Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 22:28:15 -0600
From: Chuck0 <chuck-AT-mutualaid.org>
Subject: Re: primitivism and anarchism


Ali Kazmi wrote:
> --- dan combs <dcombs-AT-bloomington.in.us> wrote:
> 
> 
>>zerzan is a goofball Luddite whose ideas just don't
>>seem possible without a 
>>huge die-off of the humyn secies.  

Zerzan has written a lot of stuff. This wholesale rejection of Zerzan's 
ideas is just as goofy as some of his ideas. I find much of his writing 
to be of value. I disagree with Zerzan's articles on Chomsky and Star Trek.

>And
> despite Chuck0's protestations, primitive life in the
> white north was no bed of roses. Primitives in Europe
> faced similar trials and tribulations. 

I believe that there is abundant anthropological and archaelogical 
evidence that indicates otherwise. Another indicator that supports the 
fact that "primitive" life wasn't that bad was the degree to which 
primitive peoples resisted being assimilated into civilization. Here in 
the United States, the lives of many Native Americans is far worse than 
it was when they were living off of the land. Living on the res is not 
exactly wine and roses.

> If you could magically make 99% of the world pop
> disappear, and the remaining settled into hunter
> gatherer societies, you would loose science and
> learning and medicine and average life expectancy
> would go down to 30 within a few generations. And with
> this you loose the ideological setup of that society.
> That is assuming that the 1% that survived and created
> the society were all primitivists, another fantasy. A
> required reading for them should be the "Lord of the
> Flies" grin.

The problem with this argument is that only a handful of people support 
a vision this bleak. The problem with this strawman is that it presents 
an extreme caricature of primitivist ideas that allow people to just 
ignore all of them.

And the "Lord of the Flies" is a work of fiction.

> The egalitarianism I saw in Somalia blew my mind.
> Things I could never have imagined in Pakistan, people
> at vastly different rungs of society treating each
> other equally. It showed the stratified, feudal nature
> of my society by contrast. It made me reject the class
> structure inherent in Pakistan, and later all
> hierarchies. It made me anti-authoritarian (I won't
> say anarchist). 

I believe that all of us want to live in an anti-authoritarian society. 
The big question is how these societies would look. But it's not like we 
can plan any of this out, nor should we want to.

> Primitivists look at the hunter-gatherer tribes and
> other primitive cultures, but in the same superficial
> way I looked at the Somali tribes at first. Industry
> and progress are shackles to be broken. Do they serve
> us or do we serve them? What they forget is the only
> thing that exploits man is man. Whether one has a gun
> in his hand or more money, or just bigger muscles, or
> better lies, it has always been one part of human kind
> exploiting the other. One tool of exploitation
> destroyed will be replaced with another. What needs to
> change is the relationships between humans. 

I doubt that any primitivists simply want to adopt *any* form of tribal 
structure or arrangement. Even the ones who seek an extreme vision 
probably want to live in egalitarian communities.

I don't know. I should stop speaking for them.

Chuck0