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Anarcho-Primitivism: The Denial of Humanity
Hexmage-PA
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Pittsburgh City Paper: Wild Times Ahead
I feel like the article I linked and posted quotations from makes some good points. Agriculture, the civilizations that it enabled, and the technologies created by civilizations have caused many problems.
My main point of contention, though, is that abandoning civilization and technology in favor of the hunter-gatherer society our ancestors engaged in would eliminate not only civilization's problems, but also its positive aspects. If not for civilization, people might not be able to create elaborate artwork, games, or other products of human creativity due to the pressures of a nomadic lifestyle, a lack of tools, and a greatly reduced ability to exchange ideas.
To deny civilization and technology, in my opinion, is to say that humans should live like any other animal. We aren't any other animal, though; our unparalleled intelligence gives us the potential to do things that no other creature can. Critics of modern life say that the things we have accomplished are negative, and that ideas of progress mask the truth that our intelligence has caused more harm than good to the human race and to the planet.
If this truly is the case, then what good is intelligence? Does that not mean intelligence is an inherently negative characteristic? The prospect that any possible intelligent species, human or otherwise, can only create things that ultimately degrade itself and the world it inhabits is horrific; it makes intelligence into a sick, cosmic joke and paints humans as the most pitiful creatures imaginable.
Civilization, primitivists argue, germinates all our ills: government, which is necessarily repressive; private property, and thus crime; war; social, economic and sexual inequality; environmental degradation; and endless, numbing work routines. Progress is a myth, they contend: We've lost more than we've gained. Modern technology promises fulfillment but delivers isolation, cocooning us from each other, from nature, from the consequences of our destructive, unsustainable ways.
...in recent years, primitivism has found an unlikely ally: modern science.
In 1968, anthropologist Marshall Sahlins presented a paper titled "The Original Affluent Society." Drawing on recent field research among surviving hunter-gatherers including the !Kung Bushmen of South Africa's Kalahari Desert, Sahlins proposed that foraging was in fact a rather attractive way to live.
The !Kung inhabited marginal lands ... the most fruitful real estate having been seized by agriculturalists ... and lacked electricity, metal tools and permanent homes. But Sahlins argued that they were affluent because all their needs were met. The !Kung spent only a few hours each day gathering food. The rest of the time they played, socialized or slept.
"The research suggests that the more complex socially organized society you live in, the more you have to work," says Pitt anthropology professor Richard Scaglion, who in the 1970s spent a year-and-a-half living among the Abelam people of the New Guinea highlands.
Scaglion says the Abelam have a pretty sweet life. They're not pure foragers, practicing slash-and-burn horticulture and living alongside free-roaming, semi-domesticated pigs. They also have some (imported) metal tools, including machetes. Yet the Abelam have little sense of time and don't distinguish between work and play. They just live. Their health is good and their life expectancy comparable to ours ... minus, of course, artificial life support.
In a 1987 article in Discover magazine, Jared Diamond ... later a Pulitzer Prize-winner for Guns, Germs and Steel ... called agriculture "the worst mistake in human history." For the first million or two years humans and their ancestors walked earth, "Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and longest-lasting life style in human history. In contrast, we're still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it's unclear whether we can solve it."
Some argue that surely we'll keep the party going. Surely we'll find ... or invent ... new sources of energy. Optimists cite the "Green Revolution" in agriculture: In the face of warnings about overpopulation, new technologies enabled the global head-count to double from three billion to six billion, between 1960 and 2000. But what enabled such growth was the chemically dependent modern agriculture that has meant soil depletion, runoff that poisons and clogs waterways, and the plowing under of wild lands ... not to mention oceans of fuel for shipping crops across hemispheres. New solutions always have new costs.
Rain forests and polar ice caps really are vanishing. Fisheries and petroleum reserves really are drying up, while sea levels and environmental toxins rise. Of the hottest 20 years on record globally, 19 have come since 1980. The Worldwatch Institute estimates that to protect the environment and promote economic equity, rich nations "may need to cut their use of materials by as much as 90 percent over few decades." The Party's Over author Richard Heinberg suggests that to stave off the worst of coming cataclysms we should adopt small, radically decentralized, semi-autonomous communities living off sustainable energy.
