Radder Than Thou
by Jason GodeskyWe’ve occasionally been in touch with Kevin Tucker, so his comment in the 13 July 2006 Pittsburgh City Paper that he doesn’t “know any other primitivists in the Pittsburgh area” was a bit odd—though he may not consider the Tribe of Anthropik legitimately primitivist. After all, we don’t think technology is necessarily evil, and we have no problem with symbolic thought. Still, when it landed in the hands of one of my co-workers, he too was baffled, since “a Clusty search for ‘pittsburgh primitivism‘ produces all kinds of results for Anthropik.” The printed version included a photograph of Kevin with tattoos, piercings, and dirty blond dreadlocks going down his back. The same co-worker told me that he found my own take on the subject far more compelling, if for no other reason than I didn’t look like a “freak”—and as a result, the same ideas coming from me seemed to him eminently more reasonable.
This encounter, some months old as it is, has been forefront in my thoughts lately. In the previous feature, “The Subversive Spirit of Christmas,” we were graced with a comment from none less than the illustrious Mark Meritt, co-founder with Howard Ditkoff of Emergent Associates and author of “The Unsustainability and Origins of Socioeconomic Increase,” a masters’ thesis that explored the scientific underpinning of Ishmael and praised by Daniel Quinn himself. Mark and Howard are both good friends of the Tribe of Anthropik, to boot, so they’re always welcome here. But that made it all the more difficult when Mark posted this:
Worth noting, though, that on some level, we could have the same conversation about many high ideals held by civilized cultures. Daniel Quinn, in The Story of B, says directly that religions are the highest expressions of our culture, and he does so while suggesting that all of the “good things” that religions want us to do are that very highest expression. At first, I was confused by this—how could the highest expression of our culture be about things that are so hard to do/be in our culture? I later realized, that’s exactly the point. Civilization makes it hard to be lots of the good things that are our birthright, that come far more naturally to people in tribal circumstances. Those things then become what we idealize, and religion is the highest expression of those idealizations. Virtues are things to strive for, to struggle for, and if you don’t reach them, and especially if you don’t try, then you’re a failure as a person. It’s the old flawed being syndrome.
So, on some level, it seems to me that the point here isn’t so much that Christmas is subversive, not any moreso than any of the high ideals of civilized cultures/institutions are subversive. It’s really simply that Christmas is one of a gazillion features of our culture that jumble up the ills of civilization with the positive traits that are our birthright as humans, serving the whole mishmosh up to us dressed up in high ideals and a sort of longing about those high ideals never really being achievable yet without knowing why and without bothering to question why or to really make any attempt at all to separate the chaff from the wheat, the baby from the bathwater.
On one level, I agree with Mark completely on this, and yet the way he couches it—that it makes the subversive not subversive at all—is a sentiment I think is very dangerous.
In the Thirty Theses, we dissected those elements that make civilization what it is, and found that each and every one of them were inimical to human nature: a positive feedback loop of growing complexity and scale far beyond the human capcity to cope, the institution of hierarchy as a means of mitigating that, and the ensuing problems of injustice, poverty, warfare, epidemic disease, the “diseases of civilization,” and catastrophic mortality and overall loss of quality of life.
However, an important point which many readers seem to miss is that no pure civilization has ever existed—or ever could exist. Every civilization ultimately emerged out of a healthy culture; as such, every civilization has vestigial elements that remain. A pure civilization would be so deeply antithetical to human existence that it could not be tolerated. The “pressure valves” so often decried by primitivists as diversions are, all too often, the germs of healthy culture still left, where we find solace from the deeply dehumanizing system of civilization. Quinn was right that our religions are the highest expressions of our civilizations—precisely because they so often contain the longest memories of our pre-civilized heritage, where remnants of the long-gone healthy culture that pre-dated civilization may remain vital for the longest time. This can be seen in previous articles like “Betraying the Son of Man” about the historical Jesus, or in Carl Estrabrook’s “The Subversive Commandments.” In “Entering Merlin’s Domain,” I discussed Noel’s suggestion of Merlin as a shamanic role model for Europeans interested in reclaiming that heritage, without a shallow plundering of Native American culture, because there is still that faint memory in the stories of Merlin, of a healthy culture before Anglo-Saxon conquest, before even the Celts took up agriculture—faint, but there.
In “A Pirate’s Life for Me,” the release of the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie provided an excuse to discuss the TAZ, and the many ways in which pirate life reflected tribal life, less out of conscious emulation (though pirates were unique among Europeans in the New World for the tutelage they took from indigenous examples), than the simple fact that it worked. It remains one of the most popular articles we’ve ever written, drawing in people looking for pictures of Captain Jack Sparrow, and giving them the promise that the pirates’ life is not as distant or unachievable as they might have imagined after all.
The simple fact that tribal systems work, that they are so deeply ingrained in human nature, means that they crop up anew even in the most civilized of endeavors—which is precisely what we should expect. The most obvious example is the open source movement. Richard Stallman began the free software movement on principle: to develop software in a way that respected human freedom. Of course, such respect inevitably creates community, and when humans organize themselves, the patterns they naturally fall into are distinctly tribal, as one would expect. The “open source movment” branded a different name to shed the ethics of Stallman’s crusade, and sell it to companies as simply a better method of creating a product. It’s that, too, of course, and in the end analysis, open source has done more to advance tribalism than all the primitivists in the world combined, by proving that when you respect freedom, the communities that emerge are more powerful than any stale hierarchy one could ever erect. Open source warfare has caught the world’s military “hyperpower” in a quagmire in Iraq, blogging and wikis are threatening journalists and even intelligence. Rhizome is ascendant, not because it won a philosophical battle, but because it works.
