Meet the Anarcho-Primitivist movement. They want to return mankind to the Stone-Age.

[DetlefK]

http://io9.com/why-do-the-anarcho-primitivists-want-to-abolish-civiliz-1633477541

excerpts: (comments mine)

io9: Anarcho-primitivism is as much a critique of modernity as is it a prescription for our perceived ills. Can you describe the kind of future you're envisioning?

Zerzan: I want to see mass society radically decentralized into face-to-face communities. Only then can the individual be both responsible and autonomous. As Paul Shepard said, "Back to the Pleistocene!"

(How many people can you be face-to-face with? And what if some people decide that enlarging their community beyond that size brings dietary, reproductive, economic and military advantages?)




io9: Then how do you distinguish between tools that are acceptable for use versus those that give rise to "anti-hierarchical relations"?

Zerzan: Those tools that involve the least division of labor or specialization involve or imply qualities such as intimacy, equality, flexibility. With increased division of labor we moved away from tools to systems of technology, where the dominant qualities or values are distancing, reliance on experts, inflexibility.

(No experts -> no casting of metals. Stone-Age it is.)




io9: You argue that a hunter-gatherer lifestyle is as close to the ideal state of being as is possible. The Amish, on the other hand, have drawn the line at industrialization, and they've subsequently adopted an agrarian lifestyle. What is it about the advent of agriculture and domestication that's so problematic?

Zerzan: In the 1980s Jared Diamond called the move to domestication or agriculture "the worst mistake humans ever made." A fundamental shift away from taking what nature gives to the domination of nature. The inner logic of domestication of animals and plants is an unbroken progression, which always deepens and extends the ethos of control. Now of course control has reached the molecular level with nanotechnology, and the sphere of what I think is the very unhealthy fantasies of transhumanist neuroscience and AI.

(I wonder, how he wants to feed a whole society without a reliable source of food. Famine would mean going to war with neighbouring utopian, peaceful, perfect communities, killing them and stealing their food.)




io9: Tell us about the anarcho-primitivist position on science.

Zerzan: The reigning notion of what is science is an objectifying method, which magnifies the subject-object split. "Science" for hunter-gatherers is very basically different. It is based on participation with living nature, intimacy with it. Science in modernity mainly breaks reality down into now dead, inert fragments to "unlock" its "secrets." Is that superior to a forager who knows a number of things from the way a blade of grass is bent?

(But gleaning information from the way a blade of grass is bent won't distill you medicine or cut out your infected appendix.)




io9: That's a very presentist view. Some left-leaning futurists argue, for example, that ongoing technological progress (both in robotics and artificial intelligence) will lead to an automation revolution — one that will free us from dangerous and demeaning work. It's very possible that we'll be able to invent our way out of the current labor model that you're so opposed to.

Zerzan: Technological advances have only meant MORE work. That is the record. In light of this it is not quite cogent to promise that a more technological mass society will mean less work. Again, reality anyone??

(It seems to me that using the internet and printed paper to spread your anti-technology-message is less work than walking around and telling each person personally.)




io9: Transhumanists advocate for the iterative improvement of the human species, things like enhanced intelligence and memory, the elimination of psychological disorders (including depression), radical life extension, and greater physical capacities. Tell us why you're so opposed to these things.

Zerzan: Why I am opposed to these things? Let's take them in order:

Enhanced intelligence and memory? I think it is now quite clear that advancing technology in fact makes people stupider and reduces memory. Attention span is lessened by Tweet-type modes, abbreviated, illiterate means of communicating. People are being trained to stare at screens at all times, a techno-haze that displaces life around them. I see zombies, not sharper, more tuned in people.

Elimination of psychological disorders? But narcissism, autism and all manner of such disabilities are on the rise in a more and more tech-oriented world.

Radical life extension? One achievement of modernity is increased longevity, granted. This has begun to slip a bit, however, in some categories. And one can ponder what is the quality of life? Chronic conditions are on the rise though people can often be kept alive longer. There's no evidence favoring a radical life extension.

Greater physical capacities? Our senses were once acute and we were far more robust than we are now under the sign of technology. Look at all the flaccid, sedentary computer jockeys and extend that forward. It is not I who doesn't want these thing; rather, the results are negative looking at the techno project, eh?

(1. I argue that keeping up with 20 sources of information simultaneously takes a lot of brain-power. 2. In the Stone-Age, having a severe psychological disorder meant death. He accidently proposed euthanasia. 3. The average longevity of modern mankind stems from the massively reduced child-mortality. He accidently proposed letting sick children die. 4. He did not take into account that the evolutionary attributes considered favorable in a modern society are different from those in a primitive society. Being short-sighted with a poor sense of smell doesn't matter. Nowadays, women don't want a muscled, hunting brute for husband. They want an emotionally caring provider.)

