Radder Than Thou
by Jason GodeskyWe’ve occasionally been in touch with Kevin Tucker, so his comment in the 13 July 2006 Pittsburgh City Paper that he doesn’t “know any other primitivists in the Pittsburgh area” was a bit odd—though he may not consider the Tribe of Anthropik legitimately primitivist. After all, we don’t think technology is necessarily evil, and we have no problem with symbolic thought. Still, when it landed in the hands of one of my co-workers, he too was baffled, since “a Clusty search for ‘pittsburgh primitivism‘ produces all kinds of results for Anthropik.” The printed version included a photograph of Kevin with tattoos, piercings, and dirty blond dreadlocks going down his back. The same co-worker told me that he found my own take on the subject far more compelling, if for no other reason than I didn’t look like a “freak”—and as a result, the same ideas coming from me seemed to him eminently more reasonable.
This encounter, some months old as it is, has been forefront in my thoughts lately. In the previous feature, “The Subversive Spirit of Christmas,” we were graced with a comment from none less than the illustrious Mark Meritt, co-founder with Howard Ditkoff of Emergent Associates and author of “The Unsustainability and Origins of Socioeconomic Increase,” a masters’ thesis that explored the scientific underpinning of Ishmael and praised by Daniel Quinn himself. Mark and Howard are both good friends of the Tribe of Anthropik, to boot, so they’re always welcome here. But that made it all the more difficult when Mark posted this:
Worth noting, though, that on some level, we could have the same conversation about many high ideals held by civilized cultures. Daniel Quinn, in The Story of B, says directly that religions are the highest expressions of our culture, and he does so while suggesting that all of the “good things” that religions want us to do are that very highest expression. At first, I was confused by this—how could the highest expression of our culture be about things that are so hard to do/be in our culture? I later realized, that’s exactly the point. Civilization makes it hard to be lots of the good things that are our birthright, that come far more naturally to people in tribal circumstances. Those things then become what we idealize, and religion is the highest expression of those idealizations. Virtues are things to strive for, to struggle for, and if you don’t reach them, and especially if you don’t try, then you’re a failure as a person. It’s the old flawed being syndrome.
So, on some level, it seems to me that the point here isn’t so much that Christmas is subversive, not any moreso than any of the high ideals of civilized cultures/institutions are subversive. It’s really simply that Christmas is one of a gazillion features of our culture that jumble up the ills of civilization with the positive traits that are our birthright as humans, serving the whole mishmosh up to us dressed up in high ideals and a sort of longing about those high ideals never really being achievable yet without knowing why and without bothering to question why or to really make any attempt at all to separate the chaff from the wheat, the baby from the bathwater.
On one level, I agree with Mark completely on this, and yet the way he couches it—that it makes the subversive not subversive at all—is a sentiment I think is very dangerous.
In the Thirty Theses, we dissected those elements that make civilization what it is, and found that each and every one of them were inimical to human nature: a positive feedback loop of growing complexity and scale far beyond the human capcity to cope, the institution of hierarchy as a means of mitigating that, and the ensuing problems of injustice, poverty, warfare, epidemic disease, the “diseases of civilization,” and catastrophic mortality and overall loss of quality of life.
However, an important point which many readers seem to miss is that no pure civilization has ever existed—or ever could exist. Every civilization ultimately emerged out of a healthy culture; as such, every civilization has vestigial elements that remain. A pure civilization would be so deeply antithetical to human existence that it could not be tolerated. The “pressure valves” so often decried by primitivists as diversions are, all too often, the germs of healthy culture still left, where we find solace from the deeply dehumanizing system of civilization. Quinn was right that our religions are the highest expressions of our civilizations—precisely because they so often contain the longest memories of our pre-civilized heritage, where remnants of the long-gone healthy culture that pre-dated civilization may remain vital for the longest time. This can be seen in previous articles like “Betraying the Son of Man” about the historical Jesus, or in Carl Estrabrook’s “The Subversive Commandments.” In “Entering Merlin’s Domain,” I discussed Noel’s suggestion of Merlin as a shamanic role model for Europeans interested in reclaiming that heritage, without a shallow plundering of Native American culture, because there is still that faint memory in the stories of Merlin, of a healthy culture before Anglo-Saxon conquest, before even the Celts took up agriculture—faint, but there.
In “A Pirate’s Life for Me,” the release of the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie provided an excuse to discuss the TAZ, and the many ways in which pirate life reflected tribal life, less out of conscious emulation (though pirates were unique among Europeans in the New World for the tutelage they took from indigenous examples), than the simple fact that it worked. It remains one of the most popular articles we’ve ever written, drawing in people looking for pictures of Captain Jack Sparrow, and giving them the promise that the pirates’ life is not as distant or unachievable as they might have imagined after all.
The simple fact that tribal systems work, that they are so deeply ingrained in human nature, means that they crop up anew even in the most civilized of endeavors—which is precisely what we should expect. The most obvious example is the open source movement. Richard Stallman began the free software movement on principle: to develop software in a way that respected human freedom. Of course, such respect inevitably creates community, and when humans organize themselves, the patterns they naturally fall into are distinctly tribal, as one would expect. The “open source movment” branded a different name to shed the ethics of Stallman’s crusade, and sell it to companies as simply a better method of creating a product. It’s that, too, of course, and in the end analysis, open source has done more to advance tribalism than all the primitivists in the world combined, by proving that when you respect freedom, the communities that emerge are more powerful than any stale hierarchy one could ever erect. Open source warfare has caught the world’s military “hyperpower” in a quagmire in Iraq, blogging and wikis are threatening journalists and even intelligence. Rhizome is ascendant, not because it won a philosophical battle, but because it works.
Our article on the Wii was sometimes mistaken as shilling for the product—we merely found in it an excellent excuse to dispell the myth of Cartesian dualism. The Wii’s success is grounded in a fortunate, though in all likelihood completely accidental, perception that cut beyond the civilized myth of mind and body as seperate entities, to the animistic truth of a single being. This is infinitely more interesting than the release of a new video game console, but if a video game console can reveal that to a larger population, then that is a console that deserves our full support.
So the civilizing element in any civilization must always be balanced, to one degree or another, with some amount of humanity. Even today, remnants remain of the healthy culture that predated our adoption of agriculture. Indeed, English may even be somewhat better off than other European cultures in this regard—after all, while the French owe the majority of their culture to the ancient Romans, the Anglo-Saxons were still some of the only barbarians in Europe that fit the stereotype attached to that term—unlike the Visigoths, or Vandals, or most any other of the Germanic populations—even as recently as 1,500 years ago. What is more, when the civilizing element becomes too strong, civilization becomes unbearable, and if the culture survives, it does so by creating new elements that satisfy that basic human need for tribalism; it comes up with such systems not from theory or even memory, but simply because they work.
To be sure, disentangling the healthy elements from the civilized elements is a task fraught with peril, but it is nonetheless crucial for many reasons. We cannot hope to invent a new culture out of whole cloth; we must rehabilitate our own culture, and that means buckling down to the hard task of identifying what good is left in our own culture, and using that as the seed we start from to grow a new one.
Which brings me to the recent events that inspired this response. While the release of the Fifth World beta was met with largely positive response, we also recieved several hateful messages by email, some of which we were even forced to remove from the comments on the Fifth World weblog, because they were so thick with invective they never reached any actual statement to contribute. Others simply questioned our sincerity, as with Ted Heistman’s post, “Too Seriously or not Seriously Enough?” in which he wrote:
So that is what it comes down to? The fate of humanity is in the hands of a bunch of gamers? I am not a gamer, but if I were wouldn’t it be a little too good to be true, to think that I am not fucking off playing role playing games, but actually coming up with ways to save the world? Could I be sure which is actually going on? Which is more likely?
I responded in the comments with this:
Or perhaps we’ve just uncovered here one of those weeds of civilized thought that linger on in all our brains, that we’ll all be meticulously rooting out for the rest of our lives: in this case, the idea that if it isn’t “serious” then it can’t be effective—after all, in so many forager societies, it’s Trickster who is one of the most powerful gods. They know full well that jokes and games hold incredible power to shape us and our culture, and we ignore them at our own peril. It’s civilization that has such a hard time understanding Trickster’s ways, and demonizes him instead of trying to understand him.
What we face is deadly serious, the most serious thing our species has ever faced. And yes, much of the work is very serious—learning primitive skills, learning to think like an animist again, creating new tribes, reconciling our communities with their land bases again, so on and so forth. But it’s far too serious to only employ serious methods in its execution. The old world was created by Trickster, and I don’t think we can create the new one without him, either.
In “The Fifth World Manifesto,” we pointed to the tribal elements in role-playing games: the shamanic role of the game master, the synthesis of storytelling and gambling, and the creation of not just a band, but of a local mythology to go with it at the same time. Our forager ancestors were not playing role-playing games like ours; what we have is another example of a tribal pattern that emerges simply because it works. It is a seed of tribal relationship in the world of hierarchical domination, the release that makes it bearable.
Such releases are important parts of keeping the civilized element from destroying itself, but they also provide an enormous liability. Not only does the recognition of these elements provide the seed for a new, healthy culture that reaches beyond civilization, they also provide a way to start creating that culture right now—and the kind of “low barrier to entry” that provide the best hope for primitivism to reach the largest population it can.
It’s here that we come back around to the story of my co-worker and the Kevin Tucker article in the City Paper. I dress like my co-workers, I talk like them, I’m one of them. When I talk about the toll civilization takes on us, it’s coming from one of their own. I don’t tell anyone to reject everything they’ve ever known in one fell swoop; I mention how eating less bread will help them feel better, or how a permacultural approach will create a more vibrant garden with less work. It’s something they can do, right here and now, and see an immediate return on the benefits of a tribal system, even if they don’t consciously make that connection. It doesn’t matter; it’s a pattern of relationship that they’re learning.
One of the themes in the Fifth World is how many cultures emerge from unlikely communities—those who today might be some of primitivism’s most outspoken critics. They don’t cease to be critics, of course. They never embrace our understanding or worldview. They become tribal simply because it works. I’ve seen this in my own family: my parents still do not put much credence in the worldview I’ve articulated on this site, but that doesn’t much matter, since my mother knows more about gardening than I do, and even though she’s not sure about using the word, what she’s doing is clearly permaculture. At that point, all the theories and models in the world are moot.
By the same token, very few of the Fifth World cultures are descended from groups that actively prepared for collapse. There is a liability in the primitivist movement that far outweighs all the skill-learning and preparation one could ever amass in a lifetime: elitism and puritanism. It can be seen in some of the responses we recieved to the Fifth World, or the disdain for others who are not sufficiently radical. A recent IshCon thread provides an excellent example of this attitude, titled, “Al Gore is an Idiot.” An Inconvenient Truth signalled a massive turning point in the debate on global warming—we are now past the question of whether or not it’s happening, that left only to the most extreme and marginal embarrassments even to their own party, like James Imhofe. We have now moved on to whether or not humans are causing it, and what we’re going to do about it. Yet rather than embracing this as a major step forward, IshCon—a bastion of the most moderate Quinnian wing of the primitivist movement—is discussing how “useless” it is because it doesn’t go far enough.
When you demand everything all at once, what you get is nothing. If An Inconvenient Truth had included all that the critics at IshCon require, it would simply have been ignored entirely. The inconvenient truth is, it’s probably already too late—and it probably has been since the election of Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter in 1980, two years before I was even born. Even so, recognizing the situation is a critical first step before we can rein in the damage being done, and hopefully scale down the catastrophe as much as it can be scaled down so late in the game.
Is a movie going to save the world all on its own? No, but it can help. Is a role-playing game going to save the world all on its own? No, but it can help. Is a game console, or a movie about pirates, or open source software? No, but they’ll help. The attitude that any one thing can solve all the problems of civilization is ludicrous enough on its own; when it leads us to reject anything that helps because it doesn’t go far enough is simple insanity. It’s time to wake up—we need all the help we can get.
What good does it do us to delineate the lines that seperate us? It does us far more good to find the things we hold in common. We don’t need people to agree with us, after all; we just need them to relate to one another and to the world around them in a different way. They may embrace it simply because it works. That is sufficient; our foraging ancestors did no better. They were not “Noble Savages” who heralded ancient ecological wisdom out of their altruistic goodness; they simply had a way of life that worked, and enjoyed all the benefits that go with that.
Whether it’s in a holiday, or a religion, or a video game console, or a movie, the seeds of a healthy culture are all around us, the pressure valves that keep our civilization running. These are the points at which you can connect with the civilized people in your life, and find common ground. If you want to show them what you’ve found beyond civilization, terror-mongering warnings of “petro-apocalypse” will do little to persuade most people. You need to share a vision of hope with them; you need to find the things in life that make it all worth living, and ask them how they can have more of that. As Daniel Quinn pointed out, the world is not dying for human malevolence, but because civilized humans are so deeply needy for the things we truly, deeply need. The seeds of a healthy culture beyond civilization are lying all about us, for those willing to tease them out. Those are the points where you can show your family and friends and neighbors that everything good in their own life stands in defiance of civilization. All you have to do then is goad them on to sieze the good things in life, to settle for nothing less, and they will move—not because you’ve convinced them philosophically, but because it simply works—beyond civilization.
“They never embrace our understanding or worldview. They become tribal simply because it works. I’ve seen this in my own family: my parents still do not put much credence in the worldview I’ve articulated on this site, but that doesn’t much matter, since my mother knows more about gardening than I do, and even though she’s not sure about using the word, what she’s doing is clearly permaculture. At that point, all the theories and models in the world are moot.”
I can relate to this aswell.
This is one of my favourite posts so far Jason, I agree with nearly everything here. I can’t stand people who see our situation as some ideological battle.
This is the most “real” battle ever. It’s not about what makes sense, it’s about what works, and what has been proven to work time and time again. What’s more, what works also leads to happiness, bonding and the recovery of something that a lot of us have lost.
I’m excited
Comment by Dan — 2 January 2007 @ 12:42 PM
Yes, I think this does an excellent job of wrapping up the real purpose of Anthropik. Have you thought about adding it to the Essential Writings?
Comment by jhereg — 2 January 2007 @ 12:49 PM
I’m honored that you gave my comment so much thought. In the end, I think we are revealed to be on the very same page. I’m with everything you wrote here. Fundamentally, we agree that there can’t help but be workable elements in the lives of all people and societies, because without them, we’d have perished long ago, and the key to positive change is to identify and build on those. This is the basic frame of the New Mind, and it works.
Let me, then, refine what I said before. For those who actually find those workable bits in Christmas — or in any of civilization’s mishmoshes — and build on them, yes that’s absolutely subversive. It’s subversive if you actually do something about it. For those who give lip service to the workable bits with songs and homilies about how nice it would be for every day to be like Christmas or for every person to be virtuous in whatever way while living ones life so as to simply accept and perpetuate the mishmosh, there is no subversion, only status quo. It’s not enough to point out the workable bits. One must know how to build on them, and then one must start building.
It seems to me that we agree down the line on this one and that it was perhaps only careless phrasing on my part that suggested otherwise. At least, I hope this is the case. Either way, it’s dialogue like that that helps people find the common ground, the workable bits, so here’’s to it.
Comment by Mark S. Meritt — 2 January 2007 @ 12:56 PM
Hey –
Excellent, J — this really pulls a lot of your threads together into a coherant… rhizome, if you will
Hi Mark! How ya been?
Janene
Comment by janene — 2 January 2007 @ 1:18 PM
[quote]In “Entering Merlin’s Domain,” I discussed Noel’s suggestion of Merlin as a shamanic role model for Europeans interested in reclaiming that heritage, without a shallow plundering of Native American culture, because there is still that faint memory in the stories of Merlin, of a healthy culture before Anglo-Saxon conquest, before even the Celts took up agriculture—faint, but there.[/quote]
I don’t think I really commented on this when you originally posted it, but I would like to share a bit of my own efforts at drawing from my ’spirit of heritage’ (as opposed to my ’spirit of place’).
My family tree is almost entirely German, so after I bottomed out on organized religion & I had decided to do what amounts to poking my nose around and trying to put together whatever shards I could find, it seemed reasonable to start with the old germanic gods.
I was very surprised to find guidance, support and power there, but that’s very much what I found. I wasn’t part of anything organized (not Asatruar, RoT, yada yada), just learning more or less directly from the Aesir & Vanir. In the (several) years since, I’ll admit I’ve had some severe disagreements with them (to the point that my relationship was severed with a number of Aesir), but even so, I’ve gained quite a lot from that exploration, and I consider it to have been of major import to getting where I am now.
I say this for two reasons:
1) It’s a great idea to draw from your personal heritage.
2) Always proceed with your eyes wide open.
