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Title: Why Civilization? Author: Anonymous Language: en Topics: anti-civ, primitivist Source: Retrieved on 1 January 2011 from www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/whycivilization.htm Notes: from Disorderly Conduct #6
With all thatâs goinâ on in the world, why do these feral fanatics,
these rejects of anarchism, these off-the-deep-end ecologists, these
granola-munchinâ harbingers of chaos need to spend so much time
attacking civilization?
The following communiqué was found at the site of a recently disrupted
secret meeting in Dover, Delaware, which was to facilitate a coalition
between Chevron, Pepsi-CO, Microsoft, the Sierra Club, the Northern New
Jersey Federation of Anarcho-Stalinists, Michael Albert, and the
Institute for Social Ecology. This disruption seems to be evidence that
insurrectionary green-anarchist and anarcho-primitivist actions and
ideas are spreading!
We are often told that our dreams are unrealistic, our demands
impossible, that we are basically out of our fuckinâ minds to even
propose such a ridiculous concept as the âdestruction of civilizationâ.
So, we hope this brief statement may shed some light on why we will
settle for nothing less then a completely different reality then what is
forced upon us today. We believe that the infinite possibilities of the
human experience extends both forwards and backwards. We wish to
collapse the discord between these realities. We strive for a
âfuture-primitiveâ reality, one which all of our ancestors once knew,
and one we may come to know: a pre/post-technological,
pre/post-industrial, pre/post-colonial, pre/post-capitalist,
pre/post-agricultural, and even pre/post-cultural reality â when we were
once, and may again be, wild!
We feel it is necessary to raise some fundamental questions as to where
we are now, how we have gotten to this point, where we are headed, and
perhaps most importantly, where we have come from. This should not to be
seen as irrefutable evidence, the Answers, or prescriptions for
liberation, but instead, as things to consider while you fight against
domination or attempt to create another world.
We believe anarchy to be the ultimate liberatory experience and our
natural condition. Before, and outside of, civilization (and itâs
corrupting influences), humans were, and are, for lack of better terms,
anarchistic. For most of our history we lived in small-scale groupings
which made decisions face-to-face, without the mediation of government,
representation, or even the morality of an abstract thing called
culture. We communicated, perceived, and lived in an unmediated,
instinctual, and direct way. We knew what to eat, what healed us, and
how to survive. We were part of the world around us. There was no
artificial separation between the individual, the group, and the rest of
life.
In the larger scope of human history, not long ago (some say 10 to
12,000 years ago), for reasons we can only speculate about (but never
really know), a shift began to occur in a few groupings of humans. These
humans began to trust less in the earth as a âgiver of lifeâ, and began
to create a distinction between themselves and the earth. This
separation is the foundation of civilization. It is not really a
physical thing, although civilization has some very real physical
manifestations, but it is more of an orientation, a mindset, a paradigm.
It is based on the control and domination of the earth and its
inhabitants.
Civilizationâs main mechanism of control is domestication. It is the
controlling, taming, breeding, and modification of life for human
benefit (usually for those in power, or those striving for power). The
domesticating process began to shift humans away from a nomadic, towards
a more sedentary and settled existence, which created points of power
(taking on a much different dynamic then the more temporal and organic
territorial ground), later to be called property. Domestication creates
a totalitarian relationship with plants and animals, and eventually
other humans. This mindset sees other life, including other humans, as
separate from the domesticater, and is the rationalization for the
subjugation of women, children, and for slavery. Domestication is a
colonizing force on non-domesticated life, which has brought us to the
pathological modern experience of ultimate control of all life,
including its genetic structures.
A major step in the civilizing process is the move towards an agrarian
society. Agriculture creates a domesticated landscape, a shift from the
concept that âthe Earth will provideâ to âwhat we will produce from the
Earthâ. The domesticater begins to work against nature and her cycles,
and to destroy those who are still living with and understanding her. We
can see the beginnings of patriarchy here. We see the beginnings of not
only the hoarding of land, but also of its fruits. This notion of
ownership of land and surplus creates never-before experienced power
dynamics, including institutionalized hierarchies and organized warfare.
We have moved down an unsustainable and disastrous road.
Over the next thousands of years, this disease progresses, with its
colonizing and imperialist mentality eventually consuming most of the
planet, with, of course, the help of the religious-propagandists, who
try to assure the âmassesâ and the âsavagesâ that this is good and
right. For the benefit of the colonizer, peoples are pitted against
other peoples. When the colonizerâs words do not suffice, the sword is
never far away with itâs genocidal collision. As the class distinctions
become more solidified, there becomes only those who have, and those who
do not. The takers and the givers. The rulers and the ruled. The walls
get raised. This is how we are told it has always been, but most people
somehow know this isnât right, and there have always been those who have
fought against it.
The war on women, the war on the poor, the war on indigenous and
land-based people, and the war on the wild are all interconnected. In
the eyes of civilization, they are all seen as commodities â things to
be claimed, extracted, and manipulated for power and control. They are
all seen as resources, and when they are of use no longer to the
power-structure, they are discarded into the landfills of society. The
ideology of patriarchy is one of control over self-determination and
sustainability, of reason over instinct and anarchy, and of order over
freedom and wildness. Patriarchy is an imposition of death, rather than
a celebration of life. These are the motivations of patriarchy and
civilization, and for thousands of years they have shaped the human
experience on every level from the institutional to the personal, while
they have devoured life.
The civilizing process became more refined and efficient as time went
on. Capitalism became its mode of operation, and the gauge of the extent
of domination and what still needed to be conquered. The entire planet
was mapped and lands were enclosed. The nation-state eventually became
the proposed societal grouping, and it was to set forth the values and
goals of vast numbers of peoples, of course, for the benefit of those in
control. Propaganda by the state, and the by now less powerful church,
started to replace some (but certainly not most) of the brute force with
on-the-surface benevolence and concepts like citizenry and democracy. As
the dawn of modernity approached, things were really getting sick.
Throughout its development, technology always played an ever-expanding
role. In fact, civilizationâs progress has always been directly
connected to, and determined by, the development of ever more complex,
efficient, and innovative technologies. It is hard to tell whether
civilization pushes technology, or vice-versa. Technology, like
civilization, can be seen more as a process or complex system then as a
physical form. It inherently involves division of labor, resource
extraction, and exploitation by power (those with the technology). The
interface with, and result of, technology is always an alienated,
mediated, and heavily-loaded reality. No, technology is not neutral. The
values and goals of those who produce and control technology are always
embedded within it. Different from simple tools, technology is connected
to a larger process which is infectious and is propelled forward by itâs
own momentum. This technological system always advances, and always
needs to be inventing new ways to support, fuel, maintain, and sell
itself. A key part of the modern-techno-capitalist structure is
industrialism, the mechanized system of production built on centralized
power and the exploitation of people and nature. Industrialism cannot
exist without genocide, ecocide, and imperialism. To maintain it,
coercion, land evictions, forced labor, cultural destruction,
assimilation, ecological devastation, and global trade is accepted and
seen as necessary. Industrialismâs standardization of life objectifies
and commodifies it, viewing all life as a potential resource. Technology
and industrialism have opened the door to the ultimate domestication of
life â the final stage of civilization â the age of neo-life.
So now we are in the post-modern, neo-liberal, bio-tech, cyber-reality,
with an apocalyptic future and new world order. Can it really get much
worse? Or has it always been this bad? We are almost completely
domesticated, except for the few brief moments (riots, creeping through
the dark to destroy machinery or civilizationâs infrastructure,
connecting with other species, swimming naked in a mountain stream,
eating wild foods, love-making, ...add your own favorites) when we catch
a glimpse of what it would be like to go feral. Their âglobal villageâ
is more like a global amusement park or global zoo, and itâs not a
question of boycotting it âcause weâre all in it, and itâs in all of us.
And we canât just break out of our own cages (although weâre helpless
unless we start there), but we gotta bust down the whole fuckinâ place,
feast on the zoo keepers and those who run and benefit from it, and
become wild again (whatever that means to you!). We cannot reform
civilization, green it up, or make it more fair. It is rotten to the
core. We donât need more ideology, morality, fundamentalism or better
organization to save us. We must save ourselves. We have to live
according to our own desires. We have to connect with ourselves, those
we care about, and the rest of life. We have to break out of, and break
down, this reality. We need Action.
To put it simply, civilization is a war on life, we are fighting for our
lives, and we declare war on civilization!
T.H.U.G. (Tree Hugginâ Urban Guerrillas)