primitivism, communism and anarchism

[saint max]

From another thread about social vs lifestyle anarchism


saint max: But anarchy says: "thats not freedom...that's still not freedom" or rather "that's freedom, but there is more." The anarchist is a continual and total negation, there is nothing positivist about about seizing freedom in a world universalized in oppression and hierarchy. There is only the projectual life of freedom through the organized (and not) attack and insurgence.

as the italian anarchist told me: "no organizate very anarchico"

cheers,
-max

ps: Lifesyle VS social, come on! Think of all the lifestyle syndicalists (at least for this year of college) out there and social primmies living in wild. Does'nt this dichotomy, just seem a bit ridiculous. Let bob and murry and that fool from openly classist worry about this nonsense, we have a world to destroy (and create...if you're into that sort of thing.)


anarchochris: But we are not just "all anarchists". I consider primitivists just as much an enemy as I would fascists. (though primitivists are far less likely to get what they want)

There are certain irreconcialable differences between certain kinds of anarchists. Though not necessarily between social and lifestyle anarchists. As they usually want close to the same thing, the social anarchists just don't want to use organization or theory to get there.

What is anarchy, if not the negation of the social order?

What would make primitivists as much enemies as fascists?

If primmies are as much enemies as fascists, what makes communists who have a history of crushing and imprisoning anarchists any more allies?

What about insurrectionalists? individualists? syndicalists? communitarians? pacifists? nihilists? egoists?

too many lines in the sand?

[RASH chris]

Anarchism is a social and economic system based on worker's direct empowerment and community control through direct democracy and federations of trade unions and communes.

Primitivists are reactionaries, they seek to take the world back to primitive communism. Revolutionaries want to take the world foraward to communism.


If primmies are as much enemies as fascists, what makes communists who have a history of crushing and imprisoning anarchists any more allies?

While Marxist-Leninists have shown a tendency to persecute anarchists (real anarchists, not lifestyleists or primitivists mind you) the left-communist movement has much in common with anarchism. And the trotskyists shared much common ground with the anarcho-syndicalists in Spain of 36-39.


What about insurrectionalists? individualists? syndicalists? communitarians? pacifists? nihilists? egoists?

Insurrectionalism is not a political theory, it is a mindset attatched to political theories about confronting the forces of state and capitalism. You can be an insurrectionalist-minded Marxist-Leninist-Maoist. Individualists...not familiar with that. Syndicalists are class struggle anarchists, provided we're talking about anarcho-syndicalism. But if you're reffering to DeLeonism then I don't think that even warrants my time and energy, as their movement was fully eclipsed by the anarcho-syndicalist movement. Pacifists...liberal bourgeois waste of time. Nihilists...thats a joke.

[saint max]

Anarchism is a social and economic system based on worker's direct empowerment and community control through direct democracy and federations of trade unions and communes.

Primitivists are reactionaries, they seek to take the world back to primitive communism. Revolutionaries want to take the world foraward to communism

Perhaps you don't see the irony in the fact that you argue against primitivism by calling it "reactionary" then argue for anarchy's great great grandfather. it's the 90's dude... Serriously. You are digging up graves and vomiting federations and 'trade' unions, not even industrial. How realist, how boring. Even gramma Emma wanted to dance (and violently confront our oppressors.) You don' think that syndicalists and anarcho-commies are being a bit reactionary? 1936, is that the 'new' 1936, perhaps after the myan calander starts again?

by the way, i asked what anarchy was, not anarchism--the ideology...

So how does being reactionary, like red-anarchism, or your take on primitivism, make anyone as bad as fascists?

and if reds n' blacks shared common goals in 1936, what makes up for all the years until the present?


Insurrectionalism is not a political theory, it is a mindset attatched to political theories about confronting the forces of state and capitalism. You can be an insurrectionalist-minded Marxist-Leninist-Maoist. Individualists...not familiar with that.

Insurrectionalism is a particular discussion and critique of the organization of anarchy anti-politics. Insurrectionalism has (historically) had nothing to do with any politics less than an anti-politics. It finds it's contemporary orgin in the later years of the 70s in italy, and has been building as a theory on organization (and lack there-of) since then. It was/is influenced by many social movements and phenomona; Aut-Op, being one, classical anarchisms being others. To the insurrectionalist, the task is one of generalizing insurrection and raising the anarchist tension.

individualist-anarchism/egosim is a anarchy that seeks nothing higher than all for all. god is dead...every one is their own god....etc.

Perhaps you should have chat with some contemporary anarchists, or read something printed after the 30s or 80s...

cheers,
-max

ps: primitivism and green anarchies, contrary to popular belief, are not all reactionary (in that marxist sense) but see history, non-linearly and seek a "future primitive" as it were. Not all savages were noble, some were, and from them we seize new ideas. Where do you think classical liberalism--where you find your politics orgin--came from?

Sure we can make total fucking destroy, but it's not like we'll forget a collective conscious of the last 10,000 years.

[Severian]

Originally posted by saint [email protected] 17 2005, 12:50 AM
ps: primitivism and green anarchies, contrary to popular belief, are not all reactionary (in that marxist sense) but see history, non-linearly and seek a "future primitive" as it were.
So?

You don't have to consider yourself reactionary...in order to be reactionary.

It doesn't matter what "new ideas" you have of what you'd like your "future primitive" society to be like.

The nature of a society flows from its economic basis, not your intentions. Life in primitive societies is nasty, brutish, short, ignorant, and xenophobic...regardless of what you "seek".


Perhaps you don't see the irony in the fact that you argue against primitivism by calling it "reactionary" then argue for anarchy's great great grandfather. it's the 90's dude... Serriously. You are digging up graves and vomiting federations and 'trade' unions, not even industrial. How realist, how boring. Even gramma Emma wanted to dance (and violently confront our oppressors.) You don' think that syndicalists and anarcho-commies are being a bit reactionary? 1936, is that the 'new' 1936, perhaps after the myan calander starts again?

Ah. Yes, old ideas are so boring. So much more entertaining to adopt the latest fashion.

Anyway, how's it going with that wall? Become convinced of it's objective reality yet? (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=38824&hl=)

[saint max]

i enjoy your dry wit (and cyber-inside joke) serv...

but, If society flows economically as you propose (and a few other old heads with beards,) then how is modern ideology, and industrial economy, in a post-modern and post-industrial world not reactionary? Don't you think Leftism has got quite a bit of "the good ol' days" baggage? particuarly in regaurds to those of us living in most of europe and the US?

I don't care to much for the linear and enlightenment take on time/progress, but for yall who do, I think that's another fun problematic to try and reconcile. (good luck with that)

cheers,
-max

[Severian]

Originally posted by saint [email protected] 17 2005, 04:56 AM
i enjoy your dry wit (and cyber-inside joke) serv...

but, If society flows economically as you propose (and a few other old heads with beards,) then how is modern ideology, and industrial economy, in a post-modern and post-industrial world not reactionary?
cheers,
-max
Dunno. Ask me when and if NASA discovers that world. But if the pomo world is accurately described by pomo theory, I suspect the answer will have to be in deliberately incomprehensible pomospeak......

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by saint [email protected] 17 2005, 07:50 AM
Perhaps you don't see the irony in the fact that you argue against primitivism by calling it "reactionary" then argue for anarchy's great great grandfather. it's the 90's dude... Serriously. You are digging up graves and vomiting federations and 'trade' unions, not even industrial. How realist, how boring. Even gramma Emma wanted to dance (and violently confront our oppressors.) You don' think that syndicalists and anarcho-commies are being a bit reactionary? 1936, is that the 'new' 1936, perhaps after the myan calander starts again?
All this just seems petulant really.

Communism isn't new enough for you? Oh well, tuff luck I suppose.


Insurrectionalism is a particular discussion and critique of the organization of anarchy anti-politics. Insurrectionalism has (historically) had nothing to do with any politics less than an anti-politics.

Not true. The old Russian Nihilists and even Bakunin both encouraged insurrectionary moments.

[Donnie]

What would make primitivists as much enemies as fascists?
Well I wouldn't say there our enemies; however they are backward looking because in order for primitivism to work we would have to shrink the world population a lot in order for it to work. In fact I read somewhere I think (not for definite) it was in 'Ecology and Class' that Primitivists supported killings in order to bring primitivism about.

Communism is better and beneficial because it takes into account the population of humanity.

[RASH chris]

Not true. The old Russian Nihilists and even Bakunin both encouraged insurrectionary moments.

As did Marx.


So how does being reactionary, like red-anarchism, or your take on primitivism, make anyone as bad as fascists?

Anybody who wants to take steps backwards in the course of human development is a reactionary. Plain and simple. As a revolutionary I do not find any common ground with people who want to live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.


and if reds n' blacks shared common goals in 1936, what makes up for all the years until the present?

I don't understand this question. Are you saying that since the Spanish civil war there has been little to no cooperation between the anarchist and communist movements? If that's what you're saying then you're retarded. The anarchist and communist movements work very closely together now, far more than they ever have in the past (with the possible exception of Spain). Look around a black bloc, you'll probably find more communists than you might think.


individualist-anarchism/egosim is a anarchy that seeks nothing higher than all for all. god is dead...every one is their own god....etc.

Which has what to do with what we're talking about? If we all serve only ourselves then how will communities survive? That sounds an awful lot like some sort of capitalism to me.


Perhaps you should have chat with some contemporary anarchists, or read something printed after the 30s or 80s...

I am a contemporary anarchist. I find it very funny that you're trying to say class struggle anarchism doesn't really exist within the anarchist movement anymore. I know far more people who support the IWW, NEFAC, WSA, RAAN, etc than crimethinc and those organizations.

[Guest1]

"Post-industrial society"? Sure, industry is not the center of employment in the west that it was years ago, but it has merely been moved elsewhere. But then again, I guess those non-europeans don't matter.

As for a "new primitive", why? We have reached a point in human development where we can finally feed everyone, and have them live comfortably, and do it all without harming the environment. All we have to do is do it. The logical answer to today's problems is for humans to seize control of their own lives, smash the bureaucrats and the CEO's who let millions die for profit, and turn technology around to feed, clothe and shelter us all while defending the environment. Instead, you propose we destroy the work that has allowed us to get to this point and watch as disease and hunger spread and we have to start all over again.

That's why primitivism is reactionary.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by Che y [email protected] 17 2005, 07:14 PM
As for a "new primitive", why? We have reached a point in human development where we can finally feed everyone, and have them live comfortably, and do it all without harming the environment.
But technology isn't neutral... :o

[Guest1]

Are you being sarcastic? I hope so. Otherwise I'd have to slap you back to a "feral" state.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by Che y [email protected] 17 2005, 07:42 PM
Are you being sarcastic? I hope so. Otherwise I'd have to slap you back to a "feral" state.
That's the criticism of primitivists against communists. That technology isn't neutral. It works only for those who know the technology and is therefore oppressive, so even though we have created new ways to make ourselves comfortable and able to feed ourselves, we shouldn't because technology is evil!

[Guest1]

I know it is, I was kidding.

My favourite primmies though are the language primmies. The ones who believe the creation of language was our "original sin" and the basis of all further oppression and must be abolished.

[Black Dagger]

I'd like to see them try and articulate said critique :lol:

[Guest1]

:lol:, but they do, every day on the internet!

I can't quite wrap my head around it.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Che y [email protected] 17 2005, 01:01 PM
I know it is, I was kidding.

My favourite primmies though are the language primmies. The ones who believe the creation of language was our "original sin" and the basis of all further oppression and must be abolished.
Postmodernism seems a logical fit with that. As a weapon for destroying language as a means of communication.

[bourgeois adventurist]

Severian: "Life in primitive societies is nasty, brutish, short, ignorant, and xenophobic".

Wrong. Where have you been the last 40-odd years?

Marshall Sahlins, and others since him (Richard Lee, Pierre Clastes), obliterated this myth, which was Hobbes’ justification for the State, in the late 60s in "The Original Affluent Society".

Anyone who's picked up a standard anthropology text lately now knows that prior to civilization (agriculture, domestication, division of labour, cities) primitive societies were societies without a state or instituionalized hierachy, work was limited to 2-4 hours (while their work was more what we'd call leisure), conflict was rare, a wide variety of foods were enjoyed along with robust health, relative equality between the sexes obtained, and a deep harmony with their natural environment was the norm. Reactionary indeed! Whos really being "xenophobic"?


Donnie: “Primitivists supported killings in order to bring primitivism about.”

No they don’t. Primitivists find this as repugnant as any other anarchist or normal human being, and all the major a-ps, and every other one I know of, reject it outright. This is an obvious smear. You don’t accuse mainstream environmentalists for advocating lower populations, do you? Donnie, why don’t you name a source or else refrain from you despicable accusations, eh?


Anarchopunkchris: “As a revolutionary I do not find any common ground with people who want to live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.”

Really? Does that include the few hunter-gather groups around the world remaining who are fighting against your glorious “progress” to survive? If you do support their self-determination, why not the anarcho-primitivists? I’m not sure yet if I want to live a gather-hunter “lifestyle”, but those who do have my solidarity.

Don’t you see the implicit racism in the view of progress, in the view that primitive peoples are “backward” and need to be brought “forward” by revolutionaries?


Che y Marijuana: “We have reached a point in human development where we can finally feed everyone, and have them live comfortably, and do it all without harming the environment”

This a utopian dream predicated on the assumption that natural resources are infinite. Agriculture, for example, is inherently destructive to eco-systems.


I could go on, but suspect most of you don’t really want to understand primitivism lest it undermine your faith in your own ideologies, or rather the ideologies that have you.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Anyone who's picked up a standard anthropology text lately now knows that prior to civilization (agriculture, domestication, division of labour, cities) primitive societies were societies without a state or instituionalized hierachy, work was limited to 2-4 hours (while their work was more what we'd call leisure), conflict was rare, a wide variety of foods were enjoyed along with robust health, relative equality between the sexes obtained, and a deep harmony with their natural environment was the norm. Reactionary indeed! Whos really being "xenophobic"?

And yet the food supply was sparse and unsteady, that's why we developed agriculture.
Even as hunter-gatherers we upset the "balance" as it were - the mammoth was hunted to extinction, as was the moa, and numerous other game. And instead of settling down and making land productive, we swept through areas and picked them clean.
Technology has since then been developed to make agricultural life more comfortable.


No they don’t. Primitivists find this as repugnant as any other anarchist or normal human being, and all the major a-ps, and every other one I know of, reject it outright. This is an obvious smear. You don’t accuse mainstream environmentalists for advocating lower populations, do you? Donnie, why don’t you name a source or else refrain from you despicable accusations, eh?

How else are you going to get the low populations required for sustainable hunter-gatherer societies? It's either going to be through deliberate genocide, which is truly despicable, or you're going to stand aside and let whatever disasters that come sweep over civilisation, which is murder through inaction.


Really? Does that include the few hunter-gather groups around the world remaining who are fighting against your glorious “progress” to survive? If you do support their self-determination, why not the anarcho-primitivists? I’m not sure yet if I want to live a gather-hunter “lifestyle”, but those who do have my solidarity.

It might not be politically correct to say this, but their lifestyles are well and truly obsolete. That's why they are in the minority - if hunter-gathering was such a great way of life, more people would be doing it.


Don’t you see the implicit racism in the view of progress, in the view that primitive peoples are “backward” and need to be brought “forward” by revolutionaries?

Ah yes, the race card, played by anyone who doesn't have a real argument. Hunter-gathering is not an activity confined to one race.


This a utopian dream predicated on the assumption that natural resources are infinite. Agriculture, for example, is inherently destructive to eco-systems.

If that were true we would have died out long ago, obviously this is not so.
Current agricultural methods are more destructive than they need to be - sustainable agriculture consists of giving back some of what you take.

[Severian]

Originally posted by bourgeois [email protected] 18 2005, 06:34 AM
Don’t you see the implicit racism in the view of progress, in the view that primitive peoples are “backward” and need to be brought “forward” by revolutionaries?
No, I don't see what skin color has to do with it, and I'm curious why you think so. Do you think white people were never primitive? Heck, do you think white people were the first to become civilized?


Anyone who's picked up a standard anthropology text lately now knows that prior to civilization (agriculture, domestication, division of labour, cities) primitive societies were societies without a state or instituionalized hierachy, work was limited to 2-4 hours (while their work was more what we'd call leisure), conflict was rare, a wide variety of foods were enjoyed along with robust health, relative equality between the sexes obtained, and a deep harmony with their natural environment was the norm

Some of that is true, some is not...none of it contradicts my statement.

[bourgeois adventurist]

Severian: "Some of that is true, some is not...none of it contradicts my statement"

Then which parts are true, which not? If some parts are true like you say, how can none of what I say contradict your statement primitive life is "nasty, brutish, short, ignorant, and xenophobic". Be specific. According to mainstream anthropology none of your generalization is true. What sources are you referring to? None within the last half-century I’m sure.

“No, I don't see what skin color has to do with it”

Ok racism may have been the wrong word, but it’s the same principle of prejudice.

Your have an irrational prejudice against non-civilized cultures.

The concept of Progress views history as a linear movement always going forward. Thus you see hunter-gather societies and cultures as “backward” and stuck at an earlier phase of humanity, compared to civilized societies; they are inferior basically.

This is view of History isn’t objective but our interpretation. History doesn’t “move” at all.

[bourgeois adventurist]

Noxious: “And yet the food supply was sparse and unsteady, that's why we developed agriculture.”

