.
And nobody is calling for the death of billions. We're just not ignorant or in denial about the fact that the planet cannot support 6 billion people. As many as 80 percent of human calories come from annual monocrops that are fertilized with fossil fuel-based nitrogren fertilizers. What's going to happen when the fossil fuel runs out? Read Overshoot by William Catton.
Perhaps I'll read Overshoot, but what is your solution? Stop using fossil fuels? Isn't that the problem? I agree we are going to "bite the bullet" someday, but I am in that camp that says "oh, fuck it." All species wind up in extinction eventually. History be my evidence, it is inevitable.
Frederick Hoffman, founder of the American Cancer Society and author of "Mortality from Cancer Throughout the World" wrote that cancer is caused by the food of civilization: "far-reaching changes in bodily functioning and metabolism are introduced which, extending over many years, are the causes or conditions predisposing to the development of malignant new growths, and in part at least explain the observed increase in the cancer rate of practically all civilized and highly urbanized countries."
You can look at the research of Stanislau Tanchou who discovered that cancer is an urban phenomenon, not a rural one. "Cancer, like insanity, seems to increase with the progress of civilization." British doctors reported that among 120,000 Aborigines in Fiji, there were exactly two reported cancer deaths. An article out of Queen's University in Ontario opens with: "It is commonly stated that cancer does not occur in Eskimos, and to our knowledge no case has so far been reported."
Your evidence is sparse, and it is quite vague, and it does nothing to reject the most rational hypothesis, which is that the increased number of cell divisions due to high life duration brought on from modern advances in medicine has increased the prevalence of cancer in society more than any other factor. A simple google search on "inuit cancer" or "aleut cancer" shows cancer has been found in those human subgroups, it just has been a rarity.
First page: "hunter-gatherers and numerous non-industrial populations throughout the world have vanishingly small cancer rates."
Second page: " During the second half of the 20th century, Inuit societies underwent major changes in lifestyle and living conditions, and the risk of lifestyle-associated tumours, especially cancers of the lung, colon, and breast, increased considerably after changes in smoking, diet, and reproductive factors."
Right, that's what I found too. Like I said before, cancer has been found in those human subgroups, it just has been a rarity. This, of course, falsifies the embellished claim of the author you cited.
"It is commonly stated that cancer does not occur in Eskimos, and to our knowledge no case so far has been reported."
All the results show Inuits developing cancer AFTER they adopting civilized practices, which just confirms my argument. Check out Weston A. Price's book on nutrition and physical degeneration for further evidence of that sort.
And increased life expectancy is often the result of a reduction in the infant mortality rate. True, infectious diseases like tuberculosis can be a problem among indigenous populations. This obviously affects life expectancy. But cancer is not an infectious disease.
No, it doesn't "confirm" your argument. It takes correlation as causation and does nothing to tease out the null hypothesis which runs concurrent with all of the information he has cited. In fact, he states he is going to refute the "fallacy" (incorrect word) in the next blog post but he does not. In fact he demonstrates that life expectancy for the sample he uses, sans infant deaths, is a meager 43.5. The average life expectancy in the USA 78.11 with infant mortality. If we took out...
...if we took out infant deaths, I would not be surprised if USA mean life span nearly doubles that of that Inuit sample. And you cannot say "well that would mean that cancer incidence would just be double of that of the Inuits." Age increases incidence odds exponentially, not just by a simple coefficient.
Doesn't anarcho-syndicalism imply collective ownership and cautious development of techonology? Why would we, having accomplished that, therefore seek to abolish technology?
We already are in many ways advanced enough to create a largely sustainable society, corporate tyranny prevents that.
I thought the appeal to primitivism was that technology under private or corporate ownership will continue to be abused and collective ownership is impossible therefore we can only abolish it.
If we managed to democratize technology, which is the aim of anarcho-syndalism, then it wouldn't it be a hideous evil to abolish it?
I suggest you read Richard Heinberg's "The Party's Over" if you really think industrial society can be largely sustainable and it's only corporate tyranny that's stopping it. He goes one by one through all the technologies that are purported to be able to save our way of living, from solar, wind, ethanol, etc. and pokes serious holes in their feasibility. It's industrial civilization itself that's inherently unsustainable.
This is a useful distillation of how technology kind of has its own ideology. Under the ideology of technology, the solution to the problems of technology is always more technology, never less. More advanced, more developed, etc. The myriad problems created by nuclear power are not inherent in the technology itself, but in the fact that the technology is not advanced enough, industrialists argue.
