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Title: We Fight for Life Author: John Jacobi Date: 08 October 2014 Language: en Topics: anti-civilization, luddite, luddism, anti-technology, anti-tech, technology, ecology, deep ecology Source: Retrieved from [[http://johnfjacobi.github.io/articles/2014/10/08/we-fight-for-life/]] on 08 October 2014 Notes: Text created by Freedom Club at UNC-CH. For feedback or questions, email mailto:uncfc@riseup.net.
Non-industrial ways of life cannot support 7 billion people, that much
is certain. But, given that there are currently 7 billion people on the
planet, there seems to be a gaping hole in the Luddite argument that
ending the industrial-technological system is the choice those who love
wild nature ought to take. And if there is not a gaping hole, critics
say, then Luddism must be misanthropic. No doubt, there have been some
Luddites who were misanthropic, and proud of it.[1] But I have no
interest in praising those who so easily advocate for the death of so
many. What are we fighting for if not for life?
With some history and a bit of inductive logic it becomes clear the
general direction humans are headed for should technological progress
continue unabated. So far, industrial technology[2] has only augmented
and modified humans and wild nature; it has not operated for nature or
for humans. This is because a technological system has to regulate
humans and nature in order to function.[3] You can’t have cars without
laws governing cars and roads, without a coercive system of labor to get
people to work in factories, or without a cultural climate that forces
youngsters to study all day to become engineers. As the system gets more
complex, this trend will only get worse. Rather than medicating human
beings maladapted to life in a city, the industrial system will instead
technologically augment human beings maladapted to life in space–or even
just a highly technological city. The extremist vanguard of this future,
the transhumanists, openly admit that this is the direction they want
the human race to go.[4] But as many science fiction authors have
pointed out—and how odd that their futures are actually plausible
now!—this could turn out to be a disaster.[5]
If industrial society does not collapse, either through some sort of
disaster or some sort of revolution, humans will find themselves in one
of the possible technological futures. And even if the future is a shiny
transhumanist one, it will not be one filled with life. Transhumanism
advocates for the destruction of life. Granted, there are no easy
answers regarding the hard limits of what constitutes a human, but maybe
that is not the right point of inquiry. It is clear that, human or not,
there is something fundamentally unsettling about the idea of a person
with an artificial brain. And beyond the philosophical questions of
humanness, there is concrete reality: history has made it clear that
while sometimes technological progress brings what it promises, it
always brings unintended consequences as well. For example, if the
technological system continues unabated, it will eventually make the
human body incapable of defending itself from disease. This will either
be through the weakening of the human immune system, the creation of
superbugs or runaway laboratory viruses, or both.[6] If this happens,
then at a certain point the human race will be dependent on machines
just to survive. What kind of life is that? What kind of position does
this put us in? No, the transhumanists do not fight for life, they fight
for the machines. This was most clearly expressed by the founder of
information science, Claude Shannon, when he said, “I visualize a time
when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I’m rooting for
the machines.”[7]
With all this in mind, we can positively say that our most rational and
ethical choice is certainly not continuing down the road of
technological progress.
Much more likely than any of our possible futures is the collapse of the
industrial system. Again, we can look to history for confirmation: every
advanced civilization that has existed has disintegrated relatively soon
after. Granted, this is not a very strong argument that our civilization
will collapse, especially since civilization is a relatively new
invention, but it becomes strong once we understand why these
civilizations have fallen.
Joseph Tainter explained some of the factors that go into collapse:[8]
for one, when a complex society confronts a problem, it tends to pile on
more bureaucracy and more complexity. For example, to fix the problem of
the industrial pollution of waterways, technological society built a
complex filtration and plumbing infrastructure. To fix the problem of
waste in industrial cities, technological society introduced waste
disposal departments. This trend eventually leads to diminishing returns
on investments in social complexity, which is to say the energy required
to run a civilization becomes impossible to acquire.
Modern technological society has already passed the point of diminishing
returns. Jason Godesky offers a great synthesis of information
supporting this in his collection of essays, “Thirty Theses.”[9] The
most astonishing bit explains how industrial agriculture is far, far
past the point of diminishing returns because of monoculture, peak oil,
and the destruction of arable land. More basically, the energy industry
itself is past the point of diminishing returns, largely because it
requires massive machines and infrastructure requiring oil and coal in
order to get oil and coal. Eventually, one (or more) of the areas will
face crisis and put all of modern civilization at risk of collapse.[10]
Of course, a temporary extension on the lifetime of civilizations can be
achieved through innovation, which is why industrial society has come to
favor capitalism as its economic model. It is also why energy companies
are moving toward so-called “green energy.” Should green energy become
cheap enough to produce, it will lengthen the lifetime of civilization
by at least a bit. This is why the left environmentalists are so
dangerous: they are fighting for innovation that could possibly lead us
to the undignifying technological futures described above (that is, if
the technocrats find some more efficient energy source during the extra
time green energy gives civilization). Worse, still, and this is the
takeaway point, they could increase the strength of the technological
system (by extending the amount of time it has to perfect its control
mechanisms) so that when collapse happens, industrial society takes down
the entire complex biosphere with it. Of course, until the very end
these same environmentalists will proclaim that they are fighting for
life because “billions of people would die if we end industrial
society.” Never mind that everyone might die if we don’t.