Please stop, you’re embarrassing yourself.

The opposite is true. The food supply was actually incredibly varied, prehistoric peoples obtained sustenance from 1500 species of wild plants. Whereas all civilization has been based on the production of one or more of six plant species: wheat, barley, millet, rice, maize, and potatoes.

It is with civilization, farming and food production of a single or few crops, and the risk of blight, flooding etc that societies becomes more susceptible to food shortage and starvation. It is incredibly rare within gather-hunters who obtain food from a wide range of sources.

“And instead of settling down and making land productive, we swept through areas and picked them clean.”

This is the justification the first European imperialists used to conquer and eliminate indigenous populations. Its total hogwash. You’ve obviously swallowed your school education uncritically.

“It might not be politically correct to say this, but their lifestyles are well and truly obsolete. That's why they are in the minority”

Obsolete? They are successful, healthy, happy societies. They’re in the minority because of imperialism and genocide have wiped them out, with the help of scumbag apologists like you. You are obviously no friend to anybody desiring free and egalitarian relations.

[bourgeois adventurist]

Noxious: “How else are you going to get the low populations required for sustainable hunter-gatherer societies? It's either going to be through deliberate genocide, which is truly despicable, or you're going to stand aside and let whatever disasters that come sweep over civilisation, which is murder through inaction.”

Having less babies? Birth control? No primitivist thinks its going to happen overnight.

[saint max]

bourgeois adventurist,

*zing!*


my questions still haven't been answered. I'll sum it up.

How is Leftist ideology, as a modern, industrial ideology, not reactionary, in a World that is no longer defined by industrialism?

and if reds n' blacks shared common goals in 1936, what makes up for all the years until the present?

Why is anarchy anarchism? Why ought anarchy be confined to only ideology? Why must anarchy be confined to another commodity in the market place ofThe Left?

Perhaps I'll go out on a limb. Even history is on the side of anti-civ. What is has progress done for anarchy or non-ideological communism? Has anything in the last 10,000 years even come close to creating a situation of total indiviudal and collective self-determination?

cheers,
-max

[Severian]

Originally posted by bourgeois [email protected] 19 2005, 11:31 PM
Severian: "Some of that is true, some is not...none of it contradicts my statement"

Then which parts are true, which not? If some parts are true like you say, how can none of what I say contradict your statement primitive life is "nasty, brutish, short, ignorant, and xenophobic". Be specific.
You don't seem to understand: none of your statements contradict mine. For example, it may be true that a variety of foods were available, but that does not contradict my statement that life was short (or Noxion's that the food supply was limited and unstable). It may be true that conflict between tribes was "rare", or at least rarely as destructive as civilized warfare (or untrue, the Huron or the Chatham Islanders might disagree if they were still around), but either way it doesn't contradict my statement that tribal life was xenophobic, with other tribes not even considered truly human.

If you want to dispute somebody's statement, it helps to actually address their statement, rather than just proclaiming vaguely related generalities.

As for sources...Here's one (http://www.betterhumans.com/News/3770/Default.aspx) - a discussion on the effects of more of our ancestors living to "old age", defined as "double the age of reproductive maturation", that is 30 or so.


Having less babies? Birth control? No primitivist thinks its going to happen overnight.

Hmmm...birth control which is a product of modern industrial civilization. Hunter-gatherer tribes typically regulated their population through infanticide, or sometimes unsafe abortion.

And how is it going to happen other than an overnight collapse of civilization? In any gradual process, groups or countries which move towards primitivism will be at a disadvantage compared to their civilized neighbors, and will be squished just like past and present primitive groups.

As far as I can see, an "overnight" collapse is the only remotely realistic proposal any primitivist has ever made to achieve their goal.

Saint Max:

How is Leftist ideology, as a modern, industrial ideology, not reactionary, in a World that is no longer defined by industrialism?

I did answer: show me that world. Did you type that on a computer grown on a tree, or handcrafted from natural materials by village artisans? Didn't think so. Even if the industrial working class was shrinking in size, its economic importance is undiminished. Life still requires making things other than bytes and hot air.

And in fact the wage-working class in the world is larger than its ever been, and so is the section of the class working in industry. Even in Europe, the proportion of wage-workers and industrial workers is probably larger than in Marx's day.

[bourgeois adventurist]

Severian: “You don't seem to understand: none of your statements contradict mine.”

I think you’re confused, or else being equivocal.

You’re right, I can’t understand how my description of primitive societies characterized by autonomy, egalitarianism, sharing, leisure, health, and peace, does not directly contradict your assertion that life was “nasty” or “brutish”.


“or Noxion's that the food supply was limited and unstable”

Again, I can’t understand how my description of primitive peoples enjoying diverse and readily available food, does not directly contradict Noxions statement above.

As for “short”, wrong again. Current hunter-gatherers actually often outlive their civilized counterparts. Eye witness Spanish accounts tell of Florida Indian fathers seeing in their fifth generation. Significant proportions of San men and women, for example, live past age sixty.

In any case, so what? Is living longer necessarily better? I’d rather live a short life in freedom and happiness than a long one of unfreedom and misery.


“It may be true that conflict between tribes was "rare", or at least rarely as destructive as civilized warfare (or untrue, the Huron or the Chatham Islanders might disagree if they were still around)”

Huron were not hunter-gathers, they practiced agriculture, the basis of civilization. Its only after agriculture emerges that organized warfare begins.

Chatham islanders, the Moriori, were hunter-gatherers, and a peaceful society who resolved disputes through consensus.


“either way it doesn't contradict my statement that tribal life was xenophobic, with other tribes not even considered truly human.”

I’m talking about pre-civilized primitive peoples. You’re confusing pre-civilized, Palaeolithic peoples with post-agriculture, Neolithic ones. In the former, gather-hunters organized themselves in egalitarian bands. Tribes emerged later as an aspect of the civilization, after agriculture, and were hierarchically structured.


“birth control which is a product of modern industrial civilization. Hunter-gatherer tribes typically regulated their population through infanticide, or sometimes unsafe abortion.”

Birth-control methods were not practiced not invented by civilized peoples FYI. Greater awareness of the body’s ovulation cycles by women were one way hunter-gatherers kept their populations low and sustainable.

Infanticide was rare as far as I’m aware. In any case I don’t believe there’s a moral distinction between infanticide and abortion.


“In any gradual process, groups or countries which move towards primitivism will be at a disadvantage compared to their civilized neighbors, and will be squished just like past and present primitive groups.”

The same weak argument applies to your communist revolution.


“As far as I can see, an "overnight" collapse is the only remotely realistic proposal any primitivist has ever made to achieve their goal.”

Its not a proposal, or a “good” thing, but inevitable at this rate. Past civilizations never saw their collapse coming either.

Why do you wish to perpetuate this Hobbesian myth that was debunked nearly half a century ago? Why are you and so many others here afraid to let it go?

This essay might help you make the leap:

http://www.primitivism.com/search-of-the-primitive.htm

Others:
http://www.primitivism.com/anthropology.htm
http://www.primitivism.com/primitivism.htm

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by saint [email protected] 20 2005, 08:29 AM
How is Leftist ideology, as a modern, industrial ideology, not reactionary, in a World that is no longer defined by industrialism?
What relevance does that have? Radical "leftist" politics is usually about ending wage slavery.

Although there is a smaller "essential" working class as there was 150 years ago, there is still a vast section of westernised society who sells their labour in order to generate profit for a ruling plutocracy.

How is wanting to end this reactionary?


and if reds n' blacks shared common goals in 1936, what makes up for all the years until the present?

Who are you referring to? As far as I'm aware, the common goals were between anarchist communists, syndicalists and left Marxists. Goals we still share.


Why is anarchy anarchism? Why ought anarchy be confined to only ideology?

It isn't.

"Anarchy" is now largly a middle class trend that holds no clarity in a wider struggle; and that's the problem. Anarchism has been co-opted by the middle classes who have no interest in class politics because their far to comfortable in the coffee shops and student union's, smoking role ups and talking about "all we need is collective decision making, maaan."

Anarchism represents, or at least did represent class struggle. There's no justification I've seen that should alter that. Class struggle still exists.


Why must anarchy be confined to another commodity in the market place ofThe Left?

Because the only people capable of creating fundamental change are those directly effected by its system. Namely wage slaves.


Has anything in the last 10,000 years even come close to creating a situation of total indiviudal and collective self-determination?

Yes.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

The opposite is true. The food supply was actually incredibly varied, prehistoric peoples obtained sustenance from 1500 species of wild plants. Whereas all civilization has been based on the production of one or more of six plant species: wheat, barley, millet, rice, maize, and potatoes.

That doesn't contradict what I said about the food supply being sparse - Compare how much food there is in an acre of jungle compared to an acre of wheat. The jungle, despite being the most lush of nature's bounty, has more variety but less food overall than the wheat. Also it is easier to make sure that the wheat is as productive as possible.

While wheat, barley etc have been important, they have not been the only source of nourishment - early civilisations picked wild fruits and vegetables and as they grew they learned to cultivate them too. If agriculture was as destructive as you claim, these early civilisations would have foundered and died.

Face it - nature is a blind force that doesn't care how much you have to eat. One day you could have a feast and the next you have nothing.


It is with civilization, farming and food production of a single or few crops, and the risk of blight, flooding etc that societies becomes more susceptible to food shortage and starvation. It is incredibly rare within gather-hunters who obtain food from a wide range of sources.

Hogwash. With hunter-gatherer's lower available food density, they are even more vulnerable to natural disasters. Not to mention that nowadays true food shortages are a things of the past. Nowadays it is distribution that is the problem, and that is a fault of capitalism and not civilisation itself. Think about the sheer amount of food that Americans alone eat. People in China are going hungry because their government refuses to import grain.


This is the justification the first European imperialists used to conquer and eliminate indigenous populations. Its total hogwash. You’ve obviously swallowed your school education uncritically.

And that the Europeans used this as an excuse changes the fact how?


Obsolete? They are successful, healthy, happy societies. They’re in the minority because of imperialism and genocide have wiped them out, with the help of scumbag apologists like you. You are obviously no friend to anybody desiring free and egalitarian relations.

And the fact that nearly everyone else developed agriculture and civilisation means nothing to you? You don't have to lose everything civilisation has gained to have egalitarian society, and you don't need to murder people to bring them into civilisation.


Having less babies? Birth control? No primitivist thinks its going to happen overnight.

I'm sorry, but low birthrates are a signature of advanced technological societies. Anytime the quality of life starts to decrease toward primitivism, birthrates will increase, thus defeating the point. Ever heard of a place called Easter Island?
Back to square one, genocide or moral cowardice?


You’re right, I can’t understand how my description of primitive societies characterized by autonomy, egalitarianism, sharing, leisure, health, and peace, does not directly contradict your assertion that life was “nasty” or “brutish”.

You're forgetting about rival tribes and that ***** mother nature. They decreased the quality of life considerably. Their houses were nothing but hovels that a medieval peasant would be disgusted to live in, they were vulnerable to predators such as lions, tigers, wolves and bears. They were exposed to the elements, had no advanced medical care (So no sterilised equipment, bandages, carefully measured medicine, defibrillators, intravenous medicine, X-ray machines, or decent dentistry), had to walk everywhere, they were supremely ignorant about the world around them; they had no schools, universities or libraries.


Again, I can’t understand how my description of primitive peoples enjoying diverse and readily available food, does not directly contradict Noxions statement above.

"Diverse" and "Readily Available" does not mean "Plentiful at all times"


As for “short”, wrong again. Current hunter-gatherers actually often outlive their civilized counterparts. Eye witness Spanish accounts tell of Florida Indian fathers seeing in their fifth generation. Significant proportions of San men and women, for example, live past age sixty.

Can't imagine the facilities being particularly good for those wrinklies. Besides, quality of life is mostly independant of technological level - It depends on your environmental conditions and lifestyle choices, although medical technology can make you live longer.


In any case, so what? Is living longer necessarily better? I’d rather live a short life in freedom and happiness than a long one of unfreedom and misery.

In any case, I'd rather die of a heart attack than get mauled to death by a bear.


The same weak argument applies to your communist revolution.

Look, diversionary tactics!


Its not a proposal, or a “good” thing, but inevitable at this rate. Past civilizations never saw their collapse coming either.

And what's currently causing the downfall of modern civilisations? This all sounds too messianistic.

I would rather live in a technologically advanced society than your primitivist "utopia".

[bourgeois adventurist]

Noxion, this is the last time I correct your numerous errors and inaccuracies, its too time-consuming.

It would really help if you understood the difference between pre-civilized/gatherer-hunter primitives and civilized/agricultural primitives, the Paleolithic/Neolithic divide. All your arguments are either based on the discredited Hobbesian myth that primitive life was "nasty, brutish and short", or they are directed against civilized primitives, thus reinforcing the anarcho-primitivist/anti-civ postition.

Food was not "sparse" for gather-hunters. Sure, a larger volumer per-capita can be produced by agriculture, but gather-hunters had no need to produce more, or a surplus -- they already obtained a plentiful and diverse amount through gathering and hunting, activities which are far less labour intensive than agriculture. Rather than providing an unneccessary surplues, they preferred to engage in leisure activities.

Again, it is a commonplace thesis in anthropology today that agriculture did not originate from a shortage of food amongst gather-hunters. The consensus question is no longer why primitive peoples took so long to develop agriculture, but why they developed it at all.


N: "I'm sorry, but low birthrates are a signature of advanced technological societies. Anytime the quality of life starts to decrease toward primitivism, birthrates will increase, thus defeating the point. Ever heard of a place called Easter Island?"

You are living in upside-down world, truly. It is agriculture and other aspects of civilization (eg need for armies) that produced rapidly accelerating populations. Gather-hunters socities kept their populations low and sustainable for 99% of human history before the advance of civilization/agriculture.

I'm glad you mention Easter Island. This example actually reinforces my position: the inhabitants on Easter Island were not pre-civilized or gatherer-hunters, they practiced agriculture, basis of civilization. This once advanced civilization was reduced to cannabilism and intense warfare as a result of self-inflicted environmental collapse, primarily deforestation, an inevitable consequence of agricultural methods which take more out of the earth than they put back.

And again, like I said earlier, tribes are a civilized form of organization.


You seem utterly incapable of imagining a life outside modern industrial society. So "they had to walk everywhere". Wow-wee. Good exercise.

And they didn't need modern medicine, because they didn't have civilization/agriculture, which is responsible for malaria, probably the single greatest killer of humanity, and nearly all other infectious diseases. Tuberculosis and diarrheal disease arrive with farming, measles and bubonic plague with the appearance of large cities. Nutritional and degenerative diseases in general appear with the reign of domestication. Cancer, coronary thrombosis, anemia, dental carries, and mental disorders are but a few of the hallmarks of agriculture.


"In any case, I'd rather die of a heart attack than get mauled to death by a bear"

My god, you're serious. You've a very hollywood view of primitive life. You're a classic case of civilized ways of thinking about nature as something terrifying and unruly, needing to be dominated and controlled by humans, separated/alienated from nature.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

This is the last time I correct your numerous errors and inaccuracies, its too time-consuming.

Translation: I don't have a decent argument, so I'm backing out.


It would really help if you understood the difference between pre-civilized/gatherer-hunter primitives and civilized/agricultural primitives, the Paleolithic/Neolithic divide. All your arguments are either based on the discredited Hobbesian myth that primitive life was "nasty, brutish and short", or they are directed against civilized primitives, thus reinforcing the anarcho-primtivist postition.

BZZZT! Wrong! My arguments were addressed strictly at hunter-gatherer societies.
Primitive life was in most cases "Nasty, brutish & short", although not for the reasons most people believe. I said nothing about civilised primitives - in fact they tend to have a more dense, stable and controllable food supply than H-Gs, by simple virute of the fact that an acre of wheat contains more food than an acre of jungle.


Noxoin, food was not "sparse" for gather-hunters. Sure, more food can be produced by agriculture, but gather-hunters had no need to produce more, or a surplus -- they already obtained a plentiful and diverse amount through gathering and hunting, activities which are far less labour intensive than agriculture. Rather than providing an unneccessary surplues, they preferred to engage in leisure activities.

The fact that population growth forced the development of agriculture never occurred to you? If H-G societies were as stable as you claim, then we would not have developed agriculture, as there would have been no need to. But we did. QED.


Again, it is a commonplace thesis in anthropology today that agriculture did not originate from a shortage of food amongst gather-hunters. The consensus question is no longer why primitive peoples took so long to develop agriculture, but why they developed it at at all.

OK then, so why did we develop agriculture? If H-G was as heavenly as you claim it to be, then why would people tie themselves to work-intensive (Compared to H-G) agriculture?


You are living in upside-down world, truly. It is agricluture and other aspects of civilization (eg need for armies) that produced rapidly accelerating populations. Gather-hunters socities kept their populations low and sustainable for 99% of human history before the advance of civilization/agriculture. You're confusing primitivism with poverty, which is fallacious.

How do you know that stable populations weren't due to predation, death by preventable diseases, environmental factors, starvation etc? A high birthrate would offset such disadvantages, but as humans settled down to agriculture and found it easier to keep full, healthy and safe, that the population would then increase?

Once again, why do you think it's better to rely on fickle nature to keep your standard of living high, when agriculture and modern technology can be so much more consistent?


You seem utterly incapable of imagining a life outside modern industrial society. So "they had to walk everywhere". Wow wee. Good exercise.

