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Title: On The Question Of Technology
Author: Conspiracy of Cells of Fire
Date: 17/11/2013
Language: en
Topics: anti-technology, Greece, green anarchism
Source: https://misanthropesgoingtheirownway.wordpress.com/2020/05/04/ccf-on-the-question-of-technology/
Notes: Translated by: Dubus Dumno

Conspiracy of Cells of Fire

On The Question Of Technology

(The following answer was given by Christos Tsakalos of the Conspiracy

of Cells of Fire, on air, during an interview by the self-organized

radio of 105FM. The question was what does the CCF think of technology)

I think this is one of the most important questions, as in Greece, the

part of anarchist criticism of technology, unfortunately, is a part that

is quite unrecognized and isolated, while on the contrary, technology is

all around us. And technology is neither marginalized nor isolated.

Summarizing the core of my answer, I could tell you that, in my opinion,

every science is in the service of the authority. Technology turns our

lives, what we live in today, what we feel, into a mechanical process,

into statistics. In a laboratory experiment, one could say. If one looks

around at the consequences of the tech-industrial complex, they see that

it alienates us from the natural environment, from human contact, from

emotion.

We live in concrete cages that we call apartments. We walk among

strangers. Highways are the veins of a system where people, goods and

money circulate together, all mixed up. All those in the name of profit.

We have mass entertainment with technological substitutes. We

communicate via keyboards. We fall in love through screens. We desire

through showcases. The funny thing is that man once thought that with

the technological revolution they would be liberated. But, in fact,

their technological revolution put on new velvet shackles, technological

shackles. Our life itself, if you notice, is poisoned on a daily basis

by plastic food, by flue gas, by radioactivity, by laboratory diseases,

by drugs. At the same time, the natural wealth, the forests are being

destroyed, burnt, cut down to either become housing estates, highways or

department stores. Our very existence, our individuality, since we are

talking about technology, is being violated by the technopolice. Our

movements are recorded through the electronic camera eyes. Our habits,

our desires, our tastes, our hobbies, are stored on hard drives, on

credit cards, on the internet, in a huge data warehouse that we find

ourselves. These are the achievements of technology. Animals are being

captured and killed, either in the context of laboratory experiments on

technological development or, even worse, on human aesthetic choices.

That is, they are transformed into bags, shoes and clothes. All this

shows that the so-called quality – because the defenders of technology

and the industrial complex emphasize that all this has offered the

quality of life – must now crush any other form of life, in the name of

the new man-god. That is, anything that happens today is a catastrophic

human endeavor against anything that is not human. Against the whole

planet earth.

To answer to a possible response that arises when such conversations are

opened, about the good and bad use of technology, when people claim that

technology is a means and the user is the one who will either make good

use or misuse it and we should not be totally against technological

development, no I don’t think technology is a means. Technology is a

concept. And, in particular, it is an anthropocentic view of life, a

view that places man at the center of the universe, giving them the

right to dominate nature and animals for their own benefit. Therefore I

can’t isolate the issue of technology and bring it down to a level of

use. We need to understand that the very core of technological thought

has to do with an anthropocentric perception of the universe. Thus, we

end up, at least for me, in one of the most extreme forms of fascism and

totalitarianism. The tech-industrial complex is literally turning life

into a repetitive predetermined process. Nothing more, nothing less.

We too, dear folks, if we look at it differently, become numbered guinea

pigs. That is, because we now have the knowledge and the information, if

one sits down and thinks, with the technological means that exist, one

will realize that humans themselves have finally become a commodity of

the westerners. That is, we have made a complete mutation through

technology. Here a question arises, one could say that “nicely, and with

all that you say, what do you suggest, a return to nature, that is, a

return to primitiveness?”. I live very far from such perceptions. By no

means do I support primitivism. Nor do I have the illusion that nature

is compassionate or morally good or morally bad, nature cannot be

defined in moral terms, again anthropocentric. Nature is nature, it is

something very simple. What we are saying, then, without idealizing

nature, is that we want to discover a new way of life and a new form of

human connection with the natural environment and animals. A completely

different way of connecting – which can sometimes be harmonious and

sometimes even conflicting. But it will certainly be freedom. That is

the difference.

Now, in Greece – that’s why I made the introduction and said that

unfortunately the issue of criticism of the fascist technocratic complex

is quite misunderstood and unrecognized by the Greek anarchist movement

– we see, unfortunately, that more and more often, this critique is

considered somewhat suis generis, to put it simply. The funny thing is

that those who speak of the latter are the ones who live with the

fantasy of the social revolution and the struggling people. Now, who’s

the suis generis and who’s not is another story. So the bet that comes

with all this is to understand that those of us who are interested in

attacking the nature-expoloiting system must also attack the

human-exploiting system. We need to understand that these are

inseparable things. This attack is not done in words, it is done in

deeds. A vegetarian diet or a sensitive animal-friendly consciousness is

not enough to tear down and destroy this world. There is a need for a

concrete attack; the companies and industries that plunder nature need

to be targeted with bombs, dynamite, fire, and of course the people who

run these companies should also be hit.

Alfredo and Nicola, who I mentioned earlier, the two Italian comrades,

realizing the complex of techno-industrial fascism, chose to shoot the

executive of a large nuclear company in the leg. In general, outside of

Greece, there is a very rich legacy of the militant extremist

econarchism, so to speak. There is, first of all, the legacy of ALF and

ELF. In the US, imagine that ALF and ELF, are called “Green Scare” or

“Green Terror” by the American secret services and are considered to be

the second greater threat internal enemy, after Islamic terrorism. There

have been many blows against nature and animal exploitating companies,

and the most pleasant thing we’ve seen lately is a connection between a

core of the ELF and the FAI, especially in countries like Russia. The

militant eco-anarchist current is very active there, and it leads to

corresponding attacks on continuity. We believe that this is an ideal

bet for Greece as well.