Our article on the Wii was sometimes mistaken as shilling for the product—we merely found in it an excellent excuse to dispell the myth of Cartesian dualism. The Wii’s success is grounded in a fortunate, though in all likelihood completely accidental, perception that cut beyond the civilized myth of mind and body as seperate entities, to the animistic truth of a single being. This is infinitely more interesting than the release of a new video game console, but if a video game console can reveal that to a larger population, then that is a console that deserves our full support.
So the civilizing element in any civilization must always be balanced, to one degree or another, with some amount of humanity. Even today, remnants remain of the healthy culture that predated our adoption of agriculture. Indeed, English may even be somewhat better off than other European cultures in this regard—after all, while the French owe the majority of their culture to the ancient Romans, the Anglo-Saxons were still some of the only barbarians in Europe that fit the stereotype attached to that term—unlike the Visigoths, or Vandals, or most any other of the Germanic populations—even as recently as 1,500 years ago. What is more, when the civilizing element becomes too strong, civilization becomes unbearable, and if the culture survives, it does so by creating new elements that satisfy that basic human need for tribalism; it comes up with such systems not from theory or even memory, but simply because they work.
To be sure, disentangling the healthy elements from the civilized elements is a task fraught with peril, but it is nonetheless crucial for many reasons. We cannot hope to invent a new culture out of whole cloth; we must rehabilitate our own culture, and that means buckling down to the hard task of identifying what good is left in our own culture, and using that as the seed we start from to grow a new one.
Which brings me to the recent events that inspired this response. While the release of the Fifth World beta was met with largely positive response, we also recieved several hateful messages by email, some of which we were even forced to remove from the comments on the Fifth World weblog, because they were so thick with invective they never reached any actual statement to contribute. Others simply questioned our sincerity, as with Ted Heistman’s post, “Too Seriously or not Seriously Enough?” in which he wrote:
So that is what it comes down to? The fate of humanity is in the hands of a bunch of gamers? I am not a gamer, but if I were wouldn’t it be a little too good to be true, to think that I am not fucking off playing role playing games, but actually coming up with ways to save the world? Could I be sure which is actually going on? Which is more likely?
I responded in the comments with this:
Or perhaps we’ve just uncovered here one of those weeds of civilized thought that linger on in all our brains, that we’ll all be meticulously rooting out for the rest of our lives: in this case, the idea that if it isn’t “serious” then it can’t be effective—after all, in so many forager societies, it’s Trickster who is one of the most powerful gods. They know full well that jokes and games hold incredible power to shape us and our culture, and we ignore them at our own peril. It’s civilization that has such a hard time understanding Trickster’s ways, and demonizes him instead of trying to understand him.
What we face is deadly serious, the most serious thing our species has ever faced. And yes, much of the work is very serious—learning primitive skills, learning to think like an animist again, creating new tribes, reconciling our communities with their land bases again, so on and so forth. But it’s far too serious to only employ serious methods in its execution. The old world was created by Trickster, and I don’t think we can create the new one without him, either.
In “The Fifth World Manifesto,” we pointed to the tribal elements in role-playing games: the shamanic role of the game master, the synthesis of storytelling and gambling, and the creation of not just a band, but of a local mythology to go with it at the same time. Our forager ancestors were not playing role-playing games like ours; what we have is another example of a tribal pattern that emerges simply because it works. It is a seed of tribal relationship in the world of hierarchical domination, the release that makes it bearable.
Such releases are important parts of keeping the civilized element from destroying itself, but they also provide an enormous liability. Not only does the recognition of these elements provide the seed for a new, healthy culture that reaches beyond civilization, they also provide a way to start creating that culture right now—and the kind of “low barrier to entry” that provide the best hope for primitivism to reach the largest population it can.
It’s here that we come back around to the story of my co-worker and the Kevin Tucker article in the City Paper. I dress like my co-workers, I talk like them, I’m one of them. When I talk about the toll civilization takes on us, it’s coming from one of their own. I don’t tell anyone to reject everything they’ve ever known in one fell swoop; I mention how eating less bread will help them feel better, or how a permacultural approach will create a more vibrant garden with less work. It’s something they can do, right here and now, and see an immediate return on the benefits of a tribal system, even if they don’t consciously make that connection. It doesn’t matter; it’s a pattern of relationship that they’re learning.
One of the themes in the Fifth World is how many cultures emerge from unlikely communities—those who today might be some of primitivism’s most outspoken critics. They don’t cease to be critics, of course. They never embrace our understanding or worldview. They become tribal simply because it works. I’ve seen this in my own family: my parents still do not put much credence in the worldview I’ve articulated on this site, but that doesn’t much matter, since my mother knows more about gardening than I do, and even though she’s not sure about using the word, what she’s doing is clearly permaculture. At that point, all the theories and models in the world are moot.