And because you can't exactly get everywhere quickly, insularity and xenophobia increases. Do you know just how big the world becomes when you only have your feet? If I wanted a holiday in India and had to walk there, I'd spend upwards of several months getting there. Assuming technology to build some sort of channel-crossing boat was allowed in your primitivist utopia.

Which is another thing; how are you going to prevent people developing technology? It's possible to live a sustainable lifestyle without having to go back to paleolithic levels of technology. I would sure as hell want at least a furnace to make tools to tend my fields and repair my house in the event civilisation collapses.


And they didn't need modern medicine because the didn't have civilization/agriculture, which is responsible for malaria, probably the single greatest killer of humanity, and nearly all other infectious diseases.

Wrong. Infectious disaeases have always been with us. Modern medical technology means we can treat them better and more effectively.


Tuberculosis and diarrheal disease arrive with farming, measles and bubonic plague with the appearance of large cities.

And thanks to modern medical technology, these diseases can be treated. Do you imagine that in the event of civilisational collapse people will magically develop a resistance to these diseases? People will be dying horrific deaths while people like you crow over the fact that "Nature has her revenge" Sickening.


Nutritional and degenerative diseases in general appear with the reign of domestication.

You don't have to revert to primitivism to eat healthily.


Cancer, coronary thrombosis, anemia, dental
carries, and mental disorders are but a few of the hallmarks of agriculture.

Bullshit. Cancer and heart disease are lifestyle illnesses, anemia is caused by lack of iron not "Agriculture" as you vaguely put it (Or it can be a symptom of leukemia or Sickle Cell disease, which doesn't need artificially large amounts of radiation to occur) And people have always been going batty, blaming it on civilisation is simplistic simply by virtue of the fact that many people grow mentally healthy.


My god, you're serious. You've a very hollywood view of primitive life. You're a classic case of civilized ways of thinking about nature as something terrifying and unruly, needing to be dominated and controlled by humans, separated/alienated from nature.

I recognise that I am a part of nature and always will be, and I also recognise that nature is not "Sacred", I see it as a powerful but blind force that has done both great good and great evil in my view.
So what's wrong with bending it and redirecting it's forces to do good for the human species? it's simple survival, every species would do it if they had the will and the ability. They live in equilibrium not because they choose to, but because they lack the power to break that equilibrium.

Someday I hope we escape this cradle called Earth altogether and control our own destinies.

[Severian]

Originally posted by bourgeois [email protected] 20 2005, 05:42 AM
Significant proportions of San men and women, for example, live past age sixty.
Wow, some people live past sixty (unspecified how many). That's well short of average life expectancy in the U.S. today - 77 and climbing.

But as long as you can make statements that help construct a rose-colored generality, who cares what they mean concretely, huh?

[Severian]

Originally posted by bourgeois [email protected] 21 2005, 08:44 AM
It is agriculture and other aspects of civilization (eg need for armies) that produced rapidly accelerating populations. Gather-hunters socities kept their populations low and sustainable for 99% of human history before the advance of civilization/agriculture.
Yes, by infanticide and sometimes unsafe abortions. 'Cause if they didn't, people would starve.


And they didn't need modern medicine because the didn't have civilization/agriculture, which is responsible for malaria, probably the single greatest killer of humanity, and nearly all other infectious diseases.

What? No. They didn't have epidemic crowd diseases, many of which originate in cattle, (E.g. Cowpox-->smallpox.) and all of which require, well, crowds. But certainly people got sick (from endemic diseases), and injured, and pregnant. People died, and usually died young by our standards.

And then other people blamed the deaths on witchcraft, setting off a quest for revenge. The whole concept of "natural causes" is not really present typically in tribal cultures. Ignorance has consequences.

Oh, and malaria did exist before agriculture although it became deadlier after. (http://bric.postech.ac.kr/science/97now/01_7now/010720c.html) Typical of your imprecise-at-best statements.

[saint max]

So what's wrong with bending it and redirecting it's forces to do good for the human species? it's simple survival, every species would do it if they had the will and the ability. They live in equilibrium not because they choose to, but because they lack the power to break that equilibrium.

Someday I hope we escape this cradle called Earth altogether and control our own destinies

You're a fucking Transhumanist!

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Originally posted by saint [email protected] 22 2005, 12:20 AM

So what's wrong with bending it and redirecting it's forces to do good for the human species? it's simple survival, every species would do it if they had the will and the ability. They live in equilibrium not because they choose to, but because they lack the power to break that equilibrium.

Someday I hope we escape this cradle called Earth altogether and control our own destinies

You're a fucking Transhumanist!
You say that as if it were a bad thing.

[romanm]

Zerzan is so stupid. I can't believe anyone takes that stuff seriously.

[saint max]

Communism and transhumanism, anarchy and transhumanism are not compatable.

Transhumanism is not the next step for "human evolution," it's the next step in social order--it's civilization's dirtiest wet dream. Transhumanism is about as liberatory as fucking national bolshivism.

You think primitivists are 'inhumane' for desiring incoherence, and a world without control and secutiry, yet Transhumanism desires total control and submission for 'the greater good' of a 'higher consciousness.' Enjoy the LSD, and leave the rest of us out of it. aight?

To desire security is to hate love it's self.

Yall are fucked up.

cheers,
-max

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by saint [email protected] 22 2005, 09:28 PM
To desire security is to hate love it's self
Oh shut up you toss piece!


Yall are fucked up.

In your mind.

[Elect Marx]

Originally posted by NoXion+Sep 22 2005, 06:51 AM--> (NoXion @ Sep 22 2005, 06:51 AM)
Originally posted by saint [email protected] 22 2005, 12:20 AM

So what's wrong with bending it and redirecting it's forces to do good for the human species? it's simple survival, every species would do it if they had the will and the ability. They live in equilibrium not because they choose to, but because they lack the power to break that equilibrium.

Someday I hope we escape this cradle called Earth altogether and control our own destinies

You're a fucking Transhumanist!
You say that as if it were a bad thing. [/b]
Indeed; I don't see what is wrong with:


Transhumanism

an emergent philosophy analysing or favouring the use of science and technology, especially neurotechnology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology, to overcome human limitations and improve the human condition.

I have endevored to be posthuman for some time, most people do in some way...
I have been interested in supertechnology all my life and am likely as much of a lover of technology as NoXion, I do however see the dangers of giving fire to the enemy.

[The Feral Underclass]

The primitivist opinion is that technology is not neutral and will always be oppressive because a) it has to be maintained and that means people have to produce the technologyi.e do dangerous work to find the materials to maintain the actual production of technolgies or simply be apart of that mode of production, essentially for other people, which in turns maintains the process of alienation and b) that selective people within society will have the knowledge of these technologies which will create another class of those who know and those who don't making it easy for it [technology] to be exploited for the benefit of a minority.

[bourgeois adventurist]

N: "Translation: I don't have a decent argument, so I'm backing out."

No, rather because it would be an eternal, futile endeavour. Because obviously no amount of evidence will ever convince you to even question civilization.

OK I'll continue a little longer, if only to kick a few more dents into your massive hubris, and further flesh out the poverty of your control-obsessed "posthuman" vision.


Noxion (and the rest of leftists), you are so close-minded, so domesticated, your critical faculties so retarded by the ideologies of the day, that you are not only incapable of imagining a free and equal society in harmony with nature, but actively fear it, desire to control/stabilize every natural rhythm and wild instinct, everything outside your petty little ego stripped bare to a cold rationality.

Of course this is predictable from a “scientific humanist” -- science being not a neutral or objective account of the world, but always a tool bankrolled and used for the benefit of elites to dominate and exploit nature and men; humanism being the justification of the rape of the earth, the destruction of species and the de-animalization / domestication of the human being.

Isn’t it ironic that you and many others here claim to oppose postmodernism, but embrace one of the few things postmodernists accept as given or positive -- technology – together with its nightmare vision of an artificialized, “posthuman”, cyborgized, virtual reality.


N: "BZZZT! Wrong! My arguments were addressed strictly at hunter-gatherer societies...I said nothing about civilised primitives"

Sorry but you are confused. You may have addressed your arguments at hunter-gatherer societies, but they completely miss the point because your evidence is taken from civilized societies, for instance your Easter Island (and Severian's Huron) example.

I have mentioned the San bushmen, and Severian has unintentionally (as I pointed out) provided the Moriori of the Chatham Islands, as examples of uncivilized and successful (free, egalitarian, healthy, leisure...) societies.

You have not provided a single example of a uncivilized or gather-hunter society conforming to your stereotype. Why is that?


N: "civilised primitives ... tend to have a more dense, stable and controllable food supply than H-Gs, by simple virute of the fact that an acre of wheat contains more food than an acre of jungle."

Yeah, so what? This is typical civilized, bigger-is-better, control-obsession mentality.

I repeat: the experts tell us that H-Gs had/have a nutritionally adequate diet acquired from a wide variety of food, which was, moreover, normally only a small proportion of the total amount of food available in their environment.

You'd obviously have preferred toiling away to provide an unnecessary surplus, in keeping, most probably, with your spiritual marxist belief in work as the essence of humanity.


N: "If H-G societies were as stable as you claim..."

For all but the last few thousand years of our two-million year existence (over 99% of human history) we humans have obtained our subsistence by gathering and hunting. I would call that stable. It is undoubtedly the most successful and flexible way of life and the least damaging to the natural eco-systems that humans have ever known.


N: "The fact that population growth forced the development of agriculture never occurred to you?"

Getting through to you is quite impossible.

Yes, it occurred to nearly everybody prior to the late sixties, before anthropological studies emerged debunking that thesis. Today, there are several other, still tentative theories attempting to explain the origins of agriculture. A religious or cultural origin is most likely.

But obviously, since your mighty intellect cannot comprehend something, the experts in the field must all be wrong.


N: "Wrong. Infectious diseases have always been with us."

Not wrong; I said nearly all other infectious diseases.

Infectious diseases were greatly increased by the introduction of agriculture and domesticated animals, from which we've inherited smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, and diphtheria, influenza, leprosy from assorted varieties of cattle, to mention but a few.

Moreover its only with the rise of settled societies and dense populations that the conditions necessary for many new infectious diseases to thrive emerge, such as measles and mumps, bubonic plague and cholera, the list is endless.


N: “And thanks to modern medical technology, these diseases can be treated”

This is a little ambiguous, but I think its more than safe to assume you harbour the illusion modern medicine played a significant role in relieving/suppressing those diseases. Sorry, another myth.

Studies suggest that overall since 1900 medical intervention has contributed to as little as 3 ½ percent to the decline in mortality caused from infectious diseases. Estimates show that improved medical treatment was responsible for only three percent of the overall reduction in deaths from tuberculosis, for example.


N: “Bullshit. Cancer and heart disease are lifestyle illnesses, anemia is caused by lack of iron not "Agriculture"…”

Yes, they are lifestyle diseases -- otherwise known as “Diseases of Civilization”. ( :lol: I’m cracking up now).

Caused by lifestyles restricted for centuries to a limited variety of foods (and thus nutrients) made available by agriculture, only viable now thanks to the widespread and increasing use of petrochemical fertilizers.

Lifestyles of an industrial society which poisons and devastates our home the earth, and for its own survival must continue ripping the planet to pieces to extract resources that must eventually run out (whichever way you want to manage it).

You’ll no doubt argue we could have civilized/agricultural/industrial society without all that and the other nasty stuff, which is a crock of shit. You’d rather keep the most of the fundamental elements and categories of the present reality intact, merely re-organizing them equitably. I would rather smash them into oblivion.

Maybe you’ll at least agree with two of the biggest supporters of capitalism, Marx and his factory-owning mate Engels, who realized industrial society could only be brought to fruition by a capitalist system and all its horrors of exploitation, poverty, war etc?

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Noxion (and the rest of leftists), you are so close-minded, so domesticated, your critical faculties so retarded by the ideologies of the day, that you are not only incapable of imagining a free and equal society in harmony with nature, but actively fear it, desire to control/stabilize every natural rhythm and wild instinct, everything outside your petty little ego stripped bare to a cold rationality.

Yes, we're close-minded and domesticated because we don't want nature to simply steamroll over our species, and we have the means to do so.
It is impossible to live in harmony with nature - all species disrupt that "harmony" (Which is more an equilibrium of competition) whenever they get the chance.
We certainly didn't live in harmony with nature whenh we were hunter gatherers - we were simply too small in number and scope to make a significant effect.
Natural rythms hurt the human species - Hurricanes, floods, mudslides, tornadoes, avalanches, wet seasons with too much rain, wet seasons with too little rain, dustbowl dry seasons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hail, blizzards, frostbite, ice ages, meteors, asteroids, comets and tsunamis. Technology makes life better in the face of such things. How will primitivists search for survivors without helicopters?
Don't get me started on the irrational, impulsive nature of instinct. We're above that, or rather, we should be.
What's wrong with rationality? Does it go against your childish notion of Nature as "sacred"? If you don't lik rationality... then there's nothing more to be said.


Of course this is predictable from a “scientific humanist” -- science being not a neutral or objective account of the world, but always a tool bankrolled and used for the benefit of elites to dominate and exploit nature and men; humanism being the justification of the rape of the earth, the destruction of species and the de-animalization / domestication of the human being.

Why i science not neutral? Why is it not objective? Science has only one agenda, and that is truth. Others may twist science to get the answers they want, to suit their agenda of control and oppression, but then that's not science is it?
Science benefits everybody. It has benefited me, it has most probably benefited you, and it has benefited millions more.
Look at me. I now live a better life thanks to science, particularly the science of opthalmology - I wear glasses, as do many others. I can see properly. How would primitivists provide for short-sighted people?
Yes, science created nuclear weapons, dum-dum bullets and napalm. But these things require human interaction to make them harmful. It is the human tendency toward conflict that led them to be created by men with agendas. Once again, it is agendas and objective that are the problem, not science. Removing science does not remove the human element, and only serves to deprive people of the benefits that science can bring.

Quantify "rape". Do you mean irresponsible farming methods, where sustainability is sacrificed for short term gain? (Agendas at work again, this time it's capitalism)
Or are you naively referring to all farming, including those methods which utilise natural fertilisers, crop rotation, and responsible water management?
The mosquito spreads malaria, the AIDS virus slowly destroys lives, and thousands of other species cause misery for human beings. Who are you to deny people's suffering and proclaim non-human life as somehow sacred and untouchable?
Obviously your Disneyland vision of animals has blinded you to the fact that they don't give a damn.
I'm "Domesticated" eh? I see you wish to imply that I'm somehow docile, meek and without passions. Totally wrong. You think huddling round a fire in the winter to keep the wolves at bay is freedom? You think leaving yourself at the tender mercies of Nature is the ideal life?
Well I strongly disagree, and I'm gonna make damn sure that my descendants live in an era where nobody wants for anything, the stars live and die at the whim of humanity, and where wild, fickle nature is subserviant to technology which is in turn, subserviant to the whole of humanity and not simply an elite.


Isn’t it ironic that you and many others here claim to oppose postmodernism, but embrace one of the few things postmodernists accept as given or positive -- technology – together with its nightmare vision of an artificialized, “posthuman”, cyborgized, virtual reality.

Well actually PoMos are divorced from the concept of science - they think subjectivity has merit, when in fact it is worthless trash.
Postmodernism is not an embracer of technology, rather it is a backlash against Enlightenment thinking and all that descended from it. It is the childish assertion that thought, mere electro-chemical impulses in the brain, can affect reality.
Postmodernists are usually Buddhists or some other bullshit trendy eastern philosophy.

Fuck 'em.


Sorry but you are confused. You may have addressed your arguments at hunter-gatherer societies, but they completely miss the point because your evidence is taken from civilized societies, for instance your Easter Island (and Severian's Huron) example.

OK, I retract the Easter Island example.

But primitive people still suffered from injuries and diseases, as well as attacks by pedatory animals, certainly more so than the Easter Islanders.
But they had no hospitals, no advanced medicine, no knowledge outside what was stored in their heads and passed down the generations (So no universities, schools or libraries)

And you still haven't answered this: How are you going to stop people developing technology?

Like I said:


Originally posted by "Me"
Which is another thing; how are you going to prevent people developing technology? It's possible to live a sustainable lifestyle without having to go back to paleolithic levels of technology. I would sure as hell want at least a furnace to make tools to tend my fields and repair my house in the event civilisation collapses.


I repeat: the experts tell us that H-Gs had/have a nutritionally adequate diet acquired from a wide variety of food, which was, moreover, normally only a small proportion of the total amount of food available in their environment.

Which experts? Have they written any peer reviewed papers? Why do you believe them when they use the exact same science that you despise? Do you only like science when it gives the answers you want? Typical agenda-based thinking.


You'd obviously have preferred toiling away to provide an unnecessarily surplus, in keeping, most probably, with your spiritual marxist belief in work as the essence of humanity.

:rolleyes: The "Marxism as religion" attack. Sooooo original <_<


For all but the last few thousand years of our two-million year existence (over 99% of human history) we humans have obtained our subsistence by gathering and hunting. I would call that stable. It is undoubtedly the most successful and flexible way of life and the least damaging to the natural eco-systems that humans have ever known.

So? I like technology.


Yes, it occurred to nearly everybody prior to the late sixties, before anthropological studies emerged debunking that thesis. Today, there are several other, still tentative theories attempting to explain the origins of agriculture. A religious or cultural origin is most likely.