I feel like the article I linked and posted quotations from makes some good points. Agriculture, the civilizations that it enabled, and the technologies created by civilizations have caused many problems.
My main point of contention, though, is that abandoning civilization and technology in favor of the hunter-gatherer society our ancestors engaged in would eliminate not only civilization's problems, but also its positive aspects. If not for civilization, people might not be able to create elaborate artwork, games, or other products of human creativity due to the pressures of a nomadic lifestyle, a lack of tools, and a greatly reduced ability to exchange ideas.
To deny civilization and technology, in my opinion, is to say that humans should live like any other animal. We aren't any other animal, though; our unparalleled intelligence gives us the potential to do things that no other creature can. Critics of modern life say that the things we have accomplished are negative, and that ideas of progress mask the truth that our intelligence has caused more harm than good to the human race and to the planet.
If this truly is the case, then what good is intelligence? Does that not mean intelligence is an inherently negative characteristic? The prospect that any possible intelligent species, human or otherwise, can only create things that ultimately degrade itself and the world it inhabits is horrific; it makes intelligence into a sick, cosmic joke and paints humans as the most pitiful creatures imaginable.
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Also ideas about foraging cultures being peaceful, hippie communes are just romanticized visions of the noble savage and well wishing. Foraging cultures can tend towards peaceful, egalitarian lifestyles because they're spread far apart. In those cases there just isn't enough competition to make violence and inequality worth it.
All of these ideas were big in the'60s. Most anthropologists today know better.
And in a pre-medicine society, I probably would be dead or at least crippled by now, since I broke my ankle when I was a kid. My wife would have certainly died a few years back when her appendix got inflamed. The relatively minor complications our son had when he was born might well have been fatal in a hunter-gatherer society.
So, I guess the upside of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle involve not having to stare at a computer screen all day. The downsides include getting eaten by hyenas and watching your loved ones die from relatively minor illnesses.
Rigorous Scholarship
Upside? 90%+ of my entertainment happens on the computer screen.
I don't know whether it would be beneficial to us or not. I tend to think not, but my priorities tend not to be focused on maximizing my personal leisure time and pleasure. I just take issue with the idea that humans act in a manner that is somehow unnatural.
Yep.
The !Kung will live on as a memory once the earth dies thanks to future humans that embrace their technological potential.
If we all turn into anarcho-primitives then we're all doomed.
Don't forget the terrible parasites hunter gatherers often would have picked up and not have been able to treat given a lack of medicine! :V
Or dying of snakebites when, during a woodland forage, you accidentally pissed off a rather poisonous snake and didn't have antivenom.
Or that time you angered a brown recluse.
Or the deer ticks and their lyme disease.
In a world where nature has a myriad of different ways to painfully cripple or outright kill you... yeah, I'm gonna say that Civilization, while not perfect, is better than hunting-gathering. Plus, it has that nice ability to be refined so it isn't as shitty for earth.
they're destroying it from WITHIN
On the other hand it's improved our medical well-being in every other way and provided us with a virtually unlimited ability to entertain ourselves. It suppose it's a question of personal value and happiness.
It's true that you need to work at least a 40-50 hour week in order to live in a big house in the suburbs and drive a nice car and play your video games on your pretty flat-screen HDTV. But that assumes you really want all those material possessions. If you want a little house in a rural area, don't need a car, don't care about techno-gadgets... you can grow your own veggies with little time spent on upkeep and probably work 20 hours a week to pay your fairly limited bills.
So you can live all nice and relaxed, all without worrying about being eaten by something large and angry, or dying of easily-preventable diseases.
In terms of like serious, life threatening illnesses? I would imagine we're exactly the same, since you can't build up an immunity to something once you're dead.
In terms of like minor colds and stuff, we're more prone to getting them (but like you said, less prone to dying from them).
This. A thousand times this. I think that modern western consumption-driven civilization is, on the whole, not terribly good for our mental health.