By the same token, very few of the Fifth World cultures are descended from groups that actively prepared for collapse. There is a liability in the primitivist movement that far outweighs all the skill-learning and preparation one could ever amass in a lifetime: elitism and puritanism. It can be seen in some of the responses we recieved to the Fifth World, or the disdain for others who are not sufficiently radical. A recent IshCon thread provides an excellent example of this attitude, titled, “Al Gore is an Idiot.” An Inconvenient Truth signalled a massive turning point in the debate on global warming—we are now past the question of whether or not it’s happening, that left only to the most extreme and marginal embarrassments even to their own party, like James Imhofe. We have now moved on to whether or not humans are causing it, and what we’re going to do about it. Yet rather than embracing this as a major step forward, IshCon—a bastion of the most moderate Quinnian wing of the primitivist movement—is discussing how “useless” it is because it doesn’t go far enough.
When you demand everything all at once, what you get is nothing. If An Inconvenient Truth had included all that the critics at IshCon require, it would simply have been ignored entirely. The inconvenient truth is, it’s probably already too late—and it probably has been since the election of Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter in 1980, two years before I was even born. Even so, recognizing the situation is a critical first step before we can rein in the damage being done, and hopefully scale down the catastrophe as much as it can be scaled down so late in the game.
Is a movie going to save the world all on its own? No, but it can help. Is a role-playing game going to save the world all on its own? No, but it can help. Is a game console, or a movie about pirates, or open source software? No, but they’ll help. The attitude that any one thing can solve all the problems of civilization is ludicrous enough on its own; when it leads us to reject anything that helps because it doesn’t go far enough is simple insanity. It’s time to wake up—we need all the help we can get.
What good does it do us to delineate the lines that seperate us? It does us far more good to find the things we hold in common. We don’t need people to agree with us, after all; we just need them to relate to one another and to the world around them in a different way. They may embrace it simply because it works. That is sufficient; our foraging ancestors did no better. They were not “Noble Savages” who heralded ancient ecological wisdom out of their altruistic goodness; they simply had a way of life that worked, and enjoyed all the benefits that go with that.
Whether it’s in a holiday, or a religion, or a video game console, or a movie, the seeds of a healthy culture are all around us, the pressure valves that keep our civilization running. These are the points at which you can connect with the civilized people in your life, and find common ground. If you want to show them what you’ve found beyond civilization, terror-mongering warnings of “petro-apocalypse” will do little to persuade most people. You need to share a vision of hope with them; you need to find the things in life that make it all worth living, and ask them how they can have more of that. As Daniel Quinn pointed out, the world is not dying for human malevolence, but because civilized humans are so deeply needy for the things we truly, deeply need. The seeds of a healthy culture beyond civilization are lying all about us, for those willing to tease them out. Those are the points where you can show your family and friends and neighbors that everything good in their own life stands in defiance of civilization. All you have to do then is goad them on to sieze the good things in life, to settle for nothing less, and they will move—not because you’ve convinced them philosophically, but because it simply works—beyond civilization.
“They never embrace our understanding or worldview. They become tribal simply because it works. I’ve seen this in my own family: my parents still do not put much credence in the worldview I’ve articulated on this site, but that doesn’t much matter, since my mother knows more about gardening than I do, and even though she’s not sure about using the word, what she’s doing is clearly permaculture. At that point, all the theories and models in the world are moot.”
I can relate to this aswell.
This is one of my favourite posts so far Jason, I agree with nearly everything here. I can’t stand people who see our situation as some ideological battle.
This is the most “real” battle ever. It’s not about what makes sense, it’s about what works, and what has been proven to work time and time again. What’s more, what works also leads to happiness, bonding and the recovery of something that a lot of us have lost.
I’m excited
Comment by Dan — 2 January 2007 @ 12:42 PM
Yes, I think this does an excellent job of wrapping up the real purpose of Anthropik. Have you thought about adding it to the Essential Writings?
Comment by jhereg — 2 January 2007 @ 12:49 PM
I’m honored that you gave my comment so much thought. In the end, I think we are revealed to be on the very same page. I’m with everything you wrote here. Fundamentally, we agree that there can’t help but be workable elements in the lives of all people and societies, because without them, we’d have perished long ago, and the key to positive change is to identify and build on those. This is the basic frame of the New Mind, and it works.
Let me, then, refine what I said before. For those who actually find those workable bits in Christmas — or in any of civilization’s mishmoshes — and build on them, yes that’s absolutely subversive. It’s subversive if you actually do something about it. For those who give lip service to the workable bits with songs and homilies about how nice it would be for every day to be like Christmas or for every person to be virtuous in whatever way while living ones life so as to simply accept and perpetuate the mishmosh, there is no subversion, only status quo. It’s not enough to point out the workable bits. One must know how to build on them, and then one must start building.
It seems to me that we agree down the line on this one and that it was perhaps only careless phrasing on my part that suggested otherwise. At least, I hope this is the case. Either way, it’s dialogue like that that helps people find the common ground, the workable bits, so here’’s to it.
Comment by Mark S. Meritt — 2 January 2007 @ 12:56 PM
Hey –
Excellent, J — this really pulls a lot of your threads together into a coherant… rhizome, if you will
Hi Mark! How ya been?