A link&#33; A link&#33; My kingdom for a link&#33;


But obviously, since your mighty intellect cannot comprehend something, the experts in the field must all be wrong.

I&#39;d trust them over you any day.


Studies suggest that overall since 1900 medical intervention has contributed to as little as 3 ½ percent to the decline in mortality caused from infectious diseases. Estimates show that improved medical treatment was responsible for only three percent of the overall reduction in deaths from tuberculosis, for example.

I&#39;d like to know where you pulled those figures from (Hopefully not your ass)
Even if those figures are real, a small improvement is better than none.
No mention of vaccination there either.


Yes, they are lifestyle diseases -- otherwise known as “Diseases of Civilization”. ( :lol: I’m cracking up now).

Bullshit. You can live an unhealthy lifestyle regardless of your technological level.


You’ll no doubt argue we could have civilized/agricultural/industrial society without all that and the other nasty stuff, which is a crock of shit.

Why? We have the capability, we just need the willpower, and simpletons like you aren&#39;t helping matters.


You’d rather keep the most of the fundamental elements and categories of the present reality intact, merely re-organizing them equitably. I would rather smash them into oblivion.

The savage speaks.


Maybe you’ll at least agree with two of the biggest supporters of capitalism, Marx and his factory-owning mate Engels, who realized industrial society could only be brought to fruition by a capitalist system and all its horrors of exploitation, poverty, war etc?

Birth tends be painful.

[tumble_doom]

Natural rythms hurt the human species - Hurricanes, floods, mudslides, tornadoes, avalanches, wet seasons with too much rain, wet seasons with too little rain, dustbowl dry seasons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hail, blizzards, frostbite, ice ages, meteors, asteroids, comets and tsunamis. Technology makes life better in the face of such things. How will primitivists search for survivors without helicopters?

have you ever heard of the tribe in indonesia that survived the recent tsunami? none of them died. neither did many animals. we&#39;ve certainly lost of connection with the rhythms of hte planet. plus, floods are so bad now becase we&#39;ve cut down all the forests that once soaked up the water. and the recent tsunami was bad because we&#39;ve killed alot of the corel reefs (which slow down tsunamis). and asteroids are out of our control. as are volcanic eruptions.

myopia is a symptom of civilization. it CAN be cured. i also wear glasses, and also have myopia, and the sad thing about glasses is that they make your eyes weak and sooner or later you have to buy stonger glasses. so much for science. heh.

science is simply a way of seeing things. getting the potential energy of an "object" is true, i guess, but it&#39;s only a model of how to SEE things. so, yeah, science isn&#39;t the Truth. science much of the time seeks to "cure" the problems that were created by civilization. but it really only cures the symptoms.

agriculture is inherently expansive. please dont give me that shit about how we can feed all of "humanity," because you dont seem to realize that we&#39;ve converted half the Wild planet in to HUMAN MASS. that is unsustainable, because the percentage is GROWING. because population is a function of the food supply. if you want to feed all of "humanity" fine, but you&#39;ll up screwing the human race even worse than now (because, we will run outta land = famine).

it&#39;s also been well established by mainstream anthros that agri was "the worst mistake in human history." http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/agron...ondmistake.html (http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/agron342/diamondmistake.html)

non-human life is "sacred" because we DEPEND on them. as we kill the rest of the wild lands on the planet, we kill biodiversity. and we turn the planet into human mass.

malaria, aids, and all the civilized diseases are symptoms of a high population. sure, they were around in long ago, but how frequent? since the population densities in some places is so high, there are more cases of it.

medicine: primitive people have knowledge of herbs. herbs are the BACKBONE of modern medicine. herbs are nothing new. do you realize that scientists have found plants that can help cancer more than any modern medicine (of course, they are ARENT going at the cause of cancer)? obviously advanced medicine is far too primitive compared to a shamen that knows 1000s of medicinal plant forumlas (and they do). "advanced" medicine kills 300,000 people a year. herbs kill... ding... ding ZERO.


"How are you going to stop people developing technology?"

I&#39;m not. the planet is. think about it. all the technolgies we have are built with FINITE resources. therefore, they will eventually run out. all these technolgies require a strict division of labor, too. computer chips are made in arizona, and computer monitors could be made in china. you have to transport all that STUFF over to ANOTHER processing plant. then they have to send it to the store. most every "advanced and benifical technology to humanity" involves stuff like this.

see link above for about the best "professional" paper you can find.

anthropolgist kent flannery: "I don&#39;t see any evidence anywhere in the world that suggests that population pressure was responsible for the beginning of agriculture."

http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp-a...p-anat-8b.shtml (http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp-anat/comp-anat-8b.shtml)
http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional_di..._americans.html (http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional_diets/native_americans.html)

there is alot more stuff. im not saying that H/g life was utopia, but i am saying that it was pretty good compared to the civilized way of life.

[bourgeois adventurist]

Noxion: “I&#39;m gonna make damn sure that my descendants live in an era where…the stars live and die at the whim of humanity, and where wild, fickle nature is subservient…”

Noxion: “we don&#39;t want nature to simply steamroll over our species.”

Noxion: “It is impossible to live in harmony with nature”

Noxion: “Science has only one agenda, and that is truth”

Noxion: “You think huddling round a fire in the winter to keep the wolves at bay is freedom? You think leaving yourself at the tender mercies of Nature is the ideal life?”


Do others here take this seriously? Noxion’s obviously a goner; does anyone else think its worth replying?

[LSD]

myopia is a symptom of civilization. it CAN be cured.

Really? How?


i also wear glasses, and also have myopia, and the sad thing about glasses is that they make your eyes weak and sooner or later you have to buy stonger glasses.

If that were so why do you wear glasses?

If you&#39;ve discovered a way to "cure" myopia, why don&#39;t you use it on yourself? if glasses are truly as harmful as you imply, why don&#39;t you stop wearing them?


science is simply a way of seeing things. getting the potential energy of an "object" is true, i guess, but it&#39;s only a model of how to SEE things.

What?

Science is a "way of seeing things", yes but what does "getting the potential energy of an &#39;object&#39;" mean?

"potential energy of an object"? :huh:


so, yeah, science isn&#39;t the Truth.

No, it&#39;s a method by which to find the truth. One which has been eminently successful in doing so.


non-human life is "sacred" because we DEPEND on them.

No we don&#39;t. We depend on some non-human life. Obviously this is life that we should not kill&#33;

But that&#39;s utilitarianism, not "sacredness".


malaria, aids, and all the civilized diseases are symptoms of a high population.

I assume that by "civilized" diseases you mean those diseases primarily present in high populations.

So basically your point is that diseases found in high populations are because of the high populations. Wow, that&#39;s real brilliant.

The real question is, so what?

Yeah, if it weren&#39;t for civilization, we probably wouldn&#39;t have as many malaria deaths. But you know what? It&#39;s worth it.


medicine: primitive people have knowledge of herbs. herbs are the BACKBONE of modern medicine.

:lol:

"BACKONE of modern medicine"?

Not even close&#33;


advanced" medicine kills 300,000 people a year. herbs kill... ding... ding ZERO.

Ever heard of a little herb called tobacco?


Do others here take this seriously?

Much more than we do you and your reactionary primitavist garbage.

What exactly is wrong with any of the quotes you provided?

I too hope that my children live in a world in which nature is subject to human control and not the other way around. "Harmony" is idealist fantasy; nature is constant special war.

Nature isn&#39;t a "thing", it doesn&#39;t exist. It&#39;s just a useful shorthand for everything organic that isn&#39;t us. But there&#39;s no central force, no guiding hand. It&#39;s a collection of biological organisms all fighting for themselves and their genetic propogation. Wolves and elk and E. Coli don&#39;t care about "harmony" and neither should we.

Nature is war. We&#39;re winning. Be happy.


Noxion’s obviously a goner;

As a matter of fact, we just made him mod of Science and Technlogy.

You, on the other hand, seem unable to even form a coherent thought. Before you accuse others of being "goners", how about you actually address his rather biting rebutal of your position?

...or should we take your refussal to do so to be a concession?

[Elect Marx]

I must say there is no shortage of hypocrisy among internet primitivists.

The funny thing is that harnessed fire is technology. You have to live as an early primate to not use technology and if all technology is "evil," it must be the righteous over there yonder, swinging from the trees. Neo-primativits, as it were :lol:

[Severian]

Well, B.A., I&#39;d say it&#39;s you who&#39;s a goner. Noxion&#39;s got an obviously true point, that the tyranny of nature and ignorance is not freedom. He&#39;s making an error in counterposing humanity and our technology to nature, as if we stood outside it....but then, you make that same counterposition, don&#39;t you? At least technology vs nature, and whether you like it or not, homo sapiens is inseparable from technology. We would never have existed without it....

You&#39;ve got a point that Noxion and I have sometimes mentioned early agricultural societies (hardly civilized though) instead of hunter-gatherers...but there are so few hunter-gatherer societies available as examples&#33; For a reason. (It&#39;s also hard to wrap one&#39;s head around a mindset which regards, say, most North American Indians as having been far too technologically advanced. Sorry.)

***

OK, enough arguing with the terminally irrational. Let&#39;s take an example of someone with intelligence and knowledge, if not always good sense, pointing out the downside of the Agricultural Revolution.

The worst mistake in the history of the human race by Jared Diamond (http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/agron342/diamondmistake.html)

Who, incidentally, is a biologist expressing an opinion outside his specialty. Not an anthropologist.

He&#39;s saying it was agriculture. Though he knows enough not to suggest this should be reversed.

Of course it&#39;s ridiculous to suggest agriculture was "chosen", rightly or wrongly. Humanity has never been in a position to consciously and collectively make decisions; that&#39;s what communists are fighting for.

But some of the particulars Diamond points out are true. The rise of class society and the oppression of women, certainly. Morgan and Engels pointed that out long ago; it&#39;s certainly not news to any Marxist.

&#39;Course we&#39;re starting to reverse that; equality and freedom have undeniably been on the rise for centuries now, and the possibility is opening up for even more decisive advances. Ironic that advocacy of primitivism would arise precisely now.

Nor will I dispute archaeological findings like this: ""Life expectancy at birth in the pre-agricultural community was bout twenty-six years," says Armelagos, "but in the post-agricultural community it was nineteen years.""

Wow, 26 years&#33; And their lives must really have been cakewalks for them to live that long. I guess that "Hobbesian myth" about life being "nasty, brutish and short" has been definitely refuted, huh? Considering average life expectancy in the U.S. now is a mere 77 years. Cuba&#39;s is 76, so it doesn&#39;t take imperialist exploitation of the rest of the world to do that. Japan&#39;s is 80. Zambia&#39;s is the lowest in the world - 37.2. Still 11 years ahead of "the pre-agricultural community".
link (http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa042000b.htm)

And why is it that "primitivism" arises as an ideology precisely now when we have at last acquired the technology to beat epidemic disease, and live longer and healthier lives than ever before? And with a lot of places having actually begun to do so, and humanity on the road to the social requirements for beating it everywhere? Kinda an interesting problem in the social roots of ideology.

Anyway, why did humanity "choose" this path? Diamond points out:


One answer boils down to the adage "Might makes right." Farming could support many more people than hunting, albeit with a poorer quality of life. (Population densities of hunter-gatherers are rarely over on eperson per ten square miles, while farmers average 100 times that.) Partly, this is because a field planted entirely in edible crops lets one feed far more mouths than a forest with scattered edible plants. Partly, too, it’s because nomadic hunter-gatherers have to keep their children spaced at four-year intervals by infanticide and other means, since a mother must carry her toddler until it’s old enough to keep up with the adults. Because farm women don’t have that burden, they can and often do bear a child every two years.

As population densities of hunter-gatherers slowly rose at the end of the ice ages, bands had to choose between feeding more mouths by taking the first steps toward agriculture, or else finding ways to limit growth. Some bands chose the former solution, unable to anticipate the evils of farming, and seduced by the transient abundance they enjoyed until population growth caught up with increased food production. Such bands outbred and then drove off or killed the bands that chose to remain hunter-gatherers, because a hundred malnourished farmers can still outfight one healthy hunter.It’s not that hunter-gatherers abandonded their life style, but that those sensible enough not to abandon it were forced out of all areas except the ones farmers didn’t want.
Emphasis added.

Look, there&#39;s our old friend infanticide&#33; Which Diamond is honest enough not to deny; though he coulda specified the main reason hunter-gathering groups had to practice it, to keep population below the fixed food production of their environment.

And look, there&#39;s the argument B.A. dismissed offhand as "weak"&#33; (And by weak, he means irrefutable.) So much more pleasant to deal with someone who doesn&#39;t dodge all real issues. Perhaps this is why Diamond doesn&#39;t advocate reversing what he calls the "worst mistake in human history" - he knows its impossible. If even one village in Kyrghyzstan stuck with civilization, it would spread unstoppably across the world again, pushing out everyone who didn&#39;t adopt its ways.

(But then....by what standard is it "sensible" to stick to a lifestyle which inevitably gets you pushed into the Arctic, the Kalahari, or the sea? Maybe that&#39;s why so many peoples were in fact sensible enough to adopt agriculture and/or stock-raising after coming in contact with others who were doing so.)

Any new system has to be more productive than the old. History is progressive, contrary to what Diamond suggests. That is an objective reality.

It doesn&#39;t mean history is nice, or has the purpose of making things better for people (or any "purpose" at all, that&#39;s personification.) It means the historical process tends to encourage the growth of productive forces...and social systems that become an obstacle to that will be swept aside. Like unfit species in the process of natural selection.

That was true of primitive communalism. And now it&#39;s true of class-divided society.

[saint max]

We could continue this discussion, but what&#39;s the point?

Leftists, enjoy your real world and technofantasies. They will both soon be over. Your history is one of failure and deception. Perhaps, before you realize it&#39;s too late, your college study group or party or federation will trick a few people into joining. But you, like all ideologues and technophiles are doomed. The thing about collapse or destructive forces against civilization, is it can&#39;t be stoped. There are huge vulnerabilites, you don&#39;t need a mass movement, and for the most part we could care less for one. All it will take is the will of those who lay claim to the deed. Maybe you can take solace in knowing capitalism will die too?

You can&#39;t argue with an irreconcilable desire for freedom.

and so for the arguements have been an anarchronism and boring and best, and horrorific anti-freedom wet dreams of domination at worst. (Perhaps yall watch too much star-trek and read too much science fiction.)

cheers,
-max

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by saint [email protected] 24 2005, 11:37 AM
You can&#39;t argue with an irreconcilable desire for freedom.
I don&#39;t think you&#39;ve proven that it is.


and so for the arguements have been an anarchronism and boring and best, and horrorific anti-freedom wet dreams of domination at worst. (Perhaps yall watch too much star-trek and read too much science fiction.)

Please, really. Let&#39;s not jump to silly conclusions. You haven&#39;t made any coherent argument that would defend your position and reject communism.

You want to destroy technology. Fine? But why.

[Severian]

Originally posted by saint [email protected] 24 2005, 04:37 AM
The thing about collapse or destructive forces against civilization, is it can&#39;t be stoped.
If it was inevitable, why would you need to argue for it?


There are huge vulnerabilites, you don&#39;t need a mass movement, and for the most part we could care less for one.

Yes, we all know about the great successes that have been obtained by individual terrorists through history, going back to the original Hasashin. Remember what happened to them?

Damn few terrorists have achieved their goals; even if their actions succeed (a big if) they are more likely to have the opposite result (backlash.)


All it will take is the will of those who lay claim to the deed.

Heh. If you had the will to carry out terrorist acts you wouldn&#39;t be posting about it on a public message board. What a clown.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

have you ever heard of the tribe in indonesia that survived the recent tsunami? none of them died. neither did many animals.

That means nothing, they could have just been lucky. And if memory serves me correctly, Indonesia was choked with the bodies of all sorts of animals.


we&#39;ve certainly lost of connection with the rhythms of hte planet. plus, floods are so bad now becase we&#39;ve cut down all the forests that once soaked up the water. and the recent tsunami was bad because we&#39;ve killed alot of the corel reefs (which slow down tsunamis).

There are such things as levees and early warning systems, but Indonesia couldn&#39;t afford them (Look&#33; It&#39;s capitalism being a dick again&#33; Surprise&#33;)


myopia is a symptom of civilization. it CAN be cured. i also wear glasses, and also have myopia, and the sad thing about glasses is that they make your eyes weak and sooner or later you have to buy stonger glasses. so much for science. heh.

How does Civilisation cause myopia? The reason myopia wasn&#39;t so prevalent in h/g societies is because nature kills them off. Myopia causes you not to see important things like lions or that mother bear and her cubs. Also, some forms of myopia are progressive and get worse as time passes - thus requiring stronger glasses. They do not make your eyes weak.


science is simply a way of seeing things. getting the potential energy of an "object" is true, i guess, but it&#39;s only a model of how to SEE things.

What? :blink:


so, yeah, science isn&#39;t the Truth. science much of the time seeks to "cure" the problems that were created by civilization. but it really only cures the symptoms.

I never claimed science to be the truth, I merely said it was a damn good way finding out the truth. I&#39;d like to see what you think of as an alternative.
Be specific. What did science cure that was only a "symptom"?


agriculture is inherently expansive. please dont give me that shit about how we can feed all of "humanity," because you dont seem to realize that we&#39;ve converted half the Wild planet in to HUMAN MASS.

