NOTE: Because there are quite a few footnotes in this article, I am also attaching it here as a .pdf to make it easier to read. Please feel free to leave comments below.
Thoughts from the forest, ecovillage and sickbed on our beliefs about nature and anarcho-primitivism
(A friend and the author canoeing)
After living in the forest for a year, helping set up an eco-village, co-organising wilderness gatherings, meeting many people with, or supportive of, anarcho-primitivist (or indigenist)(1) belief systems and then ending up very ill from a countryside-associated disease, I want to share some hard-learned thoughts.
In particular I explore how it can be dangerous when people advocate belief systems when they have not fully explored their practical consequences or applied them to their own lives. This is especially true when those belief systems – as I try to show with anarcho-primitivism – advocate a very radical break from society, which can alter every aspect of our lives.
An introduction to belief systems
All of us have belief systems(2)(3) through which we interpret – and understand – the world around us, which in turn guide the actions that we take. Belief systems are a framework of ideas, knowledge and experiences that we hold at any one time and which we use to make decisions. They may be religious, philosophical or ideological, and they underpin what we value and what we think is right and wrong.
These belief systems often change throughout our lives as we are exposed to new ideas and experiences through reading, discussing, working, loving, losing, struggling, raising families or having many other life experiences. These ideas often change if we try to put them into practice and find that the reality is different from what we expected.
All of us have been born into an incredibly complex world and experience it very differently. We are all part of different ecosystems, surrounded by species which are often interdependent in ways we do not realise. Scientific knowledge is advancing at an unprecedented rate, leaving many of us behind and yet influencing so much of how the world around us works. We are often surrounded by human or machine-made products, of which we have little idea where or how they are made (or what happens to them when they are thrown away). We are governed by incredibly complex political, economic and legal systems – developed over hundreds or thousands of years – which are local, national and international, and which only a small percentage of people really understand. We are all born into families with different professional backgrounds, amounts of wealth and education. Throughout our working lives many of us have highly specialised jobs, where we are often only exposed to narrow groups of people, ideas and tasks. We are bombarded with information, some of which we choose based on our existing belief systems, which can in turn perpetuate them. This information often has known – and unknown – vested interests and biases behind it and is ultimately trying to influence our actions.
In light of all of this we try to understand the complex world around us through different belief systems based on our very unique experiences and knowledge. We develop frameworks or belief systems which try to explain what is going on and offer solutions to the problems we face.
The environment or mother nature
Over the years I have been especially fascinated by the different belief systems that people have on “the environment” or “mother nature”, because it is the life system we are all a part of and are dependent on. This is partly why I went to live in the forest and helped set-up a small eco-village – I wanted to practically explore these belief systems.
In the last few decades “the environment” has been increasingly on our minds because the impacts of Western lifestyles have become ever more apparent: human-caused climate change, the depletion of natural resources on which our current way of life depends, the melting of the ice caps, widespread pollution, extinction or depletion of various species, deforestation and much more.
Various people have tried to explain the root problems behind this. Some believe that it is the fault of a growing human population which is using ever more resources. Others argue that our excessive production and consumption is the problem, especially because of the overwhelming focus on economic growth and profit of the state corporate capitalist system in which we live. Some say that it is the discovery of fossil fuels such as oil which has led down this path or that the fault lies with the energy intensive technologies that humans have developed, particularly since the start of the industrial revolution. Others say that it is the increasing urbanisation of our species, which requires increasing amounts of resources to import goods into urban areas and which fundamentally disconnects us from the land where these goods are coming from (and going to when we throw them away). Some give more class based explanations, arguing that those who own and control most of the world (the very rich or 1%) make the rest of us work and produce much more than we need to so they can benefit from the profits of our labour. Yet others give psychological reasons, looking at historical – and current – human behaviour patterns to explain human desires to consume ever more goods. There are many more theories trying to explain the environmental crisis.
Similarly, depending on peoples’ belief systems and what they think to be realistic, there has been a long list of solutions proposed to counter these problems. These range from technological solutions which claim that we can carry on living as we do but replace our fossil fuel energy supplies with renewable and/or nuclear energy. Others think that our economic and political model is at fault and needs to be fundamentally reformed, including severely regulating or even banning corporations and changing our priorities away from economic growth. Some propose relocalising our economies and even promote eco-villages, going back to the land, permaculture, forest gardening and organic agriculture as solutions. Others think we are stuck in an unstoppable system which is doomed to collapse so we may as well enjoy our time on earth while we have it.
A good example of this range of opinions is given by Jonathan Porritt in the book Capitalism as if the World Matters, where he outlines the importance of belief systems for environmentalists when it comes to determining what actions we should take in relation to the dominant economic system – capitalism:
“If, as a politically active environmentalist or campaigner for social justice, one’s answer to the question is they are, indeed mutually exclusive (that capitalism, in whichever manifestation, is in its very essence inherently unsustainable), then one’s only morally consistent response is to devote one’s political activities to the overthrow of capitalism. If one’s answer is that they are entirely compatible (that there are no structural, inherent characteristics within a capitalist system that would make sustainability an unattainable goal), then it is morally consistent to pursue sustainable development (as the path that leads to that goal) within and through that capitalist system. And if one’s answer is that they are only compatible under certain conditions (it isn’t capitalism per se that is at issue here, but which model of capitalism), then the transformation of those aspects of contemporary capitalism that are incompatible with the attainment of sustainability becomes both a moral and a political precondition of being an effective environmentalist or campaigner for social justice.” (p. 87)
As Porritt points out, what we believe about capitalism and sustainability can determine where we focus our energies. Do we try and reform capitalism or overthrow it? Belief systems guide what we think is the right thing to do and in turn our actions.
Anarcho-primitivism
A few years ago I was fascinated by one belief system which has influenced a lot of people – anarcho-primitivism. This is one of the reasons I went and lived in the forest – to practically explore some of its ideas as well as just wanting to learn more about nature first-hand. Within the environmental movement there has always been a strand of thought which questions the wisdom of much of modernity. However, writers such as John Zerzan and Derrick Jensen go further and question not just technology and capitalism, but the benefits of civilisation itself. (4)
Rather than misrepresent their ideas and arguments I’d recommend you read their books or watch them speak if you really want to understand what they have to say (they have many videos on the internet) (5). One good place to start is an interview of John Zerzan by Derrick Jensen. (6)
I summarise some of their ideas in this article, albeit in an incomplete way. Both Jensen and Zerzan argue that humans have lived as hunter gatherers for most of humanity and civilisation has risen relatively recent in human history. According to Jensen and Zerzan, hunter gatherer tribes were – and still are in some places – relatively egalitarian, relaxing and peaceful societies whose way of life was/is genuinely sustainable.