Ah, well, anyway, that’s my 2 cents on an otherwise tangential subject.
Comment by jhereg — 2 January 2007 @ 1:44 PM
One of my favorite Anthropik posts ever, Jason! Thanks for writing this!
Comment by MatthewJ — 2 January 2007 @ 2:32 PM
Hmmm…
Jhereg, if you had said your heritage was largely eastern european, I would have freaked…
one less mystery to ponder
Janene
Comment by janene — 2 January 2007 @ 3:20 PM
Thanks, everyone.
Mark, I definitely think we’re on the same page. My first read of your comment reminded me of some of the more Derridan topics that came up in some of my anthropology classes; for instance, that rebellion legitimates the ruling power by the very fact that you’re rebelling against it. I think it’s very important to note these seeds and recognize them for what they are, because I think these are the main leverage points we have to expose the essential contradictions of civilization, and let it destroy itself. But you’re quite right—if we use them as nothing more than an excuse to keep going on our merry way, then we’ve utterly neglected to tap into their subversive potential.
There’s a war on, after all. It’s a war for hearts and minds; a war of memes. At stake is nothing less than the survival of the human race, and even more as our mass extinction unravels the living communities all around us.
I see this website as an arms supplier in that war. We’re trying to do all a website can: we’re keeping our side well-armed in the latest weapons of mass argumentation. So yes, exposing where those leverage points are is one of the main problems we focus on, and you can expect us to do more of that in the future.
Jhereg,
I’ve always been turned off by the organized groups, like Asatru, but I love Norse mythology all the same. Woden is as shamanic a god as one could ask for. In fact, the Fifth World’s archetypes of shaman, scout and brave are neatly embodied in Norse mythology’s “Big Three”: Odin, Loki and Thor.
Of course, the neo-Nazi interest in Norse mythology maligns a noble tradition, so that today you always have to keep an eye out to see what kind of company you’re keeping, and if you’re not mistaking as genuine some piece of white supremacist garbage. I’ve been several paragraphs into pages at times before I looked up and noticed that it was on stormfront.org. So yes, it’s a rich tradition that deserves attention, but to quote the clan motto of my Drummond ancestors, gang warily.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 2 January 2007 @ 3:35 PM
[quote]Of course, the neo-Nazi interest in Norse mythology maligns a noble tradition, so that today you always have to keep an eye out to see what kind of company you’re keeping, and if you’re not mistaking as genuine some piece of white supremacist garbage. I’ve been several paragraphs into pages at times before I looked up and noticed that it was on stormfront.org. So yes, it’s a rich tradition that deserves attention, but to quote the clan motto of my Drummond ancestors, gang warily.
[/quote]
Absolutely. In some ways, I was fortunate to head into that particular tradition [b]because[/b] of the Nazi associations (rather than in spite of them) simply because it did help me keep my eyes open. That, in fact, was half the reason I put that up at all.
More and more, I’m realizing that we don’t have any options in this. We simply have to walk some fairly perilous roads through our heritage, our history, our culture, our entire psyche. I’m convinced that it has to be done, and equally convinced that it’s dangerous as all hell. I want to encourage people, but I don’t want to send them walking blindly.
Also, I’m not trying pushing that particular tradition on anyone, I hold it up as my heritage and encourage others to find theirs.
Comment by jhereg — 2 January 2007 @ 3:45 PM
This is very, very true. The Norse example and the Nazi influence is only the most stark; all of our traditions have been ripped through civilization, and that makes all of them dangerous.
Hear, hear.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 2 January 2007 @ 3:59 PM
Your statement regarding the “all or nothing” mentality brings to mind the incessant nay-saying by those who prefer to go nuclear or continue suckling at the petroleum teat rather than move to alternatives. Since no alternative energy source can replace petroleum, they are all, by the nay-sayer’s definition, useless technology and not worth pursuing. This is is analogous to a man bound at the stake heaving a sigh of relief when the tiger leaves the area and and rejoices when all that is left is an anthill.
Comment by Frank Black — 2 January 2007 @ 6:39 PM
Given the long-lasting costs of nuclear power, I can hardly share your enthusiasm. Nuclear power won’t supply more than perhaps a decade more of civilization, all told, but its costs will haunt us for millennia to come. As bad as an oil crash could be, they are tame compared to the costs of nuclear power.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 2 January 2007 @ 6:49 PM
Hi all… Jason, I have just posted you in my blog… thanks for the inspiration and the great stuff you have. I have also posted the guideline of some conferences.. I think you have already pass throught this themes but it will be a honor to have your visit and comments. http://www.sincroniaconciencia.blogspot.com
bye
Comment by Mario A. Grajales — 2 January 2007 @ 7:05 PM
[quote]Hmmm…
Jhereg, if you had said your heritage was largely eastern european, I would have freaked…
one less mystery to ponder
[/quote]
Janene,
To the best of my knowledge, my ancestry is on the order of 90% german peasant farmer. I know I have a smattering from the rest of northern europe, and there is the faintest hint of possible ties to eastern europe, but nothing conclusive.
I assume you’re referring to my registerd name? I’m a great fan of Stephen Brusts (esp “The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars”), but it stops there.
Comment by jhereg — 2 January 2007 @ 9:22 PM
Escape valves could also serve as escape routes!
Comment by Cable — 3 January 2007 @ 12:31 AM
Hey Jason,
This is a great article. I totally agree with you on games being important to the transition. Look at it this way, children have to “play house” before they can actually mature and run a household. What you are doing with the Fifth World is getting people to “play apocalypse” so that they can actually do it when the time comes. Am I right? Well it’s brilliant. Plus, it allows us to psychologically be there now, which can help lift the weight of emotional grief we suffer at our day jobs.
I was a little hurt by your reference to my thread, “Al Gore is an idiot.” I am not a purist. Like you I look at what works. I just have a very different perspective of the motivations and results of films/media like that which took that discussion on ishcon for me to be able to articulate, which I then did not post. My critique of that film is no different than your critique of Tom Elpels book. You wrote,
“…his vision of sustainability is not the least bit sustainable…he pushes for ecologically-friendly home relying on solar power and other “green” technologies. All of them rely on an industrial economy, which itself relies on increasing complexity and fossil fuels.”
Wasn’t I saying the same thing about Al Gores movie? Insert “cars” for home, and “energy efficient lightbulbs” for solar power.
You also wrote above:
“The inconvenient truth is, it’s probably already too late—and it probably has been since the election of Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter in 1980, two years before I was even born.”
That was another reason I found the film dispariging. Because it’s too late, and the solutions are too little. Does that mean it’s terrible? No. But it does mean that Al Gore is an idiot.
Comment by Urban Scout — 3 January 2007 @ 2:39 AM
Interesting post (as usual) Jason.
I’m glad you’re keeping a wary eye out for neo-nazi traps - the combination of primitivism and norse mythology doesn’t have a happy history (I came across this recently and its an interesting read - http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/germany/sp001630/peter.html).
On the “jhereg” moniker, I always thought that was a Hungarian name for vulture (though I came across the name in Brust’s books when I was a kid and maybe got it completely wrong).
Comment by Big Gav — 3 January 2007 @ 5:52 AM
[quote]On the “jhereg” moniker, I always thought that was a Hungarian name for vulture (though I came across the name in Brust’s books when I was a kid and maybe got it completely wrong). [/quote]
I know next to nothing about Hungarian, so I’m not qualified to say that it does or doesn’t mean vulture. I do know that in Brust’s novels jhereg are flying scavengers not that different (in terms of ecological niche) from vultures. I’m comfortable with the comparison.
Comment by jhereg — 3 January 2007 @ 9:48 AM
Well, you seemed to be offering the idea that An Inconvenient Truth had no value simply because it didn’t go all the way. Of course, how could it? Even as far as it went was a surprise to me. Maybe Gore has all the ulterior motives you suggest (or perhaps that would just be putting his money where his mouth is). Like Elpel’s eco-home, it’s better than nothing. In response to Elpel, though, I was challenging complacency; not that his approach did no good at all, but that it can’t be the end point, which is what he was arguing. It’s important to celebrate the small victories along the way (and that’s where I took issue with your judgment on Gore’s movie), but it’s also important to not become complacent, and keep moving forward all the time, in any way we can (and that’s where I took issue with Elpel’s conclusions).
I disagree. Gore won a big victory for us, probably the biggest victory yet when it comes to global warming. We’re now past the petty bickering over whether or not it’s going on. That still leaves a lot to do: like the argument that it’s just a natural cycle and we have nothing to do with it, and the notion that such an idea means we shouldn’t do anything to stop it. It didn’t end the war by any means, but it was a major victory, nonetheless. His “solutions” don’t go nearly far enough, but they at least get people thinking about their impact on the world they depend on to survive. So, Gore accomplished about as much with a movie as you could ever ask a movie to accomplish, and frankly, that’s more than all of your efforts and mine put together as of this moment.
Giuli’s only recently started to see some of the company we keep in the space marked as “primitivism,” and she’s not exactly impressed. Originally in response to some of Ted Heistman’s recent writings on “race,” and now more to the general history and a disturbing trend in primitivism, she’s working on a full article about primitivism’s unsavory relationship with Nazism. I actually saw your link to that article a few hours before you posted and emailed it to her for research material.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 3 January 2007 @ 11:06 AM
At some point the problems caused by the Black Plague gave rise to new technology that kept civilization going. Was that a turning point for the vision? No. At some point the social threat of Nuclear War gave rise to agreements between countries so that Civilization could keep going. Was that a turning point for the vision? No. Just like every other global or large scale problem Civilization has caused or seen, Global Warming is viewed as another one of those. Will it be a turning point for the vision? I don’t think so, but maybe I am wrong. Maybe Al Gores movie is a step towards vision change. Maybe all of his solutions look ridiculus to viewers after seeing what is happening. I don’t know what the long term effects will be, but does anyone? What I do know is the history of global crisis that Civilization has faced, and how it has responded; by inventing new technology. Maybe this is different, I don’t see how yet. All I was saying is that I think this film is the voice of mother culture, addressing the problems that she has caused and telling people that she can fix them if only they keep trusting her, and buying into the system. Will it change some peoples minds? I know several people who have been changed, so yes. Is it a step towards a leaver vision? I don’t think so. To me it looks like Civilizations mythology trying to cover it’s own ass now that people are not clueless to the environmental change. Is it wrong to create a dialogue about this? If my emotive response was not to celebrate but to question… That makes me a purist? Is asking questions a bad thing? Is my gut reaction not worth a discussion? Should we accept anything that has the environmentalist stamp of approval at face value?
p.s. “Al Gore is an Idiot” is a silly way of creating contraversy. I like to be silly. Perhaps we don’t share the same sense of humor.
p.p.s. I’m also not sure about “green” technology being somehow better because it’s “cleaner.” The longer civilization exists, the more loss of biomass… “Green” technology is designed to make civilization last even longer, which I believe is worse for the planet than if it were to kill itself quickly. Again, I could be wrong… but if no one asks these questions or creates a discussion for them, then there is no way to know.
Comment by Urban Scout — 3 January 2007 @ 4:04 PM
Of course it’s the voice of “Mother Culture,” no disagreement there. I think it’s excellent if you take An Inconvenient Truth as a starting point to go deeper, into something that really does speak to a “Leaver” mindset. I’d like to think that’s what I’ve done in the various “pop culture” articles I’ve written over the past year, linked above—use the Wii or Pirates of the Caribbean, etc., to launch a deeper discussion. That’s very laudable. That’s also what I was writing against in the Elpel article—a step forward is a step forward, and “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” but unless you also take the second and third steps, you haven’t accomplished much. So absolutely, build off of such opportunities, and use them to launch into something deeper. Complacency is deadly.
But I don’t think you can really do that by calling your thread, “Al Gore is an idiot.” I think you first need to acknowledge that your starting point did something good, if only in providing that starting point to launch off from. I called your thread an example of purism because it didn’t seem, to me, to be using the movie as a starting point and going further. It seemed like it was more about how bad it was because it didn’t go far enough. That’s precisely the kind of purism that’s holding us back. Maybe that wasn’t you intention, but that’s what I saw in the thread, and why I didn’t take part in it.
p.s. - It may well be. While I’m accused of never taking anything seriously in meatspace, for some reason the medium of a keyboard strips me of all humor.
p.p.s. - I share your ambivalence, but to give voice to my other mind on this matter, does that mean that it would be good to make everything as destructive as possible? It might be more accurate to say that civilization crashes when a certain threshold of biomass is wiped out, regardless of how quickly it is reached. In that case, approaching that threshold more slowly might provide greater chance of a slower, more gradual “powerdown,” which would allow civilization to die out, without necessarily facing die-off, and population leveling off simply through declining birth rates.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 3 January 2007 @ 4:37 PM
“But I don’t think you can really do that by calling your thread, ‘Al Gore is an idiot.’”
Haha. You’re probably right about that.
“…think you first need to acknowledge that your starting point did something good, if only in providing that starting point to launch off from.”
I see what you are saying and now I see why you thought it was coming from a puritin approach. I wasn’t really thinking about how to use it as a platform. I was trying to de-code the mythology behind it. I definately think it can be used as a platform. But I went to see it, and was so sorely dissapointed, “This is what the buzz is about?” I was under the impression is was ten steps forward, not the same old story. To regular old Takers, this movie was nothing but the same story with a new twist. In the hands of “changed minds” this movie can be a great way to freak people out and get them to open up to new ideas. That is, if you’re trying or wanting to change minds. I am no longer trying or making an effort to do that. If it happens, it’s a by-product of the other stuff that I am doing. So I wasn’t looking at an Inconvenient Truth as a tool I could use to spark conversations. I was looking at what it was doing to the masses of Takers who were consuming it, and how they might take it in. My value of the film is not the fact that it can be used as a tool by those in the know to wake a small number of people up, but the masses of people who it has put back to sleep: GLOBAL WARMING: don’t be alarmed, buy a hybrid. But I can see the value in the small amount of people it has the power to change. I was under the impression that this movie was going to change the masses, not give them more false hopes. But you are right when you say, “It’s important to celebrate the small victories along the way.” And while most people were celebrating the small victory, I was examining the big that came with it… Someone has to remind people that this isn’t the “end of the war.” It’s like… Don’t get hopeful because it will make it all the more painful when the whole thing collapses. I wasn’t saying this movie “didn’t go far enough,” I was saying, “don’t let it get your hopes up.” This movie was all about false hope. “We’ve got to save the frog from the boiling water.” The frog is dead, Al. The frog is dead.
Comment by Urban Scout — 3 January 2007 @ 5:45 PM
I guess I’m more pessimistic.
The great masses out there weren’t sure global warming was even real. An Inconvenient Truth offered some “solutions,” but more importantly, it convinced them that there is an actual problem. That’s a big step forward. It’s not ten steps forward as you said, but it’s at least two, maybe even three. You’re right, this is no time to sit on our laurels, and it’s something we can use to try to reach people. Of course, you know me, I’m IshCon’s resident materialist—changed minds come from changed lives, in the end, and if you try to be an animist working the 9-to-5 gig, you’ll go crazy. But this might help to start move people in the direction of living a different way, and the new mindset that goes with that.
All in all, though, it sounds like we’re basically on the same page here.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 3 January 2007 @ 5:53 PM
“changed minds come from changed lives”
Agreed.
“All in all, though, it sounds like we’re basically on the same page here.”
Yay!
Now, maybe next time before you lambast one of *my* threads (make fun of ishcon all you want, I sure do!), you can ask me for clarification first… or not.
Comment by Urban Scout — 3 January 2007 @ 7:43 PM
“I think it’s excellent if you take An Inconvenient Truth as a starting point to go deeper, into something that really does speak to a “Leaver” mindset.”
Definately. My social discontent took form and my writing started after reading Stupid White Men by Michael Moore
I think writers who can start people off like that, in an entertaining and engaging way are great and essential.
Comment by Dan — 3 January 2007 @ 9:11 PM
“Those other primitivists are elitist and puritan. This isn’t very radical because it doesn’t get to the heart of the issues at hand. Here’s why we’re better and more radical.”
This isn’t necessarily my perspective of what you wrote, but it’s certainly one possible interpretation. Can’t escape it, can we?
This reminds me of your comments on ethnocentrism and racism:
Dan Bartlett followed up:
All humans are self-centered. We love ourselves more than we love others. And why shouldn’t we? We’re us goddammit! People who are arrogant and grandiose are suffering from the breakdown of self-love, not an overdose. Narcissistic people posture and preen because they’re tragically insecure, not because they’re legitimately secure in themselves.