There's no intelligible objection to that argument though. No one serious or rational has actually developed a coherent argument that technology is not necessarily bad, or can't be good.
Yeah, the early anarcho-syndicalists had a very positive view of industrial society. They just didn't like the way it was run. Primitivists are much more skeptical of industry, production, progress, sustainability(tm), etc.
What struck me in this interview is that he questions back. Thats a lovely gesture of him, dismantling the borders between interviewer and the interviewed, turning it into a talk between two humans - not like between an "authority" and a "truth-seeker".
I think primitivism is inherently self-limiting in terms of securing a following. The idea of dispensing with technology is so self-evidently undesirable to the overwhelming majority of humanity, you just don't have to spend much time arguing the point.
fileboy2002 6 months ago
Awesome Guy... all the support.
MetziTecol 1 year ago
While I disagree with Zerzan, I do respect him.
PersianPaladin 2 years ago
I don't respect him, Zerzan is a reactionary. His beliefs completely reject class struggle.
TeflonMaster 1 year ago
@TeflonMaster There wouldn't be a class if there were an art or culture (enabled through domestication) if not for technology.
PObserver 1 year ago
Anarchism is art
tbktb 2 years ago
What an horrendously closed-minded comment about representation, which says a lot about the narcissism of the anarchist creed. Representation begets sublimation, which in turn opens our eyes to our common humanity by offering us a shared profound experience with the creator and the audience.
DublinDilettante 2 years ago
Its an interesting question about how psychedelics may have contributed to Zerzan's primitivistic outlook. There are other intellectual's who agree that drugs have helped them. Susan Blackmore believes that she couldn't have done the work she did without the aid of marijuana.
spartan2600 2 years ago
@spartan2600
Yes, but how many people of various stripes, including the mainstream who are of that age, roughly, have done the same things? We know that Gore, Bush, Clinton, and Obama all used drugs.
Estragon17 2 years ago
Every time he talks, he just seems so much more rational to me. A lot of it is having to come to my own conclusions I guess, but I can understand some of his perceived detriments of language (we're out of tune with our bodies, the land, and so fourth).
DeflocculatedDentist 2 years ago
The first and last questions where the most relevant, I think. =]
I don't think I'd be doing what I do today if it weren't for psychedelics.
KenCat1337 2 years ago
Anarcho-primitivism is a horrible idea! It's worse than anarcho-capitalism and that's saying something. We need to have a speedy, advanced and technological process of widely distributing resources and we ought to have it without our hierarchical restrictions we have today. The negative results of industrialism should be challenged with newer, cleaner technologies. Advance the technology, clean the industry and drop the state. Anarcho-communism is the only realistic anarchism.
spiltanarchy 2 years ago
i'm not sure if it's definitely the case that primitivism is always a bad thing. Our technological advancement has already exceeded perceptible morality is getting to the point of exceeding rationality. what i mean is, we already create things that without considering the ethical implications and we are getting to the point where we cant even explain why we are doing it.. Atomic weapons, the CERN and the HARRP are two examples of this.
rey9883 2 years ago
Not that this is boring! Good questions.
nuclearnight 2 years ago
I met that dewd, he was kinda boring.
nuclearnight 2 years ago
Anarchism must place means over ends as the only basis for anti-authoritarianism, the best possible outcomes must be those resulting from freedom. It should be focused on How to provide the Means for maximal, experiential and expressive, personal liberty supported by a systemic mutual aid. How will/should people want to live after that? Lets find out. What we need is the freedom to learn and decide for ourselves, not another group defining freedom, and the correct outcomes of freedom, for us.
universalcommons 2 years ago
That it was cool that you interviewed him.
Glad you got him to say anarcho-syndicalism is a stepping stone. Maybe we can start getting green anarchists to believe in solidarity.
bjarczyk 2 years ago
it's not that we don't believe in solidarity- it's just that we cannot deceive ourselves about how deep the problems go. many anarchists do not even pay much attention to environmental issues, or indigenous rights, etc. we cannot fall into the trap of thinking that the world's problems can be fixed by simply by re-arranging our social structures. we must also address the culture that underlies civilization and technology. this goes way beyond anything the chomsky's of the world ever mention.
theGreenAnarchist 2 years ago 3
When you say "many anarchists" I just don't buy it. Maybe SOME, but people who truly describe themselves anarchist are by default radical environmentalists and support indigenous peoples, etc. They are already passionate about those issues because one leads to the other.
No one is saying take over the system of production and leave it the way it is, NO ONE. The point is to create an anti-authoritarian environment and then dismantle what needs to be. I think primitivism is unnecessary.
bjarczyk 2 years ago
In my view, primitivism is a theoretical perspective that focuses on the flaws of human technological solutions such as intensive agriculture, cities, etc.
