excreationist
Married mouth-breather
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism
Warning: very long
In the year 2000 I was a fan of the Unabomber's Manifesto - which is anti-civilization and pro-anaracho-primitivism... I posted about it on an ABC forum.... I no longer am a fan but I still might try and defend the ideas here anyway....
I wrote things like:
Then I created a thread called "The civilisation debate"
A later post:
Another post:
Defending my ideas against criticism:
More....
......I recommend reading "People without government" by Harold Barclay. He believes in technology, so he isn't biassed towards primitive cultures. Anyway, he talks about different h-g societies, different herding societies, different horticultural societies and different agricultural societies.
The book basically gives you the impression that the more primitive societies are generally more egalitarian than the more advanced societies.
I didn't say that if you do any type of horticulture you become evil, I'm just saying that cultures that rely more on controlling nature TEND to also control each other. And I'm not saying it is impossible to be happy with language and culture, I'm just saying it seems to be more difficult (since they allow inequality/separation).....
About primitive intelligence:
John Zerzan says:
"Recently there was a piece in Nature magazine of a new finding that humans may have been sailing and navigating around what is now Micronesia some 800,000 years ago."
And apparently we've had stone tools for 2,500,000 years. I don't know about fire. I think it would be very hard for me to discover those things. It takes some intelligence.
On second thoughts I think indigenous Australians could be pure hunter-gatherers.... but I don't know much about how happy their original society was.... though I do know that in towns where they live in the bush, there is quite a lot of drunkenness, violence, poor health, etc.
Warning: very long
In the year 2000 I was a fan of the Unabomber's Manifesto - which is anti-civilization and pro-anaracho-primitivism... I posted about it on an ABC forum.... I no longer am a fan but I still might try and defend the ideas here anyway....
I wrote things like:
.....Basically the Unabomber used bombs to get his message out. I only bothered finding out about him because he was mentioned in "Good Will Hunting" (I had already heard of him before though)....
Then I created a thread called "The civilisation debate"
Hi,
over the past couple of months I have become a primitivist and have come to believe that civilisation was a bad idea. I've read lots of books about it and I could talk for hours about it, but I'll try and summarise some of the main things.
Basically, the primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyle is guaranteed to be sustainable (well at least until there is a global catastrophe) and I believe that very primitive people are the happiest people in history. Reasons for their happiness include their abundance of leisure time (they work about 2-4 hours a day), their excellent health (though their life expectancy is about 35), their lack of the concept of linear time and hours/seconds (they have cyclic time), they are in small autonomous groups (so they don't feel powerless), they are amongst nature and rely on her to survive (so they are grateful), they are with their family their whole life, they can be kids (they don't have to sit through school), they are content with survival and companionship (they don't long for unattainable wealth), they know everything about their society (we only experience a small slice of reality), they don't have drugs/alcohol, etc.
So anyway, I don't believe that everyone should be forced to have a high standard of education. I think education gives people an abstract understanding of things so they are detached. I think raw, spontaneous experience is better.
Hmmm... so is that crazy?
A later post:
I think civilisation is like gardening. Basically you begin with an idea about how the world/society should be like, then you supress or kill the weeds, purify things, encourage some things to grow and make it all nice and orderly. And people don't fit very well into civilisation but since we need science (because it is our saviour), the show must go on, and we'll just bring in the therapists and drugs to get those problem people (obsessives/depressives/manics,etc) to fit in.
But the problem is the corporations and the entrepreneurs. They're exploiting the third world countries, working class people, etc. They wouldn't want to give up all their riches without a fight, and they probably own the governments and the police. (well probably not) But anyway, I guess all I can do at the moment is complain.
But the problem is the corporations and the entrepreneurs. They're exploiting the third world countries, working class people, etc. They wouldn't want to give up all their riches without a fight, and they probably own the governments and the police. (well probably not) But anyway, I guess all I can do at the moment is complain.
Another post:
About chimpanzees again... I read an excellent book called "The Human Animal" which was based on the BBC series and it has great colourful pictures. It has lots of interesting anti-civilisation stuff like how primitive people just squat on some leaves and have a baby, and modern people give birth horizontally (without gravity) and that the bright lights and loud noises would traumatize the baby, etc, etc.
Anyway, it said that hunting meant that people had to cooperate more so I would expect primitive humans to be less back-stabbing/evil, etc than chimpanzees. And did this abnormal behaviour happen in zoos or in the wild? I think zoos can do bad things to the animal's minds.