This makes me question what you’ve written here, and myself as well. Why don’t you just ignore these other people you’re referencing as examples? Why does it matter if you point out that they’re being elitist and puritan? Does Kevin Tucker or Scout or anyone else’s (mine?) so-perceived “elitism” really have anything to do with you? Wouldn’t the logical conclusion of your own self-confidence be solidarity with yourself and not lengthy posts critiquing others while justifying yourself?
As you yourself advocate, where is the common ground seeking? You and I could both go back through history and dreg up interminable examples of our hypocrisy — but why? Let’s move on, shall we?
What do we have in common? What do I want more of? What makes me come alive? These are the questions that I’m doing my best to stay focused on. Everything else is secondary.
- Devin
Comment by Devin — 4 January 2007 @ 12:37 AM
the best is that you type all this bullshit and say elsewhere, “learning the skills are easy” … also suggesting permaculture but never do any of it cause youre too busy talking about Wii and designing a stupid role playing game where you think some Dungeon Shaman controls mediation between whats sacred/myth. Boring. if you want a real relationship with the “natural” world, “skills” would be a much more immediate, direct and practical way of learning how to “THINK LIKE AN ANIMIST” since skills dont need fantastic representations. this website is just self-serving as usual. go live your life. you dont have to tell everyone about how you want nintendo Wii to “subvert” Cartesian philosophy. no one gives a shit except people who want to play it and need to justify it through their politics. why even bring up Tucker’s image? because you people are scared of it? what do you think of real hunter-gatherers image? and how scared would your work buddies be of them? toss a fucking spider-man shirt on them and 70 pounds of fat and i guess it makes them “one of you.” fuck that shit. lose some weight and go outside instead of typing all fucking day.
Comment by Doctor Awesome — 4 January 2007 @ 1:11 AM
Jason,
I used to read your blogs regularly, i think your 30 theses are a good re-articulation of things other people have been exploring over the last 20 years in antiauthoritarian milieus, they are a useful tool and ive referred friends to them. Unfortunately i find it harder and harder to take anything on this site seriously. Ive never posted any comments before, but this essay feels like an airing of grievances so i will air mine.
You seem to confuse and conflate Primitivism with Anarcho-Primitivism. I am not one to get bent on semantics, but there are important distinctions that need to be drawn. Primitivism or any kind of critique of civilizations ultimately has a critique of the power structure that forces the labor required to build and feed cities. Anarchists however aim to challenge those existing power structures in every area and moment of life. This is because for every moment these power structures exist there are lives denied, ruined, used, and destroyed.
Your essay “On Violence” highlights your confusion in this area. While you may feel well versed in the themes of various writers, your own writing betrays your lack of desire to physically challenge the structures of power as they exist today. Im not referring to killing individual people or pitched battles, no one is. Jensen says violence against people is necessary for self defense, but if you have read any issue of Green Anarchy magazine at least for the past several years, any writing about effective direct action has been focused primarily on the infrastructure (ala global guerillas) and physically living (and eating) “off the grid.”
You blame those who would openly challenge the technological juggernauts advance, you blame those who would challenge the state’s ability to enforce its laws -an ability rooted in violence, but worst of all you blame -IN ADVANCE- those who would do anything that might bring down the wrath of the state on such well-behaved “primitivists” like yourself who prefer to sit at their programming jobs patiently waiting for “the collapse” to deprive everyone of the comforts you enjoy.
Your response to the omnicidal condition of the present appears only to be a monumental waste of energy in the form of a role-playing game. You claim to comprehend the critiques of ritual and the debasing of experience by symbolic culture. Why role play as foragers when you could be out doing real thing? I understand the need for discussion and education and exploring ideas, but again, you seem to conflate a critique with a physical reality. Your emphasis on symbolic diversions is indicative of the way specialists and archons throughout history have used ritual behavior to distance people from their lived reality, a practice that conceals more than it reveals. Nevertheless, if i am lucky enough to find myself with an afternoon to kill with some friends, you can rest assured we will not be spending it inside rolling dice.
In reference to a reply of yours at the top, the Derridan (and post-modern) acquiescence to power has been addressed by more than enough radical writers, i suggest you find one and read it. This is not just a war of ideas, there used to be fish in the ocean, now there aren’t. You are well aware of the stakes, why attack those who at least propose to try to effectively stop the world-devouring technological complex? Especially if you want your own projects to be taken seriously. A critique is nothing without a real refusal. For all the generally good and thorough writings of Anthropik, I am waiting for something real to manifest itself in the form of a challenge to civilized habitation. Until then, i fear it will remain a site for liberals with “deep critiques” and limited responses.
-Chuck P
Comment by Chuck P — 4 January 2007 @ 3:06 AM
Ever since reading Daniel Quinn’s books I was hoping others would start writing fiction with his philosophies at their heart instead of the same old civilization propaganda. When I discovered 5th world through Ran’s site I was overjoyed. It definitely provides a positive vision of a post-peak future that is far more practical than even a movie like “An Inconvenient Truth” which gives a good message but no vision. Keep up the good work and I look forward to Guilianna’s book on the 5th being completed!
Comment by SF — 4 January 2007 @ 10:13 AM
Now what sense would that make? If I’m lambasting the thread, at issue is what you wrote—your opinion is relevant insofar as you succeeded in reflecting it in your thread. Clarification helps us understand your opinion, but it does nothing to help understand the impact of your thread, right?
Unfortunately, yes. The problems we face cannot be solved by anyone alone. We need to build upa rhizome network, with various cells feeding off of each other. A puritanical approach limits that rhizome network, and that diminishes us all.
Funny, I thought those were the very questions this article was focusing on.
Obviously, many people disagree with your assessment as to what’s “boring,” but you prove an important point with this statement: that it’s very difficult to judge who someone is from what they write online. For instance, I can’t find anything worth writing about in my permacultural activities or in primitive skills. I’ve started a food forest this year, but there’s nothing to really write about until spring when it starts coming in—and even then, it’s so locally-adapted that it’s basically no use to anyone else. When I go foraging, when I make medicine, what is there to write about that you can’t get much more easily from a basic field guide? I mean, we have a full cabinet of medicine we made ourselves, and I’ve done basic first aid with nothing more than herbs and mud, but what is there to write about in that? What is there to write about in the teas and salads and snacks we make from foraged wild edibles? So to say that we “never do any of it” is simply untrue. We do it quite a bit. We just don’t sit online preening about it.
For some. Others need more intermediate steps. More importantly, most people I know who are really into primitive skills still do not think like animists, because it’s still not a lifestyle. To quote Tamarack Song once again:
Most of us are in no position to live primitively right now—I wrote about this “Where Have All the Savages Gone?” The opportunity is only now beginning to open, after all. Learning primitive skills is critical; I’ve learned and practiced quite a few, but there’s still a great deal more ahead of me. In the meantime, the seeds of a healthy culture are all around us, just waiting.
That’s actually precisely the point, in case you missed it. Hunter-gatherers are strictly conservative. Their appearance is in accordance with the dictates of their culture, down to the smallest details. They don’t dress to shock. Kevin Tucker does, and what’s the effect? People who might otherwise listen to what he has to say, don’t. Such superficial radicalism might feel good, but it undermines the stated radical goals. That raises the question of whether you’re genuinely pursuing those goals, or if you just like to feel like a “radical.” Tucker’s hardly alone in this, and though he might superficially resemble a hunter-gatherer, someone who’s thinking like a hunter-gatherer would be more likely to dress in a polo shirt and khakis (I don’t do that).
Easier said than done. I can’t support myself as a hunter-gatherer, at least not yet. So I work long hours; in this season, the sun is usually long set before I’m out of work, and that means that I only get very limited opportunities to hone my skills. It also leaves me precious little time to exercise, cook proper food, or do much else but type. So I do what I can: I type. Yes, I’m caught in the vicious cycle right now. I’m also moving into the virtuous cycle. Since most of the First World is caught in the same trap as me, my example can help—as much for the mistakes I make as the example I set. It’s basically “publishing your source code,” making the whole process open source. If I were to simply run off into the woods and do nothing to help everyone else do the same, the way you suggest, I’d be as selfish as I am sometimes accused of being. Of course, if you don’t like it, you’re free to not read any of it, but for the sake of all those who’ve been helped, inspired or intrigued by the things we’ve done here, I’m going to have to ask you as politely as I can to go fuck yourself.
Thanks, SF—particularly for proving my point to “Dr. Awesome” that while he’s always free to not read it, it’s helping others, so no, I’m not going to stop.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 January 2007 @ 11:02 AM
Gee, “Doctor Awesome,” don’t you sound familiar. For someone who advocates “go[ing] outside instead of typing all fucking day,” you sure do spend a lot of time bitching at Jason about what he should be doing. (Despite the fact that you have no idea what skills he’s learning or what projects he’s working on.)
Here’s an idea: why don’t you start your own blog describing, in excruciating and boring detail, all the skills you’re learning, and we’ll see who’s farther along. We’ll also see how damn boring a blog about hunting and gathering is.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 4 January 2007 @ 11:05 AM
Hi, Chuck P,
Sorry your post got caught in the spam filter. It’s often overzealous.
I’m not at all confused about the difference between primitivism and anarcho-primitivism. I am only incidentally an anarchist, insofar as tribal social structures do not have leaders. I am not interested in trying to overthrow the government, since such a predictable and useless response wastes the effort and potential that might otherwise be used in an effective attack on civilization. As I noted in the very article you’re critiquing, the question of violence is not an ethical one, but a strategic one. Perhaps you can comfort yourself with the thought that the terrorist wing is only targeting infrastructure, and conveniently forget how many people rely on that infrastructure to live—that is, the number of people such an infrastructural attack directly kills. The fact of the matter is, it’s not “effective direct action” (though I loathe the euphemism of “direct action”—please, at least show the courage to call it what it is, an attack). It’s not effective at all.
At the end of the day, attacking civilization is how you make it stronger. If you want to destroy it, you need to move beyond it, and that requires the creative use of our energy towards the goal of creating a new, healthy culture. Primitive skills are essential. So are arts and games. My friends get together and roll dice because by the time we have any free time together, the sun is gone and the night is cold. There’s not much to be done at times like those to hone primitive skills, so we work on equally essential skills, the ones involved in building a culture. When the weekend comes, or we have some days off, if we roll dice at all, it’s around a campfire at night after a day in the woods collecting our food, or tending to our sprouting forest garden.
I challenge “direct action” because I’m interested in tearing down civilization as quickly as possible, not strengthening it so that it can last longer, no matter how good it might make me feel personally. Granted, with our civilized mentality, such “direct action” feels like something you’re really doing, something to be proud of, but of course, in the end you’ve helped civilization far more than you’ve hurt it, and you’ve managed to kill several innocent people along the way. Way to go.
As for the points about symbolic thought, I’ve often reiterated my case for why Zerzan’s critique of symbolic thought is utterly inane. Abram does an excellent job with this in Spell of the Sensuous: symbolic thought is hardly the divorced entity Zerzan makes it seem. It is rooted in the sensuous earth around us, and emerges from our interplay with the living world around us. Symbolic thought is a powerful thing, and it can be used for incredible good just as easily as it can be used for incredible evil, a crucial point that Zerzan rejects entirely. We will never be able to go beyond civilization without using that advantage. Zerzan’s brand of primitivism is thus deeply anti-human, since in rejecting symbolic thought, he is rejecting a fundamental, defining element of the human experience, universal across all human cultures—even the primitive ones that have none of the hierarchy or oppression that Zerzan says must follow from symbolic thought. This, of course, shows that his argument is just plain wrong.
In the final analysis, you and Dr. Awesome have provided excellent examples of precisely the kind of attitude I’m talking about in this article. Dr. Awesome is more interested in proving that he’s more “awesome” than me by calling me names, than trying to explore possible solutions that could help create a healthy culture beyond civilization; you are more interested in the immediate emotional return of “direct action” than in effectively fighting civilization, because all the effective means of fighting civilization aren’t glamorous or flashy, and to our civilized minds, they don’t really feel like fighting at all. But at the end of the day, you have to answer the question of whether you’re more interested in being seen as a radical, or being genuinely radical. Because very often, the latter precludes the former.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 January 2007 @ 11:26 AM
Chuck P: I understand what you’re saying and I thank you for saying it in a reasonable tone.
I don’t see how the difference between primitivism and anarcho-primitivism could be drawn on those lines, unless we’re using a different definition of anarchism. Based on the dictionary definition of anarchism (no rulers), anarcho-primitivism is exactly what we believe. What you’re talking about is activism, specifically violent activism; you can believe in a philosophy and it can still be a philosophy without you pursuing a specific course of action that others deem to be anarchistic enough.
We’re all for living and eating off the grid, but the destruction of infrastructure does nothing to help our cause, and usually hurts it. This was discussed in “On Violence.”
First of all… enjoy? Jason doesn’t exactly enjoy his 10-hour workday in a sealed building. We’ve been dying to do more permaculture, more hunting, more gathering, but we’re restricted by the demands of civilization. Neither of us “enjoys” these “comforts”: both of us want to be living in the woods full-time as soon as humanly possible. But the key words here are “as humanly possible.” Right now, it’s not humanly possible to survive without doing the 9-to-5. Or, in Jason’s case, the 8-to-6.
Second of all, we don’t critique these peoples’ motives. If there’s anything worth fighting for, or against, this is it. The question is whether it’s effective. You take for granted that these methods are effective (”why attack those who at least propose to try to effectively stop the world-devouring technological complex”); we don’t “attack” anyone, but we questioned if these methods were as effective as they claimed (and that question should be asked before a person does something that might risk his or her life) and came up with: no.
The Fifth World role-playing game was not designed for foragers, for people who have the option of “going out doing real thing.” It was designed for people uninitiated into anarcho-primitivist thought, people who have never heard of these ideas and are looking for a bright future to spark their imagination. It’s Ishmael, in a different format. It’s reaching people where they are. And it’s what will allow us to save up enough money to move onto our food forest full-time, giving people a living example of what we’re talking about.
We are too. The only thing in our way is money. And the best way to make sure that living challenge happens sooner rather than later is to support us - and the Fifth World.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 4 January 2007 @ 11:28 AM
Oh, I don’t know … I could see much of our tribe’s ritual life revolving around role-playing games. They’re already a kind of ritual.
What, it makes less sense than turning snack time into a ritual with grape juice and cookies?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 January 2007 @ 11:34 AM
Okay, so maybe that was just wishful thinking since I don’t like role-playing games.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 4 January 2007 @ 11:39 AM
[quote]You claim to comprehend the critiques of ritual and the debasing of experience by symbolic culture. [/quote]
To be fair, Anthropik readily admits having no such issue with either ritual or symbolic culture.
[quote] any writing about effective direct action has been focused primarily on the infrastructure (ala global guerillas) and physically living (and eating) “off the grid.” [/quote]
Again, to be fair, Anthropik has historically been pushing to both live & eat “off the grid”, in as far as they are able to do so. And as regards “effective direct action” and “global guerillas”, well, I can’t say that I’ve seen a whole lot of it. It seems like so far the most effective methods have been made indirectly by eating/buying locally, building local communities, eating wild, etc.
[quote]Your emphasis on symbolic diversions is indicative of the way specialists and archons throughout history have used ritual behavior to distance people from their lived reality, a practice that conceals more than it reveals. [/quote]
I’m reasonably certain that somewhere in the archives there’s an article where Jason discusses why Anthropik isn’t especially “down” on symbolic thought. I’m no anthropologist, (which, incidentally, appears to refute the concept that humans have ever lived without symbolic thought) but I’m willing to accept that symbolic thought is a “natural” part of human existence. In the meantime, since Zerzan himself admits that “there is no blueprint” to get to a non-symbolic society, I, personally, am willing to work with the tools at hand to go as far down the rewilding path as I can, even if that includes symbolic thought (and diversions).
[quote]Nevertheless, if i am lucky enough to find myself with an afternoon to kill with some friends, you can rest assured we will not be spending it inside rolling dice.[/quote]
I’m not really sure I see why you think Anthropik is suggesting that you should, after all, as far I know storytelling has [b]always[/b] been best at night, around a fire!
Comment by jhereg — 4 January 2007 @ 11:41 AM
Oddly enough, Ran today linked to an Orion article, “Green Rage,” which discusses some of the ways in which passionate conviction outran common sense, leading to “direct action” that allowed civilization to grow in places where they’d previously been held in check, and generally had the effect only of making civilization stronger. The most hope Matt Rasmussen can offer for such “direct acton” is to one day be a symbol, like John Brown, for those who will employ actually effective action.
Poor, lonely Giuli, that’s just because you’re such a scared little bunny. Don’t worry, you’ll break out of your shell one day.