From this theoretical vantage point, primitivists are developing many different ideas about how to move culture away from the technical machine. Personally, I think permaculture is a good starting point. Others think we have to go further than that. But we all agree that industrial civilization needs to go.
theGreenAnarchist 2 years ago 4
i am with theGreenAnarchist, anarcho-primitivism is a study about what bring us today, i cant see any pure anarchism apart from anarcho-primitiv
gggrzesiek 2 years ago
Chomsky, for one, says very little about a post authoritarian world, since he believes it will be up to the people to decide what it will be like.
That being a vital component of moving away from a dictat of the few.
CapitalistHolocaust 2 years ago
Great questions! I've never heard of a syndicalist who wanted to dismantle technology long-term, but it makes total sense. I'm just afraid that necessary ecological diversity won't survive that long.
AntiLoquaxx 2 years ago
I didn't say I wanted to dismantle technology long-term. I just raised the possibility of people choosing to do so after they took control of industry, which I would totally respect.
mr1001nights 2 years ago
Capitalism gives rise to technology made in it's own image, so we have the most incredible technology for killing people but we haven't found a cure for cancer yet.
jumpnjza2 2 years ago 4
Nevermind that cancer is largely a civilized phenomenon, increasing sharply since the industrial revolution. Cancer doesn't occur in traditional cultures on traditional diets. So is the solution to cancer to trust in technological progress and hope for a cure in the future, or to stop the very processes that caused the cancer in the first place?
jianenohashi 2 years ago 2
I'd say we invest in technology which I'm all for.
jumpnjza2 2 years ago
You are a fool. The reason cancer rates have risen so much in post industrial society is because life expectancy has risen sharply. Old age correlates very strongly with cancer for reasons I should not have to explain.
"Cancer doesn't occur in traditional cultures..."
I am pretty sure you are just making that up or that is baseless hear-say. Cancer has been documented way back to the time of the ancient Egyptians. Carcinogens are rather common in nature and are not purely man made.
IIKruZerII 2 years ago
Not to mention that Louis Leakey has found evidence of a tumor in a pre-homo sapien species of human--a homo erectus. There's much more, such a homo sapien recovered from the bronze age with a tumor.
You guys should look at everything that technology has done for us before you go out and pursue an idealist society that will result in the preventable deaths of billions. Anybody that dogmatically spouts nonsense about how preindustrial or primitive societies are healthier than...
IIKruZerII 2 years ago
post industrial societies is a liar or an ignoramus.
IIKruZerII 2 years ago
No one's saying there was NO cancer before. Just that the incidence of cancer is dramatically correlated with being civilized.
And nobody is calling for the death of billions. We're just not ignorant or in denial about the fact that the planet cannot support 6 billion people. As many as 80 percent of human calories come from annual monocrops that are fertilized with fossil fuel-based nitrogren fertilizers. What's going to happen when the fossil fuel runs out? Read Overshoot by William Catton.
jianenohashi 2 years ago
Perhaps I'll read Overshoot, but what is your solution? Stop using fossil fuels? Isn't that the problem? I agree we are going to "bite the bullet" someday, but I am in that camp that says "oh, fuck it." All species wind up in extinction eventually. History be my evidence, it is inevitable.
IIKruZerII 2 years ago
*such as
tired...
IIKruZerII 2 years ago
Frederick Hoffman, founder of the American Cancer Society and author of "Mortality from Cancer Throughout the World" wrote that cancer is caused by the food of civilization: "far-reaching changes in bodily functioning and metabolism are introduced which, extending over many years, are the causes or conditions predisposing to the development of malignant new growths, and in part at least explain the observed increase in the cancer rate of practically all civilized and highly urbanized countries."
jianenohashi 2 years ago
You can look at the research of Stanislau Tanchou who discovered that cancer is an urban phenomenon, not a rural one. "Cancer, like insanity, seems to increase with the progress of civilization." British doctors reported that among 120,000 Aborigines in Fiji, there were exactly two reported cancer deaths. An article out of Queen's University in Ontario opens with: "It is commonly stated that cancer does not occur in Eskimos, and to our knowledge no case has so far been reported."
jianenohashi 2 years ago
Your evidence is sparse, and it is quite vague, and it does nothing to reject the most rational hypothesis, which is that the increased number of cell divisions due to high life duration brought on from modern advances in medicine has increased the prevalence of cancer in society more than any other factor. A simple google search on "inuit cancer" or "aleut cancer" shows cancer has been found in those human subgroups, it just has been a rarity.