Anyway, it said that hunting meant that people had to cooperate more so I would expect primitive humans to be less back-stabbing/evil, etc than chimpanzees. And did this abnormal behaviour happen in zoos or in the wild? I think zoos can do bad things to the animal's minds.
Defending my ideas against criticism:
"I wonder if you realise that your views are pretty much identical with classical marxism - and we've seen what happens when they get put in power."
Well actually there are MAJOR differences between my views and Marxism. Marxism is basically communism and I'm talking about anarchism. Communism is about large groups of people and anarchism is about small groups. In small groups you can all participate and you don't have privacy but in large groups you don't and that's why you can have corruption. And Marxism is about industrialism. Even agriculture and irrigation is so complex that you need some type of government to organise things. And industrialism is even more complex. So instead of having a informal arrangement it is much more formal, and you have classes and extreme inequality. Also, with a complex society, ordinary people can't participate in politics much anyway because they don't know everything about how their society works, so you need experts which means inequality.
And primitive societies work. They existed in a relatively stable form for many thousands of years maybe even millions of years. But governments only exist for a matter of centuries, if you're lucky.
"It's a gross overgeneralisation to say that all hunter-gatherers and "primitive" groups are egalitarian, peace-loving, nature-respecting, etc."
Well maybe they're not completely egalitarian, but they sure are more egalitarian than us (e.g. starving vs. billionaires). But anyway, I think hunter-gatherers are those things. I am against other primitive groups- e.g. herders, horticulturalists, etc. They control nature to some degree and you'll notice that they are generally more violent and are control-freaks, etc.
"Some groups live out their lives in contentment, others are consumed with paranoia over sorcery, warfare with other groups, and politicking within the tribe."
As a primitivist I don't like the idea of language. For most of human history I think they didn't have culture (culture is an abstraction, like language). I think warfare with other groups (as opposed to agression towards individuals) is only possible because of culture. And culture gives a place for shamans. So basically I am for a society with no culture - people are just naked (as they are in some tribes). I don't know if it can be achieved today, but I think it is the state of mind which is like Buddhists get to in meditation. (I got off track there...)
"The majority of h-g groups subjugate women in one way or another - they tend to do most of the work and have little say in who they are married off to (again, this is true for most, not all)."
Again, I think this is because of culture. There was a period for 100,000's of years when we didn't have culture, but then we slowly started using symbols (art, ritual, language, etc) and that slowly separated us from nature and each other, and culture justified that inequality. But maybe in the natural state women are slighty unequal. (Though I don't mind if they are equal)
"For a sample from perhaps the negative end of the spectrum, I suggest you check out Napoleon Chagnon's work on the Yanomamo, who are h-g's and shifting cultivators in the Amazon basin."
As I said, they cultivate- they control nature (to some degree) so this is expected.
"As for cultivation being the root of all evil, the evidence is that crop-growing only began when people were forced onto less fertile land which could not support hunter-gathering - so either h-gs have an unsustainable population-expansion problem in the long term, or they are just as bad as everyone else in making war on people they don't like and forcing them out to the margins, or both."
Well people have been very intelligent for perhaps a million years... yet they only grew crops recently. I don't believe it was out of pure necessity. But they gained an advantage because of it... I mean if you're a h-g and things are getting tough, you'd move on. h-g are meant to be nomadic. But some weren't and since they're sitting around the same place all the time, I guess they discovered crops and they began by doing a bit of that on the side (horticulture). So basically I think the problem is that some h-g weren't nomadic. And apparently the human population was stable. John Zerzan believes that primitive people knew about contraceptive herbs, etc. But anyway, nomadic h-g life can only support sparse populations so if a big population develops then they will just die of starvation or something.
"Just because we evolved in a particular environment doesn't mean we will be happy in that environment. If our mentality is constrained by fitness-optimisation, then we will have evolved never to be content, always striving after more - food, sex, power, children, resources, whatever."
Well actually I think it does... it seems happiness is just used by evolution to make sure the animal is doing the right things. So it means that if the animal is doing the right things, then it should be happy.