Yes, Giuli’s our “pit bull” online, but you’d never guess that if you knew her in person. By the same token, most people who read my writings online think I’m a stuffy academic, while those who know me in person think I can’t take anything seriously. It’s amazing the way replacing lips with a keyboard can change your personality—yet another reason not to judge someone as a person based on their online writings.
Absolutely!
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 January 2007 @ 11:59 AM
I have never wrote a book. May be a tale…. I have never played an Internet video game… I have never thougth so near the end of our form of life…
May have some help! I have make an entry in the Fifth World… but just looking for a form of being there… just don’t wanna be out of it.
Comment by Mario A. Grajales — 4 January 2007 @ 2:08 PM
“If I’m lambasting the thread, at issue is what you wrote—your opinion is relevant insofar as you succeeded in reflecting it in your thread.”
I agree. Only so far as our personal relationship goes… “Friends” wouldn’t post a blog haranging eachother… For some reason my thinking was, we are working on the same things, we agree on most things, even on the things I disagree on with you, I support what you are doing and consider you an online friend and colleage that I will meet in person some day.
You know all these attacks on role-playing is really pissing me off. I don’t role play. I have in the past (some pretty sweet Star Wars/Vampire campaigns let me tell you). I see the importance they play in cultural developement. What the fuck do you think indigenous people doing “ritual enactment” is? It’s live action role playing. You are enacting, with your body the “campaign” of your mythic heroes/gods. I would highly suggest that people posting comments here read more Campbell or Prechtel. Maybe then they will understand that ritual is not just chanting or sweating. Initiations were year-long live action role playing campaigns.
“Nevertheless, if i am lucky enough to find myself with an afternoon to kill with some friends, you can rest assured we will not be spending it inside rolling dice.”
And what do you think natives did all winter long while they were hanging out in their shelters? Sat around and talked about politics? No. They played games. They told stories. Danced….
“Primitivism” is not just knowing what to eat and how to make tools. This is why Zerzan may have done more damage to the anarchists by questioning symbolism. He himself says, “I may be wrong, but let’s talk about it,” where so many anarchists read it and go, “Yeah. Fuck all that stuff.” Humans cultures are just groups of people who have all agreed to play the same game; a tribe is a group that has agreed to play the same campaign. Unfortuanately most people who study anarchism or primitivism or shamanism even anthropology don’t study mythology or ritual or cultural mentoring. That’s because those tools are invisible. You cant hold them in your hand, but they are tools. More important than what you can hold in your hand. They are the instructions for the tools you hold in your hands. I highly reccomend people take Jon Youngs Art of Mentoring workshop. It’s a week of emersion into how indigenous cultures functioned as learning environments. You learn the core routines of indigenous people, something you won’t find in a book. We have imaginations, we have emotions, and we have languages. There is a reason for that. We are storytellers. End of story. Haha.
Great quote from Tamarack Song by the way.
Comment by Urban Scout — 4 January 2007 @ 2:58 PM
Regarding Jensen and violence. There are two things that he does in Endgame that I think are very good.
First, he says that before we can talk about strategy and tactics, we need to talk about what our ultimate goal is. I’m not at all convinced that Jensen and the tribe of Anthropik have the same ultimate goal in mind. Jensen’s goal is to tear down civilization before it destroys even more of the natural world; the cost to those who do this tearing down is quite important, but nevertheless secondary. The tribe of Anthropik wants to make sure that the guns don’t point in its direction before civilization collapses on its own, after which it hopes to enjoy a bright future; the price paid by the natural world in the meantime is quite important, but nevertheless secondary.
Second, and more explicitly regarding the use of violence, what he’s essentially saying is this: let’s unearth the gun (or explosives, whatever) and put it in the drawer with all the other tools. That doesn’t mean we have to use that gun. It’s just that we need to know it’s available so that, should it ever be the best tool to use, we can just pick it up and put it to use, without having to dig through the mud first in order to reach it. Basically, he destroys the arguments put forth by dogmatic pacifism, so that we can move on and talk about effectiveness and morality of violence in, and relative to, this or that particular situation , without having to go back to the same old dogmatic moral arguments each time.
Comment by Hasha — 4 January 2007 @ 3:26 PM
I suppose you’re right. My apologies. And thank you for such a spirited defense of what role-playing is capable of; a lot of these ideas I’d actually already written in the introduction to the Fifth World rulebook, but you’ve stated them here from a slightly different perspective and some very inspiring conviction. Thank you for that bit of perspective, I think it’s very well-timed in this thread.
You’ve read us entirely wrong, I’m afraid. If it would make a difference, I’d already have strapped bombs to my chest and blown myself apart. Ending civilization is the most important goal ever presented to the human species. The only question is how to do so most effectively. If all the people whose creative potential and conviction could actually tear down civilization instead blow themselves up with the dams, then we’ve done civilization more good than harm. We’re trying to create a new, healthy culture not just for ourselves, but for everyone who’s willing to go beyond civilization.
And that’s the discussion we’re having here. Bugger is, there’s almost no scenario under which it’s effective. In pretty much every case, it does far more harm than good.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 January 2007 @ 3:30 PM
Jason, I’m fairly convinced by your first paragraph. As for the second, I don’t think that’s right. For instance, at the beginning of Endgame, Jensen gives the example of a bunch of Vietnam vets living in the forests of Oregon that the government and some transnational timber corporations were spraying with Agent Orange, sending messages to the Bureau of Land Management, Weyerhaeuser, Boise Cascade etc. saying “We know the names of your helicopter pilots, and we know their addresses.� Apparently, the spraying stopped. So, in this case, violence (or rather, the threat of violence) was effective. And there is no reason to think it wouldn’t be effective in other situations as well.
What might however be true is that you can’t ‘tear down civilization’ using violence - that you can only win some local battles. If that’s true, then there’s no point in going around the globe, destroying infrastructure of cities in a civilization destroying campaign. But if a particular piece of land means a great deal to you, and if that particular piece of land is under attack, then the threat and possibly the use of violence have the potential to successfully protect it. But of course, that wouldn’t amount to destroying civilization. It would however prevent civilization from destroying that particular piece of land.
Comment by Hasha — 4 January 2007 @ 3:53 PM
I meant second and third paragraph, respectively. First and second paragraph of your response to me.
Comment by Hasha — 4 January 2007 @ 4:02 PM
I can certainly appreciate the sentiment there, and there may be exceptional cases where it’s effective, but even in the case of particular places I’m skeptical. Our own struggle to protect the Tribe of Anthropik’s homeland, the Allegheny National Forest, suffered an enormous setback from the ELF arson on the Irvine ranger station on 11 August 2002. While the ADP had effectively slowed logging in the national forest prior to that event, it has since energized the opposition and made it much more difficult to protect the forest. Today, the Allegheny is worse off than ever, and largely because while the ELF’s attack had almost no effectiveness in stopping the exploitation of the forest, it did energize the exploiters. The overall effect has been profoundly negative.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 January 2007 @ 4:03 PM
Jason, I’ll look at the articles that you linked to, but I’m somewhat skeptical. Think about it, you said
[quote] While the ADP had effectively slowed logging in the national forest prior to that event, it has since energized the opposition and made it much more difficult to protect the forest. [/quote]
That’s the point. It slowed down the logging, probably just for a little while. Jensen writes about how hard he worked on petitions etc. to stop the logging of a particular piece of land; the logging stopped for a little while, until the folks with big guns changed the laws/regulations on the petitioners and logged every single acre of the land that the petitioners were working so hard to protect.
Sometime violence is effective, sometimes it’s ineffective, and as for the ELF, their acts of sabotage are largely symbolic, a nuisance, and not a real threat to anyone, individually or collectively. I wouldn’t expect the ELF to scare anyone away. I also suspect that you’re exaggerating the damage that they did. I imagine that, at most, they sped up the destruction that was going to happen anyway.
Comment by Hasha — 4 January 2007 @ 4:22 PM
No, no, no, you misunderstand. The Allegheny Defense Project had slowed down logging, primarily through litigation. Then the Earth Liberation Front came in, partially burned down this ranger station, and now, because of the attack, there’s much more resistance to the ADP. So the people who were effectively slowing the exploitation of the forest are, because of the ELF’s attack, much less effective, and because of the attack, logging has now increased. Non-violent tactics had slowed the logging. When a violent “direct action” was undertaken, logging increased. There was no slow down because of the attack, the slow down was because of the ADP’s litigation, before the attack.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 January 2007 @ 4:27 PM
I understand what you’re saying. Litigation originally slowed down the logging. Great. The question is how long it would have lasted. My guess is that, eventually, the logging companies would have logged everything that they originally intended to log (though of course, I might be wrong). Then the ELF comes in, burns down the ranger station, thus turning the public opinion against the litigators, giving the logging companies a convenient excuse to do what they wanted to do. I understand all that. The point is that, although I’m certainly not saying that the ELF action helped, I imagine that it didn’t cause quite as much harm as you’re suggesting. I mean, it provided an excuse to the logging companies. What I’m suggesting is that, if there hadn’t been for the ELF action, the logging companies would simply have found another excuse.
But the point with the ELF is that its actions are so symbolic. That’s all they are. They don’t threaten anyone, therefore they won’t stop anyone, and they can even be harvested to their opponents’ advantage. But what if the ELF moved away from the purely symbolic actions? What if it became a real threat, the way that those Vietnam vets were?
Comment by Hasha — 4 January 2007 @ 4:39 PM
Sure … eventually. But other strategies are being developed. There’s Friends of Allegheny Wilderness, for example, a group that has much more of my own sympathies for reasons I’ll be getting into in a later article. I’d hardly say that hastening the inevitable is a good thing in this case. No, I’m under no illusions that had ELF not intervened, everything would be just peachy. But for those of us trying to save this forest, they’ve been a terrible enemy.
Have you read “On Violence”? That’s precisely the possibility that I explored there, and what I came up with was that even the most effective strategies are still not effective enough to counter-balance the damage they do.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 January 2007 @ 4:49 PM
[quote]But what if the ELF moved away from the purely symbolic actions? What if it became a real threat, the way that those Vietnam vets were? [/quote]
Well first off, I think it would cement public opinion. Secondly, I think that if they became a real threat and were organized like ELF, the kid gloves would come off.
[b]If[/b] you’re going to do that, it needs to be done more rhizome-atticly (there’s my neologism for the year) than ELF, but I don’t see that happening if public opinion about A-P is cemented into a negative “sleeping with the fishes” pair of boots.
It’s an issue of scale, which you’ve already mentioned, as a matter of fact.
Comment by jhereg — 4 January 2007 @ 4:52 PM
ELF’s actually fairly rhizome as it is, but even if they were to move beyond merely symbolic targets to actual infrastructure—as I discussed in “On Violence”—they would still do more harm than good.
Now, a rhizome army defending a tribal league that’s laid effective claim to some more-or-less abandoned territory through simple ownership-by-use as hierarchy begins to crumble, that’s something else entirely. But we’re not at that point yet. Civilization is basically unstoppable in its anabolic growth phase. It’s peaking and catabolic collapse is when opportunities begin to open up. That’s why everything to date has failed so miserably, and why the future is optimistic nonetheless.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 January 2007 @ 4:56 PM
[quote]ELF’s actually fairly rhizome as it is[/quote]
Yeah, somewhat. But if you’re going to ‘kick it up’ in threat/violence, you’re going to need to ‘kick it up’ organizationally too. In order to do that rhizome-atticly, you need a larger support group (that’s voluntary!!!!). In this case, assuming we’re talking about the US, hierarchy isn’t broken down enough to get away with anything less than the majority of the public. And again, I think that as soon as someone tried to build such a rhizome in the US, public opinion for it would wither on the vine. You couldn’t get such a thing started on a large scale. (at this time, which leads to…)
[quote]Civilization is basically unstoppable in its anabolic growth phase. It’s peaking and catabolic collapse is when opportunities begin to open up.[/quote]
Yep. Once you start talking about having everyone (or mostly everyone) on board for a given area, then you can start thinking (and acting) this way, until then, I just don’t see the point.
Comment by jhereg — 4 January 2007 @ 5:04 PM
“Thank you for that bit of perspective, I think it’s very well-timed in this thread.”
No prob. Hey, are you planning on going to Rabbitstick, 10,000 ways, or Feral Visions this year?
Comment by Urban Scout — 4 January 2007 @ 5:13 PM
I read “On Violence�, but it was a while ago. Will reread it.
I do agree that, if you’re going to use violence/threat of violence, it’s best if it’s done by a group with as little connection to any other group as possible. Back to the Vietnam vets. Just a bunch of people occupying a piece of land and willing to defend it. No organization behind them. What are you going to turn the public opinion against? No, I’d say, if you’re going to use violence, don’t go out yelling to the media about how you and your ‘green organization’ are going to do such and such. Threaten quietly, and threaten the people who count. And mean it. If you don’t mean it, then keep your mouth shut. And evaluate what the power balance is. If you don’t think you can win, don’t go into the battle to begin with.
[quote] Now, a rhizome army defending a tribal league that’s laid effective claim to some more-or-less abandoned territory through simple ownership-by-use as hierarchy begins to crumble, that’s something else entirely. But we’re not at that point yet. Civilization is basically unstoppable in its anabolic growth phase. It’s peaking and catabolic collapse is when opportunities begin to open up. That’s why everything to date has failed so miserably, and why the future is optimistic nonetheless. [/quote]
Yeah, I imagine that Jason’s right, that the hierarchy is still too strong for most counterviolence to be effective. But it won’t be for too much longer. And at that point, you wanna make sure that your gun is in the toolbox, and not buried deep in the ground, covered by a bunch of dogmatic pacifist nonsense. (Not that Jason’s spitting out a bunch of ‘dogmatic pacifist nonsense’, just that there are too many people who are, which is why I think ‘Endgame’ was so important.)
Comment by Hasha — 4 January 2007 @ 5:18 PM
So the bottom line: direct action strengths civilization, video games and role playing undermine it?!
Score 2 more for internet masturbation.
Comment by Neo-Shamu — 4 January 2007 @ 6:06 PM
And where do you get the idea that violence creates change, and games do not? That’s a very civilized viewpoint; it’s civilization that denigrates games, and it’s civilization that casts everything as a battle or a war. Primitive societies revere Trickster, often as the most powerful of the gods, and he often plays a prominent role in the creation myths.
But, being civilized, games don’t feel like they’re accomplishing anything. Violence does. So rather than examine what will actually change things, you’d rather just feel good while you help maintain the status quo? How radder than thou.
Masturbation, indeed.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 January 2007 @ 6:15 PM
keep justifying the fatness Godesky. “primitive societies never were fat but id like to take privmitivism to a new level since me and daniel quinn like horsing down fucking Gummi Burgers and Taco Bell at our Dungeons and Dragons parties that WASTE HOURS of the day where we could be out disrespecting the sacredness of ’skills’ as assimilated DATA from field guides and to feed my slow ass metabolism.” this website is a fucking hunk of shit and its not even worth reading. the collapse consistently is centric to the Fat Patrol and a bio-region you dont even know (but talk about a lot) cause youre too busy tip-tapping on your own website amassing more and more data (how many articles and posts do you reply to a week? and you say you have no time? fuck off). its good to know the vanguard for collapse has its 30 thesis prepared for everyone to read froim 5 books you reference constantly. id suggest tossing this website out and learning things with a small knit group where you can go LARP in the woods after but thats not going to happen. hell, maybe you can trick more people from work and church with your Leave it to Beaver manners into playing Dungeons and Dragons too before they laugh their ass back home. name-calling wins. people in primitive societies are constantly doing it to LEVEL power and this ego-centric website needs it. fuck your fat face.
Comment by Doctor Awesome — 4 January 2007 @ 6:31 PM
I’m not entirely sure if all that was English—there were definitely English words involved, but sentences in English tend to convey a complete thought. I think he’s saying I’m fat, the kind of witty, rhetorical barb that only the good doctor (or a cafeteria full of sixth graders) could come up with. You’re absolutely right, “Dr. Awesome,” foragers use insults inside their tribes all the time. Of course, you’re not inside the Tribe of Anthropik, so this is more akin to warfare than suppressing egos, but I’m much more disturbed by the quality of your insults—don’t you kids know how to hurl a good insult anymore?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 January 2007 @ 6:54 PM
Hey Doctor Asshole,
If spending time on the internet is so stupid, why are you doing it? If you don’t agree with Jason’s philosophy, or Anthropik… why comment at all? Do you think you will change someones mind by making fun of them? If it is self-satisfaction you seek, masturbation is a lot more fun, and no one gets hurt (unless you do it to hard). Although my hands are not clean when it comes to insulting Jason, I would still recognize that this site is doing something and Jason has not claimed to be anyones role model. What are you doing Mr. invisible? What is your real name? If your such a primitivist who hates role-playing and this site, why are you even on the internet? Shouldn’t you be out in bush, wacking your way to freedom?
Comment by Urban Scout — 4 January 2007 @ 7:00 PM
I have to say, Scout, you make a much better friend than foe. I enjoy working with you on the important stuff much more than getting so heated about the details.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 January 2007 @ 7:03 PM
I can’t for the life of me figure out why this guy is so pissed at my husband. I mean, Jesus, you can feel his fury in all the swear words he tosses around—but fury at what? For what purpose? What has Jason ever done to this man (I assume) he’s never even met? Why all the vicious anger?
Doctor Awesome, you’re so enraged over the fact that someone you’ve never met who probably lives thousands of miles away from you isn’t doing enough. You agree with him on more than you disagree with him, in fact, on far more points than you agree with most people—yet you’re raging against him on his blog because, in your mind, he’s not doing enough to further a cause both of you support? Did it ever occur to you that we’re all on the same side and you could use that common ground to convince us that your method of moving beyond civilization is more effective than ours? Did it ever occur to you to ask Jason what he’s doing, rather than assume that he must be doing nothing, just because he doesn’t go around bragging about it constantly? (Which is somewhat similar to assuming that someone who writes travel guides to Europe has never been to Europe, since in the travel guides he never mentions his specific trips.) Did it ever occur to you to encourage him in losing weight with the paleo diet rather than just accuse him of being fat?
There are two questions here. One is the question of how Jason is harming you to such an extent that you apparently feel the need to fly into an uncontrollable rage. The other is the question of what you gain from flying into said uncontrollable rage, versus what could be gained from befriending Jason and exchanging ideas with him.
Furthermore, did it ever occur to you that the energy you’re expunging yelling at a stranger on the internet could be put to better use becoming more tribal yourself?
In any case, I strongly suggest not posting here again… it seems doing so would give you an aneurysm.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 4 January 2007 @ 7:08 PM
And so we’ve all learned a valuable lesson today about friendship.
This feels like the end of an episode of Stella. Yay! We did it! We did it together! Yaaaaaaaay!!!
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 4 January 2007 @ 7:11 PM
Oh, but Giuli, if the good doctor did that he’d only be working towards ending civilization, and then how would all the cool primitivists know how much more radical he is than us?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 January 2007 @ 7:12 PM
Haha. Yes. My new philosophy is, “why argue when you can collaborate?”
I fucking hate talking about philosophy. Let’s play some games, share some knowledge and laugh about it. People can almost always find something to argue about, but when it comes down to doing stuff, I think any one can work well together. At this point, I (we?) need more allies. So the tribe of Anthopik views X differently that my tribe. So fucking what? How can we help eachother out? I share what I know, you share what you know, maybe theres a dissagreement maybe there isn’t. All in all what really matters is not philosophy, but what we do to give support and get support. At this point, I’m all about supporting the elements I agree with and the groups who do similar things, even if I don’t agree with everything. Fuck the details. You scratch my back, I scratch yours… and that is called a working relationship. Like you were saying about your mom not agreeing with you, but it doesn’t matter because she is already doing permaculture. Family rarely agree on politics, but never-the-less, they still give support and get support (not all families
) Anyway.
“you make a much better friend than foe”
right back atcha.
Comment by Urban Scout — 4 January 2007 @ 7:16 PM
From both me and Jason:
Sing it, brotha!
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 4 January 2007 @ 7:31 PM
[quote]There are two questions here. One is the question of how Jason is harming you to such an extent that you apparently feel the need to fly into an uncontrollable rage. The other is the question of what you gain from flying into said uncontrollable rage, versus what could be gained from befriending Jason and exchanging ideas with him.[/quote]
Actually, there is another possibility.
He’s a troll that enjoys creating controversy where there is none.
Comment by jhereg — 4 January 2007 @ 9:05 PM
Thanks both for responding.
My purpose of bringing up the On Violence article was not to say that “attacking” is the only way to be radical, but as people who have a vested interest in a similar result, it would be better not to write off resistance efforts as “purile, childish, and emotionally charged” or acts of “immediate-return gratification.” Indigenous groups throughout Latin America and Africa have been attacking and sabotaging mining and natural gas operations for some time now. The motives vary but most fix around the operations being dangerous and damaging for the communities themselves, and have been met with a “success” in terms of keeping total development at bay.
North America has begun to experience this as well, with Indigenous occupations and sabotage across the border in Canada. Critiques of the ELF are legion and their weight is beginning to sink in. Too often what is viewed as “going on the attack” barely qualifies as self-defense. And I think you wrote it off as childish and reactionary when we havent even begun to see real actions and real results.
What bothered me most was that you are not in the same position that they are and yet you cast judgement on them and their actions. Then you expect people to respect your offering of a role playing game to undermine civilization. Im sorry, but the dissonance in this situation should be obvious.
The Zerzan/Abram debate is an old one. Zerzan at least has the follow-through to challenge Culture itself as a means of social control. Control at its most basic level, the mediation of experience. Roles are merely a symptom of the unfreedom at the heart of any divided society. The fact that they can be played with, occupied by, and replaced with various interchangeable people, only speaks to the roles themselves becoming autonomous, or coming to exist outside and apart from the immediate human actors.
To ritualize this exchange only furthers the institutionalization and debasement of daily life, no matter what symbolic gestures are offered to fill the void. As Abram documented the more language loses its grounding and physical connections with reality, the more it becomes ideology -an abstraction over daily life. There is plenty of grey area open for discussion but the obvious remains, the last step is implicit in the first. Its trajectory cannot be ignored.
You seem to revel in noting how conservative foragers are in terms of their garb and daily life. I would suspect even an “incidental anarchist” would be wary of any type of coercion or homogenized behavior within a society or group. I am not of the camp that holds foraging groups up as an ideal, and im sure you would not admit to doing so either.
Allow me to borrow a question from Jensen… Does the woman who fights her rapist empower the rapist?
It seems as though only once she is directly out of harms way can she decide which is the most perfect course of action. It seemed your comments On Violence came from a place that is out of harms way. To say that fighting those in power legitimates their use of force is to operate by the logic of the dominator and blame the victim (before they even resist!). The species that make up this planet are not choosing to let themselves be wiped out with the knowledge that if they die then civilization is one step closer to collapse. I fail to understand why anyone would not support those who promote actions to derail or hinder the very machines that kill our lifebase.
One final note. I understand the role playing game as “primitivism for beginners.” I just think that given the stakes, its kind of lame, and you should at least be willing to lend verbal support to those who are trying to stop the destruction of the biosphere in a more immediate fashion. In this case, it appears to be you, the one we only see when he is at his computer -not in prison, not facing a grand jury- who is playing the “radder than thou” card, refusing to offer his support -in fact condemning- those who have put more on the line to save a piece of this earth than he has thus far.
Chuck P
Comment by Chuck P — 4 January 2007 @ 10:18 PM
[quote]I am not of the camp that holds foraging groups up as an ideal, and im sure you would not admit to doing so either. [/quote]
Are you sure you read ‘The Thirty Theses’? Cause I get the impression that foraging groups generally [b]are[/b] held up as an ideal at this site. And, certainly, I’ve seen Jason explicity state that in terms of ‘Anarcho-Primitivist’, he’s more ‘Primivist’ than ‘Anarcho-’. If we’re gonna bust his chops for stuff, let’s at least make sure it’s deserved.
[quote]Allow me to borrow a question from Jensen… Does the woman who fights her rapist empower the rapist?[/quote]
Of course not. But that’s not exactly the question we’re discussing is it? I don’t see anyone suggesting pacifism, all I see is people trying to figure out when, where and how to be most effective at fighting.
[quote]It seemed your comments On Violence came from a place that is out of harms way.[/quote]
It may seem that way when read on it’s own, but again, Anthropik is already engaged in efforts to rescue/revive the Alleghany, so I hardly think that it [b]truly is[/b] from a place that’s out of harm’s way.
[quote]In this case, it appears to be you, the one we only see when he is at his computer -not in prison, not facing a grand jury- who is playing the “radder than thou” card, refusing to offer his support -in fact condemning- those who have put more on the line to save a piece of this earth than he has thus far. [/quote]
The entire point of this article was that what you put on the line is of secondary importance! It’s [b]effectiveness[/b] that counts most. I for one am a [b]pragmatist[/b] not a [b]purist[/b]. From what I see, Anthropik is as well, and I can hardly fault the position taken in this article.
Comment by jhereg — 4 January 2007 @ 10:47 PM
The worst part about Anthropik is that everyone is laughing and this “inter-tribe” of a handful of bloggers is the only one who doesn’t get it.
And being “incidentally” an anarchist means that you’re not an anarchist. And if you think flamers are putting ANY real energy into this, you’re just wrong. This is where serious people come for a good AND VERY OCCASSIONAL laugh. The idea there is an article about how much better the ‘neo-shaman’ (an insult of all insults) is than others is just even more laughable.
And there it goes. Another one to swallow into the vortex.
Now write a billion responses to it and think that this site does ANYTHING.
Comment by Neo-Shamu — 4 January 2007 @ 11:04 PM
urban scout, i found your primitive beer cache under the log by your house. sorry to steal (and piss inside) your phony forage for your alcoholic ass. the first world scaredy babies need to figure out all the ways to keep the sedentary horrors of civilzation in close proximity. of course dont use violence when youre scared but most of the world doesnt have the option of being a complete pussy like we do with websites and daniel quinn whack off sessions. its too bad the Hadza quickly lose their land and culture but anthropik is here to save the day with Fifth World. beer anyone? its a rough life.
Comment by Doctor Awesome — 4 January 2007 @ 11:21 PM
Chuck P, thanks for bring up the resistence of the indigenous groups. Yeah, I don’t see how anyone could condemn people for using violence to protect their own land if all other options have been exhausted. At that point, the talk of effectiveness becomes rather pointless: if you’ve got nothing but violence left to protect yourself, and if not protecting yourself means that you will be obliterated, then you fight no matter how ineffective it might seem from the outside. And nobody’s got a right to judge. “It’s counter-productive,� I can hear people say. Counter-productive for whom? Not for the people who are making one last effort at protecting their homes. It might seem counter-productive ‘in the grand scheme of things,’ but locally, for the people protecting the only homes they’ve got, it can’t possibly be counter-productive, because it’s gotten to the point where they must choose between their own likely obliteration, and their own certain obliteration. And what right does anyone have to talk to them about ‘counter-productivity’ at that point? (Of course, I’m not saying anything terribly original here - Jensen’s written about all of this stuff. It’s just that it finally clicked for me.)
Plus, I must say I’m skeptical even about the notion that this kind of fighting is counter-productive even ‘in the grand scheme of things’. The hierarchy is overstretched as it is, and anther problem is yet another problem. The idea that additional problems will make it stronger… I’m skeptical.
(Of course, the above in no way implies that ELF isn’t being childish and silly. Their ‘direct action’ is deliberately merely symbolic, and as such, it lacks seriousness.)
Comment by Hasha — 5 January 2007 @ 1:16 AM
Hey, that’s my new boyfriend you’re disrespecting, you heathen woman, you! {shakes fist in outrage}
Comment by Jashee Denford — 5 January 2007 @ 2:13 AM
Dr. Evil,
Me no understand what word you say. Me just finished took english class first time. Me drunk to write response clever.
“i found your primitive beer cache under the log”
Ooooh how nice. You watched my movie! Thanks for spending the time to do that. Did you think it was it as wasteful as playing role-playing games?
I don’t think anyone here thinks that one role-playing game is going to save the day. But it can be a small piece of a larger picture. Why is that so hard to see?
“of course dont use violence when youre scared but most of the world doesnt have the option of being a complete pussy like we do with websites and daniel quinn whack off sessions.”
And what are you doing here again, but continuing to make this a whack-off session, only I’m the one recieving here and let me tell you, your not as good as my last internet troll… and you know what that means? You don’t get a tip. Everyones got a piece of the pie, no ones is better. Everyone has a way of justifying why theres is better. I don’t care about their justifications, I’m doing what I’m doing and I’m not going to justify it to anyone but myself. I’m also not sure what the effects of anything I do really are, who knows maybe I’m not inspiring anyone to do anything at all except argue with me on blogs and forums… I’ll never know and I don’t care. Because I’m doing what I want and what feels right for ME. Let everyone do what feels right for them. I’m done fighting over tactics. If you disagree who cares, what can we do to help eachother? How can we play off each others tactics? If you disagree on tactics, then don’t work together or find a way that both of your tactics can work together. “We need it all,” remember. Let’s not argue, let’s make shit happen… is that really this hard? Everyone is doing their thing. If you’ve got a problem with what other people are doing, then it’s probably because you yourself are not doing anything at all. If you want to argue about what is or isn’t more effective, you’ll spend the rest of your life debating. Who knows until it’s been done? That is why I say do what you think works, and support those experiementing with other techniques. I support Anthropik not because I agree 100% with their tactics or their philosophy but because they are doing work against civilization that they know how and feel inspired to do. While I disagree with Anthropik about violence, it still makes me feel good to know they are doing what they can, and what makes them happy.
“beer anyone? its a rough life.”
Rougher than my 5 o’clock shadow.
Tell me Doc, what would you prescribe people to do?
p.s. I haven’t drank or smoked since April; One too many blows to the head will make you deaf for months! That’s enough even for Scout to realize he’s got a problem. Some people can drink moderately… I am not one of them.
Comment by Urban Scout — 5 January 2007 @ 3:35 AM
Jashee, you little slut! WTF is wrong with you? Get back in the box. I SAID GET BACK IN THE GODDAMN BOX!!!!
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 5 January 2007 @ 11:20 AM
I swear I saw something smoking in August (not a friction fire…)
The Gymp from Pulp Fiction anyone?
Comment by JCamasto — 5 January 2007 @ 2:10 PM
It occurs to me that if one is trying to break free of civilization’s paradigm, one should at least try to discard such shallow nonsense as fat-phobia.
Comment by venuspluto67 — 5 January 2007 @ 2:25 PM
“I swear I saw something smoking in August (not a friction fire…)”
ssshhhhhhh! Haha. You got me! Well, technically I quit drinking in April and smoking in… September. I lump them together to make it feel like it’s been longer. It helps me psychologically with cravings.
Comment by Urban Scout — 5 January 2007 @ 2:43 PM
Hello, Chuck,
Thank you for your response. Especially in contrast to the rest of this thread, your civil yet intelligent criticism is a breath of fresh air. I hope my response here can move us closer to an understanding of one another, if not full agreement.
I think you’ve misunderstood what I mean by “Radder Than Thou.” It’s not about not being judgmental—gods know I’m not one to preach that gospel. Rather, my concern is with those who claim to be trying to stop civilization and the calamity it creates, but ultimately will jeopardize their supposed goals for appearances. So my opinions from “On Violence” are quite relevant here: the terrorist wing of primitivism ultimately serves to strengthen civilization, because in the end analysis, violent action feels like it’s achieving something even when it is a major setback. It feels like that because we’ve been raised as civilized people, and we see everything in terms of violence. We have wars on terrorism, on drugs, on poverty, on cancer; we cannot even speak of a struggle in the English language without using metaphors of combat. So if there isn’t any actual combat going on, the civilized mind concludes, then there must not be any struggle.
Of course, an animist thinks in very different terms. Tribal peoples often revere the Trickster. For them, most struggles have no violent dimension. They have song duels, escalating prank feuds, and other means of winning out over each other not through force, but through wit. In fact, to many tribal cultures, it is shameful if someone must resort to force; it shows that they are too dim-witted to win any other way. So, let me begin by saying that to me, what you call the “dissonance in this situation” is not obvious at all. While it is “obvious” from a civilized mindset that violence is effective, while mere games are not sufficiently serious, it is equally “obvious” from an animistic perspective that violence is rarely if ever effective and usually helps your enemy more than yourself, while more effective tactics are usually marked by some element of play, art, or wit. So, while as a recovering civilized person I can appreciate how this must appear to be contradictory, I believe it reflects much more deeply just how different the civilized mindset is from the tribal one. Naturally, since it’s my view that the civilized mindset has a great deal to do with our current problems, I do not have much care for whether my tactics make sense to that mindset. It is precisely that difference in worldview that also makes the most deadly animistic attacks completely invisible to civilization until it’s too late–and therein, I believe, lies our greatest hope.
Of course, sometimes force is necessary, which is what makes Jensen’s favorite rape analogy so pointless. We’re not talking about whether or not fighting civilization is good, but how to do so. The analogy just doesn’t work: the problem with eco-terrorism isn’t that it fights civilization, but precisely the opposite, that it helps civilization so much.
And of course, eco-terrorism is a far cry from any indigenous resistance, which I haven’t had much to say about at all. We did do everything we could to help the Bushmen win their recent victory in Botswana, including taking collections in Pittsburgh and writing several articles here to raise awareness of what’s going on there. No, they’re not revolting against Botswana (yet), and I typically support indigenous resistance efforts, though they often fall into depravity and commit atrocities as terrible as their oppressors. But we weren’t talking about indigenous resistance efforts, we were talking about eco-terrorism, a very different phenomenon, so this is a bait-and-switch—a straw man.
What I dislike in Zerzan is his lack of follow-through. Culture, language and even symbolism arise naturally from the living world; they are not even unique to human beings. Zerzan tries to explain control, coercion and hierarchy in terms of abstraction, and while abstraction is certainly a prerequisite, it is just as obviously not an explanation. Coercion and hierarchy are new phenomena in human history, but culture is anything but. Even our most abstracted expressions—art, religion, philosophy, and so on—are four times older than systems of control and coercion (the Upper Paleolithic was some 40,000ya, while the first signs of hierarchy emerge with agriculture, 10,000ya—of course, evidence of abstract thought is even older in Africa, and the Upper Paleolithic “Revolution” is more likely evidence of migration from Africa, so even “four times older” is giving hierarchy too much credit). You might as well explain the rise of hierarchy in terms of the opposable thumb: like abstract thought, you can’t build a coercive society, although there are also plenty of egalitarian societies with opposable thumbs, and like Zerzan’s denial of abstract thought, a denial of the opposable thumb similarly puts us in the position of condemning ourselves for being human. Abstract thought is common to all human beings; culture is common to all human beings. Freedom and egalitarianism are the norm for most human cultures across time and space, and yet all have art, language and abstract thought. Human freedom is impossible without it, because the rejection of abstract thought and culture is a rejection of humanity itself.
While foraging groups may not be “ideal,” they are our evolutionary heritage—the context humans are created for. They may not be perfect, but they are, as Daniel Quinn put it, “damnably hard to improve upon.” The reconciliation of tribal conservatism and human freedom is that their social structure actively encourages self-expression. Thus, radical self-expression and a conservative tribal culture are not only compatible, but mutually reinforcing. Paul Radin treated this subject very well in Primitive Man as Philosopher. The key is to create a society that provides sufficient space for self-expression. Our own culture fails miserably in this, providing very little space for self-expression. This is not necessary, of course, and most cultures throughout history have been tribal cultures that did not share this feature. So, while you say, “I would suspect even an ‘incidental anarchist’ would be wary of any type of coercion or homogenized behavior within a society or group,” the nature of tribal society resolves the seeming contradiction that seems to bother you here, because in their culture, there is no contradiction here at all.
You also wrote, “I fail to understand why anyone would not support those who promote actions to derail or hinder the very machines that kill our lifebase.” I would support such an action, as I mentioned in “On Violence,” that’s why I condemn the use of violence—because, as I discussed in that article, even in the best case scenario, such actions still fail “to derail or hinder the very machines that kill our lifebase.” Instead, they accelerate the machines that kill our lifebase. I emphatically “support those who promote actions to derail or hinder the very machines that kill our lifebase.” I also emphatically oppose those who accelerate, aid or empower the same. That is precisely why I am so deeply opposed to eco-terrorist action, as I explained in the article in question.
Finally, you wrote, “I understand the role playing game as ‘primitivism for beginners.’” I think in this, you underestimate it terribly. While it is certainly useful for that, there is plenty of evidence in this thread of self-proclaimed “advanced” primitivists to benefit from such a tool. I refer you again to the Tamarack Song quote above: while several in this thread have told me that they have far superior experience with primitive skills, this is still fundamentally a technological approach to primitivism—which is part of the very problem. A role-playing game provides a ritual space and context for a developing tribe, and can provide the first nexus for creating such a social fabric. Just as important, and possibly even more important, than learning primitive skills and the mundane, day-to-day, technological needs of primitive life, modest, simple and elegant as they are, are the social tools and network. Tribal peoples count their greatest wealth in their tribe: their families and their social networks. Not their skills. So while the RPG is a good tool for “primtivism for beginners,” I think this very thread shows how urgently it is also needed by those that consider themselves seasoned or even advanced.
As for the rest:
Comment by Jason Godesky — 5 January 2007 @ 2:49 PM
HAHAHAHA.
Well it could’ve been an email and resolved some of this, since the omission of other Pittsburgh area anarcho-primitivists (and please don’t kid yourselves into thinking you’re the only ones) was Bill’s, not mine. I didn’t see the article before it went to print (much to my dismay) and even after having a last minute confirmation that the statement printed was NOT true, it went ahead as it was.
Ultimately, I’m almost glad it did because this “article” is too hilarious to have missed simply because it highlights and adds several exclamation points behind the fact that anthropik is pathetic.
As much of an opinionated asshole as everyone knows I am, I’m hardly the judgemental type. Y’all call yourselves anarcho-primitivists, so that’s how I referred to you (honestly, not knowing much better as well). I’m curious as to how the anarcho- part fits in at all considering anarchism to me is pro-active and NOTHING here follows that. It’s just a computer world mish-mash of topical anthropology, Quinn obsession, self-quoting, and self-justifying ridiculousness. I seriously don’t know what it is y’all think you’re doing, but filling the internet with ridiculous amounts of half-baked and premature (meaning later contradictory) blogs doesn’t feel like much to me.
Seriously, if you’re into comics, video games, LARPing, and fantasy worlds, PLEASE don’t drag AP down with you! You don’t need to step into anti-civ terms to try and justify your apathetic draw downs.
For example, this ‘role playing’ shit is garbage. Children in primal societies play as adults, but this isn’t sitting around and playing dungeons and dragons with a hunter-gatherer/horticultural theme, it’s PRACTICAL. Children by the age of four are beginning to be self-sufficient and by 6-8 have a whole other realm of society that is their own and it’s largely provided by their own efforts. It is play, but it has REAL results. When a good friend of mine and me watched his 9 year old son and a friend get crawdads from a creek and stoke a fire by themselves, cook and eat them without any suggestion or prompting from adults, it wasn’t cause they were role playing, it was because they wanted to eat and liked living that way.
And any of your internet onlookers here with a brain should be able to see right through the Wii as ‘undermining’ or ‘Pirates of the Carribbean’ as subversive (as if pro-child molesting Hakim Bey has had an idea worth entertaining).
Consider yourself fortunate that I’m not going to bother touching the violence, ‘attacking civilization builds it’, and christian nonsense. Jason, you simply don’t know when to quit and you’re too egocentric to realize that you’re being patently offensive in your co-option of terms and ideas without any grounding. It really is just infuriating if someone was to take it seriously (and thankfully for you, that’s rarely the case).
Whatever, I don’t understand the point of your existence or what it is you THINK you are doing. But I don’t care, obsess with my image and what you THINK I THINK or AM DOING. While you play make believe with topical level rhetoric and clearly not understand core concepts.
At least I know you have no real world lives or aspirations. Talk all you want, but given the chances to meet face to face and actually work on the skills which you think come SO EASILY (hahaha), you prefer 2 hour, pay-as-you go walks on a rare occassion and a 2 minute youtube clip of skinning a deer as opposed to the 2 WEEK TIME FRAME I left open to all of you to come to my house and learn, connect and take a significant amount of venison home. Computer wins, reality losses, but the rest of us don’t care.
To make it real simple, here’s my bottom line: I gave y’all a chance, and (in hindsight), you fortunately didn’t take it. I think you’re pathetic and a dime a dozen. You’ll be gone from AP as you were among IshCon where you’re far more welcomed I’m sure. And you won’t be missed.
I’ve spent far more time just typing this than y’all are worth.
Eat shit motherfuckers.
-Kevin Tucker.
Comment by Kevin Tucker — 7 January 2007 @ 3:10 PM
One more thing;
Guillianna wrote: “We’ll also see how damn boring a blog about hunting and gathering is.”
I think the case is closed.
Comment by Kevin Tucker — 7 January 2007 @ 3:22 PM
Ah, that resolves some mysteries. The quote was attributed to you, though we did think it was strange. No, we didn’t think we were the only ones—we know for a fact that we are not, but my co-worker only knew about us.
So is Dungeons & Dragons—at least, at its best. It fulfills the very same practical needs as storytelling, one of the most common means that primitive societies spend their copious free time. Of course, another is gambling, which also relates to role-playing games, but I fail to see how you might characterize that as practical. Since it is perhaps the most common form of hunter-gatherer game, I think that really belies your contention that primitive peoples only play practical games.
Since you also have so little time for Hakim Bey, I suppose you’re also not interested that you just dismissed Ran Prieur, Jeff Vail, Toby Hemenway, and many other intelligent, thoughtful individuals who frequently read this site and appreciate our perspective as much as we appreciate theirs. It’s a shame you’re so hell-bent on marginalizing yourself in this manner, but you’ve certainly exemplified the very “Radder Than Thou” attitude I wrote this article about. It’s a shame that you’d rather be “cool” than effective, but I suppose that such “fashion statements” will take precedence over any significant social cause.
There was an invitation that was extended to me through another to come join you for one particular weekend, and while we were excited about the opportunity, we’d previously committed that weekend to something else. We asked our mutual contact to extend our apologies, and ask if some other weekend might work. We never heard back. So if a two-week time frame was extended, it never made it all the way to us.
I don’t know what “2 hour, pay-as-you go walks” refers to; I can’t think of anything we’ve done that would fit that description. Of course, you hardly know the full extent of our activities, but to assume that simply because we don’t boast about them online that we don’t do them is simply foolish.
In all, it’s a shame that you are given such prominence in primitivism; your deep-seated need to marginalize yourself in this fashion marginalizes primitivism along with it, and in the end, thousands who might otherwise have moved to a more sustainable way of life will instead die in collapse for the sake of your “coolness.” Truly, it is a tragedy.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 7 January 2007 @ 3:31 PM
HAHAHA
It seriously does get funnier. But it’s done and over with. Somehow my previously generous and later irritated views on you is supposed to be reflective of me in general. I seriously don’t care at all, but you clearly don’t get it.
Case in point, the wolf/dog articles. But just at what you wrote here, you’ve completely missed the point about playing. Play is practical, meaning it fills a purpose. Storytelling does that in an essential manner, but there’s a point to the story FOR A COMMUNITY THAT ALREADY EXISTS. Not that all stories need a point or that novels and the like aren’t stories, but STORIES FEED SOCIETIES NOT CREATE THEM. I’ve been pointing out for years how much goes into rewilding and write that I’m in that as much as anyone, but you’re just looking for an easy and self-serving way out. It takes a number of things, but everything has it’s place and if you’re interested in storytelling then do it, but don’t pretend (as you’ve written above) that it’s like the way children play, which is pure trivialization.
I don’t know why I bother, this is just stupid and a waste of time. What makes me “radder than thou”, I don’t know, I’m stating my opinions, not telling other people what to think of you, they can do that for themselves. You’re just a self-righteous twit who deflects much needed criticism for a general write off.
And if you sympathize with Bey, you deserve it all the more. Believe me, I have much more violent contempt for him. I’m sure some people here mean well, but this is my opinion of YOU AND YOUR SITE. If they have issues, I’m not a hard person to track down (feraledge at gmail.com).
I’m done. I have nothing more to point out about your attitude that doesn’t become a billion times more clear when you try and defend yourself. But as someone with a good deal of experience here, let me hit you with this before you go: being a writer doesn’t mean people are going to read it, putting out a flood of shit doesn’t mean you’re wise, and if you make yourself public (especially personal aspects of your life) KNOW that critics and friends ARE going to use it against you and both will point to inconsistences and flaws in your logic. What makes a good writer is being able to filter through that and learn from your mistakes. We’ve all made plenty, but when it comes to this, Jason, you’re just a brick wall.
All knowledge, any hunter-gatherer will tell you, comes from humility, that is the point of ridicule, storytelling, and life. And, from what I’ve read and seen here, that’s something you’ll never accept.
And that’s that for me. Hurry and defend yourself before you have to think about it.
Comment by Kevin Tucker — 7 January 2007 @ 3:51 PM
I didn’t see the add on paragraph where you really “give it to me” with your ‘nerdier than thou’ shit: “your deep-seated need to marginalize yourself in this fashion marginalizes primitivism along with it”
If laughter is the best medicine, you’re far more suited to being a therapist than a writer.
Comment by Kevin Tucker — 7 January 2007 @ 3:55 PM
That’s an odd slant to take, considering that most of those closest to me are far more concerned with my overabundance of humility, and my tendency to internalize others’ criticisms far too much. All the more odd since your activity here is hardly anything I’d consider “humble.” It seems quite hypocritical.
I’m disturbed by Bey’s writings on pedophilia, but I am not going to summarily reject everything he has to say for that. I’m not comfortable with Ran Prieur’s writing about 9/11 conspiracy theories or “morphic fields,” but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s done a lot of other good things. That’s the very type of purist approach that I was writing about. Nobody’s ever going to agree with you 100%; that’s what makes it so important to build on common ground. That’s what makes you “Radder Than Thou.” My passing mention of your name in this article didn’t actually have anything to do with you, but with the effect your image had: that a “radical” image can undermine radical ideas, because until you succeed in making your stance relevant to people’s lives, there’s simply nothing there.
Movies, video games, etc., these things are not subversive in and of themselves, but there is potential there, and my previous writing on these subjects is aimed at raising up that subversive potential. It makes primitivism relevant to people’s lives, right here and now.
Consider: you’ve drawn a line around what defines anarcho-primitivsm that’s so tight even the Tribe of Anthropik, IshCon and Daniel Quinn don’t make the cut. If you can’t even work with your natural allies, how will you ever hope to reach the millions more out there who neither know nor care about our cause?
Perhaps I am as egotistical as you suggest, but where you make enemies out of those who aren’t good enough for you, I make friends out of those who share something in common with me, and try to build on that so we share more and more in common. Your purist line is something few will ever live up to.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 7 January 2007 @ 4:07 PM
[quote]Your purist line is something few will ever live up to. [/quote]
You know, it’s entirely possible that that is the point.
Comment by jhereg — 7 January 2007 @ 5:08 PM
I believe it is. That’s actually my point—as in, that’s exactly what that article 85 comments above is about.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 7 January 2007 @ 5:11 PM
[quote]critics and friends ARE going to use it against you and both will point to inconsistences and flaws in your logic. What makes a good writer is being able to filter through that and learn from your mistakes. We’ve all made plenty, but when it comes to this, Jason, you’re just a brick wall.
[/quote]
Kevin, I don’t know you from Adam, but this just doesn’t jive. I’ve actually seen much in Jason’s tone improve considerably in the last several months. In particular dealing with opposing viewpoints. Of course, in Jason’s case I don’t think it was ever an issue of being a ‘brick-wall’ so much as it was an issue of expression.
Comment by jhereg — 7 January 2007 @ 5:15 PM
{snippage}
Jesus Tapdancing Christ! The weight of all that ego must be truly crushing.
Comment by venuspluto67 — 7 January 2007 @ 5:17 PM
Guillianna wrote: “We’ll also see how damn boring a blog about hunting and gathering is.”
…………………………………
hahaha WOW.
you just destroyed yourself on every level in one sentence. thanks for getting to the point.
Comment by Doctor Awesome — 7 January 2007 @ 5:47 PM
For the benefit of “Dr. Awesome” and Mr. Tucker, since most everyone else seems to have had no trouble understanding what Giuli wrote, while there’s plenty of interesting things to discuss about hunting and gathering, as we’re often discussed such things on this very site, the idea of a blog that consists of nothing but what you, personally, hunted or gathered is nothing short of a mind-numbing bore—the primitivist equivalent of some civilized person’s blog consisting of nothing but each week’s grocery list.
In the future, “Doctor,” saying it once will suffice to alert us to your weak reading comprehension skills. Flooding the thread with essentially the same comment will be purged in the future just as it was in this instance. It does not promote healthy discussion, and if you do it again, you’ll be banned.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 7 January 2007 @ 5:53 PM
ban me and then get the fuck off your computer for 8 seconds cause its hilarious watching you come running everytime someone responds to this pathetic hunk of shit website. tell your wife to keep throwing out single sentence comments that completely reveal the intentions of this website.
you forgot to write in your analysis of kids and play that most kids dont sit around and just talk when theyre playing. thats what fat video game kids did (there goes my fat phobia again… you forgot also that youd be left in the dust around real hunter-gatherers and laughed at when you finally caught up. i guess that goes back to name-calling though and how in daniel quinn’s strategy to save civilizations First World monsters that we must be sensitive.). kids actually use their being in movement, developing coordination. something Merlin and role playing games dont do.
the best is that you create a game to feed more into the sedentism/blob culture of game nerds. no one else is going to play it except the gutless, gumby bodied, data consuming nerds who are more worried about their favorite “heroes” being mass produced by some piece of shit company than getting off their ass or having ANY concern about the destruction around them. they live in their heads and thats the only place. thats why their bodies are resemble the domesticated monsters of factory farms.
get over the “purism” shit too. civilization and its components are the real “purist” and “absolutist” dynamic at hand in the world. you fucking idiots.
ill ban myself.
then sit here rotting, patting eachother on the back until you have a kid and the REAL laughs begin on this blog.