[littlemissmartypants]

1. Excellent catch, DetlefK. Great post.

I hope it doesn't sink like a stone.

Thanks again.

Love, Peace and Shelter.
~ littlemissmartypants

[silverweb]

2. Sure. That'll work.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]Crackpots abound.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

3. He doesn't appear to be 'walking the walk'.

Rather than actually trying to serve as a living example of his 'utopia', he seems to be embracing modern society. He wears glasses, he isn't wearing clothing he made (free of 'experts'), he uses computers, and on, and on, and on. I will take him and his movement more seriously when they start actually practicing what they preach. He could start simply by learning to live like the Amish before moving even further backward in time.

[jollyreaper2112]

4. he is a moron

You want to live without tech, you will die. We are poorly equipped for livubg like cavemen. Tech has brought IRS share of evils. I am for using it prudently and judiciously. I am not in favor of paving over nature.

As someone pointed out in the article, the fucker is wearing glasses. What an idiot.

I can more get behind liberal Amish sects that use machinery but ask what the impacts are before bringing it into their lives. How do they want to live? How will the tech change them? Do they feel like the master or the slave?

We don't really have this conversation, there's no forum for it. Look at fracking. It is just being done to us. Why? Because it is making someone money. It is without consent.

Tech is not self-aware, has no conscience, is without morals. Tech is tools. The morality lies with us. If we can't handle tech responsibly, what makes him think we will handle primitive society with any more aplomb?

[AlbertCat]

5. They want to return mankind to the Stone-Age.

I thought that was the Teabaggers and Libertarians.

[AlbertCat]

6. Those tools that involve the least division of labor or specialization

Does he think that stone tools are something anyone can make well? Does he think there were no stone age individuals who were better at it, and maybe therefore were sought out or rewarded more than others? Then of course there were obviously stone age individuals who could USE the tools better than others (including the makers) and were also sought out and rewarded? Isn't this one of the things that leads to what we would think of as a modern society?


"And one can ponder what is the quality of life? " (re "extending life&quot

Well, as my mother used to say: "Be thankful you were born after penicillin."

What the hell does he think the quality of stone age life, that usually ended at say 30-something, was like? Does he want to be near the bottom of the food chain again too?

It's kinda funny that he doesn't seem to really get how awful Stone Age life musta been like, because he's using all the tools given to him by modern life to over analyze his dumb idea.

[CanonRay]

7. I think he may eventually get his wish

but not in the manner he expects or would like it to happen. We'll be back in caves soon enough.

[eppur_se_muova]

8. As long as Earth's population stays below, say, a million, things should work out. nt

[NickB79]

12. Exactly. We're past natural carrying capacity by "only" about 6.9 billion humans or so

He's not advocating just going back to pre-tech days. He's talking about getting rid of AGRICULTURE!

[salimbag]

16. Early Hawaiian society

Before the arrival of Captain Cook, the Hawaiian islands supported approximately one million people. They were without metal, therefore "stone age", and had a ridgidly structured society. Not likely anyone today would be able to follow this model, but it worked for the Hawaiian nation.

[JoeyT]

9. The solution is to hand the guy two rocks and tell him you'll be back

in an hour and expect him to have knapped a spear out of one of them using the other one.

I wonder what kind of rocks and sticks he's going to make his prescription eyewear with. He's got them on in every picture of him on google image search except one where he's obviously posing, so I'm guessing they're pretty necessary.

[Warpy]

10. At least the "back to the land" hippies had a reasonable idea

that small scale and sustainable farming was backbreaking and accepted things modernity provides like dental care and vaccinations for the kiddies and minor labor saving equipment like roto tillers.

The truth is that Utopian dreamers are all wandering around with their heads up their butts. Yes, the stone age provided all the tools people of the time needed. That bit about not having half their kids survive to the age of 5 and dying themselves in their 30s due to dental infection is a small price to pay for entering a new stone age.

Zerzan is no different from an aristocratic Fabian in the Edwardian era. His life of privilege has given him nothing but rose colored glasses to look through. Only someone utterly ignorant of the food insecurity and ill health enjoyed in the stone age would try to relive it.

The biggest dreamers among the hippies were a lot more reality based than he is and the hippies were drugged.

[lastlib]

11. aka the GOPee......

[NaturalHigh]

13. This guy is just nuts.

What makes him think he would survive in his utopia? I think I could even last longer than him.

[Warren DeMontague]

14. People love the story of the garden of eden, and "original sin". They love, love, LOVE it!

They love it so much they'll dress it up in all sorts of different clothes, blissfully unaware that underneath it's still the same damn story.

[Shankapotomus]

15. Without technology it's doubtful

most in that group would be alive today. What we need is clean technology and clean ways of manufacturing it and recycling, not no technology.

[hobbit709]

17. "Lions and tigers and bears. Oh SHIT!"