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Title: Portrait Author: Daniel J. Lavender Date: 2015 Language: en Topics: anarchy, anarcho-primitivism, nature, industry, oppression Source: Retrieved Oct 2015 from [[http://guymcpherson.com/2015/10/portrait]]
Paved fields, mangled forests, polluted skies and lakes, uniformed thugs
tormenting citizens to compel adherence to the lifeless, demeaning
industrial system. This is the portrait of our landscape.
Industrial society elicits the worst in people. It reduces humanity to
hypocrisy. Humans coddle the dolphins but trap the tuna. Humans curse
litter beside the highway while driving to the supermarket.
Deforestation, acidification of the oceans, massive animal die-off and
polluted skies are ignored in the pursuit of economic development but
the stray bottle cast into the ditch is sin. Government punishes
individuals for bottles and papers yet literally paves the way for
corporations and industrial expansion.
Industrial society elicits the worst in everyone.
The industrial system allows isolation of goods into the hands of a few.
As a result, the vast majority must either work for, or steal from,
those few to subsist. Since law and its enforcement are forced upon the
people, individuals are coerced to work for these few. And with
industry, tools of coercion and control are as effective as ever. In
essence the industrial system allows the few to easily enslave the many.
Individuals are processed and conditioned for efficient use by the
industrial system. Any threat to that efficiency is addressed by law
enforcement and the courts. Truant children along with their families
are tormented. Those who aren't conditioned at an early age are more
difficult to condition later on thus hindering the system's efficiency.
Thieves are apprehended and imprisoned. Thieves hinder the system's
efficiency because they don't work, they steal. Unemployment is bad for
the system, and the few, because neither can be sustained if the people
aren't working. The few would actually have to do something for
themselves. Habitual drug-users are harassed because they too hinder the
efficiency of the system. Drug-users tend to be a lot less productive as
far as industry is concerned, so this means less profit for the
industrialists and less stuff for the materialists. Most issues are
exacerbated by the system and then compounded even further when the
system implements solutions.
This predicament is not exclusively attributable to capitalism. Any form
of civilization serves to benefit the few. In any organized society,
which is essentially what civilization is, there exists administration.
Administration manages this organization. Certain administrations are
more coercive and violent than others, but ultimately all
administrations manage and oversee society. Administration always has
the ability to steer society to its advantage. Even in communist or
socialist systems the masses of people do not have control of property
or society. In communist and socialist systems ownership and management
are essentially transferred to the State. These systems may claim
collective ownership, however, administration ultimately manages the
system and makes the actual decisions so the power remains in the hands
of a few. And of course a communist or socialist system could just as
well enable and sustain the harmful industrial system.
In today's culture kindness is bought and smiles are manufactured.
Nature, life, time, other people, everything is for sale and there for
our use. Everything is to be exploited. Polluted skies, rivers and
lakes, mutilated terrain, hot asphaltic fields, loss of freedom and
self-determination and the systematic sustenance and concentration of
greed and power. This is the culture the good guys help perpetuate and
protect.
This is the portrait of our landscape. This is the portrait of us. Alas,
a portrait many wish to preserve, a portrait adored and praised much
like da Vinci's Mona Lisa. An artificial depiction hoisted above the
natural stage. And then dropped like a meteorite crashing into Earth
beneath.