Comment by Doctor Awesome — 7 January 2007 @ 6:25 PM
I bought a new cook’s knife at the grocery store last week because the handle came off on my old one. But when I was making my dinner for tonight, I forgot how sharp the new knife would be and cut myself not just once but twice. Fortunately they were only superficial cuts, so I didn’t bleed profusely all over tonight’s sustenance. I hope I cook everything enough so that I don’t end up getting diarrhea again!
See Jason, you were wrong. What’s not thrilling and gripping about that?
Comment by venuspluto67 — 7 January 2007 @ 6:27 PM
I tend to think that Dr. Tiresome’s apparent lack of social skills would be more of an impediment to functioning in a tribe-situation than Jason’s girth would ever be.
Comment by venuspluto67 — 7 January 2007 @ 6:37 PM
That’s because it’s true of each and every one of us here.
I guess you’ve never heard of a LARP, eh? I tend to get somewhat active in my own RPG sessions, I don’t know about the rest of you….
Yes. Yes they are. That’s precisely the point: that for all the talk about being anti-civ, a lot of the anti-civ attitudes expressed here are exceptionally, well, civilized.
Well…
But then, that’s a lot more interesting than the blog others are suggesting. You’d really need to drop the whole narrative thing, and just give us a list of what you bought at the grocery store last time to truly capture the pulse-pounding action of a blog detailing everything we do with primitive skills, just bragging about how cool we are.
While hunter-gatherers dream of being as rotund as myself, you’re right—it’s social skills that are most essential to primitive survival. In all tribal societies, they reckon their wealth not by their skills, much less their possessions, but by the size of their families, and the number of their friends. So in tribal terms, I think many of the commenters in this thread are very poor, indeed.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 7 January 2007 @ 7:34 PM
The five sentences that composed my “single-sentence comment”:
The fact that to you, every other sentence in that comment didn’t exist illuminates much - like why you completely ignored this other comment I left:
Every comment that makes a good point you completely ignore, then you endlessly harp on a single sentence that could perhaps be twisted, with a lack of reading comprehension, into something resembling an insult.
Jason actually had to explain to me why you and Kevin Tucker kept harping on that line, since we are not, have never been, never will be, and never identified ourselves as a blog about hunting and gathering. It’s kind of like saying that a blog about the middle ages is “about” agriculture since people practiced agriculture in the middle ages.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 7 January 2007 @ 7:41 PM
JGod: “Consider: you’ve drawn a line around what defines anarcho-primitivsm that’s so tight even the Tribe of Anthropik, IshCon and Daniel Quinn don’t make the cut.”
Maybe once everyone calls themselves Anarcho-Primitivists we can say we live in a world of primitive anarchy….
Lets keep widening the circle…
Al Gore had some pretty harsh things to say about our culture and how it views/uses the earth. Even some talk of an “expanding sense of self.” Sounds like deep ecology, maybe we can elect him president?
Or lets expand it to include Quinn who believes Technology is neutral. That sounds primitivist. Or maybe every lame ass graphic design student “blown away” by Ishmael or Neil Postman’s Technopoly? Lets include them too… and all the independent advertizing firms they work for too, so domination can stay fresh and hip for new generations.
We wouldnt want to alienate anyone or “marginalize” ourselves from the imaginary “mainstream” of Primitivism.
But sense were only “playing with ideas” here, i guess we should pretend it doesnt matter and we shouldnt feel “attached” to them, you know, like we might feel if they actually came out of experience or a living culture of resistance.
Comment by Chuck P — 8 January 2007 @ 1:44 AM
Yeah, I don’t want to be like “I told you so” but that’s the response I expected.
You might have thought your article was about building common ground, but the opportunity for that was well over by the end of the first paragraph.
oh well.
Comment by Devin — 8 January 2007 @ 3:29 AM
Hello, Chuck,
I see several things in your last comment that disturb me considerably. First is the dogmatism. While there are surely certain convictions which must define primitivism, you seem to have expanded these into a veritable creed. By my own reckoning, all that’s required to make one a primitivist is the conviction that humans operate best in primitive society. Even the rejection of civilization is not necessary for that, yet even in your own response, you reject Daniel Quinn pretty derisively for believing that technology is useful. I agree, and it seems to me, the rest of you do, too. In the article I mentioned at the onset, Bill O’Driscoll’s “Wild Times Ahead,” he wrote:
Of course, this is a very specious distinction. Given the previous misquoting, I cannot say if the fault lies with O’Driscoll or Tucker, but of course even the primary example used here is flawed. Metal does return to its natural state: it rusts, and becomes chemically identical to ore. Nothing can ever be seperated from nature irreversibly; there is no firm line seperating “good” technology from “bad” technology. An atlatl, a bow drill, a flint knife, these are all technology, and they’ve been part of sustainable, egalitarian, free human cultures for millions of years.
Indeed, tool-making is fundamental to what makes us human. Tool-making is closely associated with the huge increase in cranial capacity that occured with the shift from the genus Australopithecus to the genus Homo, it gave us handedness, our uniquely unsymmetrcal neocortex, and with it, much of our linguistic capacity, back with Homo erectus. Like the so-called “critique” of symbolic culture, the notion that technology is inherently evil is the kind of naive notion that rejects the human species in toto—free primitives and civilized slaves alike.
That’s not to say that technology is not without its problems. There are unexpected consequences and problems like Jevons Paradox, but ultimately what it comes down to is that technology is a type of complexity, and complexity is subject to diminishing returns. Therein lies the real problem: not that technology is evil, but that no one thing can ever be the ready-made answer for everything.
We both believe that primitive societies are better; just with that, we are in a minority together. But rather than work with that, you seem to be laying out a primitivist dogma, and scratching off anybody that doesn’t live up to your standards. Who says that technology is evil? That’s certainly not the attitude of actual, living hunter-gatherers. This is the kind of question that should be open to discussion inside primitivism.
What disturbs me even more, however, is the unstated assumption that humans are the only people who do not change. Finding common ground with someone does not mean that everyone’s a primitivist; what it means is that you make primitivism relevant to the people around you. Once you’ve done that, they may not be a primitivist, but they’ll be much more open to hearing what you have to say, what your hopes and dreams are, and perhaps, eventually, joining you as a primitivist. Pushing them out for failing to meet a specific dogma will not accomplish that, though. For example, at the moment, I’m not terribly inclined to listen very intently to what “Doctor Awesome” or even Kevin Tucker has to say.
Primitivism is anything but “mainstream,” but why is that? It speaks to the essential core of human existence. It unites everything that remains good and hopeful, even in the midst of civilization. Why aren’t people flocking to it? I think in this thread we see clearly why that is: dogmatism, purism, and a willingness to empower civilization to maintain “street cred.” So I don’t see anything coming “out of experience or a living culture of resistance,” at least not from your side of the aisle: all I’ve ever seen from that side is purge after purge to maintain the ideological “purity” of primitivism.
Hey Devin,
I don’t see how. The first paragraph wasn’t about Kevin Tucker; it was about an article about Kevin Tucker, and a photograph of Kevin Tucker, and most importantly, what impact they had on someone who’s not a primitivist, had never heard of Kevin Tucker. You’d have to be pretty self-obsessed to take that as a dig—we all have impacts on people we didn’t intend or didn’t plan, and it would be hard to talk about how primitivism’s being held back by puritanical attitudes without illustrating with some examples.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 8 January 2007 @ 11:32 AM
To the Doctor Ass:
I guess I count as one of your fat internet nerds simply b/c I play (and help write) the Fifth World.
Let’s see if anything I do qualifies me as “fat internet nerd”. At 5′9″ 145lbs, I am not fat. I am a martial artist, and have been practicing wing chun kung-fu for 15 years. I have a full time job as a paralegal, and have a tribal business, ala Daniel Quinn/Beyond Civilization, which is non-profit record label, and a for profit recording studio, as well as a for profit video studio. So I am definitely not lazy.
I also have minimal knowledge of HTML or any of those other greek internet languages. That makes me not ” an internet nerd”.
My tribe owns a bed&breakfast, which we run our tribal business out of, and we are getting into permaculture and other ways to ge off the grid.
So tell, me, do we measure up to your standard?
Humans like you irk me. Here we are trying to put primitivism and going beyond civlization “out there” as much as we can, and b/c we don’t do exactly like you (which i might add you never mentioned), we suck.
Seems pretty purist to me. But I have dealt with the jealous, whiny naysayers like you all my life, so whilst you piss and moan that nothing we do measures up, we will leave you behind just like the rest of civlization.
May your genatalia be blighted by maggots, sanctimonious prick.
Comment by Rory — 8 January 2007 @ 2:12 PM
Let me repeat your quote to which I was responding:
JGodesky: “Consider: you’ve drawn a line around what defines anarcho-primitivsm that’s so tight even the Tribe of Anthropik, IshCon and Daniel Quinn don’t make the cut.”
Im not a dogmatist. I just like it when terms retain their substance. I said nothing about not looking for common ground, I just dont think that should include throwing out our critique to pander to some mainstream mass of primitivists, especially when (as you say) they wouldnt even necessarily say they were “against” civiliziation.
Its obvious we are referring to different beasts here. And I think we should distinguish them from each other. Does that make me a purist?
You immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was saying that Technology is always and everywhere and unequivocally EVIL. I merely brought up that Quinn believes that (capital T) Technology is NEUTRAL, a statement fraught with deeper implications of which im sure you are aware, and a statement which no self-described primitivist I know would subscribe to.
I cant believe you would even try to say the reason primitivism isnt “catching on” is because of anarchist dogmatists. As if the social pressures of families and jobs and friends and all the norms of “mainstream” society aren’t still the biggest coercive institutions in peoples lives. As if the promises of big tits (love), money, a house, a sweet car, techno-communion, and piles of drugs aren’t still enough to distract people from their real needs. As if there aren’t armies of police, teachers, neighbors, professors, and counter-terrorism units ready to threaten people if they should step out of society or “walk away” in any meaningful sense to seek a life closer with the natural world or closer to themselves. You have forgotten the REAL antagonist.
All this time I have implied that YOU were the one with the “radder than thou” attitude, blaming others for whatever shortcomings you experienced within your primitivist discussion networks.
The fact is that Green Anarchy, the ideas and critiques, actions and practices that give it form and substance IS on the ascendancy in the US, Europe, and South America. It has been written that it is part of a general “momentum” against civilization as more and more people are beginning to look for solutions to the problems imposed by mass society, but a growing chorus of voices are beginning to describe themselves as explicitly anarchist and explicitly anti-civilization.
By labeling the anarchist “wing” of primitivism TERRORIST whose interest do you think youre serving? I suspect its your own so you can come off as more enlightened, nuanced, more mature, so you can better appeal to a generation of discontents who want to maintain the benefits of civilization -patiently waiting for it to “collapse,” without having to challenge or face the underlying basis of oppression and violence.
All im asking for is a little clarity. If the words and terms we use, lose their substance -their connection to reality- we cant hope for any meaningful discourse.
ive said my piece,
Chuck P
Comment by Chuck P — 8 January 2007 @ 3:42 PM
There’s a valid point to be made there, but who was suggesting otherwise? I’ve never suggested that Pirates of the Caribbean or the Wii, etc., were primitivist things in and of themselves—only that their appeal speaks to values that primitivists can appreciate, and that as such, they provide an excellent means of opening a dialogue about primitivism and making it relevant to the immediate lives of people who might never have considered any other way of life but the civilized one.
But I don’t see anywhere where anyone was suggesting that we extend or dilute primitivism, only that we try to build a common ground and bring people closer to it, so I apologize if I misunderstood your point. In my defense, it seems you were responding to an idea no one actually posed.
Well, now you know several; we do believe, like Quinn, that technology is neutral. I describe myself as a primitivist for the reasons stated above: I believe humanity was better off with primitive societies. If you feel that is not an appropriate moniker, I’m open to suggestions, but it certainly seems to be the most obvious handle to use.
I’m sorry if I assumed too much about your attitude towards technology, since your statement seemed rooted in a Zerzanite critique of technology, I assumed you held to the basic outlines of his argument. There’s several things I disagree with Zerzan about, but once again, the very fact that we both see civilization as a problem and primitive life as a way of life better suited to human beings puts us in a small minority together—so despite our differences, we agree on much more than we don’t.
Actually, on this, I think many primitivists allow themselves to get carried away on a bit of a paranoid fantasy. I’ve never run into any such opposition. The government isn’t hostile to my rewilding efforts, it’s oblivious to them. What do they care if I hunt more, live in the woods, etc.? There’s just a small checklist of items they’re interested in, and once that’s fulfilled, I’m not worth their notice. This is an important point I took from Jeff Vail’s work: hierarchy is blind to the threat rhizome represents.
I know you have, but to do so, you’ve completely redefined what I meant by “radder than thou,” as I’ve responded to prior.
You misunderstand me; when I refer to “the terrorist wing” of primitivism, I mean those primitivists who use violence to try to “bring civilization down,” as I discussed in “On Violence.” Examples include ELF and the Unabomber. Most anarchists in primitivism do not belong to this group, and again, the problem I have with it is not that it is violent, but that it is counter-productive. My intention is not to prompt myself up, but to urge these elements to stop their crusade before they destroy our last chance.
Here you tap the emotional core of the matter, which is at the heart of the “radder than thou” attitude. If I were “radder than thou,” as you claim, would make arguments like these to justify emotionally what cannot be justified strategically or intellectually, because my commitment to my own image as a “rebel” would be stronger than my commitment to stopping civilization’s rampage. As it is, I’m content to puruse actions that have an actual positive impact against civilization, even though they may be mocked and derided as they have been here, rather than empower civilization to do further harm in order just so I can feel good about “challenging” it.
As I wrote before, there are many ways to challenge oppression and violence. In primitive socieites, the challenges most respected are when you can get everyone to laugh at your enemy, mock your enemy, and in the end, walk away from your enemy forever. They usually involve songs or jokes or games; if they involve fists or elbows, you’ve probably already lost. It’s only a civilized mind that thinks that a successful challenge must always involve force. Primitive peoples consider those the least successful challenges of all, because they end up empowering your enemy. So why are we challenging civilization in such a civilized mode? Doesn’t it make more sense to challenge civilization like a primitive society would?
The question is not whether or not violence is justified—it’s never been more justified. The question is whether it does more harm than good, or if we’re throwing away the whole revolution just so we can satisfy a civilized desire to feel like revolutionaries.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 8 January 2007 @ 4:10 PM
Blimey. All kickin off here innit?!
On lighter note…anyone have an idea of what the carbon footprint of this page might be, having factored in all those computers, not to mention all those enraged calories? Perhaps someone could put up a running total - if nothing else, it might make us more efficient in our comments. Half a tree to insult Jason? Not worth it (absolutely no offence intended, Jason!). A branch and a handful of leaves to give a 101 on permaculture? Bring it on!
Less is more - or, to put it better, “Some is plenty, enough is too much”.
Enough, already.
Comment by fool — 8 January 2007 @ 4:40 PM
On that note, I’ve been moving the Fifth World website over to Sustainable Websites, a hosting service that powers its servers with wind, so it’s 100% carbon neutral. I’m incredibly impressed with their level of service so far. Anthropik will likely remain where it is, though: the only thing more tribal than a carbon-neutral host is a gift, and that’s what this site is.
As for the carbon footprint from all the hating, I’m not even sure how you’d go about calculating that.
But no worries, “fool,” I can’t take any offense at that—no one’s worth half a tree to insult! But thanks for stopping by and reminding us how much wisdom there is in “foolishness.”
Comment by Jason Godesky — 8 January 2007 @ 4:45 PM
Jason, I am not entirely clear on what your view on technology is. When you say that “we do believe, like Quinn, that technology is neutral,� are you suggesting that we, as humans, need some tools/technology in order to survive, that having some tools/technology is what makes us human? If that is what you are suggesting, then I agree with you entirely. But if you are suggesting that any given piece of technology is neutral, then that sounds completely absurd to me (nuclear warheads, anyone?). Can you please clarify your position?
Comment by Hasha — 8 January 2007 @ 4:52 PM
Technology—the body of knowledge available to a society that is of use in fashioning implements, practicing manual arts and skills, and extracting or collecting materials—is morally neutral. Any given tool, technique, skill, etc. must be evaluated on its own. Tool-making and the use of tools is fundamental to Homo sapiens, and common to all cultures. There is no level of complexity at which this becomes “evil,” but there does come a point at which you’ve passed the point of diminishing returns, and further technology will have increasingly grave costs—costs that must ultimately be levied against your landbase. This does not change the fact that technology is essentially neutral, however, since the problem here is taking it to excess.
Of course, any given tool may be destructive, neutral, or beneficial. These all need to be considered individually.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 8 January 2007 @ 5:03 PM
Jason, I’d say we tentatively agree; though I’m still not quite clear on your position. (Have you ever written an article on this topic?) I imagine though that this is largely due to the fact that ‘technology’ is such a blanket term, covering everything from the hand axe to nuclear warheads, from the ability to orient oneself by the starts to the alphabet to television to the knowledge of which herbs will cure which ailment… So whenever anyone says anything about ‘technology - full stop’ I find it hard to either agree or disagree - the terms covers way too many disparate things.
Comment by Hasha — 8 January 2007 @ 5:30 PM
And yet they’re also continuous; there’s no real way to draw a hard line and say, “These are good and those are bad.” Though I would say that knowledge about herbs is not technology, but knowledge. If you grind it up into a medicine, you might turn it into technology that way, but knowledge is not technology.
But yes, that’s the very reason I do not condemn “technology” in the blanket terms you’ll often find in other primitivist writings, and why I believe every piece of technology must be judged on its own merits (or lack thereof).
Comment by Jason Godesky — 8 January 2007 @ 5:36 PM
I was surprised by this, as I had previously thought that the rejection of civilization was part of the proverbial heart-and-soul of “anprim” (though perhaps employing newspeak-style word-conflations rules me out as a primitivist
).
But when I reconsider your stance, that sounds like a good idea. After all, it took me years before I could acknowledge that anprim had something to say about human life that we all need to hear. When I first encountered those who said hunter-gatherer-herding was the sustainable way for humans to live on the planet, I thought y’all were a bunch o’ freakazoids! :-\
Being an anprimsymp is a long, arduous ontological journey even for people who recongize how much very serious trouble the world is in today. The two big things that brought me around were Richard Manning’s article in Harper’s magazine, The Oil We Eat, and also an excerpt from Daniel Quinn’s The Story of B that relates an overview of quality of life for the mass of humans on this planet, which has been shrinking as the population has been growing. We people in the “First World” just don’t realize it because fossil fuel subsidies hide the fact that our food production regime has pushed itself way, way past the point of diminishing returns. So if agricultural life makes people live increasingly squalid, desperate lives and ends up sucking the life out of the soil, then civilization doesn’t really work.
There were also some personal things that brought me to the point of becoming “one of those freakazoids”. The grim, depressing, alcoholic white-trash ghetto where it feels as though nothing good or worthwhile can ever pan out, certainly helped sour me on civilization. And reading this website as well as Ran Prieur’s drove a lot of stuff home for me.
Comment by venuspluto67 — 9 January 2007 @ 12:23 PM
And my point was that it’s actually more constructive for the definition of anarcho-primitivist to be less instead of more purist. Most people are so well conditioned by civilization that they go into very deep denial over what we have to say, and if we want to bring more people around, my own very slow and gradual “conversion” is illustrative of why being “Radder Than Thou” will not achieve that end.
Comment by venuspluto67 — 9 January 2007 @ 1:13 PM
Thanks for your perspective, Venus. I was reminded this morning of an article Tim Boucher from Pop Occulture wrote when he took issue with primitivism in general, and us specificially. “Attack & Defense” discusses the basic principle, “Only attack that which you want to strengthen. For the natural reaction of all things that are attacked is to defend. To defend is to concentrate strength in a particular configuraration in order to resist the painful change of one’s current state.” That’s also probably why tribal societies consider a violent encounter the most shameful form of challenge, because it’s also the least effective form of challenge. Which is likely why civilization, on the other hand, conditions us to only respect violent challenges; not only because it’s all civilization can effectively do, but also because it makes us impotent to stage any real challenge. But challenging civilization is far too crucial to blow it by approaching it like civilized people.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 9 January 2007 @ 1:27 PM
FYI
My blog is about hunting and gathering. I’m sure none of you would get bored there.
Comment by Urban Scout — 9 January 2007 @ 3:50 PM
Not really. You’re not just sitting there telling us about what you hunted or gathered today like some kind of grocery list, the way it was proposed upthread. You’re sharing ideas, perspectives, etc. It’s not what our blog is about (and viva la difference), but I don’t think either of us are doing what was suggested upthread.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 9 January 2007 @ 3:58 PM
Haha. I know. But believe me, I will be posting grocery lists at some point.
Comment by Urban Scout — 9 January 2007 @ 6:29 PM
The point at which I stop reading, I think.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 9 January 2007 @ 6:33 PM
(Don’t miss the link!)
Comment by Jason Godesky — 9 January 2007 @ 7:33 PM
All hail our clownfish king!
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 9 January 2007 @ 7:48 PM
I haven’t bothered to read most of this thread for obvious reasons, so apologies if anyone has mentioned this already. Re the Vietnam vets in Oregon story, it’s either apocryphal or some very important details have been left out. The reality is that in our societies no one gets away with threatening violence against even moderately powerful people, unless those doing the threatening are members of the police/crime/security nexus. So either it never happened, or the real details of the story would undermine that point it is supposed to support.
Comment by Eric — 11 January 2007 @ 12:56 AM
I just found this site. Very interesting ideas, and apparently very thoughtful and well thought-out. I’ll stick my neck out and say up front that I’m an eco-industrial, about which more some other time, but that I also believe that hunter-gatherer methods and culture are probably the most sustainable and resilient compared to agricultural and conventional industrial, particularly if collapse occurs. I’m part of a sustainable community planning group in northern California that includes members across the spectrum (hunter-gatherers, permaculturists, and eco-industrials). We expect to be on the land by the end of this year.
Re. the debate over symbolic thought:
Symbolic thinking is a form of abstraction. Capacity for abstraction varies, as with other measurable characteristics of humans, along a “normal curve” (bell-shaped curve). At one end are the extreme concrete thinkers: in religious terms these are the fundamentalists, those who conflate God with The Word (scripture). At the other end are the extreme abstract thinkers: in religious terms these are the mystics, those for whom direct experience of the Ground of Being is God. The vast majority of humans are in between.
I would venture to guess that your anti-symbolic critic Zerzan is an extreme case of concrete thinking. In all probability he won’t change, any more than you or I will stop our uses of symbolism.
Re. RPGs and your post-collapse game: I’ve never been a gamer myself, and I detest the violent brainwash the industry puts out (e.g. GTA), but I find this interesting. You relate it to the oldschool tribal customs of storytelling and play. There is another oldschool tribal metaphor that may be relevant here: the Dreamtime; the reality found in dreams and trance states that is said (in the Australian aboriginal myths) to be the source of creation, the place whence all of “this” reality originated.
It would seem to me that a game that has the effect of conveying its participants into that world, also partakes of that Dreamtime creation myth. In effect you’re using industrial civ’s technology to leverage people out of industrial civ. No one really knows whether that or some other approach will turn out to be the best use of time and effort, but to quote Aldous Huxley out of context, “Nothing less than everything is truly sufficient.” If you’re a coder and you can write games, do it. In these times everyone has to pitch in where they can and use their skills to the best effect.
I’m going to argue the case re. pirates. Pirates appear to be tribals, but they are at best tribals-of-convenience. Real tribals are producers, by which I mean, they produce their own subsistance. Pirates produce nothing; they are thugs who use force and fraud to steal from others. Hollywood wants us to think pirates are cute cuddly rebels, but in reality they are the seagoing version of Zarqawi, taking hostages and murdering for the sake of money. If you were to let them get near you they would cut your throat. They have as much to do with primitivism as the Nazis do with the Norse mythos, which is to say, nothing. They are not your allies.
OK, this is long enough for a first posting here; and I hope your infrastructure will recognize my paragraph breaks!:-)
Comment by gg3 — 22 January 2007 @ 6:57 AM
I don’t know how much it has to do with personal thinking styles—Zerzan’s critique of abstract thought is actually quite abstract (and my rejection of it, ironically enough, is deeply pragmatic).
Indeed, and I’ve made conscious and explicit comparisons of role-playing and shamanism. See “The Fifth World Manifesto.”
I am, and I might, but the Fifth World is a table-top role-playing game, along the lines of Dungeons & Dragons. There’s a hilariously campy video my brother found on YouTube recently: DragonStrike. This video was released with the board game produced by TSR in 1993. Like its better-known predecessor HeroQuest, bridged the gap between a board game and the typical role-playing game, making them essential RPG “lite,” or a gateway product to bring new blood into the hobby. Table-top role-playing games usually lose the board and the miniatures, and generally involve much more serious and involved storylines, but the video still illustrates the general concept, while being simultaneously hilarious.
Quite right, but I would rather say they are tribal of necessity. Humans evolved in tribes, and tribes are what come most naturally to us. Any other social system is a luxury that we may not always be able to afford. Piracy was a life that could not afford it, and so they moved easily into a more tribal pattern.
That’s going quite a bit too far. Yes, they were thieves, but they did not normally steal gold directly. Rather, they stole trade goods, and then sold them to people at much cheaper prices (having a much lower cost of production, after all—they just have to steal it). Thus, piracy both in the past and the present is a practice that flourishes when goods cost too much. That is when the disparity grows large enough to make piracy lucrative.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 January 2007 @ 11:25 AM
holy shit! Words cannot describe how glad i am that this is my first and most definately LAST visit to this piece of shit site. If it wasn’t for the comments from Kevin Tucker, Doctor Awesome and Chuck P (there may be a couple of others - i couldn’t bear to read the entire thread), i would have been sure this whole thing was a parody - techno-nerd primitivism????? i couldn’t come up with anything more fucking stupid if i tried… ok, wait, i don’t want to get too judgemental or dogmatic here, maybe i should go out and get myself a Wii and see how it realigns my perceptions…. jesus christ! You people are unbelievable! I mean, sure, do what you gotta do - we all have problems, we’re all crippled by the weight of domestication and sometimes need whatever kind of outlets to relieve the stress and boredom of industrial life (my wasting my time posting on this ridiculous site is a prime example), but seriously, to try and work that shit in to your critiques and claim it’s all part of your efforts to move “beyond civilization” (as your idealogue Quinn puts it) - and then defend your inherantly self-defeating ideology as desperately as only deeply insecure liberal left losers can - unfuckingbelievable!!!
I just know you’re the kind of people who would check their site counter every day and rub their hands together with glee at every dozen hits, thinking you’re “finally getting through to people”, so i feel obliged to tell you - the next hundred or so hits you get on this site will be everybody i know, after i tell them i finally found the internet’s nadir, the place where the most outrageously stupid and pointless garbage is spouted, and where those spouting it stick their fingers in their ears and shriek like pacifists at the sight of broken Starbucks windows anytime someone tries to wake them the fuck up…
oh and by the way, Jason - you DO look like a freak.
Comment by xlukex — 31 January 2007 @ 12:04 AM
So if neither Jason Godesky nor Daniel Quinn makes the cut for the likes of Doctor Tiresome or xpukex, I wonder how these righteous souls propose to try and convince more people that civilization is a dead end? Or is Truly Righteous Rad Primitivism something to which only a lucky few get to be to the manner born?
Comment by venuspluto67 — 27 February 2007 @ 3:54 AM
[quote]I wonder how these righteous souls propose to try and convince more people that civilization is a dead end?[/quote]
And that’s why critiques (if we could call them that) such as Dr Tiresome & xlukex aren’t really worth bothering with. Critics who are only critics never have much impact.
Comment by jhereg — 27 February 2007 @ 3:30 PM
Hi there. Jason, i don’t think Tucker necessarily dresses to shock. Actually, from the few pictures i’ve seen, his appearance actually is quite strictly in line with the codes of the green-anarcho-punk-activist-whatever subculture, to which i believe he has ties. Sure he can look shocking, and there’s reasons in the history of its development that the cultural (sub)group he belongs to has picked up a shock-laden esthetic, but basically i think he does pretty much what you say primitive people do: his dresscode follows his (sub)culture’s esthetic guidelines and expresses its values and memetic themes. Now, he might not do it for the same reasons or in the same way, and he probably ascribes his choices either to individualism or ideology/politics or both. But reading his (admittedly horrible) ravings above i feel part of the hostility comes from subconsciously interpreting your critique as an attack on his culture. With regard to the nature of sub- and countercultures, one could easily expect them to constantly be on the defensive and be very keen on their pride and territory. (Couple this with testosterone and/or radder-than-thou and you might get a nice feedback loop…)
I’m just speculating, i’m not very educated in sociology/anthropology/whtever (and i’m very tired), and i apologize in general for sloppy expression, but these thoughts have been on my mind for a while so i thought i could throw them out there, enjoy & make what you can of them!
Comment by nagnagnag — 25 April 2007 @ 7:10 PM
Well, that’s rather my point; firstly, that the “punk-activist-whatever subculture” has a “dress code,” and that it’s designed to shock. The effect is that a significant portion of the primitivist movement intentionally alienates themselves from those they might otherwise reach, all in competition for some kind of radical “street cred.” It trades effectiveness for style, and undermines the purpose we’re supposedly all so invested in.
But Tucker’s appearance represents only one, off-hand example of this trend, and given all the good that Tucker’s writing has done, I maintain he’s done far more good than harm. I would just hope that we could recognize the importance of stopping civilization’s rampage, and that we might be able to have the courage to do whatever it takes to do that—even if that means endangering our “street cred” as radicals, or skipping “feel good” approaches like blowing things up that just make civilization stronger, in favor of more effective means that just don’t feel like they’re opposing anything.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 27 April 2007 @ 11:31 AM
Hi again, been some days since i saw a computer.
I agree quite much with your points, just wanted to highlight that, yes, part of it is stupid street-cred-seeking, but alongside that, the motivation behind the dresscode is _cultural_. It’s not ‘just’ worn & designed to shock, it’s as much motivated by (cultural) aesthetics (that, as we know, are self-propagating). I suppose we agree on that this intertwinedness is slightly problematic for trying to sort things out and work things in the right direction, but i have no better idea than to take culture into consideration when dealing with people from different backgrounds. I think a huge problem in trying to effect anything on a larger societal level is the fragmentation of the collective reality, one has to be a bit considerate or one will end up stepping on someone’s cultural toes all the time. I know one can’t really compare, but it’s easy for your critique of his dresscode to come off the same way as demanding traditional people to ‘dress up properly in our civilized manner’ in order to be taken seriously.
On the other hand, i can’t help seeing the fragmentation of collective reality, or whatever it could better be named as, as an inevitable part of the ongoing process of collapse, why it would seem a bit awkward to try to work against it. Which is why i personally would want to advocate consideration and cultural tolerance on all sides so that peaceful interaction and cooperation would be a possibility nonetheless. Tucker & co do indeed not seem very good at this in the discussion above, the reasons of which i also touched upon above. Trying to build a different culture inside civilization’s hegemony is gonna be you up against the wall quite hard all the damn time, no wonder if some people are aggressively defensive (no pun/yes pun). What they indeed can be criticised for is the lack of perspective on their own culture in their political & ideological work, as it dims their analytical view quite a bit. But they are no way alone in this, cultures don’t tend to propagate the idea of their own subjectiveness, do they? The inherent problem in trying to affect things outside yourself: the motivation and legitimation stemming from your experience/knowledge of the situation and how it touches yourself, versus the potential hubris in assumming you have it all sorted out. Given the overall situation and how much it takes to try to sort it all out, i think one must aknowledge the courage of those that step up (risking hubris and the icaric plunge) to at all act on their conscience (or whatever). That also is setting yourself up against the wall quite some, which also can make ideological people defensive. Which of course is sad, when it hinders critical evaluation of yourself.
Blah blah. Be nice to the kids Jason. Good luck & times!
Comment by nagnagnag — 29 April 2007 @ 11:48 AM
Well, there’s certainly a dilemma there, but it comes down to what your goal is. Do you want to create a different culture, or do you want to make a convincing case to the culture you’re in? As we can see here, there are ways in which these causes might be at odds. Of course, you could also keep them parallel, if your culture differentiated itself along less obvious lines. So, I suppose the question is what you’re trying to accomplish: if you want to convince people to abandon civilization, this approach does little to help.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 29 April 2007 @ 9:28 PM