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Title: The Conundrums of Dismantling Civilization Author: XSilent Date: January 2003 Language: en Topics: anti-civ, primitivism Source: Retrieved on February 16, 2011 from http://flag.blackened.net/radicalanthropology/writings/xsilent-conundrum.htm
Manifest the simple
embrace the primitive
reduce selfishness
have few desires
— Laozi
On the outskirts of Western political counter-culture,
anarcho-primitivist philosophers have been some of the most persistent
in their questioning of civilization itself. As an alternative they
point out the affluence and stability of simple foraging cultures — the
few that we have not destroyed or corrupted in our drive to
globalization. Although much of this thinking is completely foreign to
our mainstream discussion of progress and technology, anthropologists
such as Marshall Sahlins and Richard Lee have clearly documented the
leisure and abundance of peoples such as the !Kung San and Australian
Aborigines. Thinkers such as John Zerzan and Bob Black have taken this
ethnographic work and developed ideas of what healthy human culture
could be in the future. Of course, these ideas are still hotly debated
but I would like to take them as given for the sake of discussion.
If we accept that simple, non-analytical foraging cultures demonstrate
the most proven and stable of human experiments (having been successful
for 1 to 2 million years) then the question that comes to my mind is:
How do we get there from here? Many respected authors have avoided this
question as unanswerable (e.g. Daniel Quinn). I can understand this
attitude, as many people are enamoured with giving (or getting) all the
answers in pre-packaged form. Hopefully sidestepping the temptation
towards prescription, I think we still need to examine the future and
some sense of what things might look like.
My personal background includes growing up in an intentional community.
This experience showed me that, although many dynamic committed people
were involved, most of the underlying assumptions of our culture were
never questioned. For modern addicts to civilization, even the most
conscientious among us are pre-programmed in ways that undermine our
best attempts at collaboration and cultural innovation. Even with
gritted teeth and focussed will, we cannot discipline ourselves to act
in ways that go against the grain of our programming. We have to deal
with the programming itself.
Bob Black observed wryly in his essay Anarchism And Other Impediments To
Anarchy that “Most anarchists are, frankly, incapable of living in an
autonomous cooperative manner.” If those who are the most committed to a
complete change in culture are unable to live in the ways they envision,
what is wrong?
I am quite unusual in that I don’t crave many of the things we are told
to desire by the all-pervasive media. I am vegetarian, don’t smoke,
drink very little, have little interest in junk food, don’t watch TV,
don’t subscribe to newspapers or magazines (except Richard Heinberg’s
MuseLetter, of course!) and a few other things that convince many of my
friends that I am a self-deprived ascetic. These visible choices (not
done in a spirit of self-deprivation, I assure you) may set me aside as
marginal in my rural hometown, but there are many more things in which I
do participate that go completely unnoticed. I drive an internal
combustion motor-vehicle (a Japanese one to help ease my conscience), I
heat my home with natural gas, my lights and computer are powered by
dams that are killing salmon rivers, I enjoy the internet as a tool of
communication and research and love my broad-band connection to it, we
buy much of our food (grown elsewhere) from the local outlet of a
supermarket chain owned by an individual billionaire, I love music and
my CD collection, and I won’t even go into the things we have to do to
keep our family farm “economically viable”. Although I personally don’t
want MTV, values such as this still drive most of our civilization in
its day-to-day decisions. I know many local people who, despite severe
financial problems continue to smoke $8 a day and watch $40 of satellite
TV a month.
As Thomas J. Elpel wrote is his short but excellent essay The Art of
Nothing:
Westerners who first met the Shoshonean bands of Indians in the Great
Basin Desert typically described them as being “wretched and lazy”. Many
observers remarked that they lived in a total wasteland and yet seemed
to do nothing to improve their situation. They built no houses or
villages, they had few tools or possessions, almost no art, and they
stored little food. It seemed that all they did was sit around and do
nothing.
To most people on our planet today this would be a description of hell.
When we dig a little deeper we find that, like the !Kung and other
forager peoples, they had a rich and dynamic cultural wealth. Forager
peoples have little interest in what we would call the fruits of
civilization — high technology and lasting monuments to progress. To
people like the !Kung the cultural network of kinship and friendship was
important, along with an intimate knowledge of the world around them.
Curiously they seemed to have much more time to enjoy these things than
we do our toys. This radically different attitude to what is important
is one of the keys to our, now cliche sounding, paradigm shift.
We don’t like giving things up. Rightly so, negative philosophy seldom
inspires more than a few nihilists, stoics and Zen eccentrics. The
problem we have is that we can’t see what we might gain in exchange even
though it may be right in front of our eyes. I know that I often find
myself sitting down in front of the computer instead of getting out into
the woods with my daughter. The point isn’t more discipline — as a
serious practitioner of the martial arts for 18 years I know a little
about discipline. The point is a shift in attitude that makes us want to
act differently. As you can see I am still working on this one and
certainly can pose as no oracle; however, like alcoholics, we must admit
to having a problem before anything can change.