Bullshit. the the totality of bacterium in the world "outweigh" us by orders of magnitude themselves, not to mention all the other species.
We can feed all of the present population to a suffecient degree. The problem is that our political and economic system cannot cope. The answer is to form a new system, not to abandon civilisation and leave billions to starve and die.


that is unsustainable, because the percentage is GROWING. because population is a function of the food supply. if you want to feed all of "humanity" fine, but you&#39;ll up screwing the human race even worse than now (because, we will run outta land = famine).

The current population growth is unacceptable in the developing world, but sooner or later their quality of life will reach a point where the birthrate is merely sustainable and not astronomical. Primitivism will not help matters.


it&#39;s also been well established by mainstream anthros that agri was "the worst mistake in human history." http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/agron...ondmistake.html

That is one man&#39;s OPINION... it says so in big letters at the top of the page.

Jared Diamond is NOT the entire Anthropological community.


non-human life is "sacred" because we DEPEND on them. as we kill the rest of the wild lands on the planet, we kill biodiversity. and we turn the planet into human mass.

Do you even know what "mass" means? It sounds like there&#39;s a conspiracy to turn Earth into a huge ball of humans :lol:


malaria, aids, and all the civilized diseases are symptoms of a high population. sure, they were around in long ago, but how frequent? since the population densities in some places is so high, there are more cases of it.

All you&#39;re telling me is that the number of ill people rises proportionally with population. No surprise there. But you would have treatment for them removed.


medicine: primitive people have knowledge of herbs. herbs are the BACKBONE of modern medicine.

No they&#39;re not. Chemicals are important, their source is unimportant.


herbs are nothing new. do you realize that scientists have found plants that can help cancer more than any modern medicine (of course, they are ARENT going at the cause of cancer)?

There are scientists who are working on cures for cancer, and there are scientists who looking for the causes of cancer. To say otherwise would be dishonesty on your part.

Oh yes, and that deer you&#39;re roasting over your fire? It contains carcinogens. Enjoy.


obviously advanced medicine is far too primitive compared to a shamen that knows 1000s of medicinal plant forumlas (and they do).

If shamanic medicine was so effective, why did we abandon it?


"advanced" medicine kills 300,000 people a year. herbs kill... ding... ding ZERO.

Ah yes, the natural = good brainbug. Tobacco, digitalis, and fly agaric mushrooms are quite harmless aren&#39;t they?


I&#39;m not. the planet is. think about it. all the technolgies we have are built with FINITE resources. therefore, they will eventually run out. all these technolgies require a strict division of labor, too. computer chips are made in arizona, and computer monitors could be made in china. you have to transport all that STUFF over to ANOTHER processing plant. then they have to send it to the store. most every "advanced and benifical technology to humanity" involves stuff like this.

If memory serves me correctly, wood grows on trees. And with wood you can make charcoal, and with charcoal you can run a furnace, and with a furnace you make iron out of iron ore, and with iron you can make simple tools, and with simple tools you can make complex tools, and with complex tools you can make... Need I go on?


see link above for about the best "professional" paper you can find.

You mean that OPINION article?



http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp-a...p-anat-8b.shtml
http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional_di..._americans.html

Both these articles compare the best examples of HG society with the worst examples of civilised society - I hardly think that is a fair comparison. Example:


Originally posted by Article
Although life expectancies of hunter-gatherers are low by modern European or American standards, they compare favorably with expectancies for displaced hunter-gatherers, many subsistence agriculturalists, and impoverished urbanized people of the tropics today (Ackerknecht, 1948; Billington, 1960; Duguid, 1963; Dunn, MS-i; Maingard, 1937; Polunin, 1953). Few hunter-gatherers survive long enough to develop cardiovascular disease or cancer, major causes of mortality in America and Europe today.

So basically they get killed before their bodies have time to wear out.

Also, the second link refers to American Indians, who were not hunter gatherers by the time the Europeans arrived.


there is alot more stuff. im not saying that H/g life was utopia, but i am saying that it was pretty good compared to the civilized way of life.

They didn&#39;t live as long, they had a less reliable food source, and were more vulnerable to illness and natural disaster? Yep, sounds pretty good to me :rolleyes:


Do others here take this seriously? Noxion’s obviously a goner; does anyone else think its worth replying?

Yeah, I&#39;m an "unrepentant techno-sinner" :lol:


We could continue this discussion, but what&#39;s the point?

To prove that your primitivist ideals are not merely articles of faith, but are grounded in reason and rationality.


Leftists, enjoy your real world and technofantasies. They will both soon be over. Your history is one of failure and deception. Perhaps, before you realize it&#39;s too late, your college study group or party or federation will trick a few people into joining. But you, like all ideologues and technophiles are doomed. The thing about collapse or destructive forces against civilization, is it can&#39;t be stoped. There are huge vulnerabilites, you don&#39;t need a mass movement, and for the most part we could care less for one. All it will take is the will of those who lay claim to the deed. Maybe you can take solace in knowing capitalism will die too?

I&#39;m not saying humanity is forever... but surviving until the heat death of the universe sounds good enough for me.

Oh, and in the event of civilisation collapsing, feel free to try to burn down my farm. I&#39;ll be waiting with an axe, a crossbow and several large dogs.


and so for the arguements have been an anarchronism and boring and best, and horrorific anti-freedom wet dreams of domination at worst. (Perhaps yall watch too much star-trek and read too much science fiction.)

Read the Culture series of novels by Iain M Banks - that&#39;s the sort of civilisation I want my children to see.

A few Notes on the Culture (http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~stefan/culture.html)

Enjoy.

[tumble_doom]

it doesnt seem to be clear to you guys that me, BA, and max arent saying we want to LIVE EXACTLY LIKE our ancestors (at least that&#39;s how i feel). i see their way of life as a model for a better existence. i dont care if you live in grass huts or if you live in a damned house. i only care about what&#39;s being done to the earth.

does that mean that billions of people will die? yeah, prolly. will i cause the death of billions? no. the earth will. as long as we convert the planet into human mass (so we can continue supporting the current population), we are on the road to oblivion.

you people seem to think that the new frontier of transhmanism is going to be the end all of our miseries. i beg the differ. that kind of stuff is what we&#39;ve been told by people in power for hundereds of years. it seems like we all follow this idea: the end is near and we need to repent quick, so we can stop the end for a little while&#33; that kind of thinking is the thinking of Progress. we are conditioned to be on our heels at all times. TO ADVANCE, by any means necessary. we just want to die comfortable, after all. in the case of transhumanism, we dont want to die.

i guarentee you that you will never have your communist existence. i bet you a hundered dollars. :unsure:

in our present system of living, we&#39;re like chickens in a factory, we kill each other because there too many of us and because we dont know each other. is it wrong to compare us to chickens? after all, many wild chickens live in "nature," but we are above that right? we only kill each other cuz we naturally want to, right? we have no connections to animals, we have rationalization...but it&#39;s too bad for you that we do the same thing as the chickens in high pops. when we are in high populations. while we get along fine in smaller populations, and so do chickens&#33;


the tribes in indonesia werent "lucky"&#33; they knew it was coming, becasue the tides were changing and beause they&#39;ve been around for 60,000 years and have lots of oral history. most wil animals didint die. many dogs started howling about a few hours before the tsunami hit land.

the corel reefs help slow down tsunamis. the tsunami wouldnt have been as bad if there were corel reefs. so much for not depending on the earth. and they wouldnt have been as bad if we hadnt built hotel resorts right on the edges of beaches. so much for luxury.

glasses make your eyes weak, yes. they cause your muscles to relax. with glasses, you eyes never get stronger, they get weaker. your eyes do have muscles, you know. and strong muscles make better sight.

and i am currently trying to gain strength in my eyes again. so yes, im trying to stop wearing them...and exercise my eyes

curing symptoms: science is going to cure the "population problem," which is a symptom of the system&#39;s inherent expansionism.

"We can feed all of the present population to a suffecient degree."

of course&#33; im not denying that. but what im saying is this: we&#39;ve converted half the planet into domesticated land just so we can feed the planet. and that percentage is growing (just check out the amazon rainforest). no matter what we do... permaculture, horticulture, blah blah, we are still going to be destroying the earth, because we HAVE to convert the earth into human use if we want to feed everyone. so, no, im not saying it&#39;s not possible to feed everyone, but what i am saying is: at what cost? will we commit genocide like we are ALREADY doing to the people in the amazon rainforest. i bet you support that.

in the long run, as we convert the planet in to crops, cities, roads, etc we are only praying for our own deaths. topsoil will eventually deplete as will the aquifiers in the central US. that means FAMINE. and roads destroy natural habitats. cars are inherently destructive.

you suffer from the idea that we can "develop" the whole world to the american/european standard of living. we prolly could, but at what cost? prolly our lives and the destruction of hte land.

jared diamond is prolly the most credible anthropologist on the planet. he&#39;s written many books that have been on the new york times best seller list. check out: guns, germs and steel.

human mass = agriculture, cities, roads, cars, etc. any thing that is for the benifit of humans. that&#39;s what i mean.

nah, herbs have been used by the chinese for thousands of years. you obviously have no knowledge of that. what i was saying was that herbs and wild plants, etc were the beggining of medicine. it helped bring about the terrible infestation of "modern" medicine. except, herbs were never really needed to cure cancer and all the civilized disease back in the day.

we are still abandoning the shamanic medicine, because we commit genocide against those brutes in the forests. they are after all, primitive and we dont need voodoo....

hahahaha. tobacco, yeah kills people in this culture&#33; why the hell wouldnt it&#33; it&#39;s packed with hundereds of artificial chemicals&#33; jesus.

sure, we can make iron n shit like that with trees. but, once we&#39;ve killed all those trees, we have to expand to another area. or get a global trade agreement. blah blah. trees are a finite resource after all.. in it&#39;s present form, iron as it&#39;s made now is unsustainable and will be as long as we have civilization.

uh, biodiversity = healthy and sane living. we need other animals to polnate flowers. we need other animals to help trees grow. dont you see that "nature" is an interconnected system. you guys sound so privileged saying stupid shit like that. like: i&#39;m so much cooller than all those uncivilized people who havent the powers we possess, lets just kill them off. childish.

there is NO RIGHT WAY to live, there are just BETTER ways. read anthropology before you make stupid asses out of yourselves. i&#39;m not trying to convert you, nor am i trying to force you to live some other way, because in the end, you will be forced to by the earth.

have a nice day.


ps. some good books for you hipsters of civilization:

ishmael - daniel quinn
story of b - daniel quinn
culture of make believe - derrick jensen

pps. i can see the irony of talking about getting rid of civilization on a computer, but i could really give a shit. it doesnt say anything about my argument. and my argument is not ABOUT ME. im not a purist. get over it. im sure you can see the irony of driving a car with oil and being against capitalism. whoopee.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

it doesnt seem to be clear to you guys that me, BA, and max arent saying we want to LIVE EXACTLY LIKE our ancestors (at least that&#39;s how i feel). i see their way of life as a model for a better existence. i dont care if you live in grass huts or if you live in a damned house. i only care about what&#39;s being done to the earth.

I care too, but primitivism is not the answer. If anything it&#39;ll make it harder to undo any damage that needs fixing.


does that mean that billions of people will die? yeah, prolly. will i cause the death of billions? no. the earth will. as long as we convert the planet into human mass (so we can continue supporting the current population), we are on the road to oblivion.

Then the solution is to stop this unsustainable population growth by improving conditions in the developing world, and the way we do that is to stop exploiting them.


you people seem to think that the new frontier of transhmanism is going to be the end all of our miseries. i beg the differ. that kind of stuff is what we&#39;ve been told by people in power for hundereds of years.

You obviously haven&#39;t been listening to what the ruling class has actually been telling us: They tell us not to question our or their position, they tell us to trust them and to vote for them, and they&#39;ve told us to OBEY&#33;
Transhumanism seeks to create a society of of social equals by eliminating the limitations inherent in the human body, something that our rulers tell us every day is impossible.


it seems like we all follow this idea: the end is near and we need to repent quick, so we can stop the end for a little while&#33;

No, that&#39;s what you primitivists have been saying&#33; You have stressed that the end of civilisation is near, that progress is pointless, and that the only way we can "save ourselves" is by adopting a primitive lifestyle.


that kind of thinking is the thinking of Progress.

No it&#39;s not. It&#39;s messianistic bullshit that holds back both scientific and social progress - if the end is near, why bother trying to improve the world?


we are conditioned to be on our heels at all times.

Listen to what the suits actually say for once&#33; They tell us to be on our KNEES&#33;


TO ADVANCE, by any means necessary. we just want to die comfortable, after all. in the case of transhumanism, we dont want to die.

True immortality is impossible, but what&#39;s wrong with extending one&#39;s lifespan?


i guarentee you that you will never have your communist existence. i bet you a hundered dollars. :unsure:

Since it&#39;s unlikely to happen within my lifetime, all bets are off.


in our present system of living, we&#39;re like chickens in a factory, we kill each other because there too many of us and because we dont know each other. is it wrong to compare us to chickens? after all, many wild chickens live in "nature," but we are above that right? we only kill each other cuz we naturally want to, right? we have no connections to animals, we have rationalization...but it&#39;s too bad for you that we do the same thing as the chickens in high pops. when we are in high populations. while we get along fine in smaller populations, and so do chickens&#33;

We are not chickens. We kill each other because of various factors - economic, social, mental, etc. To lay the blame at high populations is overly simplistic.


the tribes in indonesia werent "lucky"&#33; they knew it was coming, becasue the tides were changing and beause they&#39;ve been around for 60,000 years and have lots of oral history. most wil animals didint die. many dogs started howling about a few hours before the tsunami hit land.

How do you know they were not lucky? Most likely they would have been located inland, where the effects of the tsunami would be greatly mitigated if not completely gone.
Tsunamis are not cyclical - they are caused by earthquakes on the ocean floor, not the tides. Tidal waves are mere splashes compared to tsunami.
Most of the wild animals didn&#39;t die because they were safely inland, not because of some mystical "sixth sense". Dogs howl for all sorts of reasons. You&#39;re seeking explainations after the fact, and that&#39;s bad science.


the corel reefs help slow down tsunamis. the tsunami wouldnt have been as bad if there were corel reefs. so much for not depending on the earth.

Coral reefs only mitigate the effects, they are not magical barriers. How do you know that the recent tsunami would not have simply swept over the reef entirely?


and they wouldnt have been as bad if we hadnt built hotel resorts right on the edges of beaches. so much for luxury.

Yes, the wages of sin :rolleyes: Honestly, fuck you, innocents holidaymakers died and you&#39;re gloating over that fact? See the primitivist mindset everyone&#33; All are worthy to be sacrificed at the altar of nature&#33; :angry:


glasses make your eyes weak, yes. they cause your muscles to relax. with glasses, you eyes never get stronger, they get weaker. your eyes do have muscles, you know. and strong muscles make better sight.

Do you even know what causes short-sightedness? For your information it has nothing to do with muscles - your eye is slightly deformed (In the case of short-sightedness, the eye is longer than it needs to be), causing misfocusing beyond the point where your lense can compensate. the little muscles that your eye uses to change the shape of the lense are meant for focusing, not major correction - you still need to focus on objects at different distances when wearing glasses.
Glasses enable you to see further (Or nearer if you&#39;re short-sighted) by taking the strain off your little lense muscles.


and i am currently trying to gain strength in my eyes again. so yes, im trying to stop wearing them...and exercise my eyes

You&#39;ll only strain them.


of course&#33; im not denying that. but what im saying is this: we&#39;ve converted half the planet into domesticated land just so we can feed the planet. and that percentage is growing (just check out the amazon rainforest).

I&#39;d like to know where you get your figures from, as they&#39;re terribly erroneous. Last time I looked at a sattelite map of Earth most of it was still mountains, desert, forest, tundra, snow and ice.

50 percent? That&#39;s a lot.


no matter what we do... permaculture, horticulture, blah blah, we are still going to be destroying the earth, because we HAVE to convert the earth into human use if we want to feed everyone.

But you just said we had enough food to feed everyone&#33; Why would we want more? And how is permaculture destroying the earth? You really are a drama queen.
Agriculture done right is a self-sustaining system.


so, no, im not saying it&#39;s not possible to feed everyone, but what i am saying is: at what cost? will we commit genocide like we are ALREADY doing to the people in the amazon rainforest. i bet you support that.

But if we have enough food to feed everyone, we won&#39;t need to cut down more rainforest and the amazon indians can live their happy little lives undisturbed. You really are confusing.

I like the little ad hominem you added at the end.


in the long run, as we convert the planet in to crops, cities, roads, etc we are only praying for our own deaths. topsoil will eventually deplete as will the aquifiers in the central US. that means FAMINE.

We are nowhere near covering the planet in crops and urban areas. topsoil will not deplete if you look after it properly, as will aquifers.


you suffer from the idea that we can "develop" the whole world to the american/european standard of living. we prolly could, but at what cost? prolly our lives and the destruction of hte land.

To be honest, your analysis is less than inspiring. Your argument that an equitable sustainable society is impossible amounts to "you&#39;re putting farms and cities everywhere&#33;" Yet you fail to realise that the population will stabilise long before any serious problems arise.


nah, herbs have been used by the chinese for thousands of years. you obviously have no knowledge of that.

They also believed rhino horn to be an aphrodisiac. So what?


what i was saying was that herbs and wild plants, etc were the beggining of medicine. it helped bring about the terrible infestation of "modern" medicine.

yes they were the beginning, before we developed proper chemical quantification - herbs have varying potency. And then we discovered how to purify and refine the chemicals from such herbs, making more effective medicine.