Now, as I wrote the sentence above, I initially put “millions” instead
of “billions.” It made my heart ache to change that single letter
because I can’t even conceive of what this would look like. Now, there
should be no mischaracterization: an end to industrial society probably
wouldn’t be abrupt, and consequently neither would the population drop
(after the initial drop). But these people are living beings and members
of our own species. They might even be my family—or me. To be sure, we
Luddites do not throw out the term “revolution” lightly.
At this point we should consider an underlying ethical question: if
collapse is most likely and would cause a population drop anyway, then
why would we work for that collapse, effectively assuming responsibility
for it?
There are a few responses to this. For one, it is a reach to say that a
revolutionary movement would be assuming responsibility for the deaths
of all those people by initiating collapse when the technocrats are the
ones who got us into this mess in the first place.[11] Secondly, the
other side will be fighting for their technological future regardless of
the consequences, and regardless of what the Luddites choose to do—and
we’ve seen the possible outcomes if they are successful. If for no other
reason, a revolutionary movement should at least exist to combat those
psychopaths. Lastly, if a collapse will lead to the deaths of many
people and continued technological progress will only lead to more
people and more dependence on the system, then the only way to choose
life is to choose collapse. The sooner the collapse, the less people
die, the more likely it is that humans can live freely again.
All this is not to say that our sole concern should be to preserve as
many lives as possible. The number of people living is irrelevant if
they are living unsatisfactory, distressing lives. Furthermore, there
are more important things than life, as any parents would attest to. But
an unaided collapse would certainly be worse than if some people were
consciously pushing for it with the interests of humans and the
ecosphere in mind.
All things considered, it is clear that the best choice for us to make
at this point—for our freedom and the survival of the ecosphere—is to
instigate and solidify collapse. It is by making this choice that
Luddites can truly say that they fight for life.
[1] Christopher Manes is probably the poster-boy of misanthropic
ecology, having written “Why I am a Misanthrope” and having callously
suggested that AIDS operates as a population control mechanism.
[2] I speak here of industrial technology. Of course, small technologies
did, for the majority of human existence, serve human and wild
interests.
[3] Ted Kaczynski explains this well in the section “
Restriction of Freedom is Unavoidable in Industrial Society
” in
Industrial Society and Its Future
.
[4] Anything by
is indicative of transhumanism’s psychopathy.
[5] Although the term “slaves to robots” conjures up images of the
Matrix, a more subtle form of slavery is a real possibility in the
future. When the technological system requires a vast amount of control
in order to keep human behavior in check, we can imagine some sort of
advanced, oblique methods of control being used—like predictive policing
or control mechanisms in the propaganda industry. But it is much more
likely that large amounts of humans will continue to act in such a way
that requires physical coercion through police forces and militaries,
and this will likely increase as these people lose any purpose modern
life has left.
[6] Already these things are happening. Anti-biotic resistance is one of
the biggest problems of the twenty-first century. And while it is
probably unlikely that a virus created in a scientific lab would get
lose, it only takes one mistake for this to cause a major disaster,
especially since many scientists have created viruses to which there is
no known cure.
[7] Ted Kaczynski gives a few more relevant quotes in “
Answer to Some Comments Made in Green Anarchist
”:
[8] Collapse of Complex Societies, Joseph Tainter
[9]
, “Thesis #15: We have passed the point of diminishing returns,” Jason
Godesky
[10] Michael Greer explains why this is in How Civilizations Fall: A
Theory of Catabolic Collapse.
[11] Regardless of the irrationality of blaming revolutionaries, many
people will do so if revolutionaries aren’t careful, and they should
keep this in mind. They might be able to circumvent this by targeting
industries that will indirectly rather than directly affect people’s
lives. For example, by targeting GMOs and the companies and labs that
produce them, revolutionaries might be able to slow down food
production, which will cause food riots. These food riots will wield a
far greater amount of social power than the revolutionaries could ever
hope to, especially if some groups are prepared to organize people in
affected areas.