They argue that the rise of agriculture – around 10,000 years ago – led to food surpluses in hunter-gatherer tribes. These surpluses introduced higher levels of inequality into the tribes as some looked after – and controlled – the food supply. These surpluses also enabled greater division of labour within society as some people could pursue (voluntarily or involuntarily) activities other than food collection. They also argue that the rise of agriculture fundamentally shifted our attitude to the rest of nature as we tried to domesticate and control it for our own means, rather than just taking from – and being a part of – wild nature. Ultimately, the rise of agriculture enabled the rise of cities and civilisation as we know it. To be clear, Jensen defines civilisation as:
“a culture—that is, a complex of stories, institutions, and artifacts— that both leads to and emerges from the growth of cities (civilization, see civil: from civis, meaning citizen, from Latin civitatis, meaning city-state), with cities being defined—so as to distinguish them from camps, villages, and so on—as people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life.” (7)
For both Jensen and Zerzan, the rise of civilisation was the beginning of many of our environmental and social problems. As cities grew they required more resources to be imported into them which led, for example, to forests being chopped down for building supplies, fuel or to provide land for farming. Nowadays around half the world’s population live in urban areas, with around 80% of people in Northern European countries living in urban areas (8). What is needed to sustain our current way of life in those cities is well documented. We can, if we want, visit the clear-cuts, mines or factories spread across the planet which sustain cities and see first-hand the devastating impact they have on many different eco-systems.
Ekati Diamond Mine, Nothwest Territories, Canada – Source: When Earth is Scarred Forever – website has a collection of photos and information about some of the world’s biggest open cast mines.
Jensen and Zerzan believe that our current state capitalist industrial civilisation is completely unsustainable and will eventually collapse. They point out that humans are using up non-renewable finite resources, such as oil, at an ever increasing rate to sustain our current way of life and that this can not continue. Jensen quotes a friend of his, George Draffan, in his book Endgame as saying:
“(…) the only sustainable level of technology is the Stone Age. What we have now is the merest blip—we’re one of only six or seven generations who ever have to hear the awful sound of internal combustion engines (especially two-cycle)—and in time we’ll return to the way humans have lived for most of their existence. Within a few hundred years at most. The only question will be what’s left of the world when we get there.”(9)
Jensen and Zerzan go further than this. They want people not just to wait for the collapse of civilisation, which they think may take hundreds of years and cause massive destruction of eco-systems and other species, but for people to actively work to bring about its downfall, by whatever means necessary, as soon as possible before too much damage happens. They want humans to revert to Stone Age technology and return to the land to live a more genuinely sustainable existence. They advocate that people go through a process known as “rewilding” to overcome human domestication and return to behaviour supposedly inherent in wild humans.
Knowledge based on experience?
Over the years I have come to most respect knowledge gained from a combination of theory and practice. For example, if I want to really learn about agriculture I read books and journal articles about it as well as trying to grow plants myself. I learn through trial and error as well as speaking to people who have more experience than me. Once I gain sufficient practical and theoretical knowledge, I can then teach other people, which deepens my knowledge on the subject as new issues come up, which in turn further embeds it in my mind. This whole process can throw up lots of new ideas and insights at different stages over several years, especially when coming up against unexpected challenges when trying to turn theoretical knowledge into what practically works in reality.
I have met many people who consider themselves teachers, whether in academic institutions or other places. Some of these teachers have a good balance of theoretical knowledge and practical experience on the subjects they are teaching, while others are more one-sided towards either theory or practice.
One of my main problems with anarcho-primitivism is that it is often advocated by people who have a lot of theoretical knowledge gained from the written word, but little practical knowledge. To give an example, I met John Zerzan a few years ago and asked him: “Have you ever lived in the forest or with hunter gatherers?” He said he had been at a wilderness camp for a few weeks.
At the time this really shocked me. This is a man who has written several books and gives speeches around the world advocating a certain belief system– and is influencing many people – and yet has very little personal, practical experience of what it would really be like to live as a hunter-gatherer. If he had more personal practical experience he would probably have more nuanced and complex belief systems about civilisation and hunter gatherers. Depending on whether his experience in the forest (and/or with hunter gatherers) is positive or negative, his theoretical knowledge would be shaped by the experience. He might not even survive the experience, as he might be killed by accident, disease, starvation, the weather, wild animals or one of the many other challenges the wilderness holds. Thus we might not even hear his new point of view.
Countryside associated diseases
One of the other problems I have with Zerzan and Jensen is that they often underplay or ignore the dangers of living in the countryside and going back to the land. They regularly write and speak about the illnesses and diseases that living in cities and our modern way of life give us. This may in part be due to Derrick Jensen’s personal experience of having Crohn’s disease, which he calls a “disease of civilisation.”(10) This is one of the justifications he uses to access industrial evidence-based healthcare while simultaneously speaking against it (to clarify here: I am in no way against Derrick Jensen receiving healthcare).
However, what about the many diseases that humans can catch from the countryside, some of which can kill or disable us? Depending on which eco-systems we are living in, and what exactly we are doing in those eco-systems, we can catch a wide range of diseases from insects, animals, plants, soils and water.
The American Veterinary Medical Foundation publishes a general guide about diseases that hunters and their hunting dogs may encounter in the United States.(11) This gives a good introduction to some of the many diseases associated with the countryside, including:
• Anaplasmosis
• Avian Influenza
• Babesiosis
• Brucellosis
• Campylobacteriosis (Campylobacter jejuni)
• Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD)
• Cryptosporidiosis
• Deer Parapoxvirus
• Hydatid Tapeworms (Echinococcosis)
• Ehrlichiosis
• Equine Encephalitis Viruses
• Escherichia coli Infection (E. coli)
• Giardiasis
• Hantavirus
• Leptospirosis
• Lyme Disease (Lyme borreliosis)
• Plague
• Q fever
• Rabies
• Raccoon Roundworm (Baylisascarisprocyonis)
• Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (tick-borne typhus fever) and other spotted fevers
• Salmonellosis (Salmonella species)
• Sarcoptic mange
• Toxoplasmosis
• Trichinellosis (trichinosis)
• Tuberculosis
• Tularemia
• West Nile Virus
I can’t help but wonder if Jensen or Zerzan had a disabling countryside associated disease, would they still think in the same way? Unless they go through it themselves, they will not know how it feels to be ill in that way or how it will affect how they think about the world. I also wonder if they spent less time writing books and giving speeches, and more time living on the land, whether they would contract more diseases and therefore have a different perspective?
I have learnt this lesson the hard way.
Living on the land, becoming seriously ill with a countryside associated disease and having ongoing medical treatment has made me think about the countryside and civilisation in very different ways. Meeting and speaking to several people who have contracted chronic, debilitating illnesses, from living in – or visiting- the countryside has also further changed my opinions. I have also read of families moving to the countryside in the United States to give their children a better way of life, only for the entire family to contract diseases and become chronically ill from insects, such as ticks, and then move back into the city to try and get away from further countryside associated illness.(12) A similar problem exists in many parts of Europe, as this tick species distribution map shows:
IxodesRicinus tick species distribution map. European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Source: http://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/activities/diseaseprogrammes/emerging_and_vector_borne_diseases/pages/vbornet-maps-tick-species.aspx
Both the countryside and the city have a long list of illnesses and risks associated with them. If they are going to advocate returning to the land, then it would be better if Zerzan and Jensen gave a more balanced view of the risks and diseases associated with that way of life. Their belief systems can be very influential, and it would be better if they gave a health warning to people who want to practically explore them.
Practically applying anarcho-primitivist ideas?
One of the main problems I have with the anarcho-primitivist belief system is that it often does not work if we try to apply them practically in our real lives. For example, I use condoms when I have sex to prevent unwanted pregnancies and from catching Sexually Transmitted Infections. Similarly I would recommend other people to use contraception, unless they want to have children. If my friends or family contract a disease I would recommend that they go to a doctor for examination and treatment (if possible). I would be surprised if anyone reading this genuinely does not agree with these statements.
If you agree with the above statements, then you want an industrial healthcare system. You would also want the healthcare system to use treatments which are based on very strong scientific evidence, for example through double-blinded placebo controlled trials, so doctors know which treatments work.(13) You may even want an industrial healthcare system which is free at point of use, paid for by taxes, like the National Health System in the UK.(14)
The problem is that there are big environmental trade-offs: an industrial healthcare system requires factories, mines, fossil fuel extraction, chemicals and plastic waste disposal to exist. Most humans want access to industrial evidence-based healthcare if we contract a disease, including many people from hunter-gatherer tribes.(15) Some ascribing to anarcho-primitivism say that they don’t want to be treated by industrial evidence-based medical care. However, we do not know what they would think and do if they became very ill.
Industrial evidence-based healthcare
Another problem I have with anarcho-primitivism is that people advocating it often ignore or leave out what would happen if industrial evidence-based healthcare did not exist. We can look at different moments in history to think about this.
When the Black Death (bubonic plague) hit Europe in the 12th Century it killed between 30-60 per cent of Europe’s population. Some cities and villages in England and Italy were hit especially hard and had an estimated death rate between 70-80 per cent. (16)
I can’t even begin to imagine what it would have been like to live through those times; to be surrounded by so much death, disease and despair.
One modern description of the bubonic plague, drawing on medieval texts, is particularly gruesome:
“Tumors covered the body — some of them as big as an egg or apple, Boccaccio wrote. A large neck tumor might permanently cock a person’s head in the opposite direction. Purplish splotches also covered the body. These were nicknamed “God’s tokens,” because God usually took the sufferer soon after they appeared. The sick even smelled like they were going to die. Bad breath and odors indicated they were rotting from the inside.
“Medieval writers tell us that the fevers resulted in delirium — madmen wandered the streets, shouting wildly. The sick vomited incessantly or coughed up blood. Pus and blood oozed from sores. Once the symptoms started to appear, the victim was a ticking time bomb and died within days. No one knew what to do. There wasn’t enough space in the graveyards, so the bloated bodies were left in the street. Dogs ate corpses while babies cried hungrily beside their dead mothers.” (17)
I would not want us to return to this kind of reality and do not know anyone who would. Nowadays, the plague is much more under control, although it does still resurface from time to time. If it is caught early and treated with antibiotics, it can be cured.
Throughout history, many epidemics have swept through human populations:
(Source: Austin Alchon, Suzanne (2003) A Pest in the Land: New World Epidemics in a Global Perspective. Page 21 )
If industrial evidence-based healthcare did not exist, many different diseases would spread more rapidly through human populations. Even now, especially where healthcare systems are limited, diseases like tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and Malaria are having devastating impacts on human populations.(18) Many diseases are already mutating and evolving drug resistance and scientists are working to develop new drugs to combat this.
Jensen and Zerzan rarely discuss the health consequences if civilisation were to collapse and we did not have access to industrial evidence-based healthcare. The consequences would be horrific.
Collapse?
Jensen and Zerzan often underplay what would actually happen if they got what they wished for: the collapse of civilisation. Just imagine if the electricity, telecommunications and transportation networks shut down. Just imagine if the factories stopped producing and the tractors stopped ploughing. Just imagine if the hospitals had equipment shortages and no power.
Food shortages would occur very quickly. Diseases would start spreading more rapidly through the populace. Nuclear reactors could meltdown. People would start dying on a massive scale, including maybe even ourselves, our families and our friends. It is impossible to know how people would react and whether we would turn on each other or if we would try to work together and organise (or, most likely, both). Would riots erupt? Would governments try and enforce their power over the people? There are many unknowns of how such a future would turn out, however the transition would most likely be horrific
Noam Chomsky has famously described such a transition:
“Hunter-gatherer societies, which were all there were for most of human history, may well have had pretty relaxed lives, as Sahlins and others argue. That doesn’t change the fact that going back to such a state would mean instant mass genocide on an unimaginable scale.” (19)
If anarcho-primitivists understood the full consequences of their belief systems, I suspect that many of them would not be organising to bring down a system which we are dependent on for food, power and healthcare, especially if it would result in “mass genocide”.
I sometimes wish that Jensen and Zerzan spent more time exploring what could happen if civilisation collapsed. If they did, their audience would get a more balanced perspective, and understand the pros and cons of anarcho-primitivism. Instead, anarcho-primitivists often try to convince people with strong ideological beliefs which are not grounded in the reality of what it would be like if their ideas were actually realised.
The positive sides of civilisation?
I have rarely seen, heard or read Jensen or Zerzan discussing the positive sides of civilisation. Science has been a very mixed blessing for humanity. It has brought nuclear weapons but also amazing medical developments. It has brought gas chambers but also given us the knowledge of bee’s complex navigational systems. It has also given us the anthropological history of those hunter-gatherer tribes that Jensen and Zerzan cite in their work.
I am glad for certain things that civilisation has brought us, such as the development of the written word and that I can read. I am glad that past scientists proved that the world is round, rather than flat. I am glad that I can read – and think – about evolution, rather than being force-fed the idea that the world was created by an omnipotent being. I am glad I can access healthcare based on science.
Simultaneously, I acknowledge there are many negative sides to our civilisation, such as the destruction of eco-systems to fuel and feed it, and the widespread pollution that it creates.
The picture is complex and it is unfortunate that Jensen and Zerzan often do not present this complexity.
The negative aspects of hunter-gather cultures?
Another aspect that Zerzan and Jensen often underplay is the negative aspects of hunter-gatherer cultures. They sometimes provide a one-sided and unbalanced viewpoint which can romanticise certain ways of living and being. While there are many great things about hunter-gatherer tribes – and they are often much more environmentally sustainable than civilised cultures – they also have many dark sides. I have never lived with hunter-gatherers (so be wary of what I write about them), but I know people who have done so for several years as well as reading written accounts of anthropologists living with them.
I do not want to make generalisations as each tribe has its own culture and traditions. Putting aside the effect of diseases and personal injury, tribes can be severely affected by extreme weather conditions. Inter-tribal warfare, human sacrifices and cannibalism have all occurred in some tribes. Some tribes have ostracised members because they did not fit in with the social norms of the tribe. These people sometimes ended up living alone in difficult conditions, and some die alone.
There is not space in this article to give detailed accounts of peoples’ different experiences with tribes. Some are very positive, while others are mixed or even negative. I do not want to idealise hunter-gatherer tribes and underplay the negative aspects of some of their cultures. Either way, there are some tribes which I have heard about in which I would definitely not want to live.
Belief systems and action
Because belief systems influence how we interpret the world and what actions we take, it is crucial that we question the ones that we hold. I have seen how anarcho-primitivist belief systems can affect people. At the extreme I knew two people who killed themselves, at least partly influenced by anarcho-primitivism (20). Another person I know has disappeared while exploring Alaska by himself, and sadly it looks like he has died (21). Several other people I know, as well as myself, have become very seriously ill by contracting diseases when practically exploring anarcho-primitivist ideas or just by living and working in the countryside.
Jensen and Zerzan often do not acknowledge the power of their ideas and how their belief systems can negatively impact people.
Final thoughts
The way we interact with the environment and civilisation changes the way we feel and think about it (and vice-versa). I recommend that people question everything that is written here, read more deeply about it and discuss it. It is important to be open to new ideas, while also being sceptical of them.
I have tried to show some of the problems I have with anarcho-primitivism, focusing on the work of John Zerzan and Derek Jensen. I think it is often advocated by people who do not have that much practical experience of living it and who provide a one-sided perspective. When we try and practically apply it to our lives, it is often impractical or inconsistent with common sense and can lead to serious health or other problems. Also, if taken to its logical conclusion – the collapse of civilisation – it would have absolutely horrific consequences on the human population.
However, while I am very sceptical of anarcho-primitivism as a belief system, I would still recommend that people experiment in interacting with the environment in different ways, as long as you research the risks of doing so, including taking maximum precautions against the diseases you can contract in those environments. Grow some vegetables, visit some clear-cuts and old-growth forests, try to save a species or area from being destroyed, study the plants, animals, insects and diseases that exist in an area. Do not just think about these things in your head, but see how you think and feel when you do them in real life.
Some further reading which will give you a good spectrum of thought within the environmental movement
* Endgame – Derrick Jensen
* Against Civilization – John Zerzan (editor)
* 5 Common Objections to Primitivism and Why They’re Wrong – Jason Godesky
* Fire and Ice: Disturbing the Comfortable and Comforting the Disturbed While Tracking Our Wildest Dreams – Laurel Luddite
* Capitalism as if the World Matters – Jonathan Porritt
* Green Economics – Molly Scott Cato
* Small is Beautiful – E.F. Schumacher
* Green History: A Reader in Environmental Literature, Philosophy, and Politics – Derek Wall
* Babylon and Beyond: The Economics of Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Globalist and Radical Green Movements – Derek Wall
* The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back – and How We Can Still Save Humanity–James Lovelock
* Walden – Henry David Thoreau
* Which Way for the Ecology Movement? Essays by Murray Bookchin
* How Much is Enough? The Love of Money and the Case for the Good Life – Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky
Two essays on belief systems and how they impact our actions
* In Doubt We Trust – Cults, religions, and BS in general – Robert Anton Wilson
* Left and Right: A Non-Euclidean Perspective – Robert Anton Wilson
Footnotes
(1) In this article I use the term ‘anarcho-primitivism,’ only because I wanted to use one term throughout the article. However, I do recognise that Derrick Jensen has rejected the term “primitivist” because, in his words, it’s a “racist way to describe indigenous peoples.” He prefers “indigenist” or “ally to the indigenous,” because “indigenous peoples have had the only sustainable human social organizations, and … we need to recognize that we [colonizers] are all living on stolen land.” Source: http://www.zoeblunt.ca/2011/03/20/uncivilized/
(2) For more on belief systems, see these articles by Robert Anton Wilson: ‘Left and Right: A Non-Euclidean Perspective’ and ‘In Doubt We Trust – Cults, religions, and BS in general’
(3) Timothy Leary has called them ‘Reality Tunnels’.
(4) In this article I focus on Jensen and Zerzan, however I acknowledge that there are many other anarcho-primitivist writers who have different views on a wide range of subjects.
(5) Throughout my life I have often seen peoples’ ideas misrepresented to suit personal – or organisational – interests, so I always recommend others to go back to what people actually said in source texts or speeches.
(6) An interview with John Zerzan & Derrick Jensen, December 5 2010.
(7) Jensen, Derrick (2006) Endgame. Quote is from this chapter.
(8) World Urbanization Prospects – The 2011 Revision, UNDESA.
(9) Jensen, Derrick (2006) Endgame. Quote is from this chapter.
(10) Transcript of a six part video interview with Derrick Jensen
(11) ‘Disease precautions for hunters ‘, American Veterinary Medical Foundation:
(12) For stories of people and families going through this experience, have a look at Cure Unknown by Pamela Weintraub.
(13) For an interesting introduction to how double blinded placebo controlled trials work, have a read of Bad Science by Ben Goldacre.
(14) The NHS is becoming more and more privatised at the moment, so it is uncertain how long it will exist in this way.
(15) See, for example this from Survival International and this article from the BBC entitled ‘Brazilian indigenous groups demand better healthcare’
(16) Austin Alchon, Suzanne (2003) A Pest in the Land: New World Epidemics in a Global Perspective by Suzanne Austin Alchon. Page 21 gives a table with ‘Mortality Associated with Epidemics in the old world before 1500’:
(17) ‘How the Black Death Worked’ by Molly Edmonds
(18) For more on this, look at the Global Fund: http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/about/diseases/
(19) ‘Comments on Moore’ by Noam Chomsky, Social Anarchism, February 8, 2006
(20) The reasons behind suicide are often very complex, so I do not want to simplify these people’s deaths. However, I do think that the belief systems those people held probably contributed to the reason why they killed themselves.
(21) For a series of articles about him see here: http://www.alaskadispatch.com/search/site/%22Thomas%20Seibold%22?solrsort=ds_created%20desc
Final thanks
Many thanks to the people who proofread this article!
Greetings Eduardo. It’s always good to question belief systems I’d say. Are you familiar with the research of Weston A Price and the ideas surrounding the so called ‘paleo diet’ (which I feel contains much bullshit along with the valuable info)? It seems likely to me that our pre agricultural immune systems would have been much more robust due to eating appropriate amounts of the right type of animal fats (which, in my view, is likely a lot more than most people eat today). In agricultural societies the peasants were kept alive with inappropriate amounts of grain, hence the easy spread of contagious disease. Obviously there are many other factors than diet but this seems significant to me.What do you make of my belief system?
Greetings ortaa23, thanks for leaving a comment! I am familiar with the research of Weston A Price, although I haven’t studied it in-depth, so haven’t for example looked at his research methodologies to see how high quality his research was. I think a good diet is definitely a contributory factor to good dental hygiene and to an extent a healthy immune system (to what extent we can only know with medical scientifc research – my impression is that this has been studied a lot, but I’m no expert – see a list of articles on PubMed with the search terms “diet” + “immune system” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=diet+immune+system ). However cultures which eat healthily (paleo or not) still contract a wide range of diseases. Just think about how various indigenous cultures have been decimated by diseases. Also, it’s easy to romanticise the past and think that because people had better diets and healthier lifestyles they were immune to various diseases. The truth is, they suffered – and still suffer – from a multitude of different diseases. Different cultures dealt with disease in very different ways – some tried to heal sick members, some looked after sick members, some ostracised them and some killed sick members if they didn’t get better within a certain time period and much more besides. Bringing it up to the modern day, have a look at this article on ‘Brazilian indigenous groups demand better healthcare’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-18259233 Unsurprisingly I haven’t heard people who advocate anarcho-primitivism talk much about that!
To me it seems that there is a significant difference between pathogens that a particular group has evolved with, and ones that have come in from distant lands. And again, the vector for the smallpox, for example, was unhealthy agricultural populations. Likewise, one should exercise some restraint in applying what we see in present day indigenous populations to the past. However, to be clear, I’m not arguing for a ‘indigenous people are all angels’ thesis! But probably in most cases they appear to be less insane than agricultural / industrial groups.
At any given time, genetic resistance develops for humans for some diseases in a bioregion, while for other diseases it does not, and for others humans have limited resistance. Some diseases just kill people. At the same time the pathogens are evolving themselves and adapting!
Indigenous populations in the past, even before colonisation from the West, would have suffered from a multitude of different illnesses – just think, for example, of how many different diseases and health risks exist in the Amazon. To what extent they suffered is difficult to know, although again I’d like to know if there are some medical studies which look at recently contacted tribes and their incidence of disease.
Sure, certain diseases are associated with agriculture, while others are not.
Indigenous people were/are more sustainable in many ways than civilised people, however given how much land is required to sustain that way of life, humans could not revert to being hunter-gatherers on a mass scale – we would not be able to sustain ourselves. Some epidemics humans have experienced have been tied to agriculture and higher concentrations of humans in one place, but this is the situation we’re in now! We can’t hark back to some romanticised era 10,000 years ago, we have to work with and deal with the problems we face now, in the world we were born into. Anarcho-Primitivists, in my view, often have unrealistic and horrific ideas about how to solve problems which currently exist now – most of their solutions end in mass genocide. Ultimately us humans have needs (food, water, shelter, health, community, etc), and I’m much more interested nowadays in how we can meet these needs as sustainably as possible within a scientific framework (so we know they actually work).
Ok, so my take on this is as follows. As far as I am aware we are not in a position to know whether or not hunter gatherers were affected by epidemics prior to any contact with agriculturalists, as there are no records or archaeological evidence. I suspect it is likely that there were few such epidemics. Based on the fact that with high infant mortality those that survived would tend to have good immunity, they had good diets, while other humans that they might encounter would probably not have come from a completely different part of the planet and also not have compromised immune systems, (unless, of course, there were tribes of raw vegans back then, but somehow I doubt it!) Of course this is all pure speculation on my part, and I am open to being proved wrong.
As for your criticism of anarcho-primitivism being offered as a ‘solution’ for today’s problems, well this is certainly true. Personally however, I don’t think that at this point anything is going to prevent homo sapiens from taking down all life on this planet, and therefore, I would say that promoting the philosophy of anarcho primitivism as a working model of the last known sane human culture is not an invalid thing to do, even though it is of course not practicable for the current 7 billion humans, with rapidly degenerating bodies and minds…
Firstly, I’m not even sure that we are aware or not that hunter-gatherers were affected by epidemics – we shouldn’t assume anything! I haven’t thoroughly researched the field to know for certain. However, I think it’s very likely that hunter-gatherers suffered – and still do suffer! – from a wide range of diseases and health risks. Again, these health risks would differ from region to region, so it’s also good not to generalise too much on this. But as I know people who have lived with tribes in South America, I have heard many stories of the many diseases and health risks that exist in the Amazon.
But yes, there would have been more social darwinism in those times, with natural selection partially favouring people who have resistance to various diseases which helped them survive, especially because the healers at the time would have had much more limited options when it comes to treating people. However, I still much prefer living in a society with a healthcare system based on science, instead of having to go to a shaman or a healer if I became sick, broke some bones or a wound became infected.
See my comment below for more of my thoughts on the benefit of the paleo-diet/lifestyle and its affects on health.
As to your second point that:
“Personally however, I don’t think that at this point anything is going to prevent homo sapiens from taking down all life on this planet, and therefore, I would say that promoting the philosophy of anarcho primitivism as a working model of the last known sane human culture is not an invalid thing to do, even though it is of course not practicable for the current 7 billion humans, with rapidly degenerating bodies and minds…”
I think it’s a big stretch to say that humans will “take down all life on this planet.” It is impossible for us to know the future, and it partly depends on what we do, as well as what many others do, in our lifetimes to combat biodiversity loss, human caused climate change, etc. It also comes down to what technologies are developed and implemented and how much of a movement there is to reform our economic and political systems (as well as much more!)
I also think the word “sane” isn’t the right word to use. More sustainable certainly, however if we were to communicate with hunter-gatherers thousands of years ago I’m sure we wouldn’t agree with many of their beliefs.
I think promoting anarcho-primitivism as a working model is insane because it would lead to mass genocide of the human population! Sure, learn from hunter gatherer societies, take from them what we can, but build on their knowledge given what modern day science has given us. We can, for example, build Low Impact Developments to live in, like these in the UK, which are partly inspired from traditional designs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Impact_Development_%28UK%29
Finally, I don’t agree with your point that there are “7 billion humans, with rapidly degenerating bodies and minds…” Many people I have met are physically active and mentally brilliant, especially as they exercise and are able to read books/journals/etc and study things in a scientific way.
PS Also, don’t know if you’re aware of the ‘paranoid conspiracy theory’ around Lyme’s Disease? https://web.archive.org/web/20120620101327/http://www.lymecryme.com/
Hi, yeah I’m aware of that theory, however if you read this article in National geographic about the autopsy of a 5,300 year old man, it includes the passage:
“Perhaps most surprising, researchers found the genetic footprint of bacteria known as Borrelia burgdorferi in his DNA—making the Iceman the earliest known human infected by the bug that causes Lyme disease.”
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/11/iceman-autopsy/hall-text
I somewhat doubt that governments were around at the time trying to bio-engineer and spread Lyme! 😉 Lyme has been with humans for thousands of years and is currently a problem all over the world.
It seems from my cusory reading that the claim is that Lyme’s has gone from being a relatively mild condition to a severely debilitating one, and that what is being questioned is how this came about, not its origin.
Hi, I think it’s a massive assumption to make that “Lyme’s has gone from being a relatively mild condition to a severely debilitating one.” In the past, before people knew what Lyme was, people would have just become sick but not know what was causing it. It is well and gruesomely documented how unwell people became without access to a cure for a wide range of different diseases. At what point in the past, in your opinion, did Lyme move from a mild one to a debilitating one and where is your evidence for such a claim?
Well, the fact that Otzi apparently had Lyme’s and was trekking over the mountains would be one such piece of evidence. Had he been debilitated I can’t imagine he would have been fit enough to leave his village. Given that there are not many deep frozen people to sample it might be difficult to get more such evidence! As I already said though, I’m only speculating on this subject, I’m not agreeing with the claims that I described, and I don’t have the inclination to research it properly right now.
The main thrust of my argument relates to the relative health of hunter gatherers and agriculturalists, and subsequent susceptibility to infectious diseases. It could be more productive for us to debate that, as I have certain insights and ideas on the subject, and there’s nothing I’d like more than for you to challenge them in an intelligent manner.
“Well, the fact that Otzi apparently had Lyme’s and was trekking over the mountains would be one such piece of evidence.”
Not necessarily. Lyme, like many diseases, has different stages, so he may well have just caught it and not yet been experiencing serious symptoms. Alternatively, he might have had some genetic resistance to the disease. Impossible to know. And yeah, he is a sample of one, so difficult to know how representative his case was for the time!
Going on to your main argument. I am happy to discuss the health of hunter gatherers vs. agriculturalists (although there are many groups of people who did all kinds of combinations of the two, including partially farming as well as selectively encouraging certain trees which crop beneficial foods, etc which complicates the matter), however to get more certain answers we have to turn to the scientific literature on this subject. I am not an scientific expert in this area, so be wary of what I write. (To become an expert I would have to study it for several years, read thousands of journal articles on the subject to get a good overview of the field including checking the methodologies of the different papers, do research in this field, etc)
However, for now, we can look at a few journal articles I found:
‘Tooth wear and dental pathology at the advent of agriculture: new evidence from the Levant’:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16353225
Which finds, looking at quite a big sample of teeth, contrary to what you were saying on dental health:
“The transition from hunting and gathering to a food-producing economy in the Levant did not promote changes in dental health, as previously believed.”
As I haven’t reviewed the literature on this subject, I do not know how representative this is of the research in the field.
Another article, which can be read in full for free, ‘Human mortality improvement in evolutionary context’:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3497824/
Which looks at how mortality rates have deceased, especially in comparison to hunter-gatherers. People nowadays are much less likely to die, and live much longer, than in the past.
However, there are scientists asking similar questions to you of the health benefits of a paleolithic diet and lifestyle. See, for example:
‘Evaluation of biological and clinical potential of paleolithic diet’ (unfortunately in Polish, but abstract in English)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22642064
And ‘Paleolithic nutrition: twenty-five years later.’:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21139123
However, another paper seems to claim that it is more complicated than this:
‘Beyond the Paleolithic prescription: incorporating diversity and flexibility in the study of human diet evolution.’
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23865796
For many more medical journal articles on the paleo diet, see here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=paleolithic+diet
It is a complicated field, and only through thoroughly researching it will you or I get more definite answers. I am happy to discuss it more. if you like… 🙂
PS When I wrote my reply I didn’t see that you had also replied to my other comment!
However, I’ve not done a lot of research into it, so don’t take my word as anything of value. Also, again, ‘Otzi’ was an agriculturalist.
Remember that National Geographic is a Popular Science magazine and not a Scientific Journal and by this it should be read with some skepticism.
I am well aware of that!!! The National Geographic article was summarising research which has been published in a scientific journal! You can read the summary of the research here in Nature: http://www.nature.com/news/iceman-s-dna-reveals-health-risks-and-relations-1.10130 You can read one of the full open access journals on Otzi and Borrelia (Lyme) here:
‘The musculoskeletal abnormalities of the Similaun Iceman (“ÖTZI”): clues to chronic pain and possible treatments’
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3560943/
See here for Reader’s Digest version: https://web.archive.org/web/20120316135413/http://www.poisonplum.com/
Hi Ed, amazing article – probably the most well-ballanced viewpoint I’ve read (and I’ve read lots). I’m sorry to hear about your illness, but impressed that you even attempted to survive a year in the wild.
As a lifelong bushcraft enthusiast I have always been allured to wild living and the purity of the hunter-gatherer society, but long suspected that is was an overly romantic notion and thoroughly unpractical to implement on any significant scale; to get from here to there would be quite horrific in reality.
However, I do wholeheartedly believe that people should experience, and have the opportunity to experience, nature in it’s rawest forms. Access to wild areas is then an imperative, even if that access is only for short-term interaction rather than long-term relocation.
I’d be interested in your thoughts on how seemingly wild areas may have been affected by human behaviour, particularly agriculture, urbanisation and other byproducts of consumerism/capitalism.
For example, the tick distribution map seems to suggest more tick density in countries/areas that have the least truly wild places. Is it possible that taming the countryside in countries like the UK, which no longer has a single ‘wild’ river and arguably no true wilderness left, has resulted in a more hospitable environment for parasites and therefore a more dangerous environment for us? It seems probable to me: loss of apex predators, global warming (perhaps), loss of habitat – all allowing for more tick-carrying mammals to spread into remaining countryside and multiply.
Is there any science to support rewilding as a safer alternative to managed countryside? This chap reckons rewilding is the answer: http://www.ted.com/talks/george_monbiot_for_more_wonder_rewild_the_world.html
Hi Rich,
First, thanks for your very kind comments – much appreciated.
I’ll try and reply to all of your points and questions!
“but long suspected that is was an overly romantic notion and thoroughly unpractical to implement on any significant scale; to get from here to there would be quite horrific in reality.” <- yes, absolutely.
"However, I do wholeheartedly believe that people should experience, and have the opportunity to experience, nature in it’s rawest forms. Access to wild areas is then an imperative, even if that access is only for short-term interaction rather than long-term relocation. " <- Yes, that is important, however if people are to access wild areas then they need to be educated about the diseases and health risks of those wild areas. Ticks being one such example. People need to understand preventative measures against health risks in those areas, and even the symptoms of diseases they can pick up so they recognise early on what they are unwell with, especially because with some diseases early diagnosis and treatment increases the chance of a full recovery. Currently, in the UK, there is very little education about this. This is not the same in all European countries – in some there is a lot of public education about tick borne diseases, for example. If you're interested, you can read about preventative measures again ticks here:
"I’d be interested in your thoughts on how seemingly wild areas may have been affected by human behaviour, particularly agriculture, urbanisation and other byproducts of consumerism/capitalism. "
There are many factors which affect wild areas – and therefore incidence of disease associated with those areas – such as land-use changes, sprawling urbanisation, building on previously undisturbed land, population growth, biodiversity changes, changing hunting practises, changing uses of pesticides, patterns of antibiotics use, new techniques emerging to identify diseases, climate change and many more. This subject is incredibly complex and there are many scientific papers and books written about it.
For example, in a book by Karen Vanderhoof-Forschner, she states: “Over the past 30 or 40 years, the American landscape has changed markedly. A look back at history is instructive. In his book Ticks: And What You Can Do about Them, Roger Drummond, PhD, quotes from an eighteenth century traveller in New York State who says that it is impossible to sit outdoors without being attacked by an army of ticks. By the late nineteenth century, the landscape had been so dramatically altered – with wilderness giving way to farms and grazing lands – that another visitor to the same area wrote that the common tick had nearly become extinct. Now, with much of the U.S. Northeast more heavily forested again, ticks have made a remarkable comeback.
“Shifts in the pattern of Rocky Mountains spotted fever illustrate the results of ecological disruptions. In the 1940s, the disease was primarily found in the Rocky Mountains, but as settlers cleared the land for pastures, ticks were pushed out, and the number of cases dropped dramatically. Meanwhile, east of the Rockies, farmland was increasingly giving way to forests, and suburban terrain was being planted with tick-attracting shrubbery, with a resulting rise in the incidence of disease. By 1964, more than 90% of Rocky Mountain spotted fever cases were being reported in the eastern United States” (Vanderhoof-Forschner 2003: 20)
For more on how climate change has affected tick populations, see here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=ticks+climate+change
You ask:
"For example, the tick distribution map seems to suggest more tick density in countries/areas that have the least truly wild places. Is it possible that taming the countryside in countries like the UK, which no longer has a single ‘wild’ river and arguably no true wilderness left, has resulted in a more hospitable environment for parasites and therefore a more dangerous environment for us? It seems probable to me: loss of apex predators, global warming (perhaps), loss of habitat – all allowing for more tick-carrying mammals to spread into remaining countryside and multiply."
We need to take that map with a pinch of salt because:
1) It is a map of one tick species in Europe. In fact, there are a few different tick species in Europe so you put them all together more areas would be covered.
2) It is a map of *known* incidence of one tick species. It is likely that ticks exist in areas not in red on that map but haven't been observed by scientists or written up in journal articles.
3) Also the map does not include an incidence indicator of just how many ticks are in each area or incidence of how many people are being infected by different tick-borne diseases (and how accurate those incidence indicators are!).
Because of this I think it is difficult to conclude that " taming the countryside in countries like the UK, which no longer has a single ‘wild’ river and arguably no true wilderness left, has resulted in a more hospitable environment for parasites and therefore a more dangerous environment for us?"
If you look at the quote I gave before by Vanderhoof-Forschner, the opposite can be concluded from that! Also, things like new techniques emerging to identify diseases have emerged, so we have more data on what diseases exist now compared to the past. Again, this is a complicated question and a lot of research has been done on it.
Also, seeing as so many animals can carry ticks, including dogs, cats, sheep, deer, rats, humans and even birds, I'm not sure about your theory about apex predators. I have read that incidence of tick-borne diseases can be related to acorns and mice populations. See here for fascinating articles on it:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/acorns-mice-lyme/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120316094452.htm
"Is there any science to support rewilding as a safer alternative to managed countryside?"
Yeah, I'm aware of George Monbiot's position on rewilding. I think he is also guilty of underplaying the health risks to humans if you rewild areas and does not warn people of the health risks if people go into them.
I somewhat doubt that rewilding is a safer alternative for humans, in terms of disease incidence, than a managed countryside (see the above quote by Vanderhoof-Forschner again) – however I'm happy to be proved wrong by good science. In rewilded areas, especially in earlier years in development, there will be much more long grasses and bracken – ideal environments for ticks.
However, this is very complex, and I'm sorry I don't have more certain answers for you on this. I'd have to read a few thousand journal articles to have any degree of certainty, and I don't currently have the time!
But, to get a good introduction to this, have a look at this journal article:
'Variable Strength of Forest Stand Attributes and Weather Conditions on the Questing Activity of Ixodes ricinus Ticks over Years in Managed Forests'
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3555926/
Which "investigated variation in the relative questing nymph densities of Ixodes ricinus in differently managed forest types for three years (2008-2010) in SW Germany" <- gives a fascinating overview to the subject in the intro…
Right, I think I've written enough here. Almost another article! Thanks again for your kind comment. Best, Ed
I wanted to quickly add to my comment above, that rewilding can obviously be very beneficial for a multitude of other species and the soil. Monbiot does make a lot of good points about rewilding, as you read in his guest blog for the RSPB (the comments below the blog are also interesting):
http://www.rspb.org.uk/community/ourwork/b/martinharper/archive/2013/07/15/going-wild-a-guest-blog-from-george-monbiot.aspx
However, as I said above, he does underplay the potential impacts and risks for humans of doing that.
[…] forest, ecovillage and sickbed on our beliefs about nature and anarcho-primitivism Find it here: https://eduardojones.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/thoughts-from-the-forest-ecovillage-and-sickbed-on-our-… Feel free to leave comments on the page linked to above… […]
hi ed,
i already wrote some thing
what i want to enpower you
follow your heart.
how hard the lost is. i know two people of the lost people mentioned. i also got a seriously desease.
my only answer to this is
what do i realy want???
who am i?
what do i want my life to look like?
what deeply nourish me?
when the finish rewild girl decieded to leave?
i send her lot of nourishing love, i send her real food,(spiritual). heart energy. i made a remix song dedicated to her it even online.
one the one side nordic music and on the other side, okinawa longevity musik.
the longest living folks are the one in blue zones.
after my feral life i ended with teeth probs in 2010 and break my behaviour up.
so i research nd changed my diet, got egaged in the local natural health raw food movement. and toured with rawfood, health expos.
and i totally changed.
my blog puijoslivinglove,wordpress.com reflects this journey.
anyway keep your head up
keep your heart strong
like ben howard sings
I want to say this is a well written article with some references, I did not double check them as I know that a lot of people quote unreliable sources like zeitgeist did a lot in there film about everything. But as I said, I like the article a lot. Most “new” (anarcho)primitivists one meet have almost no experience outside the city or like you wrote about Zerzan, have been to a meeting. I have experienced that it can be a bit of a belief that mostly come from highly educated city dwelling people in the “western world”. Most of the so-called radical political ideas does. It feels like there is a old science missquote that can apply here, For every action there is a equal and opposite reaction… Where the Civilization is most prominent there will be a larger group with ideas against this.
As I live in a tent in the country side and have done so for some time I have seen a lot of the negative sides of this life while I also other positive sides that I never expected when I read the theoretical political ideas. I now have more of a tendency towards old Indian (as in India, not Americans) ideas about the world and my relation to my surroundings than I am towards the political ideology that I sometime wish was a real possibility.
On a personal note I re-read Zerzan’s Twilight of the Machines I felt that i was a bit naive when I first read it, it did fit perfect with my state of mind at the time but this time I felt that the book was more of a collection of theory’s delivered as some type of truth or objective facts about the world.
Anyway. I loved the article because it was well written with some good critic and a lot of nice points. I do agree with Jensen and Zerzan on some points and I agree with you. I believe that one way to stay somewhat sane in this strange world we all live in is to do this, not argue and fight but talk and share ideas and experience about it (the world and its complexity).
I wish all the best to you E.
D.
Hi D,
Thanks for your very kind words and your interesting, open and honest comment. Much appreciated.
I think partly as the population demographics have shifted, with more and more people living in cities, so have many of the dominant ideas (and actions and power) come from, been about and a reaction to city life. This is a short intro to the subject:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_bias
And a good book on the subject:
‘Why poor people stay poor: urban bias in world development’ by Michael Lipton:
There is often very little news on land based activities, and my feeling is that there are less calls than in the past, for example, for land redistribution, especially in richer predominantly city based societies where most of the population is separate from the land. However, land redistribution is still very relevant and going on all over the world, as this book thoroughly shows:
Land Reform in Developing Countries: Property Rights and Property Wrongs by Michael Lipton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Reform_in_Developing_Countries:_Property_rights_and_property_wrongs
This is a good book about a community buying back the land from an oppressive landlord on the Isle of Eigg, Scotland, which you might like:
Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power by Alastair McIntosh
I have massive sympathy with your reading and re-reading of Zerzan’s book. I’ve had similar experiences to that.
Anyway, please look after yourself, especially as you are living in a tent in the countryside!
Thanks again for your comment.
Ed
P.S. If you’re into Indian ideas, and living in a tent, you might like the book ‘Siddhartha’ by Herman Hesse:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddhartha_%28novel%29
Ed, the following is a response to your essay, quoting certain portions:
“I am glad for certain things that civilisation has brought us, such as the development of the written word and that I can read. I am glad that past scientists proved that the world is round, rather than flat. I am glad that I can read – and think – about evolution, rather than being force-fed the idea that the world was created by an omnipotent being. I am glad I can access healthcare based on science. Simultaneously, I acknowledge there are many negative sides to our civilisation, such as the destruction of eco-systems to fuel and feed it, and the widespread pollution that it creates. The picture is complex and it is unfortunate that Jensen and Zerzan often do not present this complexity.”
There are some falsehoods here and confusion of terms. Civilization is not science, nor is it a bastion of free-thought (propaganda has been perfected in modern times). The written word is not a product of industrial/statist civilization (people were reading before it), indigenous peoples have been continuously “force-fed” theology from industrialized/citizenized peoples, and natural medicine can be and has been developed using the scientific method. Additionally, industrialized western medicine malpractice is actually a leading cause of death in the world, and is also the source of one of the major problems (and possible calamities) humanity faces right now, the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This pandemic is an example of another facet of what your essay strangely under-emphasizes, the mentioned-in-passing extreme negative sides of industrial civilization, including nothing less than the drastic alteration of the ecological conditions which the survival of our species (and many others) depends on. Hardly a side effect, more like the end of the world as we know it. So weighing the good and bad here is really not that “complex” after all.
“I have rarely seen, heard or read Jensen or Zerzan discussing the positive sides of civilisation. Science has been a very mixed blessing for humanity. It has brought nuclear weapons but also amazing medical developments. It has brought gas chambers but also given us the knowledge of bee’s complex navigational systems.”
Again, science and industrial civilization are not the same thing, this repeated suggestion/association of their sameness is a distortion to make something completely bad, namely industrial social-systems of slavery (that produce humanity-threatening nuclear waste and radiation filling the Earth), not seem so bad, by equating it with something that is ethically neutral, science. And speaking of slavery, i.e. the monetary-slavery and forced citizenship that come with nation-states, this reality, which is the real fundamental injustice that allows for all the others (including mass destruction of the Earth), is completely missing from your essay; you’ve focused your attack of anarcho-primitivism solely on the primitivism side, skipping over the anarcho, ignoring the ethical wrongness of statism and the rightness of anarchism.
If you would rather be under the control and supposed safety of a social-system that’s your business, but there is absolutely no justification for forcing everyone else to be “citizens” that have to pay “officials” to live on this planet.
“Jensen and Zerzan often underplay what would actually happen if they got what they wished for: the collapse of civilisation. Just imagine if the electricity, telecommunications and transportation networks shut down. Just imagine if the factories stopped producing and the tractors stopped ploughing. Just imagine if the hospitals had equipment shortages and no power. ”
Yes, being in a state of deep domestication (i.e. a deskilled populace dependent on money, consumer goods and industrial energy and fuel sources), if these supply lines were suddenly cut off there would be a major crisis. Does this mean we have to just stick with industrial civilization? Once we become domesticated and dependent there is no way to become more free and self-sufficient again? Of course the answer to both those questions is no, but again you push a distorted view that it’s a wonderful thing we have these industrial unsustainable sources of survival, survival that is of course until the levels of pollution, radiation and decimation reach the point that we can’t actually survive by those methods anymore, a point that has been scientifically estimated to be in the near future if the same course is taken; again not a minor reality to be weighed against things like the “knowledge of bees” as somehow being more important.
The answer is obviously that we need to start transitioning back to greater self-sufficiency and sustainability, through free/autonomous eco-villages and homesteads. The main obstacle there being lack of our autonomy, i.e. coerced monetary-slavery, unjustly having to pay other humans just to live on this planet; so the legitimacy of statism-slavery needs to be rejected completely.
Yes Jensen and Zerzan are to some extent lacking and flawed in their philosophy, and yes one can get sick in the countryside (I hope you’ve recovered well) but that does not change the fact that industrial civilization has done more harm than good, and anarcho-primitivism remains the closest thing to a real socioeconomic solution that is currently on offer in the mainstream radical/academic milieu. What would make it much more on-target is for it to see that sovereign veganic homesteads making up voluntary gift-economy communities is much more in supporting of an ethically, ecologically and inter-personally harmonious model, and to be actively taking steps toward realizing that, like through support of movement/actions like Occupy Our Homes/Eviction-free Zones, Native Peoples Land & Sovereignty, The Land is Ours in England, Right to Dream Too in the States, etc. Also recognition of the need to regain the vast knowledge of effective natural (and energetic) healing modalities as a crucial component of these communities would be a major improvement as well. Improvements to this philosophy are needed, not complete rejection and reversion to the status-quo death/slavery-machine that is an abomination to Life.
Peace, Colin D.
Your article is a breath of fresh air! Thank you for presenting this well-balanced argument with proper scientific references. The key problem is having the facilities of an industrialised world vs. the freedom of going native, and you can’t have both. I agree that theory and practice should go together.
I’d like to give my perspective on this, coming from an archaeological and anthropological background. You are absolutely right that modern hunter-gatherers do not live cushy lives at all. In addition to being persecuted, having their land taken away, and fewer rights than western humans, they also deal with health issues. Many of them probably historically had a healer person, but most groups today have lost that knowledge, and they now rely on western medical aid, when they can get it. This makes them extremely vulnerable. Remember also that population increase is kept down by high infant mortality (it can be 80% in some places) which is ultimately driven by health / nutrition / malaria / etc. From discussions with my anthropologist colleagues who work with hunter-gatherers, I understand that those populations do not stay small by choice — they are kept small by disease and starvation. None of my colleagues would say that their tribes have an easy life.
If you take a longer view through the archaeological and fossil record, we see that prehistoric people did have diseases (like syphilis, osteoporosis, etc.). Some Neanderthals have fractured limbs that healed and lived a long time. Trepanations also occurred and did not cause death. There were certainly good medical herbal knowledge, as there is today, like in rural Poland where people know 200 types of medicinal plants. But also, we are just starting now to understand the Palaeolithic diet, that it was not all meat (because the human body physically can’t survive on just meat) but also plants, nuts, roots, tubers, honey, seafood, etc. And also we know that the transition to agriculture was not a sudden change from “pure” hunting/gathering. There were (and still are) combinations of both and gradual phases in between. So it doesn’t make sense to draw a clear distinction. Specialists don’t even agree on how to define agriculture. In fact, today we still eat wild foods: wild mushrooms and fish are key parts of our Western diets.
Sorry for such a long reply. That’s how interesting your article and all the comments were! Thanks for great reading.
Nat,
Many thanks for your thoughtful and incisive comments – I really enjoyed reading them and thinking about them. A few comments in response.
While I agree that hunter-gatherers would have had healers, or communities around the world had (and in some places still have) knowledge about hundreds of medicinal plants, I always wonder just how effective those treatments were against more serious diseases which can potentially kill humans (such as the plague and many more). Without them being scientifically tested it is impossible to know (many herbal treatments have since been tested scientifically). I think those healers would have been severely limited in treating many conditions, and mortality rates would have been much higher for certain conditions, without access to modern medicine.
I agree with what you say about the paleo diet, although I thought that people have known for some time that it was not all meat in indigenous diets – people have gathered and ate what they could from their local eco-systems. In some eco-systems, especially northern arctic ones, Inuit diets had a high animal content because that was what was available, however, when they could, they also ate berries, seaweed, etc, depending on the season and the location.
But I am just knit-picking from your argument. Overall I agree with most of what you have said. I definitely agree with you that it doesn’t make sense to make a clear distinction between agricultural systems and hunter/gathering.
Thanks again,
Ed
Excelente, esto me servirá de mucho, la verdad que es bueno conseguir sitios web como este, ahora mismo iniciaré un trabajo bastante relacionado con este tema.
you are looking at the problem with the eyes of a civilized (aka westernized, deeply mislead and out of touch with reality and nature, taught by madmen) person with wrong views on what life is and trying to compare a civilized situation (medieval europe, indigenous people today not present anymore etc.)
to a “normal” situation without overpopulation in the civilised areas (europe), uprooted people, destroyed self and nature, no roots to past.
a culture based on nothing but lies and completely out of touch with itself and the world
[…] much for coming today. My name is Ed, and I’ve been fascinated by plants for a long time. I lived in the forest in Sweden for a year, and then helped set up an eco-village there – in both places I used wild […]