And what the fuck do you mean by "infestation"? many people owe their life to modern medicine.


we are still abandoning the shamanic medicine, because we commit genocide against those brutes in the forests. they are after all, primitive and we dont need voodoo....

We&#39;re abandoning shamanic medicine because we&#39;re committing genocide? What kind of twisted logic is that? :blink:
And voodoo is very different from shamanic medicine. You should know that.


hahahaha. tobacco, yeah kills people in this culture&#33; why the hell wouldnt it&#33; it&#39;s packed with hundereds of artificial chemicals&#33; jesus.

And now the "artificial = bad" brainbug. Agar is artificial yet is completely harmless.


sure, we can make iron n shit like that with trees. but, once we&#39;ve killed all those trees, we have to expand to another area.

Holy crap, have you never heard of coppiceing?


trees are a finite resource after all.. in it&#39;s present form, iron as it&#39;s made now is unsustainable and will be as long as we have civilization.

Trees are a sustainable resource if managed correctly - to make the blanket statement that tree will run out is very naive.
The reason most iron mines are abandoned in favour of new ones is because they become commerially unviable, not because they run out of iron. The same goes for other metals and coal actually.


you guys sound so privileged saying stupid shit like that. like: i&#39;m so much cooller than all those uncivilized people who havent the powers we possess, lets just kill them off. childish.

When did I say that?


there is NO RIGHT WAY to live, there are just BETTER ways. read anthropology before you make stupid asses out of yourselves. i&#39;m not trying to convert you, nor am i trying to force you to live some other way, because in the end, you will be forced to by the earth.

"The LORD will compell you" :lol:

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24 2005, 11:44 AM
eah, prolly. will i cause the death of billions? no. the earth will.
Mystical crap. In any case, if you believe it&#39;s inevitable, why do you feel the need to go on about it?

Whenever people say "God will destroy those evildoers", or in your case "the earth", it usually means they&#39;d like to do it themselves. Everyone creates a deity in their own image, after all.

And people have been making these predictions of imminent global catastrophe for decades. Some of the same people, like Paul Ehrlich, have kept right on writing books and predicting catastrophe....even though according to their earlier predictions they oughta be dead by now.

When people keep on making these predictions of collapse, especially primitivists....I gotta say, it sounds a lot like wishful thinking.


ain our present system of living, we&#39;re like chickens in a factory, we kill each other because there too many of us and because we dont know each other.

Oh, what a load of nonsense. Most people haven&#39;t even been in a fist fight since junior high school. Contrast that with interactions among any other animal species.

If you know anything about actual animal behavior in the wild, as opposed to mystical crap about lovely Mother Nature. It&#39;s not accidental that it&#39;s always city kids who are into this kind of mystical environmentalism, animal rights, etc. Definitely not farm kids.

Humanity is remarkably nonviolent compared to other species. Certainly no other species can associate with so many other unrelated individuals without violence.

Of course, this paradoxically allows us to have tremendously destructive wars...because of the large-scale social cooperation made possible by our ability to interact without violence.


glasses make your eyes weak, yes.

No, they don&#39;t. I&#39;ve been wearing the same prescription for almost 20 years. That&#39;s typical: most people&#39;s eyes stabilize in adulthood.


curing symptoms: science is going to cure the "population problem," which is a symptom of the system&#39;s inherent expansionism.

Then why is population growth leveling off - even in much of the developing world - and reversing in the most industrialized countries?


we&#39;ve converted half the planet into domesticated land just so we can feed the planet.

Source?


o, no, im not saying it&#39;s not possible to feed everyone, but what i am saying is: at what cost? will we commit genocide like we are ALREADY doing to the people in the amazon rainforest. i bet you support that.

I see. So it&#39;s those of us who want to feed people who are pro-genocide. Nope, sorry, look in the mirror.


jared diamond is prolly the most credible anthropologist on the planet.

He&#39;s not even an anthropologist at all. He&#39;s a biologist, and his writings about society are an amateur&#39;s opinions, just like yours or mine. Well, not like yours, he&#39;s well-informed.

I&#39;ve read Guns, Germs, and Steel and often recommend it. How do you imagine its account of the inevitable destruction of primitive communities supports primitivism?

And see my comments on his article, above.


it helped bring about the terrible infestation of "modern" medicine.

Uff da&#33; Yes, so awful that smallpox is extinct in the wild. Who&#39;s pro-genocide?


except, herbs were never really needed to cure cancer and all the civilized disease back in the day.

Yeah. Because few people lived long enough to develop cancer, until recently.


hahahaha. tobacco, yeah kills people in this culture&#33; why the hell wouldnt it&#33; it&#39;s packed with hundereds of artificial chemicals&#33; jesus.

Bubba, tobacco naturally contains nicotine...which is also used as an insecticide. In fact, that&#39;s why the tobacco plant makes it.

Everything in nature has a way to avoid being eaten. Plants can&#39;t run away or fight back....so they produce poisons. You think everything natural is good for you? Deadly nightshade and belladonna are natural.

Yer shamans and primitive gatherers are not so stupid. They&#39;d die if they were. Their knowledge of their environment consists largely in knowing what&#39;s poisonous and what&#39;s not. Their knowledge of herbs consists in significant part in knowing what&#39;s a sublethal dose of poison.


sure, we can make iron n shit like that with trees. but, once we&#39;ve killed all those trees, we have to expand to another area.

Or...plant more? Trees are a renewable resource. They grow. Yup, amazing but true.

The amount of forest in the U.S. is actually increasing (http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/natural_resources/forests/forest_area_change/north_america.html)

That can and should be done elsewhere. The obstacle is social organization, not technology.

Incidentally, the most deforested country in the Americas is Haiti...where thanks to imperialist domination and underdevelopment, many people live closer to nature, without the corruption of evil modern technologies like electricity or kerosene (not by choice of course).....so they burn wood instead.

[saint max]

That &#39;source&#39; is for a estimate 10-15 yrs ago.

Have you ever heard of Boise Cascade?

The NW and Apalachia are the only &#39;forest&#39; (with old growth and biodiversity) left in the US. Two-thirds of the earth used to be a forest. There was a reasonthat one dessert was called "the fertile cresent."

On the question of "why discuss?"

It&#39;s nice to know, not merely assume, where leftists stand. And perhaps find or inlfuence potential allies.

Anarchist tension you know &#39;why&#39; anti-civilization. Why not, is my question. And like i said, an irreconcilable desire for freedom is hard to argue with, but by all means do as thou wilst.

No one has, to this point made any arguements about how civilization--workers-utopia, transhuman, or otherwhise makes me any more free. (ps. I don&#39;t care about changing my genetics or some mystical &#39;higher level&#39; of conscious that I have&#39;nt willed)

freedom is self-determination. (and another word for nothing left to lose)

cheers,
-max

ps: Why do yall care about &#39;humanity&#39; (who ever the hell that is...) or improving it&#39;s condition (what ever that means...)

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Anarchist tension you know &#39;why&#39; anti-civilization. Why not, is my question.

That&#39;s not good enough. We&#39;ve discovered the "why not" anyway - technology and civilisation empowers the human species. Why empower the human species? To increase our chances of survival by allowing us to colonise other worlds and to overcome our biological, mental and social limitations.


No one has, to this point made any arguements about how civilization--workers-utopia, transhuman, or otherwhise makes me any more free. (ps. I don&#39;t care about changing my genetics or some mystical &#39;higher level&#39; of conscious that I have&#39;nt willed)

How about being able to decide where one lives, where one&#39;s products of labour go, how long one wants to live, what one wants to do for a living, and generally being an individual free from the tyranny of both man and nature?

Technology and civilisation make these things easier.


ps: Why do yall care about &#39;humanity&#39; (who ever the hell that is...) or improving it&#39;s condition (what ever that means...)

Humanity is the human species, and we care about it because, surprise, we are humans, and by improving the general condition of the human species we improve the condition of all it&#39;s individuals as well.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

How come the primary arguments that agriculture is somehow negative deal almost exclusively with early primitive agriculture? Ug. I&#39;d rather live in a primitive society than an early agricultural despotism, but, thankfully, it&#39;s not a choice I&#39;ll ever be faced with. Duh.


Anarchist tension you know &#39;why&#39; anti-civilization. Why not, is my question. And like i said, an irreconcilable desire for freedom is hard to argue with, but by all means do as thou wilst.


freedom is self-determination.

Self-determination can only exist in a framework of some sort, not independantly as a concept, and, even then, self-determination never even existed conceptually for primitive societies. The development of freedom - both practically, and as an ideal - has necessarily parallelled the technical and social developments that primitivists wish to destroy.
Ironicly, primitivism itself is a product of a certain degree of development. A primitive humanity could never concieve of and transmit such an idea - ensuring that the path of development, if we were ever stupid enough to fuck ourselves back to the stoneage, would probably begin again.

[Morpheus]

Ironicly, primitivism itself is a product of a certain degree of development. A primitive humanity could never concieve of and transmit such an idea

Why not? Hunter-gatherers can think and they can talk and they can draw. Seems sufficient to come up with ideas and transmit them.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25 2005, 10:46 PM

Ironicly, primitivism itself is a product of a certain degree of development. A primitive humanity could never concieve of and transmit such an idea

Why not? Hunter-gatherers can think and they can talk and they can draw. Seems sufficient to come up with ideas and transmit them.
And that&#39;s the problem. In such a situation, technological progress is inevitable, necessity being the mother of invention and all that.

[Guest1]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25 2005, 06:46 PM
Why not? Hunter-gatherers can think and they can talk and they can draw. Seems sufficient to come up with ideas and transmit them.
I think he was referring to pre-language hunter-gatherers that certain sections of the primmie movement wish to emulate.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25 2005, 04:46 PM

Ironicly, primitivism itself is a product of a certain degree of development. A primitive humanity could never concieve of and transmit such an idea

Why not? Hunter-gatherers can think and they can talk and they can draw. Seems sufficient to come up with ideas and transmit them.
What ideas people have are a product of their way of life, however.

Hunter-gatherers generally don&#39;t have political ideologies, or for that matter politics. They don&#39;t advocate what kind of social system humanity ought to have....their languages don&#39;t even have words for "humanity". There was "The People" or "The Real People"...and "The Others".

Even their indigenous religious beliefs are not overarching theologies like the world religions born of class civilization.

Now, the interesting thing about primitivism is how very recently it&#39;s begun. We have no record of anyone advocating it during ancient or medieval times, or the Industrial Revolution, but only recently. Noble savage stuff, sure, but no advocacy of everyone returning there.

Possibly, like "animal rights", it&#39;s a product of how far the suburban upper-middle-class has gotten divorced from the production process and certain realities of life and nature....

Max:

Why do yall care about &#39;humanity&#39; (who ever the hell that is...) or improving it&#39;s condition (what ever that means...)

So what do you care, about, then? Oh, that&#39;s right, you. Guess what, that&#39;s something I don&#39;t greatly care about.

I&#39;ll give you a reason civilization makes you freer than a return to the Old Stone Age, though: a return to the Old Stone Age will confine the great majority of humanity...six feet under. Chances are extremely good that you will be among them.

I can guess why you prefer posting on the &#39;net do acting on your will to do the deed and carrying out continuous war against the social order, or whatever. All that would give you personally would be death or prison. Not exactly expanded freedom, huh?

War requires people who care about something other than themselves.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

On the contrary, animal rights has existed in very different incarnations for some time. The vegetarian society was actually founded in 1847 - you know, around the same time a lot of revolutionary ideas were taking shape.

Really, don&#39;t lump the ideas together.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Originally posted by Virgin Molotov [email protected] 26 2005, 03:17 AM
On the contrary, animal rights has existed in very different incarnations for some time. The vegetarian society was actually founded in 1847 - you know, around the same time a lot of revolutionary ideas were taking shape.

Really, don&#39;t lump the ideas together.
But vegetarianism as a popular lifestyle in the West did not really occur until the Post-Industrial era.

[bourgeois adventurist]

313C7 iVi4RX:
“I must say there is no shortage of hypocrisy among internet primitivists. The funny thing is that harnessed fire is technology. You have to live as an early primate to not use technology and if all technology is "evil," it must be the righteous over there yonder”

Yes, we are -- but so are you: you buy food with money, pay rent to a landlord, take out books from the State-funded public library, obey laws (most of the time)... The point is that none of us have a real choice.

Primitivists don’t object to tools. There’s a nearly century-old distinction between tools and technology, read Jacques Ellul. Briefly, technology is a form of social organization based on specialization and division of labour, not its artefacts per se.



Noxion (earlier):
“People have been going batty forever”

Isolated cases of “battyness” no doubt did exist in gather-hunter societies. However the many and varied forms of fucked-up mental disorders civilized society suffer are of a qualitively and quantatively different order. For example there&#39;s evidence suggesting that mass society (controlling for social/economic factors) increases aggression and all sorts of pathologies.

Freud accepted that the cost of civilization was universal neurosis, a result of the fact “all the things with which we seek to protect ourselves against the threats that emanate from the sources of suffering are part of that very civilization”.



Severian:
“theres our friend infanticide again…”

What’s your objection to infanticide? There’s no ethical difference between it and abortion.

How is killing an unborn child different to killing a child, at the same level of (un-self)consciousness, born soon after birth? Is it merely because the same being is inside a womb in the former, outside in the latter? Because prior to birth we don’t see the child, after birth we do?

Isn’t it absurd to say you can’t infanticize a prematurely born child, but can abort a more developed unborn one? Why does this (liberal) “right to life” I assume you uphold attach to individuals only after the arbitrary moment of birth? And isn’t it also anthropocentric to believe you may kill non-human animals with a higher level of consciousness than infant human animals?

Without doubt gather-hunters practised infanticide and killed animals with a great deal more respect and sorrow than “civilized” societies have ever shown children (born and unborn) or animals. Both were necessary and worked well (better than modern methods if you look at it long-term/as a whole).

I think your objection really just lies on a sentimental and fanatical attachment to baby-producing, a phenomena prevalent only since agriculture, State domination and exploitation made increasingly large populations necessary.



Severian:
“Nor will I dispute archaeological findings like this: ""Life expectancy at birth in the pre-agricultural community was bout twenty-six years," says Armelagos, "but in the post-agricultural community it was nineteen years.""

Wow, 26 years&#33; And their lives must really have been cakewalks for them to live that long. I guess that "Hobbesian myth" about life being "nasty, brutish and short" has been definitely refuted, huh?”

You’re confused again, although for once it is understandable. It is normal for gatherer-hunters to live as long as people in modern industrial society once they make it past the post-birth stages. The low figure is highly misleading, a result of conflating the life-expectancy and life-duration rates together.

In any case, you still havn’t explained how “short” = “nasty” or “brutish”. Are you slow, or purposely being equivocal? Please define what you mean by those two terms.



LSD:
“[science is] a method by which to find the truth. One which has been eminently successful in doing so”

Science is not the most “eminently successful” or any other way of finding “the truth”. It is one perspective, one particular, human interpretation of the world.

If the truth is the domination and exploitation of nature and men, sure, science probably is the best way to the truth.

But if the truth is a holistic understanding of the world, of how each of its parts relate to others in the context of the whole -- science is certainly not the way to the truth.

Science is based on Descartes’ mind/body dualism, the separation of (rational) man and nature. But as even Severian understands, the duality is false -- we cannot rise above and pretend neutrality and objectivity toward nature. We are in it, we are it; we are animals, no more. Your “war on nature” is effectively war on humanity.

The attainment of neutral and objective truth , “the Truth”, would require us to become totally disinterested toward the world, totally detached from all our sensations, passions, desires, goals, cultural perspectives, biological limitations -- i.e. unhuman (or “posthuman” ala PoMo’s). But there is no Archimedean point where humans can sit outside and impartially observe the world, like a god. That is total hubris.

“…the scientific method was never the empirical method. The latter was based only on experience, observation and experiment within the world with no preconceptions, mathematical or otherwise. The scientific method, on the other hand starts from the necessity of imposing mathematical, instrumental rationality on the universe. In order to carry out this task…it had to separate specific components from their environment, remove them to the sterility of the laboratory and there experiment with them in order to figure out how to conform them to this instrumental, mathematical logic. A far cry from the sensual exploration of the world that would constitute a truly empirical investigation.” (Landstreicher)



All of you continue to evade probably the main point: civilization is unsustainable.

The world simply doesn’t have enough natural resources for agriculture to feed anything like the current world population, without increasingly degrading eco-systems and thus the ability to grow enough food. Like tumble doom said, agriculture is inherently expansive. Vast areas of once rich land continue being lost to desertification because not enough is land available to let soil (practically a non-renewable resource) regenerate.

This basic principle explains the collapse of the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia civilizations. It plays a significant part in the collapse of Rome and others.

And industrial agriculture is increasingly less efficient, requiring more and more energy in the form of fertilizers and pesticides, yielding less and less food.

FACT: Industrial society is based on non-renewable resources, e.g. coal, oil and natural gas. They will run out, quite soon possibly, that is irrefutable. No more fuel or electricity, no more factories, machines, vehicles, appliances, computers etc etc.

What are you (or your offspring) going to do then? Continue denying it? Use "willpower" (Noxion) to imagine new resources into existence?

Shortsighted yes?


