Basic Primtivism Refresher
by Jason GodeskyThis was originally posted to Tim Boucher’s Pop Occulture blog, where there’s been much recent discussion of primitivism in general, and the Tribe of Anthropik specifically. That, and other discussions, have pointed to the need to retread some basic ground regularly. I hope we won’t become bogged down in such basic arguments, but for those new to the site or to primitivism in general, I hope this summary can be helpful.
What is the “baby” we should be careful to not throw out [with the bathwater] here? Is it art? Medicine? These are universals, shared by all human cultures. As I argued in thesis #22, Western medicine is simply our own ethnomedicine. We, like the people of any culture, believe our medicine to be the most effective and all others to be mere superstition, but this is mere ethnocentrism. The simple fact of the matter is that a shaman in the jungles of Peru has the same sort of success rate with his patients as a modern doctor in a good hospital. In thesis #24 I discussed the profundity of “primitive” art, easily on par with our own. For example, though unwritten, Pygmy songs have for millennia maintained a polyphonic complexity that Europe was unable to rival until the 14th century. Or is it knowledge? Surely, civilization has given us knowledge we would not otherwise have…? Again, not really; in thesis #23, I touched on some of the immense indigenous knowledge we dispensed with at the beginning of the civilized project. We’ve gradually worked our way back to about where we started, so the whole thing’s something of a wash. Robert Wolff’s Original Wisdom is the type of book I’d think Pop Occulture readers could appreciate, though I personally prefer David Abram’s Spell of the Sensuous.
So what is the “baby” here? Philosophy? Theology? Religion? See Paul Radin’s Primitive Man as Philosopher, but I would stack the Australian Dreamtime against Augustine’s Civitas Dei for theological or philosophical depth any day of the week. These are the things we usually mean if we say “civilization,” in any kind of positive sense. But these are human universals. Of course, we hold our own as superior to all others, whether in medicine or art or philosophy, but this is simple ethnocentrism. Is there any meaningful sense in which we can use “civilization”?
Some people have tried to make “civilization” a mere synonym for “culture,” but I don’t think this works. Do we feel comfortable talking about an “Inuit civilization” or a “Pygmy civilization”? Perhaps the most open-minded of us, but I think in general most of us find a certain discomfort with those phrases. In thesis #13, I explored the issue of what civilization is, and I wrote:
Etymologically, the origins of the word “civilization” lay in the Latin word civis, often translated as “city,” but perhaps more accurately translated as “city-state.” The Roman Empire was a patchwork of civitates, fulfilling a role not terribly far removed from states in the U.S., though the Roman Empire was less influenced by notions of Cartesian space and more interested in spheres of influence. The Roman Empire was, in fact, a hierarchy of such smaller imperial dominions; the Pater familias was emperor of his family, and the magistrate was the emperor of his civitas. Strictly speaking, a civis was the “citizen” of such a civitas, but the word was also applied to the sense of “city-ness,” as well as the city itself.
Etymology, then, gives us our first workable definition: “civilization” is a culture of cities.
I then went through the primary criteria of civilization defined by anthropologist Vere Gordon Childe, and argued that they actually caused one another. In other words, they’re a package deal; it takes very exceptional circumstances to have just one or two of the five criteria, without the rest following. So we’re talking about a very special kind of culture when we refer to a civilization: it’s a culture with cities, and all that comes with that. Hierarchy. Specialization. Wealth and poverty. Social classes. The state.
Have I redefined “civilization” here arbitrarily? Is this merely a game of semantics? I don’t think so. We use the word without much thought, but we still feel uncomfortable calling some societies “civilizations,” even though they clearly have cultures. I don’t think this is a semantic game or a redefinition at all; rather, I think this is trying to pin down this elusive phrase to something more precise. This has a great deal of value, because we are talking about a discernable system, and we must understand what it is that defines that system—what makes it uniquely itself, what makes it different from the rest.
So, where is the “baby” we’re in danger of throwing out with the “bathwater”? The “slimy underbelly” is all that civilization is. It doesn’t have any redeeming part. There is no baby. What’s worth saving—art, music, philosophy, medicine, knowledge, etc.—are things universal to all human cultures. The only things unique to civilizations—the things that make them civilizations—are the patterns of control and domination. That’s all they are.
That’s the first thing we need to understand, that all the good things we associate with civilization are uiversal, shared by all cultures, civilized and uncivilized alike. They’re all far, far older than civilization. They belong to humanity, not to civilization.
The second thing we need to understand is what a bizarre aberration civilization truly is. The Agricultural Revolution was a mere 10,000 years ago, but the genus Homo has been around for some two million years. So, civilization has only existed for the last 0.5% of our time on this planet. To use the analogy Jared Diamond drew in his famous “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race” (agriculture):
Suppose that an archaeologist who had visited from outer space were trying to explain human history to his fellow spacelings. He might illustrate the results of his digs by a 24-hour clock on which one hour represents 100,000 years of real past time. If the history of the human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly the whole of that day, from midnight through dawn, noon, and sunset. Finally, at 11:54 p. m. we adopted agriculture.
And for most of the time that civilization has existed, it has not been the dominant system. Foragers continue to survive even today, flourishing in ecologies where our agriculture is utterly useless. The spread of civilization has never been voluntary. We do not have one example of any forager culture willingly adopting agriculture—ever. Yet we have example after example after example of foragers who fought to the death against it, who would rather die that to submit to civilization. As J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur wrote in his Letters from an American Farmer:
There must be in the Indians’ social bond something singularly captivating, and far superior to be boasted of among us; for thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those Aborigines having from choice become Europeans! There must be something very bewitching in their manners, something very indelible and marked by the very hands of Nature. For, take a young Indian lad, give him the best education you possibly can, load him with your bounty, with presents, nay with riches, yet he would secretly long for his native woods, which you would imagine he must have long since forgot; and on the first opportunity he can possibly find, you will see him voluntarily leave behind all you have given him and return with inexpressable joy to lie on the mats of his fathers.
Or, as Benjamin Franklin put more succinctly:
No European who has tasted Savage life can afterwards bear to live in our societies.
Sitting Bull could easily see why, of course:
White men like to dig in the ground for their food. My people prefer to hunt the buffalo as their fathers did. White men like to stay in one place. My people want to move their tepees here and there to the different hunting grounds. The life of white men is slavery. They are prisoners in towns or farms. The life my people want is a life of freedom. I have seen nothing that a white man has, houses or railways or clothing or food, that is as good as the right to move in the open country, and live in our own fashion. … The white men had many things that we wanted, but we could see that they did not have the one thing we liked best—freedom. I would rather live in a tepee and go without meat when game is scarce, than give up my privileges as a free Indian, even though I could have all that white men have.
Or, as Daniel Quinn put it so well:
Kids of all ages run off to join the circus. No one runs off to join Disney World.
In other words, civilization has been experienced as so deeply dehumanizing by everyone at all times in all places that in 10,000 years, no one has ever gone to it voluntarily. Indeed, civilization has expanded to new cultures only on pain of death. That’s how much it was hated by those who knew what another way of life was like. This is where primitivism comes from: an appreciation for uncivilized life. In truth, most primitivists do not spend much time on collapse. Authors like Daniel Quinn, John Zerzan or Derrick Jensen see civilization in primarily ideological terms, as a system of belief. Jensen and Zerzan see civilization as something that must be violently toppled; Quinn sees it as a mindset that needs to be out-taught so that it will slowly fade away (his concept of “Beyond Civilization” is, like Richard Heinberg’s “Powerdown,” one of our most optimistic possibilities, I think).
In many ways, I was one of the first primitivists to bring collapse into the picture. The foregoing facts were first brought to my attention by Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael. Inspired by his optimistic vision, I pushed further, asking how large groups become swayed to new ideas. That line of inquiry deflated any hope I once held for Quinn’s scenario.
Because culture is anything but arbitrary. It’s the means by which we adapt to a given environment, the way that a computer’s operating system adapts software for a given set of hardware. The human brain is ready-made for culture: our disgust reaction, for example, is felt very deeply and strongly (as it has to be), but what disgusts us is very cultural. We absorb our cultures in an incredibly deep and profound way. There are cultures that see different colors, and cultures that cannot connect photographs to their three-dimensional subjects. That’s how deep and powerful culture is.
Every culture has some amount of complexity. As Joseph Tainter writes in Collapse of Complex Societies:
Complexity is generally understood to refer to such things as the size of a society, the number and distinctiveness of its parts, the variety of specialized social roles that it incorporates, the number of distinct social personalities present, and the variety of mechanisms for organizing these into a coherent, functioning whole. Augmenting any of these dimensions increases the complexity of a society. Hunter-gatherer societies (by way of illustrating one contrast in complexity) contain no more than a few dozen distinct social personalities, while modern European censuses recognize 10,000 to 20,000 unique occupational roles, and industrial societies may contain overall more than 1,000,000 different kinds of social personalities. …
As a simple illustration of differences in complexity, Julian Steward pointed out the contrast between the native peoples of western North America, among whom early ethnographers documented 3,000 to 6,000 cultural elements, and the U.S. Army, which landed 500,000+ artifact types at Casablanca in World War 11 (Steward 1955). Complexity is quantifiable.
But Tainter also pops the notion that there is a natural tendency towards greater complexity.
The conventional view has been that human societies have a latent tendency towards greater complexity. Complexity was assumed to be a desirable thing, and the logical result of surplus food, leisure time, and human creativity. Although this scenario is popular, it is inadequate to explain the evolution of complexity. In the world of cultural complexity there is, to use a colloquial expression, no free lunch. More complex societies are costlier to maintain than simpler ones and require higher support levels per capita. A society that is more complex has more sub-groups and social roles, more networks among groups and individuals, more horizontal and vertical controls, higher flow of information, greater centralization of information, more specialization, and greater interdependence of parts. Increasing any of these dimensions requires biological, mechanical, or chemical energy. In the days before fossil fuel subsidies, increasing the complexity of a society usually meant that the majority of its population had to work harder.
Tainter takes this farther: complexity is a function of energy.
Human societies and political organizations, like all living systems, are maintained by a continuous flow of energy. From the simplest familial unit to the most complex regional hierarchy, the institutions and patterned interactions that comprise a human society are dependent on energy. At the same time, the mechanisms by which human groups acquire and distribute basic resources are conditioned by, and integrated within, sociopolitical institutions. Energy flow and sociopolitical organization are opposites sides of an equation. Neither can exist, in a human group, without the other, nor can either undergo substantial change without altering both the opposite member and the balance of the equation. Energy flow and sociopolitical organization must evolve in harmony.
Not only is energy flow required to maintain a sociopolitical system, but the amount of energy must be sufficient for the complexity of that system. Leslie White observed a number of years ago that cultural evolution was intricately linked to the quantities of energy harvested by a human population. The amounts of energy required per capita to maintain the simplest human institutions are incredibly small compared with those needed by the most complex. White once estimated that a cultural system activated primarily by human energy could generate only about 1/20 horsepower per capita per year. This contrasts sharply with the hundreds to thousands of horsepower at the command of members of industrial societies. Cultural complexity varies accordingly. Julian Steward pointed out the quantitative difference between the 3,000 to 6,000 cultural elements early anthropologists documented for the native populations of western North America, and the more than 500,000 artifact types that U.S. military forces landed at Casa Blanca in World War II.
More complex societies are more costly to maintain than simpler ones, requiring greater support levels per capita. As societies increase in complexity, more networks are created among individuals, more hierarchical controls are created to regulate these networks, more information is processed, there is more centralization of information flow, there is increasing need to support specialists not directly involved in resource production, and the like. All this complexity is dependent upon energy flow at a scale vastly greater than that characterizing small groups of self-sufficient foragers or agriculturalists. The result is that as a society evolves toward greater complexity, the support costs on each individual will also rise, so that the population as a whole must allocate increasing portions of its energy budget to maintaining organizational institutions. This is an immutable fact of societal evolution, and is not mitigated by type of energy source.
This leads to Tainter’s central thesis, that complexity is subject to diminishing returns, and that it is this course of diminishing returns which is the ultimate cause of all collapse, regardless of the proximate cause. He reinforces his idea with examples of collapse from the archaeological record, as well as the modern Ik in Uganda. I have summarized his arguments in my own thesis #14. Tainter argues that collapse is an economizing process that happens when the alternative is no longer tolerable. But Tainter believes we cannot collapse, because we are enmeshed in a peer polity system. Of course, peer polity systems have collapsed before—see the Maya—but the only difference is, they do not collapse as individual states, but as a peer polity system. Either they all collapse at once, or no one does. In thesis #15, I break with Tainter by applying his own model to our current situation, and concluding that we are past the point of diminishing returns for our complexity—and thus, poised for collapse.
What does it mean to be beyond the point of diminishing returns for complexity? It means inventions come more slowly, and when they do come, they’re less revolutionary. It means that a new bureaucracy is more likely to create red tape than actually accomplish something. It means that our means of solving problems are diminished, even as the pace and severity of our problems—exacerbated by the high energy needs of our complexity—is increasing. I know it’s tempting to pin the blame for what happened to New Orleans last year on Bush’s incompetence, but the fact of the matter is that we cannot expect to handle the situation as well as Galveston did in 1900. In 1900, we were not yet past the point of diminishing returns. Today, we are. That is the difference between Galveston and New Orleans—that’s what it means to be beyond the point of diminishing returns for complexity. It means you can no longer solve some of the problems you used to be able to solve. It means solutions become harder and more expensive, while the energy demands rise higher and higher.
Eventually, people begin to realize that they can get the same effect, for less energy, by living in a simpler manner. But complexity is a unified phenomenon. Tainter again:
A society increasing in complexity does so as a system. That is to say, as some of its interlinked parts are forced in a direction of growth, others must adjust accordingly. For example, if complexity increases to regulate regional subsistence production, investments will be made in hierarchy, in bureaucracy, and in agricultural facilities (such as irrigation networks). The expanding hierarchy requires still further agricultural output for its own needs, as well as increased investment in energy and minerals extraction. An expanded military is needed to protect the assets thus created, requiring in turn its own sphere of agricultural and other resources. As more and more resources are drained from the support population to maintain this system, an increased share must be allocated to legitimization or coercion. This increased complexity requires specialized administrators, who consume further shares of subsistence resources and wealth. To maintain the productive capacity of the base population, further investment is made in agriculture, and so on.
The illustration could be expanded, tracing still further the interdependencies within such a growing system, but the point has been made: a society grows in complexity as a system. To be sure, there are instances where one sector of a society grows at the expense of others, but to be maintained as a cohesive whole, a social system can tolerate only certain limits to such conditions.
Thus, it is possible to speak of sociocultural evolution by the encompassing term ‘complexity,’ meaning by this the interlinked growth of the several subsystems that comprise a society.
In growth, complexity takes on a life of its own: more complexity yields still more complexity. In collapse, the same happens in reverse. In “thesis #20, I compared collapse to a run on an over-evaluated stock.
The process of catabolic collapse becomes self-reinforcing, as individuals decide that further complexity is not a worthwhile investment and refuse to make further investments, which makes the prospect even less attractive to other individuals. In the same manner as a “run” on a given company’s stock, the process of catabolic collapse snowballs quickly, until support for a complex society drops so low that that society can no longer be maintained. A “freefall” of lowering complexity follows, until it reaches a level where the marginal returns for it have become favorable again, and people are willing to invest in it again.
With complexity, we get to a more precise understanding of “civilization” than the mere “city culture” we left with before. Civilization is a culture with a unique problem-solving strategy. Its answer to every problem is to increase complexity. To invent something, or appoint someone, or establish a committee, or research something, or run some tests. We are caught in a growth cycle of ever-increasing complexity requiring ever-increasing energy, and creating an ever-larger scale society. We are already far beyond any reasonable human scale society. This is the root of that alienation that has been universally feared and hated in civilization since its very beginning. And by its very nature, civilization can only get worse.
So we see why civilization is inherently unsustainable: it is, at its most basic root, a culture in growth. It is among cultures what a cancer is among cells. It grows without limit, without regard to the other systems it is enmeshed in and coexists with, largely—I understand you’re familiar with David Abram’s Spell of the Sensuous and have mentioned it here before?—because we no longer recognize ourselves as part of it. In the very same manner, cancer cells grow without limit because they have begun to unravel their telomeres—they can no longer recognize healthy cells as part of the same body. As Kenneth Boulding put it:
Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.
If growth ever stops, or even slows down, our civilization—which depends on exponential growth to survive—will collapse. How could it be otherwise? The alternative would be to believe that infinite growth is possible in a finite world. “Sustainable growth” is an oxymoron, and there’s one thing all unsustainable systems have in common: they’re never sustained. I’m laying the tautologies on heavy here to make a point: the collapse of our civilization is not in question. It is tautological. Just the same as the reindeer of St. Matthew’s Island had no choice about whether their population would crash, so, too, are we well beyond the point where anything can be done to change our fate. I don’t know if people have free will or not (we’ve certainly never shown any evidence of that in our past), but I do believe in cause and effect. If we did have a chance to go a different way and avoid this, it was not in any of our lifetimes: it was 10,000 years ago, when we decided to plant some wheat rather than continue following the herds. Since then, the only choice we’ve had is how, and when, we want to face the consequences of that.
For 10,000 years, we’ve consistently decided that “when” should be “later.” We’ve come to the brink of collapse a few times, enough to notice the pattern. Sometimes, a deus ex machina will come to save us at the last minute (though, more often, it doesn’t). All the previous collapses were staved off by technologies or possiblities that were already there, but considered too expensive or low-quality to bother with, until the crisis deepened. It’s unclear whether we have any such possibilities to save us this time—solar might, but that’s questionable. We may have finally run out of delays. But the other thing we’ve learned from these near misses is that each reprieve gives us more time to grow, and that growth puts us in an even worse position the next time collapse looms. Had we collapsed in the Bronze Age, it would have killed millions, and devastated the Mediterranean. Now there are billions of us, and we’ve devastated the whole world. What will happen if we miss this, too? Trillions, and the extinction of all life on this planet? We’re in the midst of the worst mass extinction the earth has ever seen, and it’s being driven entirely by us—or, more accurately, because such an intensely complex civilization as ours, and still growing, cannot afford to share the world with much of anything else.
This is why I have so little optimism for plans like Quinn’s or Heinberg’s. Either they will be too little, too late, and have no effect, or they will have an effect, which will be to make a significant dent on our constant growth. After all, logically, any system is either growing or not growing—there is no third, intermediate option. Either such gradual schemes will do nothing to stop our growth and be useless, or they will be effective in slowing our growth, which will then escalate into more and more withdrawal. Such plans have a choice between being completely ineffective, or causing the collapse they seek to avoid.
Of course, I doubt they’ll do that. Humans are good at making up stories, and we make up stories that make us feel better all the time, to justify things we know can’t be sustained. We won’t want to pass up the possibilities to have more energy and more things, so we’re more likely to run into collapse at a full tilt.
So, what are the implications of all this? Is this misanthropic? I think it is not misanthropic at all. After all, to explain why humans have so many problems in civilizaton, we need to invent stories like original sin: humans are innately bad, and that’s why we always feel so ill at ease in the civilization G-d destined us to build. That’s why we chafe under our rightful leaders. That’s why we feel vaguely unfulfilled and alienated by our glorious complexity. How is this not misanthropic? Rather, primitivism says that it isn’t humans who are the problem, but civilization, and one of the worst problems with it is that it is so deeply dehumanizing. Primitivism suggests that freedom and equality are the natural human condition—human nature. It suggests that we chafe under leaders because humans don’t want or need leaders; that we feel alienated in large-scale society, because large-scale society doesn’t serve human needs. Civilization turns humans into cogs; primitivism builds communities for people.
The violent elements of primitivism are not the ones who embrace collapse, but those who don’t, those like Zerzan or Jensen who believe that ideology exists independent of physical reality, and that civilization must be violently destroyed or it will perpetuate itself forever.
So what do we do?
Collapse is inevitable. It’s actually the best thing that can happen to us now (which tells us just how terrible a situation we’re really in). One way or another, voluntarily or not, with our awarness or not, this brief experiment is coming to a quick and catastrophic end. How do we deal with that?
That’s the really big question. How do we deal with that? How do we cope with that?
You say that understanding this provides a place for true misanthropes to air a disturbing lack of compassion, and as we’ve seen, that’s absolutely true. My question is … so what? Darwin provided the same, didn’t he? The Nazi party owed much of its foundation to certain philosophical notions of race and society derived, ultimately, from the theory of evolution. Should the possibility that some people will cope with an unpleasant truth poorly convince us not to believe what the facts so clearly indicate? Should we reject natural selection and evolution for the same reason?
Primitivism brings with it a truth as unpleasant as evolution, but just as undeniably true. People will react poorly to it, but that says nothing as to whether or not it is true. Rather than “throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” and rejecting the basic fact that civilization is unsustainable simply because some might be led to misanthropic implications, I think we should instead fight against those implications, and argue all the more forcefully for the preservation of our humanity in the last death throes of such a dehumanizing, murderous force. Civilization cannot be sustained; no system based on infinite growth ever can be. We cannot afford to allow the road beyond civilization to lay in the hands of misanthropes and terrorists. For the sake of our species, we cannot.
Okay. Thanks. I’ll shut up now.
Comment by Taylor — 18 September 2006 @ 2:14 PM
Of course, there are variations in primitivism–Zerzanian primitivism, and Jensenian primitivism, which are flawed.
Comment by Taylor — 18 September 2006 @ 2:14 PM
We do not have one example of any forager culture willingly adopting agriculture—ever. Yet we have example after example after example of foragers who fought to the death against it, who would rather die that to submit to civilization.
Wait–doesn’t this work both ways? We also have examples of civilized peoples who die rather than become foragers.
Comment by Taylor — 18 September 2006 @ 2:17 PM
And also, just because people question or attack your beliefs does not mean that they are not aware of them–they could be quite aware and disagree.
Comment by Taylor — 18 September 2006 @ 2:23 PM
Oh, and from the comments I’ve read in “5 Common Objections to Primitivism,” you mention that Charles C. Mann’s 1492 estimated the population of North America at 200 million. Yet, in “Pop Occulture,” you argue that Charles C. Mann’s work that he estimated 10 million. Obviously, 10 million might be realistic, but what was Charles C. Mann’s original number? You can claim something, but not make a false claim toward someone else.
Comment by Taylor — 18 September 2006 @ 2:30 PM
With complexity, we get to a more precise understanding of “civilization” than the mere “city culture” we left with before. Civilization is a culture with a unique problem-solving strategy. Its answer to every problem is to increase complexity. To invent something, or appoint someone, or establish a committee, or research something, or run some tests.
This does not make sense as an absolute. Businesses routinely downsize, or decrease complexity. My father worked at a company (Motorola) that has laid off thousands of workers and downsized, and was laid off himself. It solved a problem to decrease its complexity and did not collapse.
There are also examples of complexity decreasing, like the fall of the U.S.S.R. without total collapse.
And, of course, as the “Exceptions that Prove the Rule” series shows, certain underbelly elements of civilization exist in non-civilized societies. The Kwakiutl had specialization, and wealth inequalities. The Iroquois and the Polynesians expanded. But were they civilizations, since they did not have “cities?”
And societies have been able to re-arrange their complexity and decrease energy use without total collapse. The U.S. did decrease its energy consumption in the 1970s without collapsing. If growth requires energy, then our civilization will collapse if it stops growing, why didn’t the U.S. collapse in the 1970s? Why didn’t Cuba entirely collapse even though it decreased its energy consumption by half?
So it does not make sense to me that every decision is made by increasing complexity.
As for high birth rates, mentioned in Pop Occulture, wouldn’t high death rates offset the population growth caused by high birth rates? I think that expansion occurs because of soil/ecosystem/resource depletion more than population growth. Population growth occurs when the society expands, but the society expanded because it could not support its current population on its now-degraded farmland.
And of course, your saying to “plant some wheat instead of follow the herds” is metaphorical, but horticulturalists can plant wheat without expanding, and still follow herds. But I understand the point.
It just does not make sense that growth is inherent to civilization, regardless of what you say. Even the Prisoner’s Dilemma is confusing–why would people all over the world without communication react the same way? I haven’t heard this claimed anywhere outside of this site, and since it is true that there are exceptional places where agriculture can sustain itself, I just don’t get it. I don’t think that an absolute like growth being inherent to civilization can be proven. I agree that unlimiting growth must end in collapse, but some growth is not inherently unsustainable.
Okay, I’ll shut up. I’m going to die because I just cannot juggle all the different opinions on the Internet. You assert your points, but then, I could easily go on another website where someone else asserts something completely different. Heinberg is not a primitivst, and Greer, another collapse theorist, does not believe civilization is inherently unsustainable. They won’t change their minds any more than you will.
And I’m not going to debate emotional points–I do not feel dehumanized in this large-scale society, and in fact, enjoy my hierarchal domination. I enjoy living in my metropolis. I do not feel like I am a prisoner, and feel sad I cannot pursue my dream job. I feel like primitivism turns me into a prisoner, binding me by the inevitable collapse of my society that is not believed by everyone–you believe it is not in question, but then, others do not, as you point out. Everyone has convincing arguments to justify their points–I just don’t know who is right anymore. But arguments must be based on ideas. Your argument of civ’s inherent unsustainably is based on the absolute idea that civ must growth. Should that be debunked or disproven, so would any ideas based upon that assertion.
The fact that no one else I know sees civ this way (and people who know I talk with primitivists think that they are mentally ill) proves to me that how people feel about civ is totally subjective. Sitting Bull’s point about us being prisoners in towns while we are free to roam is based on how you feel about it–could I not argue the opposite, they they are forced to roam while a civilized person can choose to settle? Like I said–it’s subjective, based on what you believe. I also agree with Ran Prieur in his essay “The Effects of Highly Habitual People” which can be found on his website that humans are creatures of habit who prefer to find a groove and stick with it. I think that the fact that foragers resist civ does not mean that civ is dehumanizing, it means that they are accustomed to the forager groove. But many people in civilization are accustomed to the civ groove, and resist equally. Resistance works both ways, and as Ran Prieur has said, “Resistance to change has appeared in all human societies.”
I’m going to step out of this world. I just don’t get it. You’ll assert your points just like others will assert theirs. You might be right or wrong, but naturally, everyone thinks they are right. I’m not asking you to change your mind–few people do anyway.
Comment by Taylor — 18 September 2006 @ 3:29 PM
So we’re talking about a very special kind of culture when we refer to a civilization: it’s a culture with cities, and all that comes with that. Hierarchy. Specialization. Wealth and poverty. Social classes. The state.
But again, to many people all of that is beneficial (especially cities). To them, that is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Philosophies are subjective. Many people like cities (myself included). My parents loved urban living, and resented having to move to the suburbs to raise their children. Belief in their unsustainability is different than whether or not you like or dislike something, or whether or not who believes in “x” or “y” will live or die.
Comment by Taylor — 18 September 2006 @ 4:08 PM
I can also see why Quinn’s plan would fail–most people in civilization are comfortable living in their hierarchal urban villages or small towns, and would not see on purely philosophical arguments. Powerdown is different, however; powerdown is based on an argument of societal change due to resource depletion. Yet I do not see Quinn talk about resource depletion much. Quinn’s world of people walking away is based on the idea people would want to walk away from a miserable existence–but people don’t. Most people I know think that living in communities of less than 150 is a stifling, lonely experience, and urban areas are beautiful places because of their large populations.
This, I think, is one of the flaws of primitivism–primitivists can see civilization only in terms of dehumanization, misery, and alienation, only forgetting they are the fringe, and that many people are happy in civilization. Your argument that everyone who knew another life prefers it fails because it does not explain why civilized people who know about a tribal existence, like our anthropologists who live with tribal people, don’t go out and live there permanently? I think this is based on where you are born. Most civilized people prefer civilization; most primitive people prefer living primitively. For every person that thinks that living in a settled village is stifling, like Sitting Bull, there will be people who believe otherwise.
This is why I do not believe that ideology succeeds. When it does, it becomes totalitarianism. Since most people do not want to walk away, and could not understand walking away or why it is important, Quinn’s plan would require martial law in order to be concieved, where a dictator would force people to live in tribes to preserve egalitarianism. Most people do not see hierarchy as stifling and evil, and urban dwellers like their cities, suburban dwellers like their suburbs, and when I visit small towns of 1000-2000 people, there is a cry among the youth to get out and go to the city as soon as possible. They also do not understand Dunbar’s number, and how hierarchy is required for large populations. And to them, it is a necessary evil–since they like large social stratification.
Indeed, why is specialization so bad and unsustainable? Specialization occurs because people are not created equal. Some people are talented in some things and not others, and that’s why people specialize. In societies where people do not specialize, what do you do when there is someone who cannot do something essential for the tribe? What if someone is good at gathering but not good at hunting? Many people I know believe that that is one of civilization’s benefits, that we can do many more things than we want to rather than just hunt and gather or be horticultural. The limitations of horticulture are stifling, according to them, and agriculture allows people with the freedom that complexity offers–to be urban or rural.
In “The Fifth World” you seemed to argue that human societies would be limited because of people’s ideology and desire for egalitarianism. That does not make sense. What does make sense is environmental limitations; if horticultural production limits village size to 300 people, people will have to limit themselves due to their physical reality. But that is different than saying that somehow people will only live in small villages due to egalitarian ideals (even though those ideals might arise from the physical reality of horticulture).
I also think that while arguments about overpopulation and the requirement of mass death to reenact the primitivist utopia are arguments against the philosophy of primitivism, as well as defending oneself against being a genocidal maniac, arguing that they are inevitable due to overshoot is not primitivism–William Catton, the author of Overshoot, is no primitivist, but he still believes in overshoot. Yet, for some reason, the primitivst is thought of as a genocidal maniac yet Catton is not. I believe this is because William Catton does not place his emotions about “evil” civilization in his book, whereas primitivists not only believe civilization is unsustainable and collapse is inevitable, they want it to go down because people are miserable there.
This seems to me to be the definition of bias; if you hate civilization, you’ll try to find evidence that it will go under, if you love civilization, you’ll try to debunk that evidence. I’m biased to because I don’t hate civilization, so I won’t accuse you of it. But people need to try their best to separate their emotional beliefs with their research on the facts. However, many people have stated “facts” that have proven to not be facts–technofix optimists believe they are stating “facts,” after all, when they argue their position.
Comment by Taylor — 18 September 2006 @ 6:47 PM
So there is a baby. The defining criterion of civilization. That’s what people mean with the “throwing out the baby with the bathwater.”
Comment by Taylor — 18 September 2006 @ 6:48 PM
After all, who would willingly die? If billions must die in order to make foraging possible, how could anyone walk away? That is why, I think, the philosophy of primitivism in itself is sick–if civilization were sustainable, and it was possible for 6.5 billion people to live sustainably, then advocating a return to tribal life (which would require mass death) would be morally unacceptable. The population argument also debunks the emotional arguments–sure, people might be miserable, but at least they are alive with agriculture, which, if horticulture cannot feed billions of people, would be the only way they could live. The instinct to survive overrides ideology, even with foragers resisting civilization.
As for overshoot and trophic levels, humans do exist at a high trophic level, but that explains our foraging carrying capacity. Because foraging is not the only sustainable subsistence strategy, our sustainable carrying capacity is based on the maximum population supported by sustainable means of subsistence. Logically, if industrial agriculture was sustainable, the earth could support 6.5 billion people. It can’t because the means of supporting it is not sustainable, not just because of our high trophic level. Farming really does lower our trophic level as long as it is sustained, as we have seen.
Comment by Taylor — 18 September 2006 @ 6:54 PM
Finally, civilizations have not grown equally. China and Egypt may have grown, but did not go beyond the Levant (Egypt) or beyond Tibet (China). How do you explain China and the fact that it did not grow exponentially and stuck to growth within a certain part of the world, and that it has been around for 6000 years without collapsing back to a pre-civ state?
Comment by Taylor — 18 September 2006 @ 7:04 PM
After all, I’ve yet to find someone outside of Anthropik that argues that civilization MUST grow.
Comment by Taylor — 18 September 2006 @ 7:05 PM
And I do not feel alienated in civilization, despite my autism that makes it impossible for me to shut up. God, I’m so pathetic.
Comment by Taylor — 18 September 2006 @ 7:07 PM
I also notice a contradiction in your writing. You often state that civilization is coming to an end–yet you also point out that there will still be reduced pockets of civ, and even argue where those regions might be (e.g. the Middle East) even centuries from now. You even give a list in the Fifth World of where a few of those surviving civilizations might be. How do you explain this?
Comment by Taylor — 18 September 2006 @ 7:09 PM
Thanks for the post, Jason. I’m overwhelmed with all the possible ways that the collapse will play out that are posted on the internet. I am sure, though, as you are, that only hunter/gatherer life ways stand a chance over a long time. I personally foresee a collapse taking place piecemeal over a decade or two, and I hold out hope of finding people willing to become a tribe with me. Meanwhile, I’m getting out while I can, learning how to survive during the transition. (Though I think I would be dropping out even if I didn’t know the crash was coming!)
Comment by casemeau — 18 September 2006 @ 7:09 PM
I love comment number one for its extremely prophetic pronouncement
Comment by some random dude — 18 September 2006 @ 8:56 PM
Indeed, why is specialization so bad and unsustainable? Specialization occurs because people are not created equal. Some people are talented in some things and not others, and that’s why people specialize. In societies where people do not specialize, what do you do when there is someone who cannot do something essential for the tribe? What if someone is good at gathering but not good at hunting? Many people I know believe that that is one of civilization’s benefits, that we can do many more things than we want to rather than just hunt and gather or be horticultural. The limitations of horticulture are stifling, according to them, and agriculture allows people with the freedom that complexity offers–to be urban or rural.
Correction. I am aware that specialization requires a level of surplus by food producers (agriculture or exceptional foraging like the Kwakiutl). I also must retract what I meant about the dilemma with societies that do not specialize but have people that do not know things that are important to the tribal society. I just do not understand why it is bad. I am interested, though, in how tribal societies deal with people who have problems doing some of the things necessary for a society–intelligence is not created equal.
Comment by Taylor — 18 September 2006 @ 10:56 PM
…since they do not have the energy to allow for specialization. I’m not arguing this here either.
Comment by Taylor — 18 September 2006 @ 10:58 PM
I haven’t seen all of Jensen’s older work, but as of Endgame, he is not making the argument that civilization can continue indefinitely if not toppled.
Comment by scruff — 19 September 2006 @ 1:47 AM
Ok, ignore my last comment. Having now read the pop occulture thread, I can see that the representation you’re giving is particular to your precise definition of collapse.
Comment by scruff — 19 September 2006 @ 6:18 AM
Taylor, stop. Chill. Take a deep breath and count to ten. Please, please research and try some meditation techniques.
I’m only going to respond to one statement:
[quote]But people need to try their best to separate their emotional beliefs with their research on the facts. [/quote]
You’ve read the 30 theses, you’ve been over the site. I know you have criticisms, and that’s not at all a bad thing. With respect to the fact that we all color our views with our emotions to some extent, I do hope that you can at least see that Jason has gone very far out of his way to keep emotional judgements (if not responses) about civilization to a minimum and that he backs up his opinions with facts. As we are all aware, facts can be misconstrued and misinterpreted, this is one way we get different opinions. But that does not mean that Jason is “rigging” his conclusions to suit his personal preference as you imply here.
With regard to much of the comments you’ve posted on this thread, I suggest you print out the 30 and some of the more pertinent articles and spend some time aranging them in front of you, make notes with sticky’s and make notes in margins. After few hours, I think you’ll find all of Jason’s likely responses to your above comments. I’m not saying you’ll agree with those responses!
But that’s okay…
Comment by jhereg — 19 September 2006 @ 9:06 AM
But that does not mean that Jason is “rigging” his conclusions to suit his personal preference as you imply here.
I am not saying that Jason is. But I am saying that I do not understand why primitivists try to impose their emotions on other people. They paint a world where people are miserable in civilization, but I have yet to see that proven. I have yet to find people who are miserable in civilization that I actually know, except for the primitivists themselves making that claim. So the reality I see painted by primitivism is not the reality I experience.
I understand Jason has tried to find facts to back up his opinions. I have to. Yet I am confused because the facts I have found do not always support Jason’s claims.
Comment by Taylor — 19 September 2006 @ 9:18 AM
I also speak up because I am confused when I see objectionable facts not mentioned here by Jason, and wonder if Jason has considered them when doing his research. Jason is often very cut-and-dry about certain things, and then I see objectionable examples that break the “cut-and-dry” rules that Jason talks about. This is likely semantics–to Jason, a rule can still be a rule even with its exceptions. But I believe that if an exception is found to a rule, it is unfair to call it a rule, but a tendency, and that exceptions disprove more specific rules but prove larger rules.
Comment by Taylor — 19 September 2006 @ 9:25 AM
Example: Jason says one thing. Someone else says something that contradicts Jason and has backing for his claim. This confuses me, since I don’t see a rebutal by Jason, and I wonder who is right. So I ask Jason, and then I just find more and more rebutals on other sites that confuse me even more. So that’s why I get like this. I ask myself: Since Jason has not written a rebutal, how can he explain why that other claim is false if his claim is contradictory? Otherwise, I could consider that person right.
Comment by Taylor — 19 September 2006 @ 9:31 AM
I recomended this article to a freind, so I don’t have a basic problem with it, hink it’s a great refresher,but I think you misrepresent Zerzan and Jenkins position.
I think collapse is inevitible, but how much correction for error are you giving here? Plus or minus what? A hundred years?
Are you going to live to be a 120? For us mortals, I think its worthwhile to think about how to dismantle civilization quicker. I think things can get a lot worse, Nuclear war, to say the least. Most likely the Tar sands will get mined and the shale then that will run out.
We could turn to nuclear power and have all those kinds of problems, their could be nuclear wars over the last remaining resources. I mean, sure ,civilization will collapse after a Nuclear winter. Wouldn’t it be better to try to bring it about sooner?
Comment by Ted Heistman — 19 September 2006 @ 9:55 AM
Taylor,
Do you object to diversity of thought ? How are a bunch of anarchists glong to all agree on everything?
Comment by Ted Heistman — 19 September 2006 @ 9:58 AM
Quinn:
Wanted: some one interested in saving the world (all the people)
We need a civlization that can fly!
Jenkins:
“Let’s bring down civilization and bring back the salmon! Screw people I want wild salmon!”
Zerzan:
Math is evil. Art is evil. Pygmies can see the moons of saturn with an unaided eye.
( still like him though)
Comment by Ted Heistman — 19 September 2006 @ 10:04 AM
For some data showing that the health of early agriculturalists dropped significantly from their H/G forbears…
Health & Diet Impacts (Native Californians):
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:CSGN4EwP3jUJ:www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/walker/publications/PLW%25202002%2520WH%2520California+health+decline+of+early+agriculturalists&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4
Shift from Hunting/Gathering to Agriculture:
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:4LMGzy4SOm0J:monkey.sbs.ohio-state.edu/bioarch/PDF/Animal%2520Source%2520Foods%2520and%2520Human%2520Health%2520during%2520Evolution.pdf+health+decline+of+early+agriculturalists&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=10
I think that this alone is reason to suggest that since civilization is tied to agriculture and agriculture is tied to poor health that civilization is harmful to humanity. Perhaps not proof, but certainly it’s at least a reasonable conclusion.
[quote]I am not saying that Jason is. But I am saying that I do not understand why primitivists try to impose their emotions on other people.[/quote]
I’m sorry, but it very much seems as if you just [b]did[/b] say that…
[quote]I also speak up because I am confused when I see objectionable facts not mentioned here by Jason, and wonder if Jason has considered them when doing his research. Jason is often very cut-and-dry about certain things, and then I see objectionable examples that break the “cut-and-dry” rules that Jason talks about. [/quote]
Yes, Jason is very often quite “cut-and-dry”, which I agree often leads to confusion to readers who are not extremely familiar with the bulk of the work. If you look, you’ll find the acknowledgements of the exceptions. One of the reasons I suggested you start making print outs and thoroughly examine them.
[quote]This is likely semantics–to Jason, a rule can still be a rule even with its exceptions. But I believe that if an exception is found to a rule, it is unfair to call it a rule, but a tendency, and that exceptions disprove more specific rules but prove larger rules.
[/quote]
Well, you’re right it [b]is[/b] mostly semantics. But let’s look at the part that [b]isn’t[/b] semantics. Specifically, the implication that there is a larger rule (or rules) which the exceptions imply and/or prove. Do you have a larger rule in mind? Are Jason’s rules w/ exceptions truly devoid of the larger context? Which method provides a clearer view of what works and what doesn’t work in terms of both sustainability and human needs? Does an exception necessarily disprove a specific rule?
Now, I’m not actually looking for answers to these, I’m just trying to help you become comfortable with the material on this site (even if you don’t agree with it!).
Comment by jhereg — 19 September 2006 @ 10:51 AM
Taylor, you’ve never met even ONE person who’s miserable in civilization who is NOT a primitivist?
You’ve obviously never been (or had a friend who is) an administrative assistant.
(Sorry, I know I always derail the high intellect around here. Please carry on.)
Comment by neighbor — 19 September 2006 @ 11:43 AM
[quote]You’ve obviously never been (or had a friend who is) an administrative assistant.[/quote]
roflmao!!
classic!
Comment by jhereg — 19 September 2006 @ 11:58 AM
Taylor, I know plenty of non-primativisits (at least they are not yet) who are made miserable by civilization, although they may not realize it. Just think of the masses and masses of people on anti-depressants. Are they all naturally “chemically imbalanced”? How did humanity get by before SSRIs?
Coming to terms with the horrible feelings civilization provides is not pleasant, not at all. I am reluctant to really urge anyone to do it, so dismal is the experience. Most people spend a great deal of energy to mask or suppress these realizations, or chalk it up to a youthful phase, “Wow, glad I got over that!”. Using distractions such as drugs, videogames, TV, and the endless treadmill of material questing (gadget lust)… this is all pretty obvious when you take a step back and look.
Not many people want to dwell on their misery. They may find it a personal shortcoming of some sort. They may be afraid to realize or admit that they are “crazy”. However, in a deep, honest conversation with nearly anyone of average intelligence, you will quickly find that nearly everybody feels crushed by society, their job, the obligations of bills and rent and mortgages and insurance, the IRS, law enforcement, politics, wars they may not support, and so on.
I know I feel it, I do feel like a slave forced to go to my job in order to pay fees or risk homelessness/imprisonment. I resent civilization every morning when I notice the fresh, cool air and the birds chirping, and I must trudge into my airless office so that I won’t be evicted from the tiny scrap of land I am graciously allowed to occupy by my landlord.
It is Jason’s blunt and lucid addressing of this situation that has attracted me to study primitivism; it honestly had not ever occured to me as a viable answer to the ills of civilization. So, Taylor, perhaps you need to meet a broader spectrum of people. There are many, many full participants of civilization who are made miserable by its “gifts”. The levels of awareness span from none to full, but I suggest if you wish to denounce these observations, you tally the number of people you know who are -truly- happy. Chances are they have escaped the system to some degree. They are likely to be poor artists, craftspeople living very simply in order to do their calling, downshifters or “dropouts”, outlaws, or somehow independantly wealthy and able to indluge their creative and intellectual passions unrestrained.
Comment by mantid — 19 September 2006 @ 1:19 PM
Yes. Most people want to live their lives in civilization. No one wants to see it in collapse.
That’s because despite the softening of what collapse is by primitivists–I do not see it as freedom. If Godesky’s predictions are right, it is the end of everything I know–universities, colleges, cities, suburbs, my suburban community. There’s no way a college or university could survive collapse, colleges cannot be supported by horticulture or foraging, for example.
Everything I have known my whole life–my entire community, my local school and my local museums, will perish. Who would want that? All of my loved ones, my friends, will die. My life will come to an end. My life’s goals will be done with. I will never be the person I wanted to be because my society must collapse and come to and end. I wanted to be a teacher’s aide in a school for a child with special needs. I’ve been presenting about autism around the country. Collapse shatters this dream as it shatters the lives of billions of people.
Contrary to what Jason says, St. Jerome’s message is no hyperbole. The whole world did not die, but the lives of millions of Romans were shattered. I’m suprised where you concluded that there was continuity during the Dark Ages of Rome–especially since 90% of the Western Roman population perished. I don’t know how anyone could call that continuity.
Obviously, if it cannot be supported or is not sustainable, I will have to make peace with that. What angers me about primitivism is not the arguments that cities, suburbs, farming, or small towns are inherently unsustainable, but the inability to accept diversity of thoughts on those things. Unless I am mistaken, primitivists can only see these things as miserable things that should die, and forget that despite the misery other people feel, no one would want to see this come crashing down. That is what angers me about primitivism.
I can accept that some people are miserable. But I disagree with an absolute world painted by primitivism. I disagree with the absolute claim of foragers having a far superior life, and I do not think that listening to foragers argue that is sufficient evidence for that claim. I think that that is subjective to each person. Collapse will increase the quality of life to people who loathe civilization, but you cannot deny that it will decrease the quality of life to many others. It is reasons like this that make me disgusted by primitivism.
I also think the primitivist argument that small-scale societies are the only way human needs can be provided is a false absolute. My human needs are provided just fine now in civilization; I have an identity, and will be graduating high school with a career plan. My human needs are being provided just fine.
I disagree that there is no baby to civilization. I think you have oversimplified the matter when you argue that civilization will not mean the end of art, music, and knowledge. I do agree this in an absolute sense, since they do appear in those societies, but I would argue that the reason why people complain is because in civilization, there is so much more variety in everything. Art is so much more complex and diverse, with cinema, comic strips, and different types of art. There is jazz, blues, zydeco, classical, reggae, rap, country, etc., and in a tribe there are very few types of music. I think that you mislead people when you argue that foraging and horticulture allow for more diversity–when you fail to realize that because our culture is quite complex, it is very diverse, and allows for a lot of diverse livelihoods and human occupations!
I don’t have to just garden or hunt, I can be so many different things in civilization in a large-scale society. I could not be this in a pre-civ society. Civ is not “nasty, brutish, and short” to me. I can be a specialist, and whether or not this is sustainable is another issue, I cannot see why it is bad–it enables people to show their talents. That’s not wage slavery at all–and most people I know do not see themselves as slaves. I would feel stifled in a smaller society–and that’s why I choose to die.
In reality, I just don’t know what to believe anymore. Godesky says “x.” Greer says “y.” Heinberg says “z.” Zerzan says “a.” All seem convincing to me. I just believe that I must remain agnostic. Come what may–because I won’t be around to see any of these things unless Holmgren happens to be right and suburbia can be supported by permaculture. That’s not an argument proving Holmgren, it’s just a logical statement.
Comment by Taylor — 19 September 2006 @ 1:26 PM
mantid, thank you for saying what I couldn’t in my disbelief…
I’d also like to consider the thought that perhaps there’s something to be said in Taylor’s observation and that is perhaps it’s true that the majority of those who really examine their discontent (and don’t flee from it in the myriad ways this society offers) recognize it for what it is and recognize that among the options for maintaining our humanity (or beauty, or however you choose to call it), is a turning away from ingrained civilization as much as possible - sometimes in the direction of primitivism. In that case it’s tautological if primitivism= any discontent with civ. and only people discontent with civilization are primitivists (as in Taylor’s assessment)…
(jhereg, I knew that would resonate with somebody)
Comment by neighbor — 19 September 2006 @ 2:20 PM
wow. how’s that for a run-on. sorry.
Comment by neighbor — 19 September 2006 @ 2:30 PM
Mantid:
Yes, but I think that this works both ways: You can see your misery, but can you be open to the fact that many people enjoy what makes you miserable?
Also, regardless of what people might say, I have yet to find someone except for a primitivist who wants civilization to collapse, even if they are hung-up on the system.
There are many non-primitivists who predict collapse due to unsustainability. But what makes a person a primitivist is if they are looking forward to that collapse. It’s like the old “optimism-pessimism” debate often shown here. Jason believes that a quick collapse is optimistic while most people would call it pessimistic. This proves that those are terms that are useless in many ways–and are subjective to what you want. If you want civilization to go under, yes, anything showing it will go under faster is optimism. But if you don’t want to but can accept the facts (even though they are still hotly debated facts), then that will be pessimism. Optimism and pessimism I think are useless here on a factual basis; but they do prove people’s emotions on the topic.
However, what is so hard with accepting that some people might like being what you call a slave? What is so hard with acknowledging that? I accept that there are miserable people out there who are depressed. But I cannot accept that either EVERYONE is miserable or EVERYONE is happy, and primitivism seems to argue that EVERYONE must be miserable in civilization.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I do not feel dehumanized in civilization. Most people I know are happy and healthy. They are well-fed and do not want to give up civilization. I have a dream and a career plan that is only possible in civilization. I have lived my life in a community that can only exist in civilization that is important to me. I love my community and my life. With civilization’s collapse, I will be denied this experience, and billions will lose their lives. This might be inevitable due to unsustainability and overshoot, but I think that the population arguments debunk any arguments romanticizing the quality of life for foragers, e