Janene
Comment by janene — 2 January 2007 @ 1:18 PM
[quote]In “Entering Merlin’s Domain,” I discussed Noel’s suggestion of Merlin as a shamanic role model for Europeans interested in reclaiming that heritage, without a shallow plundering of Native American culture, because there is still that faint memory in the stories of Merlin, of a healthy culture before Anglo-Saxon conquest, before even the Celts took up agriculture—faint, but there.[/quote]
I don’t think I really commented on this when you originally posted it, but I would like to share a bit of my own efforts at drawing from my ’spirit of heritage’ (as opposed to my ’spirit of place’).
My family tree is almost entirely German, so after I bottomed out on organized religion & I had decided to do what amounts to poking my nose around and trying to put together whatever shards I could find, it seemed reasonable to start with the old germanic gods.
I was very surprised to find guidance, support and power there, but that’s very much what I found. I wasn’t part of anything organized (not Asatruar, RoT, yada yada), just learning more or less directly from the Aesir & Vanir. In the (several) years since, I’ll admit I’ve had some severe disagreements with them (to the point that my relationship was severed with a number of Aesir), but even so, I’ve gained quite a lot from that exploration, and I consider it to have been of major import to getting where I am now.
I say this for two reasons:
1) It’s a great idea to draw from your personal heritage.
2) Always proceed with your eyes wide open.
Ah, well, anyway, that’s my 2 cents on an otherwise tangential subject.
Comment by jhereg — 2 January 2007 @ 1:44 PM
One of my favorite Anthropik posts ever, Jason! Thanks for writing this!
Comment by MatthewJ — 2 January 2007 @ 2:32 PM
Hmmm…
Jhereg, if you had said your heritage was largely eastern european, I would have freaked…
one less mystery to ponder
Janene
Comment by janene — 2 January 2007 @ 3:20 PM
Thanks, everyone.
Mark, I definitely think we’re on the same page. My first read of your comment reminded me of some of the more Derridan topics that came up in some of my anthropology classes; for instance, that rebellion legitimates the ruling power by the very fact that you’re rebelling against it. I think it’s very important to note these seeds and recognize them for what they are, because I think these are the main leverage points we have to expose the essential contradictions of civilization, and let it destroy itself. But you’re quite right—if we use them as nothing more than an excuse to keep going on our merry way, then we’ve utterly neglected to tap into their subversive potential.
There’s a war on, after all. It’s a war for hearts and minds; a war of memes. At stake is nothing less than the survival of the human race, and even more as our mass extinction unravels the living communities all around us.
I see this website as an arms supplier in that war. We’re trying to do all a website can: we’re keeping our side well-armed in the latest weapons of mass argumentation. So yes, exposing where those leverage points are is one of the main problems we focus on, and you can expect us to do more of that in the future.
Jhereg,
I’ve always been turned off by the organized groups, like Asatru, but I love Norse mythology all the same. Woden is as shamanic a god as one could ask for. In fact, the Fifth World’s archetypes of shaman, scout and brave are neatly embodied in Norse mythology’s “Big Three”: Odin, Loki and Thor.
Of course, the neo-Nazi interest in Norse mythology maligns a noble tradition, so that today you always have to keep an eye out to see what kind of company you’re keeping, and if you’re not mistaking as genuine some piece of white supremacist garbage. I’ve been several paragraphs into pages at times before I looked up and noticed that it was on stormfront.org. So yes, it’s a rich tradition that deserves attention, but to quote the clan motto of my Drummond ancestors, gang warily.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 2 January 2007 @ 3:35 PM
[quote]Of course, the neo-Nazi interest in Norse mythology maligns a noble tradition, so that today you always have to keep an eye out to see what kind of company you’re keeping, and if you’re not mistaking as genuine some piece of white supremacist garbage. I’ve been several paragraphs into pages at times before I looked up and noticed that it was on stormfront.org. So yes, it’s a rich tradition that deserves attention, but to quote the clan motto of my Drummond ancestors, gang warily.
[/quote]
Absolutely. In some ways, I was fortunate to head into that particular tradition [b]because[/b] of the Nazi associations (rather than in spite of them) simply because it did help me keep my eyes open. That, in fact, was half the reason I put that up at all.
More and more, I’m realizing that we don’t have any options in this. We simply have to walk some fairly perilous roads through our heritage, our history, our culture, our entire psyche. I’m convinced that it has to be done, and equally convinced that it’s dangerous as all hell. I want to encourage people, but I don’t want to send them walking blindly.
Also, I’m not trying pushing that particular tradition on anyone, I hold it up as my heritage and encourage others to find theirs.
Comment by jhereg — 2 January 2007 @ 3:45 PM
This is very, very true. The Norse example and the Nazi influence is only the most stark; all of our traditions have been ripped through civilization, and that makes all of them dangerous.
Hear, hear.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 2 January 2007 @ 3:59 PM
Your statement regarding the “all or nothing” mentality brings to mind the incessant nay-saying by those who prefer to go nuclear or continue suckling at the petroleum teat rather than move to alternatives. Since no alternative energy source can replace petroleum, they are all, by the nay-sayer’s definition, useless technology and not worth pursuing. This is is analogous to a man bound at the stake heaving a sigh of relief when the tiger leaves the area and and rejoices when all that is left is an anthill.
Comment by Frank Black — 2 January 2007 @ 6:39 PM
Given the long-lasting costs of nuclear power, I can hardly share your enthusiasm. Nuclear power won’t supply more than perhaps a decade more of civilization, all told, but its costs will haunt us for millennia to come. As bad as an oil crash could be, they are tame compared to the costs of nuclear power.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 2 January 2007 @ 6:49 PM
Hi all… Jason, I have just posted you in my blog… thanks for the inspiration and the great stuff you have. I have also posted the guideline of some conferences.. I think you have already pass throught this themes but it will be a honor to have your visit and comments. http://www.sincroniaconciencia.blogspot.com
bye
Comment by Mario A. Grajales — 2 January 2007 @ 7:05 PM
[quote]Hmmm…
Jhereg, if you had said your heritage was largely eastern european, I would have freaked…
one less mystery to ponder
[/quote]
Janene,
To the best of my knowledge, my ancestry is on the order of 90% german peasant farmer. I know I have a smattering from the rest of northern europe, and there is the faintest hint of possible ties to eastern europe, but nothing conclusive.
I assume you’re referring to my registerd name? I’m a great fan of Stephen Brusts (esp “The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars”), but it stops there.
Comment by jhereg — 2 January 2007 @ 9:22 PM
Escape valves could also serve as escape routes!
Comment by Cable — 3 January 2007 @ 12:31 AM
Hey Jason,
This is a great article. I totally agree with you on games being important to the transition. Look at it this way, children have to “play house” before they can actually mature and run a household. What you are doing with the Fifth World is getting people to “play apocalypse” so that they can actually do it when the time comes. Am I right? Well it’s brilliant. Plus, it allows us to psychologically be there now, which can help lift the weight of emotional grief we suffer at our day jobs.
I was a little hurt by your reference to my thread, “Al Gore is an idiot.” I am not a purist. Like you I look at what works. I just have a very different perspective of the motivations and results of films/media like that which took that discussion on ishcon for me to be able to articulate, which I then did not post. My critique of that film is no different than your critique of Tom Elpels book. You wrote,
“…his vision of sustainability is not the least bit sustainable…he pushes for ecologically-friendly home relying on solar power and other “green” technologies. All of them rely on an industrial economy, which itself relies on increasing complexity and fossil fuels.”
Wasn’t I saying the same thing about Al Gores movie? Insert “cars” for home, and “energy efficient lightbulbs” for solar power.
You also wrote above:
“The inconvenient truth is, it’s probably already too late—and it probably has been since the election of Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter in 1980, two years before I was even born.”
That was another reason I found the film dispariging. Because it’s too late, and the solutions are too little. Does that mean it’s terrible? No. But it does mean that Al Gore is an idiot.
Comment by Urban Scout — 3 January 2007 @ 2:39 AM
Interesting post (as usual) Jason.
I’m glad you’re keeping a wary eye out for neo-nazi traps - the combination of primitivism and norse mythology doesn’t have a happy history (I came across this recently and its an interesting read - http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/germany/sp001630/peter.html).
On the “jhereg” moniker, I always thought that was a Hungarian name for vulture (though I came across the name in Brust’s books when I was a kid and maybe got it completely wrong).
Comment by Big Gav — 3 January 2007 @ 5:52 AM
[quote]On the “jhereg” moniker, I always thought that was a Hungarian name for vulture (though I came across the name in Brust’s books when I was a kid and maybe got it completely wrong). [/quote]
I know next to nothing about Hungarian, so I’m not qualified to say that it does or doesn’t mean vulture. I do know that in Brust’s novels jhereg are flying scavengers not that different (in terms of ecological niche) from vultures. I’m comfortable with the comparison.
Comment by jhereg — 3 January 2007 @ 9:48 AM
Well, you seemed to be offering the idea that An Inconvenient Truth had no value simply because it didn’t go all the way. Of course, how could it? Even as far as it went was a surprise to me. Maybe Gore has all the ulterior motives you suggest (or perhaps that would just be putting his money where his mouth is). Like Elpel’s eco-home, it’s better than nothing. In response to Elpel, though, I was challenging complacency; not that his approach did no good at all, but that it can’t be the end point, which is what he was arguing. It’s important to celebrate the small victories along the way (and that’s where I took issue with your judgment on Gore’s movie), but it’s also important to not become complacent, and keep moving forward all the time, in any way we can (and that’s where I took issue with Elpel’s conclusions).
I disagree. Gore won a big victory for us, probably the biggest victory yet when it comes to global warming. We’re now past the petty bickering over whether or not it’s going on. That still leaves a lot to do: like the argument that it’s just a natural cycle and we have nothing to do with it, and the notion that such an idea means we shouldn’t do anything to stop it. It didn’t end the war by any means, but it was a major victory, nonetheless. His “solutions” don’t go nearly far enough, but they at least get people thinking about their impact on the world they depend on to survive. So, Gore accomplished about as much with a movie as you could ever ask a movie to accomplish, and frankly, that’s more than all of your efforts and mine put together as of this moment.