Anyway, best of luck with that war on nature LSD and rest. Maybe one day Noxion will live a perfectly logical world without the hindrances of sensuality or spontaneous desires, perhaps he&#39;ll even venture into a Virtual Reality simulation of nature (without those wild animals of course). Severian might cybogize himself and “live” forever and ever and ever, immortal like a god. Your mongoloid children will be so “happy”, so proud. But not for long.



Noxion:
"They didn&#39;t live as long, they had a less reliable food source, and were more vulnerable to illness and natural disaster? Yep, sounds pretty good to me"

:angry: All upside down again. Christ you&#39;re a slow one.

I&#39;ve never met someone with such an obessive, biased view of science as you Noxion. You&#39;re quite a caricature. You can&#39;t accept any shortcoming, you instantly dismiss non-Western and other traditions (which you obviously know nothing about), which even modern medicine admits in many cases is superior. You really are blinded by science. And you&#39;re the "Science and Environment" moderator here&#33; Thats hilariously sad&#33; :lol: :(

Science is an ideology of domination and exploitation. I presume you&#39;re some marxist variety of authoritarian so thats probably not a problem for you, if so good for you.

Fuck your ethnocentric colonialist attitude&#33; And the rest of you who are just better at hiding it&#33;

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Which reminds me - animal rights and primitivism are necessarily, and fundamentally opposed. First and foremost, animal rights develops out of a conception of "rights" - a product, specifically, of the development of civilization. Secondly, it is practically incompatible with primitivist ideology. In order to obtain sufficient protien, hunter-gatherer societies need to hunt - that is, slaughter animals. A practice which technological development has, thankfully, made unecessary (though, of course, popular ideology always lags behind material reality, but it will catch up).

I&#39;ll respond to the full post later, I&#39;ve got to go to work (no upper-class West-Coast lifestylism here . . .), but I think it&#39;s worth noting that while anarchists/communists/etc. have jobs, pay landlords, etc., anarchism/communism/etc. doesn&#39;t rely on the existence of these things. Primitivism, however, requires the modern means it despises to perpetuate itself as an idea and sustain itself as a movement.
Parallels to Leninism/the state seem inevitable at this point. :P

[Severian]

Originally posted by Virgin Molotov [email protected] 25 2005, 09:17 PM
On the contrary, animal rights has existed in very different incarnations for some time. The vegetarian society was actually founded in 1847 - you know, around the same time a lot of revolutionary ideas were taking shape.

Really, don&#39;t lump the ideas together.
Aren&#39;t you lumping together vegetarianism and animal rights?

But OK, maybe some people started advocating animal rights earlier. Prevention of cruelty, certainly some did.

But animal rights has only become a big issue in recent decades.. Britain, one of the most and longest urbanized countries, is not coincidentally a hotbed.

I&#39;m not saying animal rights is the same idea as primitivism, but they have the same material basis IMO.


First and foremost, animal rights develops out of a conception of "rights" - a product, specifically, of the development of civilization.

Of human civilization. If you start thinking about what a right is, that can&#39;t lead you anywhere good for animal rights.


I think it&#39;s worth noting that while anarchists/communists/etc. have jobs, pay landlords, etc., anarchism/communism/etc. doesn&#39;t rely on the existence of these things.

Uh, actually, in a sense communism does. That is, after communist society is attained the communist movement will lose its basis for existence; I would suggest that politics itself will.


Primitivism, however, requires the modern means it despises to perpetuate itself as an idea and sustain itself as a movement.

Of course....whether this argument by itself is much of a blow at primitivism I&#39;m not certain. I guess it&#39;s worth pointing out that actual primitives are not primitivists, and probably don&#39;t have such an idealized view of their lives....

[Severian]

Originally posted by bourgeois [email protected] 26 2005, 03:06 AM
What’s your objection to infanticide?
Oops&#33; Here&#39;s my stop.

Gotta draw the line somewhere on arguing with crazy people.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Originally posted by [email protected] 26 2005, 04:29 PM
Aren&#39;t you lumping together vegetarianism and animal rights?
Actually, the British vegetarian society started with just that in mind - consider the etymology of the word "vegetarian". Fun historical note, though not really a point for argument.


Of human civilization. If you start thinking about what a right is, that can&#39;t lead you anywhere good for animal rights.

Of course, infants can&#39;t really articulate their rights either, but we don&#39;t dig killing them, unlike our primitivist friend.


Uh, actually, in a sense communism does. That is, after communist society is attained the communist movement will lose its basis for existence; I would suggest that politics itself will.

I certainly agree, but the means for communism aren&#39;t destroyed by communism - that is, classless society, and understanding of class society are capable of perpetuating themselves. We don&#39;t need class-contridictions within a classless society, by definition.


Of course....whether this argument by itself is much of a blow at primitivism I&#39;m not certain. I guess it&#39;s worth pointing out that actual primitives are not primitivists, and probably don&#39;t have such an idealized view of their lives....

What I mean, however, is that the primitive condition necessarily destroys the means of primitivism - it&#39;s a sort of suicidal-idea. There&#39;s no mechanism to keep us saying "Remember civilization? Let&#39;s keep it primitive, guysssss&#33;"

[Severian]

Originally posted by Virgin Molotov [email protected] 26 2005, 11:14 AM
There&#39;s no mechanism to keep us saying "Remember civilization? Let&#39;s keep it primitive, guysssss&#33;"
Well, yeah. But no idea would prevent the reemergence of civilization anyway. Ideas just aren&#39;t that powerful in the face of material forces.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Isolated cases of “battyness” no doubt did exist in gather-hunter societies. However the many and varied forms of fucked-up mental disorders civilized society suffer are of a qualitively and quantatively different order. For example there&#39;s evidence suggesting that mass society (controlling for social/economic factors) increases aggression and all sorts of pathologies.

And can you actually show this evidence instead of simply mentioning it? How do I know you are not simply talking out of your arse?
There are 6 billion+ people in the world today. Of course more people are going to be insane, because there are more people around to go insane. Why can you not see that?


Freud accepted that the cost of civilization was universal neurosis, a result of the fact “all the things with which we seek to protect ourselves against the threats that emanate from the sources of suffering are part of that very civilization”.

Most of Freud&#39;s work has been discounted. Psychology is a pseudoscience anyway.


What’s your objection to infanticide? There’s no ethical difference between it and abortion.

Wrong. Completely and utterly wrong. With abortion, you&#39;re killing a foetus. With infanticide, you&#39;re killing a child, a young, helpless human. And that is disgusting.


How is killing an unborn child different to killing a child, at the same level of (un-self)consciousness, born soon after birth? Is it merely because the same being is inside a womb in the former, outside in the latter? Because prior to birth we don’t see the child, after birth we do?

Learn some human reproductive biology, then get back to us.


Isn’t it absurd to say you can’t infanticize a prematurely born child, but can abort a more developed unborn one? Why does this (liberal) “right to life” I assume you uphold attach to individuals only after the arbitrary moment of birth?

"Choice" abortions are only in the first or second trimester, during which the organism is a foetus, not a human. Abortions during the third trimester are usually to save the mother&#39;s life or because the baby is so terribly deformed that being born would kill it anyway.


And isn’t it also anthropocentric to believe you may kill non-human animals with a higher level of consciousness than infant human animals?

If a non-human species has to become extinct in order for humans to survive, then that species will become extinct. It&#39;s survival pure and simple.


Without doubt gather-hunters practised infanticide and killed animals with a great deal more respect and sorrow than “civilized” societies have ever shown children (born and unborn) or animals. Both were necessary and worked well (better than modern methods if you look at it long-term/as a whole).

How do you know?


I think your objection really just lies on a sentimental and fanatical attachment to baby-producing, a phenomena prevalent only since agriculture, State domination and exploitation made increasingly large populations necessary.


I always thought it was because we valued human life, myself.


You’re confused again, although for once it is understandable. It is normal for gatherer-hunters to live as long as people in modern industrial society once they make it past the post-birth stages. The low figure is highly misleading, a result of conflating the life-expectancy and life-duration rates together.

And yet going by the same methods, post-industrial society still does better.


In any case, you still havn’t explained how “short” = “nasty” or “brutish”. Are you slow, or purposely being equivocal? Please define what you mean by those two terms.

Well, being unhealthy generally tends to shorten one&#39;s lifespan. I would have thought you were smart enough to make that connection.


Science is not the most “eminently successful” or any other way of finding “the truth”. It is one perspective, one particular, human interpretation of the world.

And sine the human perspective is the only one that matters, and science has been the most successful at doing that, all the other worldviews are moot.

How is science not the most successful way of finding the truth? how would you define success?


If the truth is the domination and exploitation of nature and men, sure, science probably is the best way to the truth.

Marxism 101: Class society dominates and exploits man, not science.


Science is based on Descartes’ mind/body dualism, the separation of (rational) man and nature. But as even Severian understands, the duality is false -- we cannot rise above and pretend neutrality and objectivity toward nature. We are in it, we are it; we are animals, no more. Your “war on nature” is effectively war on humanity.

Science makes no such claims as to duality - it is simply a practical application of viewing the world through the lense of natural philosophy.


The attainment of neutral and objective truth , “the Truth”, would require us to become totally disinterested toward the world, totally detached from all our sensations, passions, desires, goals, cultural perspectives, biological limitations -- i.e. unhuman (or “posthuman” ala PoMo’s). But there is no Archimedean point where humans can sit outside and impartially observe the world, like a god. That is total hubris.

And your assertion that the truth is inherently unknowable is not also hubris?


“…the scientific method was never the empirical method. The latter was based only on experience, observation and experiment within the world with no preconceptions, mathematical or otherwise. The scientific method, on the other hand starts from the necessity of imposing mathematical, instrumental rationality on the universe. In order to carry out this task…it had to separate specific components from their environment, remove them to the sterility of the laboratory and there experiment with them in order to figure out how to conform them to this instrumental, mathematical logic. A far cry from the sensual exploration of the world that would constitute a truly empirical investigation.” (Landstreicher)

The opinion of one man. Face it, the scientific method works. That computer you&#39;re using is the result of scientific thinking and engineering (Also known as applied science)


All of you continue to evade probably the main point: civilization is unsustainable.

So? nothing is forever.


The world simply doesn’t have enough natural resources for agriculture to feed anything like the current world population, without increasingly degrading eco-systems and thus the ability to grow enough food. Like tumble doom said, agriculture is inherently expansive. Vast areas of once rich land continue being lost to desertification because not enough is land available to let soil (practically a non-renewable resource) regenerate.

How many times does it have to be pointed out to you that the problem is distribution, not production? We are already producing enough food to feed everyone, but it is not being distributed equitably. You consider the vast amounts of food Americans alone eat.
True, that food is being produced in a non-sustainable manner, but sustainable farming methods do exist. Even if switching to more sustainable methods uses more land; A: there is plenty of arable land to go around B: Genetic engineering can make it posible to grow food where previously it was impossible C: Sustainable farming methods are by their very nature more eco-friendly, and even if more land is used for agriculture the impact will not be so great. and finally D: If everyone where to be well fed and looked after, birth rates will decrease significantly. We are already seeing this in the wealthy, post-industrial nations of today.
The answer is a radical social re-organisation, not a return to savagery or the wild state of man.


This basic principle explains the collapse of the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia civilizations. It plays a significant part in the collapse of Rome and others.

I&#39;m not sure about the others, but I do know for a fact that Rome collapsed for political reasons, not agricultural.
And even in the face of such collapse, civilisation did not go away - it always rose again, like a pheonix from the ashes. Your messianistic delusions that this is the final civilisation are comical, to say the least.
After Rome, came the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. Who knows what sort of society will come round next time?


And industrial agriculture is increasingly less efficient, requiring more and more energy in the form of fertilizers and pesticides, yielding less and less food.

Mainly due to the soil wearing out. I&#39;m not denying that current farming methods are unsustainable, I merely disagree with your blanket assertion that all farming methods are unsustainable.


FACT: Industrial society is based on non-renewable resources, e.g. coal, oil and natural gas. They will run out, quite soon possibly, that is irrefutable. No more fuel or electricity, no more factories, machines, vehicles, appliances, computers etc etc.

What are you (or your offspring) going to do then? Continue denying it? Use "willpower" (Noxion) to imagine new resources into existence?

Shortsighted yes?

Alternatives exist. Fusion (http://www.geocities.com/freedomforfission/sci/fusion.html) is looking like a potential candidate to replace current electricity generating methods. Metals, most plastics and glass can be recycled. The private car may die out, but you can still use bicycles, draught animals, and electric railways. And even if we cannot utilise these alternatives, you can still live a life better than savagery - Think late renaissance/early steam level tech.
In the event that the oil runs out, the most important thing we should do is use our remaining power to transcribe all knowledge we have currently stored on computer disks into books and manuscripts, with an emphasis on science & engineering subjects. Libraries should be safe-gaurded and treated like treasure troves.

But I bet you primmies would rather burn them eh <_<


Anyway, best of luck with that war on nature LSD and rest. Maybe one day Noxion will live a perfectly logical world without the hindrances of sensuality or spontaneous desires, perhaps he&#39;ll even venture into a Virtual Reality simulation of nature (without those wild animals of course). Severian might cybogize himself and “live” forever and ever and ever, immortal like a god. Your mongoloid children will be so “happy”, so proud. But not for long.

Uh oh.


I&#39;ve never met someone with such an obessive, biased view of science as you Noxion. You&#39;re quite a caricature. You can&#39;t accept any shortcoming, you instantly dismiss non-Western and other traditions (which you obviously know nothing about), which even modern medicine admits in many cases is superior. You really are blinded by science. And you&#39;re the "Science and Environment" moderator here&#33; Thats hilariously sad&#33;

Yeah, because the ancient Chinese had vaccines, ER, and intensive care units :lol:
I&#39;m only biased toward the truth, bud.


Science is an ideology of domination and exploitation. I presume you&#39;re some marxist variety of authoritarian so thats probably not a problem for you, if so good for you.

Science is not an ideology, period. I&#39;m merely defending it against wannabe savages and other superstitious anti-science types.


Fuck your ethnocentric colonialist attitude&#33; And the rest of you who are just better at hiding it&#33;

Fuck your superstitious, baby-killing, mass-murdering primitivist attitude&#33; Savages like you are wild animals that need to be put down&#33;

[tumble_doom]

the 50% source is from Science magazine. I think the article was titled: Humans Dominate the Earth or somethin like that. to be fair it says: 39-50%. right now i dont have the link. but the 50% figure is on wikipedia....somewhere :rolleyes:

other than that, i give up. i will go back to worshipping my LORD and SAVIOR. :lol: i pray for the deaths of billions&#33; you can tell all your friend&#39;s that. :P yeah fucking right.

[Morpheus]

Originally posted by Severian+Sep 26 2005, 04:48 PM--> (Severian @ Sep 26 2005, 04:48 PM)
bourgeois [email protected] 26 2005, 03:06 AM
What’s your objection to infanticide?
Oops&#33; Here&#39;s my stop.

Gotta draw the line somewhere on arguing with crazy people. [/b]
Some people think communists & anarchists are crazy too. He makes a good point: what&#39;s the big difference between infantcide and abortion? If the latter is acceptable, why not the former? Your response just avoids his/her points.

[Morpheus]

Originally posted by [email protected] 26 2005, 02:14 AM
the interesting thing about primitivism is how very recently it&#39;s begun. We have no record of anyone advocating it during ancient or medieval times, or the Industrial Revolution, but only recently. Noble savage stuff, sure, but no advocacy of everyone returning there.
There were anarcho-primitivists in the Russian Revolution. Not very many, but they were there. Some early critics of capitalism were against the industrial revolution. While Europe was colonizing the new world many Europeans would "go native" and join primitive native Americans because they preferred primitivism to class society. There&#39;s the luddites, too. Many ancient civilizations saw a significant percentage of its population leave civilization when they collapsed. There wasn&#39;t much writing back then, except from the elite, so whether an ideology was involved isn&#39;t known, but people still went back to primitivism. Primitivism comes and goes, but it&#39;s not that new.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 26 2005, 09:23 PM
the 50% source is from Science magazine. I think the article was titled: Humans Dominate the Earth or somethin like that. to be fair it says: 39-50%. right now i dont have the link. but the 50% figure is on wikipedia....somewhere :rolleyes:
Well, as long as we&#39;re making vague references, I did some looking around in response to your earlier claim, and the highest figure I saw was "almost a third" of the world&#39;s land area used for agriculture and livestock-raising.

We certainly haven&#39;t hit any kind of wall, either way.

[summer]

I don&#39;t imagine a world where my movement is constantly guided by blinking lights along set paths and routes in accordance with routines and schedules managed to be the most "efficient" is much of any sort of freedom.

Freedom cannot be measured or equated by science, your argument for transhumanism seems to claim that freedom comes in a measure of security and material wealth... That is exactly the opposite of freedom, secure in knowing that no new challenges face you the next day, secure in knowing that there is nothing left to explore, you never have to worry if there is any other possible existence other than the one that you are in, sounds like a perpetual and infinite suburb if you ask me with our activities being those that science has deemed the most efficient.

Romance isn&#39;t efficient or scientific, the human spirit isn&#39;t scientific, play isn&#39;t scientific. There is no Utopia in the numbing drone of computers, the sterility of a hospital, or the forest of symbolic illusions we are constantly bombarded with.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Another one? I wonder where they&#39;re coming from?


I don&#39;t imagine a world where my movement is constantly guided by blinking lights along set paths and routes in accordance with routines and schedules managed to be the most "efficient" is much of any sort of freedom.