Well actually there are MAJOR differences between my views and Marxism. Marxism is basically communism and I'm talking about anarchism. Communism is about large groups of people and anarchism is about small groups. In small groups you can all participate and you don't have privacy but in large groups you don't and that's why you can have corruption. And Marxism is about industrialism. Even agriculture and irrigation is so complex that you need some type of government to organise things. And industrialism is even more complex. So instead of having a informal arrangement it is much more formal, and you have classes and extreme inequality. Also, with a complex society, ordinary people can't participate in politics much anyway because they don't know everything about how their society works, so you need experts which means inequality.
And primitive societies work. They existed in a relatively stable form for many thousands of years maybe even millions of years. But governments only exist for a matter of centuries, if you're lucky.
"It's a gross overgeneralisation to say that all hunter-gatherers and "primitive" groups are egalitarian, peace-loving, nature-respecting, etc."
Well maybe they're not completely egalitarian, but they sure are more egalitarian than us (e.g. starving vs. billionaires). But anyway, I think hunter-gatherers are those things. I am against other primitive groups- e.g. herders, horticulturalists, etc. They control nature to some degree and you'll notice that they are generally more violent and are control-freaks, etc.
"Some groups live out their lives in contentment, others are consumed with paranoia over sorcery, warfare with other groups, and politicking within the tribe."
As a primitivist I don't like the idea of language. For most of human history I think they didn't have culture (culture is an abstraction, like language). I think warfare with other groups (as opposed to agression towards individuals) is only possible because of culture. And culture gives a place for shamans. So basically I am for a society with no culture - people are just naked (as they are in some tribes). I don't know if it can be achieved today, but I think it is the state of mind which is like Buddhists get to in meditation. (I got off track there...)
"The majority of h-g groups subjugate women in one way or another - they tend to do most of the work and have little say in who they are married off to (again, this is true for most, not all)."
Again, I think this is because of culture. There was a period for 100,000's of years when we didn't have culture, but then we slowly started using symbols (art, ritual, language, etc) and that slowly separated us from nature and each other, and culture justified that inequality. But maybe in the natural state women are slighty unequal. (Though I don't mind if they are equal)
"For a sample from perhaps the negative end of the spectrum, I suggest you check out Napoleon Chagnon's work on the Yanomamo, who are h-g's and shifting cultivators in the Amazon basin."
As I said, they cultivate- they control nature (to some degree) so this is expected.
"As for cultivation being the root of all evil, the evidence is that crop-growing only began when people were forced onto less fertile land which could not support hunter-gathering - so either h-gs have an unsustainable population-expansion problem in the long term, or they are just as bad as everyone else in making war on people they don't like and forcing them out to the margins, or both."
Well people have been very intelligent for perhaps a million years... yet they only grew crops recently. I don't believe it was out of pure necessity. But they gained an advantage because of it... I mean if you're a h-g and things are getting tough, you'd move on. h-g are meant to be nomadic. But some weren't and since they're sitting around the same place all the time, I guess they discovered crops and they began by doing a bit of that on the side (horticulture). So basically I think the problem is that some h-g weren't nomadic. And apparently the human population was stable. John Zerzan believes that primitive people knew about contraceptive herbs, etc. But anyway, nomadic h-g life can only support sparse populations so if a big population develops then they will just die of starvation or something.
"Just because we evolved in a particular environment doesn't mean we will be happy in that environment. If our mentality is constrained by fitness-optimisation, then we will have evolved never to be content, always striving after more - food, sex, power, children, resources, whatever."
Well actually I think it does... it seems happiness is just used by evolution to make sure the animal is doing the right things. So it means that if the animal is doing the right things, then it should be happy.
More....
......I recommend reading "People without government" by Harold Barclay. He believes in technology, so he isn't biassed towards primitive cultures. Anyway, he talks about different h-g societies, different herding societies, different horticultural societies and different agricultural societies.
The book basically gives you the impression that the more primitive societies are generally more egalitarian than the more advanced societies.
I didn't say that if you do any type of horticulture you become evil, I'm just saying that cultures that rely more on controlling nature TEND to also control each other. And I'm not saying it is impossible to be happy with language and culture, I'm just saying it seems to be more difficult (since they allow inequality/separation).....
About primitive intelligence:
John Zerzan says:
"Recently there was a piece in Nature magazine of a new finding that humans may have been sailing and navigating around what is now Micronesia some 800,000 years ago."
And apparently we've had stone tools for 2,500,000 years. I don't know about fire. I think it would be very hard for me to discover those things. It takes some intelligence.