Giuli’s only recently started to see some of the company we keep in the space marked as “primitivism,” and she’s not exactly impressed. Originally in response to some of Ted Heistman’s recent writings on “race,” and now more to the general history and a disturbing trend in primitivism, she’s working on a full article about primitivism’s unsavory relationship with Nazism. I actually saw your link to that article a few hours before you posted and emailed it to her for research material.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 3 January 2007 @ 11:06 AM
At some point the problems caused by the Black Plague gave rise to new technology that kept civilization going. Was that a turning point for the vision? No. At some point the social threat of Nuclear War gave rise to agreements between countries so that Civilization could keep going. Was that a turning point for the vision? No. Just like every other global or large scale problem Civilization has caused or seen, Global Warming is viewed as another one of those. Will it be a turning point for the vision? I don’t think so, but maybe I am wrong. Maybe Al Gores movie is a step towards vision change. Maybe all of his solutions look ridiculus to viewers after seeing what is happening. I don’t know what the long term effects will be, but does anyone? What I do know is the history of global crisis that Civilization has faced, and how it has responded; by inventing new technology. Maybe this is different, I don’t see how yet. All I was saying is that I think this film is the voice of mother culture, addressing the problems that she has caused and telling people that she can fix them if only they keep trusting her, and buying into the system. Will it change some peoples minds? I know several people who have been changed, so yes. Is it a step towards a leaver vision? I don’t think so. To me it looks like Civilizations mythology trying to cover it’s own ass now that people are not clueless to the environmental change. Is it wrong to create a dialogue about this? If my emotive response was not to celebrate but to question… That makes me a purist? Is asking questions a bad thing? Is my gut reaction not worth a discussion? Should we accept anything that has the environmentalist stamp of approval at face value?
p.s. “Al Gore is an Idiot” is a silly way of creating contraversy. I like to be silly. Perhaps we don’t share the same sense of humor.
p.p.s. I’m also not sure about “green” technology being somehow better because it’s “cleaner.” The longer civilization exists, the more loss of biomass… “Green” technology is designed to make civilization last even longer, which I believe is worse for the planet than if it were to kill itself quickly. Again, I could be wrong… but if no one asks these questions or creates a discussion for them, then there is no way to know.
Comment by Urban Scout — 3 January 2007 @ 4:04 PM
Of course it’s the voice of “Mother Culture,” no disagreement there. I think it’s excellent if you take An Inconvenient Truth as a starting point to go deeper, into something that really does speak to a “Leaver” mindset. I’d like to think that’s what I’ve done in the various “pop culture” articles I’ve written over the past year, linked above—use the Wii or Pirates of the Caribbean, etc., to launch a deeper discussion. That’s very laudable. That’s also what I was writing against in the Elpel article—a step forward is a step forward, and “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” but unless you also take the second and third steps, you haven’t accomplished much. So absolutely, build off of such opportunities, and use them to launch into something deeper. Complacency is deadly.
But I don’t think you can really do that by calling your thread, “Al Gore is an idiot.” I think you first need to acknowledge that your starting point did something good, if only in providing that starting point to launch off from. I called your thread an example of purism because it didn’t seem, to me, to be using the movie as a starting point and going further. It seemed like it was more about how bad it was because it didn’t go far enough. That’s precisely the kind of purism that’s holding us back. Maybe that wasn’t you intention, but that’s what I saw in the thread, and why I didn’t take part in it.
p.s. - It may well be. While I’m accused of never taking anything seriously in meatspace, for some reason the medium of a keyboard strips me of all humor.
p.p.s. - I share your ambivalence, but to give voice to my other mind on this matter, does that mean that it would be good to make everything as destructive as possible? It might be more accurate to say that civilization crashes when a certain threshold of biomass is wiped out, regardless of how quickly it is reached. In that case, approaching that threshold more slowly might provide greater chance of a slower, more gradual “powerdown,” which would allow civilization to die out, without necessarily facing die-off, and population leveling off simply through declining birth rates.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 3 January 2007 @ 4:37 PM
“But I don’t think you can really do that by calling your thread, ‘Al Gore is an idiot.’”
Haha. You’re probably right about that.
“…think you first need to acknowledge that your starting point did something good, if only in providing that starting point to launch off from.”
I see what you are saying and now I see why you thought it was coming from a puritin approach. I wasn’t really thinking about how to use it as a platform. I was trying to de-code the mythology behind it. I definately think it can be used as a platform. But I went to see it, and was so sorely dissapointed, “This is what the buzz is about?” I was under the impression is was ten steps forward, not the same old story. To regular old Takers, this movie was nothing but the same story with a new twist. In the hands of “changed minds” this movie can be a great way to freak people out and get them to open up to new ideas. That is, if you’re trying or wanting to change minds. I am no longer trying or making an effort to do that. If it happens, it’s a by-product of the other stuff that I am doing. So I wasn’t looking at an Inconvenient Truth as a tool I could use to spark conversations. I was looking at what it was doing to the masses of Takers who were consuming it, and how they might take it in. My value of the film is not the fact that it can be used as a tool by those in the know to wake a small number of people up, but the masses of people who it has put back to sleep: GLOBAL WARMING: don’t be alarmed, buy a hybrid. But I can see the value in the small amount of people it has the power to change. I was under the impression that this movie was going to change the masses, not give them more false hopes. But you are right when you say, “It’s important to celebrate the small victories along the way.” And while most people were celebrating the small victory, I was examining the big that came with it… Someone has to remind people that this isn’t the “end of the war.” It’s like… Don’t get hopeful because it will make it all the more painful when the whole thing collapses. I wasn’t saying this movie “didn’t go far enough,” I was saying, “don’t let it get your hopes up.” This movie was all about false hope. “We’ve got to save the frog from the boiling water.” The frog is dead, Al. The frog is dead.
Comment by Urban Scout — 3 January 2007 @ 5:45 PM
I guess I’m more pessimistic.
The great masses out there weren’t sure global warming was even real. An Inconvenient Truth offered some “solutions,” but more importantly, it convinced them that there is an actual problem. That’s a big step forward. It’s not ten steps forward as you said, but it’s at least two, maybe even three. You’re right, this is no time to sit on our laurels, and it’s something we can use to try to reach people. Of course, you know me, I’m IshCon’s resident materialist—changed minds come from changed lives, in the end, and if you try to be an animist working the 9-to-5 gig, you’ll go crazy. But this might help to start move people in the direction of living a different way, and the new mindset that goes with that.
All in all, though, it sounds like we’re basically on the same page here.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 3 January 2007 @ 5:53 PM
“changed minds come from changed lives”
Agreed.
“All in all, though, it sounds like we’re basically on the same page here.”
Yay!
Now, maybe next time before you lambast one of *my* threads (make fun of ishcon all you want, I sure do!), you can ask me for clarification first… or not.
Comment by Urban Scout — 3 January 2007 @ 7:43 PM
“I think it’s excellent if you take An Inconvenient Truth as a starting point to go deeper, into something that really does speak to a “Leaver” mindset.”
Definately. My social discontent took form and my writing started after reading Stupid White Men by Michael Moore
I think writers who can start people off like that, in an entertaining and engaging way are great and essential.
Comment by Dan — 3 January 2007 @ 9:11 PM
“Those other primitivists are elitist and puritan. This isn’t very radical because it doesn’t get to the heart of the issues at hand. Here’s why we’re better and more radical.”
This isn’t necessarily my perspective of what you wrote, but it’s certainly one possible interpretation. Can’t escape it, can we?
This reminds me of your comments on ethnocentrism and racism:
Dan Bartlett followed up:
All humans are self-centered. We love ourselves more than we love others. And why shouldn’t we? We’re us goddammit! People who are arrogant and grandiose are suffering from the breakdown of self-love, not an overdose. Narcissistic people posture and preen because they’re tragically insecure, not because they’re legitimately secure in themselves.
This makes me question what you’ve written here, and myself as well. Why don’t you just ignore these other people you’re referencing as examples? Why does it matter if you point out that they’re being elitist and puritan? Does Kevin Tucker or Scout or anyone else’s (mine?) so-perceived “elitism” really have anything to do with you? Wouldn’t the logical conclusion of your own self-confidence be solidarity with yourself and not lengthy posts critiquing others while justifying yourself?
As you yourself advocate, where is the common ground seeking? You and I could both go back through history and dreg up interminable examples of our hypocrisy — but why? Let’s move on, shall we?
What do we have in common? What do I want more of? What makes me come alive? These are the questions that I’m doing my best to stay focused on. Everything else is secondary.
- Devin
Comment by Devin — 4 January 2007 @ 12:37 AM
the best is that you type all this bullshit and say elsewhere, “learning the skills are easy” … also suggesting permaculture but never do any of it cause youre too busy talking about Wii and designing a stupid role playing game where you think some Dungeon Shaman controls mediation between whats sacred/myth. Boring. if you want a real relationship with the “natural” world, “skills” would be a much more immediate, direct and practical way of learning how to “THINK LIKE AN ANIMIST” since skills dont need fantastic representations. this website is just self-serving as usual. go live your life. you dont have to tell everyone about how you want nintendo Wii to “subvert” Cartesian philosophy. no one gives a shit except people who want to play it and need to justify it through their politics. why even bring up Tucker’s image? because you people are scared of it? what do you think of real hunter-gatherers image? and how scared would your work buddies be of them? toss a fucking spider-man shirt on them and 70 pounds of fat and i guess it makes them “one of you.” fuck that shit. lose some weight and go outside instead of typing all fucking day.
Comment by Doctor Awesome — 4 January 2007 @ 1:11 AM
Jason,
I used to read your blogs regularly, i think your 30 theses are a good re-articulation of things other people have been exploring over the last 20 years in antiauthoritarian milieus, they are a useful tool and ive referred friends to them. Unfortunately i find it harder and harder to take anything on this site seriously. Ive never posted any comments before, but this essay feels like an airing of grievances so i will air mine.
You seem to confuse and conflate Primitivism with Anarcho-Primitivism. I am not one to get bent on semantics, but there are important distinctions that need to be drawn. Primitivism or any kind of critique of civilizations ultimately has a critique of the power structure that forces the labor required to build and feed cities. Anarchists however aim to challenge those existing power structures in every area and moment of life. This is because for every moment these power structures exist there are lives denied, ruined, used, and destroyed.