Neither do I, strangely enough.


Freedom cannot be measured or equated by science, your argument for transhumanism seems to claim that freedom comes in a measure of security and material wealth...

Freedom is an abstraction, so in a sense it cannot be measured as anything other than a concept.
Of course, what use is freedom when one cannot eat or find shelter?


That is exactly the opposite of freedom, secure in knowing that no new challenges face you the next day, secure in knowing that there is nothing left to explore, you never have to worry if there is any other possible existence other than the one that you are in, sounds like a perpetual and infinite suburb if you ask me with our activities being those that science has deemed the most efficient.

By the time we reach the point where nature provides no new challenges (And that&#39;s a long way off&#33; Surviving the death of the universe is going to be one hell of a challenge&#33;) we will have the capability to create challanges far more interesting and varied than nature can ever hope to provide.
And by the way, it helps to make a distinction between the the challenges nature forces upon us, and the challenges we set ourselves as a form of leisure. Trying to control an outbreak of plague is a challenge, but not one many would take up as a hobby.


Romance isn&#39;t efficient or scientific, the human spirit isn&#39;t scientific, play isn&#39;t scientific. There is no Utopia in the numbing drone of computers, the sterility of a hospital, or the forest of symbolic illusions we are constantly bombarded with.

Many people seem to disagree with you - every day millions play against each other in online games, and obviously they gain some sort of fulfillment from that or they wouldn&#39;t be doing it&#33;
Play may not be scientific, but science can make play a whole lot more fun.
Also note that the prevelance of real-time strategy games has not made tabletop gaming obselete.

[summer]

By the time we reach the point where nature provides no new challenges (And that&#39;s a long way off&#33; Surviving the death of the universe is going to be one hell of a challenge&#33;) we will have the capability to create challanges far more interesting and varied than nature can ever hope to provide.

There is a large difference between surrogate activity and adventure, when there are no stakes in life, no danger, or pain there ceases to be life there&#39;s just alienation. I&#39;d rather have a life of adventure and danger than play a perpetual video game.


Many people seem to disagree with you - every day millions play against each other in online games, and obviously they gain some sort of fulfillment from that or they wouldn&#39;t be doing it&#33;

You are describing playing as a separate realm from the other parts of your life, our lives are compartmentalized into play, socializing, work, "education", worship, etc. this is a large part of our repression... We spend our time working, recovering from it, and then convincing ourselves it is somehow worthwhile. When exactly does a hunter-gatherer clock into work, when does their education begin and end and at what time are they playing, and don&#39;t embarass yourself and give me that Hobbes bullshit, find one serious anthropology book made after the 70&#39;s that describes hunter-gatherer life as nasty brutish or short, that extremely anthropocentric and ethnocentric view point is completely so discredited among modern anthropology that it isn&#39;t even disputed, it&#39;s about as asinine as denying the holocaust.

In fact by looking at the tools made and skills developed by hunter gatherers as far as over 50,000 years ago we have realised that they had and understanding of engineering and problem solving equivical to that of modern humans. For most of those 50,000 there was, however, very little change among homo sapiens and their lifeways. It seems as though there was relatively good health, no organized violence, very little division of labor, not much in gender distinction, and a life made mostly up of leisure... The big question in anthropology is why did we ever develop agriculture?

As far as natural disasters and the reliability of civilization goes, a situation I recently studied in my environmental science class goes as follows: in the late 1920&#39;s and through the 1930&#39;s there was a severe drought that comes every 500 years drought in north america, in parts of the great plains the annual rainfall was sometimes as low as 18 inches, which was a major blow on the American economy and a contributing factor to the great depression, crops were failing everywhere... Mind you that before this the great plains were experiencing tons of rainfall for plenty of years before and that&#39;s why they were so well settled by farmers as it made extremely suitable farm land. Well during the wet years in the natural ecosystems left many plants that thrived in wet areas were thriving, well when the drought came about these plants didn&#39;t do as well and survived marginally, but plants that were extremely well suited to dry ecosystems immediately began to thrive abundantly while the wet plants survived marginally, where as all the crops had failed...

Nature knows how to balance itself, the natural world will provide for you if you simply trust it to. And it&#39;s not like civilization has done a great job of protecting us from natural disasters anyways, you don&#39;t need construction to stop tremendous disasters, you need balanced ecosystems and an end to climate change, disasters hit far worse in disturbed ecosystems... Where I live it used to be prairie and wetland, which are both well suited to deal with flooding, now, however, all the deep root prairie grasses are replaced with lawns and pavements which don&#39;t do anything to help prevent flooding.

On another note whether you use God, science, or ideology to justify your morality to yourself and others doesn&#39;t really matter, anyone who claims to have a grasp on the "truth" is still thinking in terms of objectivity, which is silly as the idea that there is an objective means to attain truth is a myth. There is objectivity in a certain sense in our physical senses and experiences but there is no such thing as objective truth because any idea of truth is symbolic which is entirely subjective.

essentially what science is: recreate a situation over and over until you have faith that said situation will respond the same every time, although even if we take science objectively for a moment science itself has disproved this with quantum physics.

essentially what magical ritual is: recreate a situation over and over until you have that said situation will respons the same every time.

Progress itself is a myth, perpetually lead to believe that a better life is just around the corner, constantly we are told we are entering a new technological, ideological, philosophical, religious revolution and that life will never be the same, soon we will be enlightened, soon we will be saved, soon technology will change the world for the better, all lies.

I&#39;m not saying that we model our lives after hunter-gatherers or that we return to that state, but I feel that true human potential is much broader than the confines of civilization and look towards the future with a little less anthropocentrism and arrogance and a little more faith in nature and our own inner nature.

Its a funny predicament, with the technological revolution we believed we&#39;d be able to one day make machines that think like humans, no significant gains have really been made in this field, however we have had striking success at making humans that think like machines.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

There is a large difference between surrogate activity and adventure, when there are no stakes in life, no danger, or pain there ceases to be life there&#39;s just alienation. I&#39;d rather have a life of adventure and danger than play a perpetual video game.

Sorry, but I don&#39;t see how pain, conflict and misfortune make life better. If anything they make it worse.

And besides, if you want to experience the thrill of REAL Danger&#33;™ you can go cross a minefield with a pogo stick.


You are describing playing as a separate realm from the other parts of your life, our lives are compartmentalized into play, socializing, work, "education", worship, etc. this is a large part of our repression... We spend our time working, recovering from it, and then convincing ourselves it is somehow worthwhile. When exactly does a hunter-gatherer clock into work, when does their education begin and end and at what time are they playing, and don&#39;t embarass yourself and give me that Hobbes bullshit, find one serious anthropology book made after the 70&#39;s that describes hunter-gatherer life as nasty brutish or short, that extremely anthropocentric and ethnocentric view point is completely so discredited among modern anthropology that it isn&#39;t even disputed, it&#39;s about as asinine as denying the holocaust.

So your problem is that work, play etc. are too distinct and seperated? I don&#39;t see why that is a problem. Some people do for fun what others would consider work, and some people do as a job what others would consider play. Things aren&#39;t as black and white as you like to paint them, and I don&#39;t see why you cannot have a society where people choose to work jobs they personally enjoy.
Education is another thing; it is wrongfully represented as some sort of chore, when in fact, learning and education really can be fun, amusing and fulfilling. Why do you think people choose to educate themselves in their spare time?


In fact by looking at the tools made and skills developed by hunter gatherers as far as over 50,000 years ago we have realised that they had and understanding of engineering and problem solving equivical to that of modern humans. For most of those 50,000 there was, however, very little change among homo sapiens and their lifeways. It seems as though there was relatively good health, no organized violence, very little division of labor, not much in gender distinction, and a life made mostly up of leisure... The big question in anthropology is why did we ever develop agriculture?

Yes, pre-civilisation humans did have practical skills that served them well at the time. I&#39;m not denying that. But since we developed agriculture, we never looked back. I wonder why?


Nature knows how to balance itself, the natural world will provide for you if you simply trust it to. And it&#39;s not like civilization has done a great job of protecting us from natural disasters anyways, you don&#39;t need construction to stop tremendous disasters, you need balanced ecosystems and an end to climate change, disasters hit far worse in disturbed ecosystems... Where I live it used to be prairie and wetland, which are both well suited to deal with flooding, now, however, all the deep root prairie grasses are replaced with lawns and pavements which don&#39;t do anything to help prevent flooding.

Disasters will happen no matter how "balanced" nature is (A concept I find laughable, since Earth has been everything from a frozen ball to a baked stone in it&#39;s eons-long lifetime) Civilisation makes it easier to weather disasters - exactly how can hunter-gatherers hope to stockpile food for when disaster strikes?
Nature is an unreliable benefactor anyway - with agriculture you can more or less directly control what you grow.



On another note whether you use God, science, or ideology to justify your morality to yourself and others doesn&#39;t really matter, anyone who claims to have a grasp on the "truth" is still thinking in terms of objectivity, which is silly as the idea that there is an objective means to attain truth is a myth. There is objectivity in a certain sense in our physical senses and experiences but there is no such thing as objective truth because any idea of truth is symbolic which is entirely subjective.

Contradictory. On one hand you say that physical sense and experience are objective, but that truths derived from such are not. Nonsense. If I make a statement and the universe behaves as if this statement were true, what&#39;s the difference?


essentially what science is: recreate a situation over and over until you have faith that said situation will respond the same every time, although even if we take science objectively for a moment science itself has disproved this with quantum physics.

No it hasn&#39;t. Quantum physics only applies to entities on the sub-atomic level, not the macro (Atomic and greater) level.
A monopole is a very different beast to a molecule.


essentially what magical ritual is: recreate a situation over and over until you have that said situation will respons the same every time.

Nonsensical. Science is the practical application of natural philosophy, magic rituals are attempts to get the universe to do what you want it to.


Progress itself is a myth, perpetually lead to believe that a better life is just around the corner, constantly we are told we are entering a new technological, ideological, philosophical, religious revolution and that life will never be the same, soon we will be enlightened, soon we will be saved, soon technology will change the world for the better, all lies.

Evidently you have never picked up a history book, let alone read one.


I&#39;m not saying that we model our lives after hunter-gatherers or that we return to that state, but I feel that true human potential is much broader than the confines of civilization and look towards the future with a little less anthropocentrism and arrogance and a little more faith in nature and our own inner nature.

Meaningless babble.


Its a funny predicament, with the technological revolution we believed we&#39;d be able to one day make machines that think like humans, no significant gains have really been made in this field, however we have had striking success at making humans that think like machines.

I beg to differ. While predictions have been a little optimistic, we&#39;re closer than we were 50 years ago. That cannot be denied.
Humans are machines. Extremely complex biological machines for sure, but still machines.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 27 2005, 03:48 PM
, your argument for transhumanism seems to claim that freedom comes in a measure of security and material wealth... That is exactly the opposite of freedom, secure in knowing that no new challenges face you the next day, secure in knowing that there is nothing left to explore,
You seem to have an unusual concept of what freedom means.

For most people, freedom implies having more choices. For you, it seems to imply "challenges" or adversity....which necessarily imply constraints or limits.

[saint max]

Freedom is self-determination. If it is choices, it is with out limit--a billion channels simply will not do.

Freedom and civilization are anti-thetical, if for any other reason technology seeks to limit possibilities. Only a blank slate allows for everything to be possible.

[Severian]

Originally posted by saint [email protected] 29 2005, 01:52 AM
Freedom and civilization are anti-thetical, if for any other reason technology seeks to limit possibilities.
Ridiculous. You can do more with a tool than without one. The more tools you have, the more option: which to use, how....

Primitive peoples had many fewer options than we do; nature was extremely powerful relative to them....because of their ignorance of nature&#39;s fundamental laws. Knowledge gives power and freedom.

Their lives ran in certain patterns, which you like, because they had to live in that way....or die, thanks to nature red in tooth and claw.

What kind of freedom is that?

hey were egalitarian and cooperative because that was the only option under the circumstances...due to the lack of surplus production to support an elite, and the need to pull together to survive.

They certainly didn&#39;t share your ultra-individualism, Saint Max&#33;

And contrary to Summer&#39;s mystical romanticized view that "the natural world will provide for you", it has not provided for the millions of species which have gone extinct in the history of this planet. It is every bit as uncaring as the invisible hand of the market...not coincidentally, since capitalism&#39;s dog-eat-dog competition is merely the law of natural competition applied to human relations.

Other human beings are not the only ones who can deny you freedom. Nature and ignorance can do that just as well.

[tumble_doom]

http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ncs/newsarch/1...97/dominate.htm (http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ncs/newsarch/1997/July97/dominate.htm)

Report: we&#39;ve got the whole world in our hands

[Severian]

From that link:

One-third to one-half of the land surface of the Earth has been transformed by human activity.

Which is different from what you said earlier.


Lubchenco and the other scientists say that "humans are changing Earth more rapidly than we are understanding it." All of the changes are ongoing, in many cases accelerating, and often entrained long before their importance was recognized. But these seemingly disparate phenomena all trace to a single cause - the growing scale of the human enterprise.

The scientists urged that the rate at which humans alter Earth&#39;s systems be reduced by slowing human population growth. They recommended accelerating efforts to understand Earth&#39;s ecosystems and how they interact with human-caused global change. And noting that often it&#39;s the waste products and by-products of human activity which drives environmental change, they advocated using resources as efficiently as possible.

They also said that humans must accept the inescapable responsibility of actively managing the planet.

All of which I agree with, except the population-control stuff...though I do support the kind of changes which in fact are slowing population growth.

And all of which is wholly incompatible with primitivism. Do you think Australian aborigines conducted an environmental impact study before setting fires which transformed Australia&#39;s ecosystems?

[tumble_doom]

sure, i fudgeed what i said, but what&#39;s the difference? we still control one half of the planet.

read this article for a more indepth (sp?) look: http://www.bostonreview.net/BR29.2/meyer.html

you should do your research on that aboriginal stuff. i dont believe any of that "man made-extinction-of big-game-animals-by-tribal people" stuff anymore. and i&#39;ve talked to and read alot of stuff about the aboriginies in that region (Aussie and NA) and they dont believe it either. and ive read scientific papers that challenge those views. if i can find them, ill post them fer ya.

if you believe in fairy dust, i guess you can disagree with the "population stuff". it&#39;s called CARRYING CAPCITY.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

If the big game wasn&#39;t killed off by the humans, what did? And why does it matter?

Why is it that big game species only disappeared after the arrival of humans?


and i&#39;ve talked to and read alot of stuff about the aboriginies in that region (Aussie and NA) and they dont believe it either.

You should have asked their ancestors. Recent aborigines had to live in "harmony" with the land or they would die.


if you believe in fairy dust, i guess you can disagree with the "population stuff". it&#39;s called CARRYING CAPCITY.

Our planet has the capacity to carry more than 6 billion people comfortably. Resources are not distributed equitably, resulting in misery.


sure, i fudgeed what i said, but what&#39;s the difference? we still control one half of the planet.

Look at THIS (http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=28.921631,18.281250&spn=120.105832,246.480469&t=k&hl=en) map and seriously try tell me with a stright face that full half of it is covered in city and farmland.

[tumble_doom]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30 2005, 01:10 AM
If the big game wasn&#39;t killed off by the humans, what did? And why does it matter?

Why is it that big game species only disappeared after the arrival of humans?

You should have asked their ancestors. Recent aborigines had to live in "harmony" with the land or they would die.

uh huh. (http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2005w09/msg00103.htm)


Our planet has the capacity to carry more than 6 billion people comfortably. Resources are not distributed equitably, resulting in misery.

prove it. (http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/populatn.htm)


Look atTHIS (http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=28.921631,18.281250&spn=120.105832,246.480469&t=k&hl=en) map and seriously try tell me with a stright face that full half of it is covered in city and farmland.

you obviously didnt get the article. read it again. :lol:

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

uh huh.

I see another opinion article. The facts state that big game disappeared after the introduction of humans - since no massive climatic changes occurred, the law of parsimony states that humans simply hunted them to extinction. One man disagrees. The world moves on.



prove it.

Oh wow, another web site promising the collapse of civilisation as we know it. nothing new there. Note that so far civilisation has failed to collapse, and I hardly think it will do within a year.
As for the article, it merely states that human population growth cannot continue indefinately, with which I agree.

neither of those sites promote primitivism as a solution.


you obviously didnt get the article. read it again. :lol:

Why should I when my very eyes are telling me that two-thirds of the Earth&#39;s surface is NOT covered in development?

Look at the map. Then tell me that two thirds of it&#39;s surface are covered in farmland, city, and similar developments with a straight face. Note that I am not including the oceans in this equation.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29 2005, 05:14 PM
sure, i fudgeed what i said, but what&#39;s the difference? we still control one half of the planet.
OK, I give up. I just quoted your own source saying "one-third to one-half" and you stubbornly repeat "one-half". Those two statements do not have the same meaning.


you should do your research on that aboriginal stuff.

I have, after being called on it before. There is dispute among those researching the matter, how exactly fire-setting aborigines changed Australia&#39;s ecosystems. That they did, is not.

And I doubt they were able to "accept the inescapable responsibility of actively managing the planet." since a lack of scientific knowledge necessarily means primitive humanity was "changing Earth more rapidly than we are understanding it" - to borrow a couple phrases from the scientists in the article you linked earlier.

[bourgeois adventurist]

"unbrigeable chasm"? There&#39;s an understatement :blink: