The Escape Plan
by Jason GodeskyCivilization is unsustainable, and there’s one thing all unsustainable systems have in common: they’re never sustained. In the case of our own civilization, the converging crises of 2012-2015–from the peaking of global oil production, climate change, mass extinction, and ultimately the synergy of these factors and the diminished capacity of our complexity to meet them–makes it seem very likely that our current state of collapse will be painfully evident within the next decade, as we pass a major inflection point in that descent. A century from now, there will no doubt still be cities, where life is nasty, brutish and short, but it is difficult to imagine a plausible scenario where civilization’s global dominion is even able to last another 15 years. Civilization will become just one of several means of organizing human society; by far the most brutal and unpleasant one, and for that reason if for no other, one that will ultimately lose ground and become, save in exceptional, small, isolated pockets, a bad memory.
Even if this were not the case, however, the toll civilization takes on us all should be enough to make us want to escape it. The prospect of collapse doesn’t form the desire for an escape plan–it just makes escape possible. While civilization is in an anabolic growth cycle, it can brook no alternative. It is systemically incapable of co-existing with any other system of social organization, and is driven to dismantle and destroy any it encounters. In collapse, the rules reverse themselves, and sustainability becomes not only possible, but necessary. A major factor of sustainability that is often overlooked, one that gets to the root of many of civilization’s material and functional inadequacies, is quite psychological. To be sustainable, a society must give its members a sense of belonging and importance. Much of the reason civilization is now in collapse can be summed up simply by saying that we can no longer afford all the energy it takes to be so miserable.
Regular readers of this site are most likely already familiar with the dreadful nature of civilization, so I will take that as a premise here. If we want to escape that civilization, though, how do we do it?
To end our dependence on civilization, we must find our own ways of providing for ourselves: food, shelter, clothing, medicine, and so on. All of these things can be procured without civilization, and have been by most of humanity, throughout most of human history. Primitive skills are absolutely necessary to acquire. Hunting, fishing, how to identify and gather wild edibles, how to prepare all of these foodstuffs as meals, how to start a fire, how to dress an animal, how to tan hide, how to build a shelter, how to make your own clothes, how to make your own tools from leather and stone, how to make herbal medicines–these are all essential first steps. Fortunately for us, they’re all skills that humans have been keenly adapted to over the past two million years of our evolution; they come quite naturally to us. They’re also all the kinds of skills that are easy to pick up, but difficult to master. It doesn’t take much mastery before you have enough for mere survival. The more practice you have, the better off you’ll be, but the minimum requirements for simply surviving is rather low.
We come from a technological society, so we naturally think that substituting primitive technology for civilized technology is our doorway. The only problem is that Native people are not into technology. They spend only a couple hours a day providing for their simple needs, and they mostly use simple means. Look at their tools — few and crude, and their craftwork — basic and utilitarian. What a Native person excels at is what I call qualitative skills — how to sit in a circle with your clan mates and speak your truth, how to find your special talent so that you can develop it to serve your people, how to use your intuition, the ways of honor and respect, how to live in balance with elders and women and children, how to speak in the language beyond words, how to befriend fear and live love. Without these skills, you will surely die. Or else you’ll go back to the life that shuns these skills.
It seems to me that acquiring primitive skills is the first requirement, but also in many ways the easiest. The far harder task that lies before us is sweeping out the old thought patterns and culture that accrued from our civilized lives, and building a new, syncretic culture that’s adapted to our new lives. That task cannot begin until we are already living off of primitive skills, though.
Living as a forager in the woods is a fairly easy life. Living in a city as a wage slave is what we were all brought up to do. Neither task is terribly difficult. What is difficult is the transition: living as a forager, who must co-exist with civilization. Hunting and gathering with bag limits and licenses; practicing transhumance in land claimed by a government that believes in “property rights.” If we wait until civilization is gone to begin living beyond it, we risk waiting too long, and being sucked into its implosion, but the history of such attempts to escape civilization while civilization yet remains is not an optimistic one.
Brent Ladd tried to live in the forests of Wisconsin, and eventually returned to civilization. He recounted his experience in, “Realities of Going Primitive.” His greatest obstacles were nothing from nature, but rather, civilization:
Modern society and its disdain for the primitive do something that always seems to be just over the ridge. It is impossible to hide from its ever searching eye and I am often humming Greg Brown’s song “Ain’t there no place away….” I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but fear and misinformation has bred a gargantuate monster of regulations, laws and codes that can be aggravating to the would-be primitive. I’ve already spoken of hunting/trapping limitations with DNR officials who are armed to the teeth. I may be a bit paranoid, but after we had built our lodges, it seemed that air traffic directly over our shelters picked up immensely. Maybe just intrigued pilots or maybe some surveillance by government officials? Several times we’ve had groups of F-16 fighter jets storm the tree tops above our lodges.
It is not only being watched and the hunting regulations that aggravate me, but there is also the issue of housing codes and zoning nightmares. Social Services once threatened friends of mine who were residing in a wigwam with their children that the children would be taken away unless they were in a house that met zoning codes. This meant they had to have tar paper on the roof, a wooden floor, no open fire, and a thing called a “rat wall.”
I expect that the most difficult part of any escape plan, by far, will be in precisely that period where all other attempts I’ve heard of fail: the part where the forager must co-exist with civilization. Civilization does not co-exist well. It is rarely a matter of out-and-out hostility, though; more often, civilization simply cannot imagine the possibility of primitive life, and squashes it with the threatening combination of its apathy, and its sheer size.
That’s the problem I’ve spent most of my thought on, and I’ve come up with a number of possibilities:
- Foraging in a National Forest in the U.S. is tantalizingly plausible. You can camp in one place for up ot 14 days at a time in most forests, there are usually very large hunting ranges, and while rules about what you can do with the trees can be very strict, there’s almost nothing about the brush.
- Foraging requires a huge range. Purchasing your whole range outright is legally the safest route, but also by far the most expensive. To buy enough land to live off of as a forager will take something on the order of a million dollars, even in undeveloped, sparsely populated areas.
- A group of foragers in a National Forest is extremely suspicious to rangers, though, since most people who try to live in a National Forest are doing so to grow marijuana.
- The biggest problem with living in a National Forest is where you do your actual living. The 14-day rule can become very prohibitive.
- My idea: Buy two or more small pieces of land (possibly as small as a few acres) that are adjacent to a National Forest, and migrate between them seasonally. These spaces not only give you space to make camp beyond rangers’ jurisdiction, but also provide an opportunity to do some permaculture.
- To hunt or fish, you’ll need licenses. These come with limits as to how many animals you can take in. This may become a problem, if you’re expecting to hunt or gather all of your food.
- In the “read world,” foraging is always a safer bet than any other strategy, but as long as we’re bound by civilized laws, full foraging may not be a viable possibility–less because of ecological limits, than legal restrictions.
- Permaculture can provide a major supplemental. Even if we don’t remain permaculturalists, it may be an essential stepping stone in the interrim.
- As we’ve discussed before, permaculture and foraging exist on a spectrum, so there’s a natural transition.
- My idea: We do some permaculture, hunt and fish to the legal limits, and that should provide enough food for a small forager band.
- Such a lifestyle greatly reduces one’s need for money, but it doesn’t eliminate it. There are taxes owed on land, there are hunting and fishing licenses that must be bought, and so on. It doesn’t require much money, but it does require some. Where is it going to come from?
- Getting an internet connection out in the woods can be tricky, but it’s by no means unheard of. Satellite connections, cell phones, and other means are likely to last as long as our need for that extra cash continues. A laptop doesn’t require much more than 80 Volts of electricity, so the entire setup could concievably run off of a single photovoltaic panel.
- Lots of writers live out in the solitude of the wilderness. Writing provides many people with enough money to live meagerly within civilizaton–more than enough to pay for a lifestyle that requires almost no money at all.
- A well-trafficked website (more trafficked than this one, currently) might be able to provide enough revenue in advertising, referral fees, and other income streams.
- Most primitive skills schools are classes. Full immersion schools are few and far between. Then there are schools that can be off-putting for their emphasis on “Noble Savage” stereotypes and “playing Indian.” A no-nonsense, pragmatic, full-immersion primitive skills school with an honest, hard look at its underlying motivatons is something we could use more of. It would also give its instructors cash flow, and a reason to be out “in the bush.”
- My idea: Diversity is a key strength in finances just like biology. Combining all of these ideas and a few others should provide all the money we need for taxes, licenses, and everything else. Some of these approaches cost money in themselves, but if they bring in more money than they cost, then it’s a net gain.
Of course, these are just ideas. They’re subject to lively debate even within the tribe. I favor the Allegheny National Forest, because it’s land that we already know; Mike seems to prefer Alaska. None of this is settled. At the moment, we just have ideas. We still need to learn the skills ourselves before we get to the point where we’re bugging out. All the same, it’s important to start thinking and talking about these things now, rather than later, and to bear in mind where we are, and where we want to be, and hopefully, airing my ideas in pulbic will help others think of some of the possibilities, and help engender a discussion that might yield some fruitful possibilities for all of us.
Its strange but at the same time exciting that you wrote about your ideas about escaping. This is strange and exciting to me because yesterday I spent a good chunk of time compiling and forming ideas about how to escape. My big idea was to comment on a site like this and advertise myself and the idea to anyone who wants to come together and pitch in towards buying some land. Each person would have a certain skill such as a permaculture person, a builder etc. If anyone is interested in details let me know at Patrocolus7-at-yahoo-com. sorry so short but dont have time
Comment by Pat — 5 June 2006 @ 11:30 AM
Excellent article, more along this line would be appreciated. I hope that this thoughtful article, helps people to understand that foraging is likely a partial strategy to mitagate collapse issues.
Very few people will be able to set up foraging communities under the current system, laws, rules etc. A blended approach is most definitely the best one for most.
These thoughts are more along the line of what I’ve been contemplating for years now. Although I still believe that mobility is a great adaptive ability for groups, being able to stay in one area for an extended time may be important as well, depending on your region and how things end up panning out.
Hypothetical question: If Nano-technology became a reality, rather than its more science fiction type hope for techno-optimists, do you believe that this would ensure the continuation of civilization (based on the proposition of endless food/energy etc) or the demise, since it would change how we value many things based upon scarcity?
Comment by Bubba — 5 June 2006 @ 11:52 AM
And I, as I’ve mentioned many, many times, am still rooting for Seneca Rocks. I’m still convinced that West Virginia is the place to be: gorgeous, wild, underpopulated… and I still think that double rainbow was a sign that West Virginia wants us to be there.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 5 June 2006 @ 11:59 AM
*shrug* I consider that to be in the same class of questions as, “If we invented time travel,” or “If we discovered magical fairy dust,” but Mike & I were discussing the ramifications of Star Trek style replicators. Really, that’s what makes Trek internally consistent: if you have magic (which is what the replicator essentially is), then you have no scarcity, and you can afford a lot more altruism in your society. Unfortunately for us in the real world, we have pesky things like “the Law of Conservation of Mass/Energy” to take into account.
It’s tricky, because every step away from foraging you take for the interrim period makes your survival post-civilization that much riskier. Migration isn’t very plausible under a government that believes in property laws, but if once that government’s disintegrated you still cleave close to the old lands for sunk cost effects, you’ve just hobbled one of the forager’s key adaptive strategies: picking up and moving somewhere else. It’s the interrim period that’s the most difficult: how do you survive outside of civilization, with civilization breathing down your neck? At the same time, it’s important to keep in mind that civilization won’t be there forever, and not to hobble yourself for the post-civilized world trying to make it through this short (though difficult) transition.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 5 June 2006 @ 12:01 PM
Hmm replicators, would be in line with advanced nano-bots which could reconfigure atoms. But the transporters would be problematic, you need Scotty or Sulu to adjust the Transporter sliding levers or lose people.
What do you deem a “short” (though difficult) transition?
Six months, 2 years etc? Because the length of time can effect an escape plan, if your area of ‘escape’does not remain safe. Mobility in many areas of America aren’t that feasible. And the mastery you mention, likely will not occur till after the collapse for the majority. We continue to have the dillemma of a foot in both worlds, or rather testing the waters outside of civilization with the toes, with our bodies pretty much sustained by the stystem. The 1st Matrix movie might present a philosophical template for the various personalities and concerns for ‘unplugging’ entirely…
Comment by Bubba — 5 June 2006 @ 12:14 PM
Well, while I think there will still be cities in a century, my guess is that by 2020 the National Forest Service will cease to be a significant concern. While foraging may remain de juris illegal, I suspect by 2025 at the latest, there won’t be anyone close enough, who cares enough to enforce those laws.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 5 June 2006 @ 1:21 PM
Hey –
You may be right, Jason… but you may be right for the wrong reason…
Have you seen any of the info on ‘neocon agenda’ re the national forests? Its been a while, so I don’t recall where I read up on this… but one of thier ‘intentions’ is supposedly to run up a high enough defecit to ‘justify’ selling off national forest land to private speculators for cut rate prices…
What happens (to your plans) if there is no (or substantially reduced) national forest by 2020?
Janene
Comment by Janene — 5 June 2006 @ 2:07 PM
Brent Ladd (author of the article “Realities of Going Primitive” is now at Purdue University. http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~laddb/ - it might be interesting for Anthropik to talk to him about his retrospective thoughts on living away from civiliztion now (the article sounded like he was still living primitive’ at the time)… esp. in regard to collapse scenarios.
Nice of me to volunteer you, huh? Just a thought… because I found his article interesting and wonder if he’d have anything to add. It also looks like he’s a permaculture designer now - there’s that combination!
Another thought - due to high privatization of land and I would assume strongly enforced defense of private rights when civilization begins to wobble more - national parks then are almost centralized locations - you WILL have to be able to handle dealing with other groups, some of whom will be armed and ready to shoot people who aren’t in their group. “This forest is taken, move along”. … I wonder if there’s enough to go around.
I’m reminded of the cultural revolution in China - when people were hungry they consumed whatever they could - down to depleting the sparrow population (that might have been sort of recovering from the campaign to kill sparrows in the 50’s - Great Leap Forward, gotta improve ag production thinking)… Man, everything is going to be toast… (no pun intended)
neighbor
Comment by neighbor — 5 June 2006 @ 2:20 PM
Privitization is a big thing not just for Neoconservatives, but “Paleoconservatives,” too. And the Allegheny National Forest has been a particular target for them, because it’s right in the middle of some of the U.S.’s remaining fossil fuel deposits. It’s right near Oil City, so named for Drake’s Well, the world’s first oil well. See Allegheny Defense Project.
But, there are a few pockets of old growth forest still left in Allegheny. Most of it was cut down between 1890 and 1930 for paper and wood pulp. It took forty years to do that much damage in an era of increasing energy, and even then, there were pockets so remote that it was not economically viable to try to harvest them. Decreasing energy means increasing desperation, but at the same time, decreasing capacity. They may want to harvest more, but they’re able to harvest less. We’re also looking at much less than 40 years, during which time we’ll be increasingly incapable of even exploiting those areas we currently have, much less expanding into new areas. A lot of corporations that bought up wilderness for timber are already finding that their investments are coming up negative, and are trying to sell off their assets to try to cover the loss … that’s how you get Donald J. Trump New York State Park. So already, we’re beginning the retraction. That retraction is bound to happen in starts and stops, but in all likelihood, those areas that are remote now will only become more remote as collapse continues.
So, it’s not something I spend too much time worrying about, because if forests that exist today are chopped down, that means that civilization is still expanding, which means it isn’t collapsing … which means we’re all going to die slow, painful deaths no matter what we do and all hope is in vain, so why worry about it?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 5 June 2006 @ 2:38 PM
Did I not mention that in the article? “Brent Ladd tried to live in the forests of Wisconsin, and eventually returned to civilization.” In fact, Giuli tracked him down and corresponded with him by email some months ago. I suggested in writing this that she might want to get in touch with him again, perhaps invite him onto the podcast.
But, Ladd’s experience doesn’t surprise me much. The interrim is difficult, and it seems like that’s eventually what did him in. Another lesson I’ve taken from that: try to make the interrim period as short as possible. Too long, and the difficulties may build and bring the whole project to failure.
The much bigger problem than resources will be the imagination to use those resources at all. That’s how it’s always happened before. With less energy, you can’t afford to spend so much time worrying about fictions like “property rights.” Time you spend defending your property is time you’re not spending getting food, and that can be enough to make you dead. I know the scenario you posit is a popular one in imagination, but it’s almost unheard of in reality. Strong property rights, and forests teeming with armed folk, are results of a growing civilization, not a collapsing one.
The “Great Leap Forward” was resource mismanagement. The amount of energy was still growing, it simply wasn’t in food form. That’s a very different scenario than retracting energy.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 5 June 2006 @ 2:47 PM
Rule number one: Don’t get caught. Any would-be foragers ought to take it upon themselves to learn the numbers and routines of wilderness patrolling LEOs in their area. Become familiar with the places they go, and the places they do not go. “Befriend” one or more. Be sneaky. I’d point out - without condoning such a thing of course - that members of the ELF typically do not get caught while performing actions, they get caught afterwards because they were stupid and talked to the wrong people.
I suspect it becomes more difficult as industry moves in to an area, as that brings with it larger numbers of people working at all hours of the day. Unfortunately, sabotage is not going to be a viable strategy to keep them out if the forager group is known to the authorities - they will be the first suspects.
How are bag limits enforced? The more one knows the answer to that question, the more opportunities one will have for circumventing them. Similarly, how are property boundaries enforced? Most especially, how often are they observed? You’re not talking about high value maximum security ares here, you’re talking about tick ridden bramble filled lands full of slopes too steep to be driven upon. That’s got to count for something.
Comment by scruff — 5 June 2006 @ 3:04 PM
Sure, you could always go “underground,” but that’s a difficult and dangerous life. When one can come so close to sustainable even within legal limits, I’m tempted to try the best way of not getting caught first: not doing anything they believe warrants their attention. What I’m suggesting would make you effectively invisible to hierarchical command structures; your suggestions, scruff, are guaranteed to make them come out actively looking for you. I’d rather they not even notice my prescence.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 5 June 2006 @ 3:11 PM
what’s a Paleoconservative?
Comment by Rory — 5 June 2006 @ 3:13 PM
That’s what neoconservatives call real conservatives. Which is kind of funny, seeing as how there are very few neocons, and they’re vastly outnumbered. But, since they’re so good at getting the “paleocons” to do what they want, I suppose they can do that. I can get along with a “paleoconservative” … at least as much as I can with a liberal. Neoconservatives aren’t really conservatives at all … they’re much more authoritatians. As Alan Moore noted in the discussion published with the latest edition of V for Vendetta, the really big division of history is not between Left and Right, but authoritarianism and anarchy–between Freedom and Dominion.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 5 June 2006 @ 3:16 PM
Jason, you pointed out certain areas in which you can already see problems with a perfectly legal forager lifestyle. My point is simply that if these problems pose too great a difficulty for one’s survival, one can keep up the appearance of legal compliance without keeping up the substance of it. Already the forest service is understaffed, deer populations roam untagged, and people who own wilderness property don’t keep an eye on it 24/7. Those disparities between what is really happening and what legal authorities wish were happening will only increase as collapse progresses. I’m not saying that any of these things should be done if they are unecessary. Sure, if you can live well in full compliance, that’s probably the best idea (unless they come around looking to implant id chips in your skin), but that might not always be possible.
Comment by scruff — 5 June 2006 @ 3:31 PM
Perhaps, but it needs to be evaluated both for its benefit, and its cost. At present, and for the foreseeable future, I don’t think any of the loopholes above are anywhere near as troublesome as the life of an outlaw. There’s a very, very big cost to that strategy that many primitivists have a bad tendency to underestimate, in large part because they glamorize it.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 5 June 2006 @ 3:43 PM
Jason: “The “Great Leap Forward” was resource mismanagement. The amount of energy was still growing, it simply wasn’t in food form. That’s a very different scenario than retracting energy. ”
can’t argue with it being growth as opposed to retraction, my very simple, unacademic point was simply that very hungry people will eat anything that they consider food. (bother, I’ve no wish to defend/argue with Diamond’s thesis re: Vikings and fish). In some places, though, people will eat what’s not considered food too. I think, honestly, that this all will most likely suck, with, if we’re lucky, a few good days thrown in. I feel sorry for the “sparrows” that will bear the brunt of human caused suffering - make no mistake, that feeling does not negate the feeling I have for the humans.
and yes, you did mention that aspect of Ladd and his article - I was just surprised that he was so easy to find on the internet - and not knowing you’d already communicated with him thought it might be interesting to hear his take on things now that he’s got some temporal distance from what is being labelled “an experiential hunter-gatherer journey ” especially as it could conceivably be focused toward anthropik-derived subjects and interests.
neighbor
Comment by neighbor — 5 June 2006 @ 4:14 PM
There’s one other caveat to put in there: they’ll eat anything they consider food, that they can get their hands on. If you’ve used the last of your cheap oil to move closer to the cities, so you can get to work more easily and leverage economies of scale as the economy retracts and everyone moves to the cities, then your options for exploiting the forests for food are limited. You need to get to them first, and getting to them requires energy–and energy is exactly what you don’t have.
That’s a hypothetical without any evidence to support it. In all previous cases, that did not happen. Maybe something entirely new will happen this time, but I’d put that on the same level as magical fairy dust.
As for Brent Ladd, you’re right, he’s a very interesting guy, and I think he’s got one of the most interesting and valuable perspectives out there.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 5 June 2006 @ 4:31 PM
sorry, i’ve lost all my html skills to underuse so no nifty quoting abilities
neighbor: “In some places, though, people will eat what’s not considered food too.”
Jason: “That’s a hypothetical without any evidence to support it. In all previous cases, that did not happen. Maybe something entirely new will happen this time, but I’d put that on the same level as magical fairy dust.”
I think it’s hypothetical on a societal scale - individuals are different though. Most americans (north) don’t consider guinea pigs food - but given a long enough hunger, how many would turn Fluffy into dinner? Maybe I’m naive, but if my kids were really hungry, I’d start expanding my horizons. Or are we talking in tautology (nobody’ll eat what they don’t consider food unless they first change their minds about what constitutes food?).
Also, it doesn’t count as evidence as it can’t be backed up empirically, but here’s a story (from a trustworthy personal source):
as a child, Mr. Yi lived on the grounds of his high school that was wooded and boasted foxes and other forms of wildlife. Toward the end of the Cultural Revolution (oh yeah, this was China), somewhere in the late 60s early 70s he came upon a wounded eagle. He brought it to a safe place and tended it with the assistance of one of the teachers. It was healing well until the day it ended up in another teacher’s cooking pot. … (He also is the person who mentioned the marinated/dried sparrows he’d eaten during that same period.)
Eagle: Not exactly a traditional food item, even in China. But this was a time when the burnt rice at the bottom of the pot was considered a treat and where protein was scarce. Compared to famine, it might be considere a picnic.
Having lurked for a while, I am now trying to tread carefully, off-the-cuff comments are quick to be snatched up here, but I try not to state huge generalizations without at least some sort of narrative base. Sorry for my lack of intellectual rigour. I don’t wish to bicker, but fairy dust irked me.
I found this to be a wake-up call though:
“If you’ve used the last of your cheap oil to move closer to the cities, so you can get to work more easily and leverage economies of scale as the economy retracts and everyone moves to the cities, then your options for exploiting the forests for food are limited.” gee, how ’bout all the folks who DO move closer to work because gas is expensive but who will be stuck there when energy declines?? I hadn’t really thought of that, on a larger scale. Nice point.
neighbor
Comment by neighbor — 5 June 2006 @ 7:33 PM
I started a thread on Ishcon with the idea of doing cost/benefit analysis on various locations, looking for the “optimal” place to escape to. Anyone interested, please meet me here:
http://www.ishcon.org/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=44069#44069
Comment by Rory — 6 June 2006 @ 11:52 AM
Foragers will need some of their tribe to continue on
within civilization. This way money will be earned to
pay for the costs associated with negotiating past
civilized rules.
The benefits of splitting these duties would be enormous;
as the foragers are learning without authoritarian inter-
ference, and the money-providers will have a place to vacation,
participating somewhat in the learning process, and then,
safe sanctuary when civilization fails.