Your essay “On Violence” highlights your confusion in this area. While you may feel well versed in the themes of various writers, your own writing betrays your lack of desire to physically challenge the structures of power as they exist today. Im not referring to killing individual people or pitched battles, no one is. Jensen says violence against people is necessary for self defense, but if you have read any issue of Green Anarchy magazine at least for the past several years, any writing about effective direct action has been focused primarily on the infrastructure (ala global guerillas) and physically living (and eating) “off the grid.”
You blame those who would openly challenge the technological juggernauts advance, you blame those who would challenge the state’s ability to enforce its laws -an ability rooted in violence, but worst of all you blame -IN ADVANCE- those who would do anything that might bring down the wrath of the state on such well-behaved “primitivists” like yourself who prefer to sit at their programming jobs patiently waiting for “the collapse” to deprive everyone of the comforts you enjoy.
Your response to the omnicidal condition of the present appears only to be a monumental waste of energy in the form of a role-playing game. You claim to comprehend the critiques of ritual and the debasing of experience by symbolic culture. Why role play as foragers when you could be out doing real thing? I understand the need for discussion and education and exploring ideas, but again, you seem to conflate a critique with a physical reality. Your emphasis on symbolic diversions is indicative of the way specialists and archons throughout history have used ritual behavior to distance people from their lived reality, a practice that conceals more than it reveals. Nevertheless, if i am lucky enough to find myself with an afternoon to kill with some friends, you can rest assured we will not be spending it inside rolling dice.
In reference to a reply of yours at the top, the Derridan (and post-modern) acquiescence to power has been addressed by more than enough radical writers, i suggest you find one and read it. This is not just a war of ideas, there used to be fish in the ocean, now there aren’t. You are well aware of the stakes, why attack those who at least propose to try to effectively stop the world-devouring technological complex? Especially if you want your own projects to be taken seriously. A critique is nothing without a real refusal. For all the generally good and thorough writings of Anthropik, I am waiting for something real to manifest itself in the form of a challenge to civilized habitation. Until then, i fear it will remain a site for liberals with “deep critiques” and limited responses.
-Chuck P
Comment by Chuck P — 4 January 2007 @ 3:06 AM
Ever since reading Daniel Quinn’s books I was hoping others would start writing fiction with his philosophies at their heart instead of the same old civilization propaganda. When I discovered 5th world through Ran’s site I was overjoyed. It definitely provides a positive vision of a post-peak future that is far more practical than even a movie like “An Inconvenient Truth” which gives a good message but no vision. Keep up the good work and I look forward to Guilianna’s book on the 5th being completed!
Comment by SF — 4 January 2007 @ 10:13 AM
Now what sense would that make? If I’m lambasting the thread, at issue is what you wrote—your opinion is relevant insofar as you succeeded in reflecting it in your thread. Clarification helps us understand your opinion, but it does nothing to help understand the impact of your thread, right?
Unfortunately, yes. The problems we face cannot be solved by anyone alone. We need to build upa rhizome network, with various cells feeding off of each other. A puritanical approach limits that rhizome network, and that diminishes us all.
Funny, I thought those were the very questions this article was focusing on.
Obviously, many people disagree with your assessment as to what’s “boring,” but you prove an important point with this statement: that it’s very difficult to judge who someone is from what they write online. For instance, I can’t find anything worth writing about in my permacultural activities or in primitive skills. I’ve started a food forest this year, but there’s nothing to really write about until spring when it starts coming in—and even then, it’s so locally-adapted that it’s basically no use to anyone else. When I go foraging, when I make medicine, what is there to write about that you can’t get much more easily from a basic field guide? I mean, we have a full cabinet of medicine we made ourselves, and I’ve done basic first aid with nothing more than herbs and mud, but what is there to write about in that? What is there to write about in the teas and salads and snacks we make from foraged wild edibles? So to say that we “never do any of it” is simply untrue. We do it quite a bit. We just don’t sit online preening about it.
For some. Others need more intermediate steps. More importantly, most people I know who are really into primitive skills still do not think like animists, because it’s still not a lifestyle. To quote Tamarack Song once again:
Most of us are in no position to live primitively right now—I wrote about this “Where Have All the Savages Gone?” The opportunity is only now beginning to open, after all. Learning primitive skills is critical; I’ve learned and practiced quite a few, but there’s still a great deal more ahead of me. In the meantime, the seeds of a healthy culture are all around us, just waiting.
That’s actually precisely the point, in case you missed it. Hunter-gatherers are strictly conservative. Their appearance is in accordance with the dictates of their culture, down to the smallest details. They don’t dress to shock. Kevin Tucker does, and what’s the effect? People who might otherwise listen to what he has to say, don’t. Such superficial radicalism might feel good, but it undermines the stated radical goals. That raises the question of whether you’re genuinely pursuing those goals, or if you just like to feel like a “radical.” Tucker’s hardly alone in this, and though he might superficially resemble a hunter-gatherer, someone who’s thinking like a hunter-gatherer would be more likely to dress in a polo shirt and khakis (I don’t do that).
Easier said than done. I can’t support myself as a hunter-gatherer, at least not yet. So I work long hours; in this season, the sun is usually long set before I’m out of work, and that means that I only get very limited opportunities to hone my skills. It also leaves me precious