But it's a mistake to look at that one example and think "welp, it was a mistake to ever start planting shit."
next question
Conversely, I do think decentralized, largely autonomous communities are one possbility of how things will turn out. I think current civilization in a global context is totally unsustainable. This will only change when we are forced to do so, and things will need to get pretty bad for that to happen. But our rate of resource consumption cannot increase forever, and once that stops things will go back to smaller roots, though I think city-states and regional agriculture are more likely than nomadic hunter-gatherers.
You just don't understand the Na'Vi
their way of life brings a humble spiritual satisfaction your unobtanium-driven modern lifestyle cannot
especially in a future with cheap, widespread wireless networks and cloud computing and ease of communication at the level we are approaching
Even if you want to live in a major city, you can live in a decent-ish apartment and have various (if non-luxurious) creature comforts without sacrificing your soul to the machine or whatever.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
It also assumes you're laboring in some pointless-to-the-self grind that you're doing only to make ends meet.
I mean, yeah, a lot of folks do that, but a lot of others work in fulfilling careers from which they derive satisfaction and enjoyment.
What do you mean by 'largely autonomous communities'? I can't imagine a situation where each community creates everything that it needs without some really stupendous technological advancements. And as long as there are still regions where, say, the cars come from or the software comes from or the lifesaving medicines come from, you're going to have inter-community trade and resource sharing. And you're going to need governing bodies to ensure that these trades are being handled in a fair and lawful manner. And then you're back to having central government. If you just mean that people get their food from local farmers then that's fine - except for people who live in non-arable regions - but hardly makes them autonomous in a culture where the catalog of consumer goods dwarfs foodstuffs by such a tremendous degree.
Alternately: Mankind becomes space locusts
Yeah. Me, too.
Hmm. I don't think it's that easy. I do agree that we've raised the bar on the kinds of lifestyles we'll accept. However, the people who can work part-time and survive are people who are relatively educated. For your random median laborer, I don't think part-time work is nearly as viable.
That said, if we're comparing time spent working between civilizations, an honest assessment would have to include the time the !Kung spend wandering from one place to another.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the following are true:
1) Foragers spend less time satisfying their basic needs.
2) Foraging lifestyles are environmentally sustainable.
3) Foragers have lower prevalence, or at least comparable prevalence, of serious disease.
On the other hand:
4) Agricultural/industrial lifestyles support higher population.
5) Agricultural/industrial lifestyles allow us to develop desirable technology.
So the question shouldn't be "can we return to a primitivist lifestyle" but rather "how can we combine the benefits of both lifestyles?"
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I find this one hard to believe, in the hypothetical.
alternately: Only because the "not-so-serious" diseases take them out first.
The simple answer is to work fewer hours. Working less will give people more free time, reduce each person's environmental impact, and reduce disease a lot (reducing stress, spending less time in a cramped office with sick people, not commuting to work every day on a busy highway, and having more time to eat properly and exercise). With more free time we'd also be able to take care of a large family, or invent technology independantly like open source programming.
Long story short: returning to hunter gatherer societies is going to suck, long and hard.
ROBOTS!
Also, if Timothy Ferriss is to be believed, OUTSOURCING YOUR BULLSHIT TASKS and NOT CHECKING YOUR EMAIL SO MUCH!
Small, nomadic, foraging communities aren't the kinds of populations in which diseases thrive. If such a community encounters measles or smallpox, the whole community could get wiped out, but it has to get there first. If all their contact is with other roaming foragers, then it's unlikely for communicable diseases to gain a foothold.
What I don't know much about is how the !Kung (or other foraging cultures) deal with injury and infection. If you get bitten or cut, what techniques do they have to prevent serious infection? I don't like to jump to the conclusion that primitive peoples are dumb just because they're primitive - but I don't want to jump to a noble savage cliche either.