Comment by Rick Larson — 6 June 2006 @ 9:02 PM
This was one of the original ideas behind the Appalachian Confederation, that occupational tribes could subsidize the meager financial needs of forager tribes as a kind of “collapse insurance,” but I’m not sure how necessary it is. Forager tribes need so little money, and have so much liesure time, that there are any number of ways to account for the gap without needing to use such a division of labor.
“IshCon 2005, or, the Power of the Unexpected“:
You will see this referenced at ishcon.org, particularly by myself and Matt “Ghost” Kabwe as, “the Breakthrough.”
Comment by Jason Godesky — 6 June 2006 @ 9:07 PM
Jason, you keep mentioning marijuana growers living in the woods and going about their business.
Do you consider them directly dangerous to your tribe? They are certainly more likely than average to be armed, and to have a violent disposition. And they know the terrain. Perhaps they will try to protect their territory from your tribe. Is there enough of them to worry?
Comment by _Gi — 7 June 2006 @ 4:30 PM
Yes. I worry about them much more than the rangers.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 7 June 2006 @ 7:36 PM
and rightfully so. “criminals” will shoot first, unlike the rangers who will chase you screaming “FREEZE!! FREEZE!! for 2 miles
Comment by Rory — 8 June 2006 @ 10:55 PM
Of course civilization is unsustainable. Every civilization that has existed has been unsustainable. Come to think of it, every form of life is unsustainable. Unsustainability is the basis of evolution and it is the result of living things going about their business. All living things change their environment. That change builds and builds until the environment is either less suitable for the dominant organism OR the the environment has been changed in such a way that a new species can become dominant within it.
The real question is why so many people think that pointing out that civilization or a particular civilization is unsustainable somehow invalidates civilization or a particular civilization.
Sustainability is the anti-thesis to life and evolution.
Comment by James Kielland — 10 June 2006 @ 9:21 PM
Sustainability is a very overused word, and rarely used properly. If you mean “sustainability” to mean permanence, you might have a point. I fail to see that as a useful sense of the term. Rather, I think a meaningful sense of the word must refer to the mechanics of the system itself. A system that could theoretically continue indefinitely is sustainable; otherwise, it is not. Ultimately, all sustainable systems exist in a changing universe, so they’re never allowed to live out that destiny, but there’s a difference between a man dying of cancer, and a healthy man who’s shot. At the end of the day, both are dead, but it’s a distinction worth making.
What invalidates civilization isn’t its unsustainability, but its rampaging destruction on every concievable level: biological, sociological, psychological, across the board. More urgently, we are not merely suffering under an insane and self-destructive system, we’re caught in a system that is dying sooner, rather than later. If we don’t escape this system, we’ll die with it–and we’ll never have had a chance to live first.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 10 June 2006 @ 10:04 PM
Did your tribe get smaller? What happened to the other guy? Why did he leave?
Comment by Big Al — 26 June 2006 @ 1:33 PM
Yes.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 26 June 2006 @ 1:36 PM
I have a concern which is seldom discussed. It’s hard to find people interested in joining a primitive living community. I’ve noticed that more men than women are interested in the idea. The groups I’ve read about usually have several single men but few single women. Unless your a eunuch that totally sucks for a single man! How long can a tribe function with that imbalance? I suspect the single men would get depressed and desperate after a while. Brent Ladd went back to civilization. He may have been embarrassed to discuss it but maybe one factor was that he had no way of getting any! I’m being serious.
Comment by Big Al — 29 June 2006 @ 2:41 PM
Yes, that is a serious concern. I don’t think it’s much of a long-term concern, though. Whatever combination of biological and cultural reasons lead fewer women to pursue math or science in the United States makes questions like ours—centered around questions of ecology, feedback cycles, EROEI, and all manner of other scientific and mathematical material—unattractive to women. But as things turn sour, our arguments will be less about abstract theory, and more about living examples. I don’t expect to see much in the way of people wanting to join us until we’re living out in the woods. Once we reach that point, though, I think there’s plenty of women who would prefer an easier, safer, and more affluent way of life.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 29 June 2006 @ 3:04 PM
I think one possible reason not to overlook is that the primitivist milieu is/can be just the same f-ing kind of boys’ club as most other groups and subgroups in patriarchal society. People migt not be so interested in joining in just for the sake of some sorry bloke “getting any”. i’m not a woman, but i get concerned everytime i see someone with a good idea that risks failing for lack of interest because of the social environment not providing any space for [half of humanity] except as mattresses. Not that this is necessarily the situation with Anthropik (i really hope it isn’t! Too much too good stuff around here!), and no offence to anyone. But seriously, i think this is a problem men would do good to analyse the causes, and what could/should be done about it, since, really the problem is theirs! (with ‘them’ i mean heterosexual men, i used it instead of ‘ours’ to avoid automatic assumptions about the gender/sex of the possible reader (or myself))
Comment by Nagnagnag — 1 April 2007 @ 1:28 PM
Speaking as a woman and an anarcho-primitivist, I have no clue why more women aren’t involved. It seems like almost all fringe political groups (except, of course, for feminism when it first started out) are dominated not just by men, but specifically by white men.
There’s a lot that anarcho-primitivism has to offer women: the promise of tight-knit communities, closer family ties, more communication, direct democracy… and let’s not forget midwifery and the whole “natural childbirth” movement that’s been gaining steam as of late, which has definite ties to Deep Ecology and primitivist thought.
I hesitate to portray the anarcho-primitivist movement as “not providing any space for [half of humanity] except as mattresses.” Admittedly, Anthropik has been kind of cut off from the majority of anarcho-primitivists because of our opposition to violence, but from what I’ve seen it doesn’t seem like women are disrespected and/or viewed as mere sex objects.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 1 April 2007 @ 4:00 PM
I don’t know what the scene is over on your side of the atlantic, but yeah i’m (hopefully) mainly painting the devil on the wall. However, whereas anarcho-primitivism ought to have a lot to offer women (or anyone), i wasn’t talking so much about the -ism as about the -ists, and about the cultural/social milieu. I guess one general reason for why a certain political group is fringe is that the people that are inclined to paradigm shifts mainly on the basis of abstract ideological promises represent the narrow end of the bell curve. I guess one general reason why these fringe groups are mostly male might be that the women inclined to paradigm shifts mainly on the basis of abstract ideological promises, AND inclined to cultivate this inclination even on the (possibly uncomfortable) terms of a male-dominated social group, represent an even narrower end of the corresponding bell curve. I think A-P might (?) actually be better than average among this kind of social milieus in giving women space & so on, at least in theory. Maybe it’s victim of bad image, what with macho survivalism leering in “on the right” and macho activism “on the left”. This influence might, however, also concretely shape the atmosphere, and even in the most soundly-minded AP crew the simple fact that it consists of a handful of males, all concerned about the lack of women in their nice rewilding crew, means that as a woman entering the group, you can count on there being quite a deal of male sexual energy (i.e. interest in getting you ‘teamed up’ and/or laid) in the air and in the social interaction, explicit or implicit.
I mean, the prospect of having to deal with this as an underlying aspect in all communication, and in the communication with every single other member in the group, who all direct their sexual energy towards you, and then maybe ‘out in the forest’ with no other social interaction available, well it sure puts me off a bit. Maybe women are a bit more accustomed to dealing with this kind of stuff than i, but i can’t believe it attracts a lot of folks. (sorry for my messy wordings, i’m not used to writing and i’m tired. it took me hours to formulate this!) Cheers to you all by the way, i like your site very much!
Comment by Nagnagnag — 6 April 2007 @ 6:49 PM
I think another factor in Anthropik being “on the outside” might be that a movement such as anarcho-primitivism that rejects civilization wholesale, will certainly be a magnet for individuals who want to make being an anarcho-primitivist all about their, shall we say, issues. (Recall the infamous “Radder Than Thou” thread and Dr. Tiresome, et. al.)
Comment by venuspluto67 — 7 April 2007 @ 12:23 PM
word, fellow ape. It might also be a reason for the lack of interest in AP (from one or any gender group) i discuss above…
Comment by Nagnagnag — 8 April 2007 @ 6:19 AM