In order to have a shift in attitude we have to know what we really
want. If you have gotten this far, I might guess that you will agree
with me when I say that these are not the wants fed to us over the TV,
in Newspapers and on the Radio. You may be surprised when I also say
that they are not necessarily the values fed to you by the alternative
media, ecological movement, or any brand of spiritual enlightenment
currently on offer. What do you really want? I have started to figure
out a bit of what I really want — but don’t take this for yourself — it
is only an indication of where I have been:
I don’t want to work. This is phrased in the negative because we don’t
have a concept in our culture for non-work except leisure. Although used
by many writers, “leisure” has too many mixed connotations for my taste.
I want to spend my time doing things that are enjoyable, non-time
stressed and directly relevant to me and my family’s life.
I want a deeper understanding of the living landscape around me. Walking
in the forest, skiing through the forest, climbing mountains, searching
out berries, following tracks, exploring.
I want time with my family and close friends. Thinking, talking, making
music, dancing and playing.
I want a life without struggle. This doesn’t mean without vigorous
activity when appropriate (and fun) — it means that our usual conception
of the world as a hostile place must be dropped. What would it be like
to live as if the universe was not hostile?
When I boil it down, most of the things that I actually spend my time
doing are pale substitutes for very simple and fulfilling interaction
with friends and the natural world.
Unfortunately, knowing what we want doesn’t necessarily relieve us from
the mixed-up desires we have adopted from “mother culture”. It is a
pretty good starting place, though. Well, actually, it is the only one.
Only when we can occasionally pause and think about our motivations and
decisions, will we actually change. People never do anything lasting
because they “should” — only when they really want something will it
happen.
Given that we might have a better (working) idea of what we really want
and that our values are changing, what do we do next? I would have an
easier time re-inventing a nuclear submarine than I would coming up with
a fully working model of a new society (a sad comment on my education).
Some initial steps are important or we will continue to live in our
heads, wishing for the day when something might happen to start the
process for us.
I won’t say a lot about the recommendations normally found in books on
saving the world. I will take it for granted that you are driving your
car less, recycling your plastic and glass, eating good whole foods, and
buying recycled paper. I am more interested in what Daniel Quinn called
“survival value”. Move out of the city (but, but, but... no, just do
it). Learn some of the skills that your great-grandparents might have
assumed to be common. Don’t just buy organic food, go and grow it. Do
some canning, drying and pickling. Fix/build/sew stuff yourself. Learn
some of the skills that the indigenous people of your area would have
considered common. Don’t assume you will always have matches or a
lighter... or a house. Learn how to use your hands. Buy a book on your
local plants and/or animals. Learn how to look at the land and see more.
Harvest (responsibly) some food from the wild. Get used to some of these
ideas and you will start seeing more.
More than anything, though, surround yourself with friends. Many new-age
books stress the importance of building “community” but, although I
agree in principle, be very careful about false community. Having seen
some of the dangers of forced community first-hand, I would start with
emphasizing connections with genuine friends. If you enjoy meeting new
people, great, but don’t stretch yourself thin.
Think about exchange — are there alternatives to money? Local currency
is increasing in popularity but, in many cases, barter may be even
better. Cultivate generosity — most forager peoples based their lives
around sharing. Work less. Buy less. Make more. Read more non-fiction.
Think more — imagine more. Home-school your kids. Broaden your range of
skills and knowledge. John Zerzan credits division of labour with the
progression of cultural alienation. Avoid organizations and hierarchy,
think tribally. Remember that authoritarianism is the lifeblood of
civilization.
All these disparate-sounding things start to coalesce around a few
central ideas. Do it yourself, learn, and share with friends. Even if
there is no immediate change, admit to your technological addictions.
Above all, play and imagine differently. If there are things in your
life that you have been meaning to address but haven’t (still smoking?)
— now is the time to start thinking about why. Start the process of
change with what is right in front of you. If you can’t, then just stop
reading right now and go flick on the TV.
I don’t pretend that anything happens overnight, but I would like to see
many different radical experiments in lifestyle. I can only hope for
tolerance from folks who live near to people trying something different.
If you include some kind of “intentional community” in your plan I would
recommend researching the ones that have been tried in the last century
(there have been many). Learning from other people’s mistakes is called
intelligence. Whatever you choose to do, bravery is a pre-requisite.
Worry not about the censure of civil society!
Having a bit of an apocalyptic bent, I agree with the petroleum
geologists who forecast a sharp decrease in available oil over the next
ten years. An event such as this (and I am willing to be wrong about it)
will bring into sharp relief the importance of these skills and changes
in attitude.
An old anarchist idea is that the new world must be created within the
shell of the old. This means that when civilization collapses — through
its own volition, through our efforts, or a combination of the two —
there will be an alternative waiting to take its place. This is really
necessary as, in the absence of positive alternatives, the social
disruption caused by collapse could easily create the psychological
insecurity and social vacuum in which fascism and other totalitarian
dictatorships could flourish.
John Moore — A Primitivist Primer
Do I expect many people to agree with me in changing values of what is
important? No, unfortunately I have been called cynic too many times to
seem that optimistic (although I think of myself as more in the
tradition of Diogenes that just a post-modern fatalist); however, in the
same way that I don’t expect everyone I meet to become a close friend, I
do hope that there will be some people out there to forge into unknown
territory and share their experiences. Who knows, maybe even some more
of my friends might want to walk the path together...