There's a study that gets kicked around primal diet websites a lot that goes into detail about life expectancy and it pretty closely matches what I've read in other studies. Infant mortality and childhood mortality are high. If you make it to adulthood, though, you're likely to live a pretty long life. Modern lifestyle diseases like heart disease and diabetes are nearly unheard of. Initial contact with modern cultures often causes an immediate crisis where people die rapidly from infectious disease, and they start to develop lifestyle diseases if they adopt a modern diet. But if they don't adopt a modern diet, and if they get past the initial infection shock and develop immunities to endemic modern diseases, then their life expectancies post-contact rise to better than pre-contact numbers due to the introduction of vaccines and better medical care.
That's the position the !Kung are in now. They've maintained, mostly, their pre-contact lifestyle but get to enjoy some of the benefits of modern technology. They get the best of both worlds. So I return to the earlier question, how can we get the best of both worlds?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Oh god. Fuck that guy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
As you've inferred, by "largely autonomous" I mean the opposite of "globalized", ie getting everything from elsewhere. My post assumes that our rate of resource consumption will decline, meaning we'll have less industry and less stuff in general. Smaller population as well. So yeah, cars and lifesaving medicines and computers will be made in different places; but there will be much, much fewer of these things made, and they will be relatively very expensive. No more two cars in every driveway sort of thing. There will of course be trade, but the relatively high cost of fuel/vehicles will limit the distance to mostly regional stuff, making it a lot harder to get things from across an ocean or continent.
The extent to which a situation like this (very hypothetical, I know, and honestly I'm making this up as I type this) is governed is open to question. I'd say like everything else government will be fractured if resources really do run out in a serious way. Centralized government is not a given. I'd imagine that this sort of fall would mean the end of the nation state as we know it. Partially because without lots of fuel and energy its difficult to administer/police/protect a geographically large area. Partially because if such a thing were to occur I think a lot of the ideological basis for nation states would dissolve as well, as people find their immediate neighbors to be far more important to their lives than citizens in some far off area. Ideologically, in this world people may not be so keen to go back to the nationalist/capitalist/technologist world that created this huge civilization, only to have it consume itself to death. Has a way of re-arranging priorities. I'd think there'd be a big anti-science/technology movement associated with this sort of world, but of course wouldn't be universal.
Some of the biggest empires in history were governed with horses being the fastest mode of travel. On the other hand German and Italian city-states didn't unify under a central government until the late 1800's. Government depends largely on who can muster the largest army, amongst a ton of other things.
I think power will go to cities, the population centers. Agriculture in the region will re-arrange itself to feed those cities. Maybe a bunch of cities or a whole area will band together to form a central government. Maybe they wont. Cities would probably be smaller, at least smaller than these massive cities we have today that take enormous resources to support. Proportionally more people would live in the country side, subsistence farming would again be how lots of people lived. Living in non-arable region? Well, have fun, but if fuel is extremely expensive then you will have a very difficult time unless you have something very valuable to trade.
I think a nomadic lifestyle is impossible to return to short of the world losing 99% of its population. Hunter-gatherers will always lose the best land to farmers, who have the tech to make better weapons. Farming will never go away; it was developed in the first place for a reason. Even if people did go back to being hunter-gatherers for ideological reasons, their grandchildren would already be inventing their way out of it, just like our ancestors did.
I'm totally on-board with this.
I don't think that's the whole answer, but I think it's a good goal.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
This seems like a death sentence for any society that adopted it. No technological culture is going to be able to completely close the loop on its resource usage. As long as you're making and using tools of any variety you're going to have some degree of material loss, and eventually you'll run out of materials. And if we run on an ever-decreasing technological base then we'll eventually reach the point where we are simply unable to recycle or extract from raw deposits certain materials. And once we run out of accessible resources, we lose access to the technologies they afford. You can't make everything out of wood and hemp.
The whole social collapse and return to city-state farm-topia thing assumes so many things about how humans behave that seem to go counter to our entire established history. We may not be able to grow forever, but it has always seemed more likely to me that we would find ourselves in a cyclical pattern of growing too large and dying back to below the sustainable threshold (if we didn't just die off entirely) than that we would somehow die off and not try to grow again. That's just not how humans, as a species, have shown themselves to act.