IIKruZerII 2 years ago
I googled "inuit cancer." Here's what I found:
First page: "hunter-gatherers and numerous non-industrial populations throughout the world have vanishingly small cancer rates."
Second page: " During the second half of the 20th century, Inuit societies underwent major changes in lifestyle and living conditions, and the risk of lifestyle-associated tumours, especially cancers of the lung, colon, and breast, increased considerably after changes in smoking, diet, and reproductive factors."
jianenohashi 2 years ago
Right, that's what I found too. Like I said before, cancer has been found in those human subgroups, it just has been a rarity. This, of course, falsifies the embellished claim of the author you cited.
"It is commonly stated that cancer does not occur in Eskimos, and to our knowledge no case so far has been reported."
Bam.
IIKruZerII 2 years ago
All the results show Inuits developing cancer AFTER they adopting civilized practices, which just confirms my argument. Check out Weston A. Price's book on nutrition and physical degeneration for further evidence of that sort.
And increased life expectancy is often the result of a reduction in the infant mortality rate. True, infectious diseases like tuberculosis can be a problem among indigenous populations. This obviously affects life expectancy. But cancer is not an infectious disease.
jianenohashi 2 years ago
No, it doesn't "confirm" your argument. It takes correlation as causation and does nothing to tease out the null hypothesis which runs concurrent with all of the information he has cited. In fact, he states he is going to refute the "fallacy" (incorrect word) in the next blog post but he does not. In fact he demonstrates that life expectancy for the sample he uses, sans infant deaths, is a meager 43.5. The average life expectancy in the USA 78.11 with infant mortality. If we took out...
IIKruZerII 2 years ago
...if we took out infant deaths, I would not be surprised if USA mean life span nearly doubles that of that Inuit sample. And you cannot say "well that would mean that cancer incidence would just be double of that of the Inuits." Age increases incidence odds exponentially, not just by a simple coefficient.
IIKruZerII 2 years ago
Doesn't anarcho-syndicalism imply collective ownership and cautious development of techonology? Why would we, having accomplished that, therefore seek to abolish technology?
This makes little sense to me.
kpirooz92 2 years ago 6
Maybe technology can be so advanced that we don't have the deleterious effects of industrialization, therefore we can keep the best of both worlds.
PolemicalCommentary 2 years ago 5
We already are in many ways advanced enough to create a largely sustainable society, corporate tyranny prevents that.
I thought the appeal to primitivism was that technology under private or corporate ownership will continue to be abused and collective ownership is impossible therefore we can only abolish it.
If we managed to democratize technology, which is the aim of anarcho-syndalism, then it wouldn't it be a hideous evil to abolish it?
kpirooz92 2 years ago
I suggest you read Richard Heinberg's "The Party's Over" if you really think industrial society can be largely sustainable and it's only corporate tyranny that's stopping it. He goes one by one through all the technologies that are purported to be able to save our way of living, from solar, wind, ethanol, etc. and pokes serious holes in their feasibility. It's industrial civilization itself that's inherently unsustainable.
jianenohashi 2 years ago
"Maybe technology can be so advanced"
This is a useful distillation of how technology kind of has its own ideology. Under the ideology of technology, the solution to the problems of technology is always more technology, never less. More advanced, more developed, etc. The myriad problems created by nuclear power are not inherent in the technology itself, but in the fact that the technology is not advanced enough, industrialists argue.
jianenohashi 2 years ago
There's no intelligible objection to that argument though. No one serious or rational has actually developed a coherent argument that technology is not necessarily bad, or can't be good.
jammoexii 2 years ago 2
Yeah, the early anarcho-syndicalists had a very positive view of industrial society. They just didn't like the way it was run. Primitivists are much more skeptical of industry, production, progress, sustainability(tm), etc.
jianenohashi 2 years ago
What struck me in this interview is that he questions back. Thats a lovely gesture of him, dismantling the borders between interviewer and the interviewed, turning it into a talk between two humans - not like between an "authority" and a "truth-seeker".
Staubdumm 2 years ago 15
Maybe he questions back because he doesn't have answers.
kpirooz92 2 years ago
We should book him for the Authority Smashing! Hour.
Chomskyan 2 years ago 11
Did you consider posting the Authority Smashing Hour on youtube (maybe separate channel). That would be great!
organdva 2 years ago
yes, it's in the works. but probably not the entire show, but a collection of "best of" pieces.
Chomskyan 2 years ago
Looking forward.
organdva 2 years ago