# Anti-Civ discussion



## Gudj

So, there are already threads about "green anarchy", but this is different.


What do you think about the idea that this civilization was destined for more harm than good from the beginning and the sooner it's over the better?


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## bote

hell, that don´t make no more sense than a monkey on roller skates


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## Gudj

bote said:


> i think you should agree with him on everything
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sorry couldn´t resist





I don't get it.


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## connerR

I think it's a matter of perspective. This society (talking about the first world countries) has made incredible jumps in technology and culture. At the same time, I think that harm is a natural by-product, regardless of what the society happens to be. There are certainly aspects of this society that are harmful, but others that are good. I think it's too ambiguous and irresponsible to just write this society off as a whole, though.


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## LovelyAcorns

I'm more into these newer post-civ thoughts starting to pop up. I can readily believe that civilized people are always the most barbaric, but while most technology is being used for fucked up shit, I believe thats inherit to capitalism, not technology itself. So, take what we want, and ditch the rest. Of course, that involves a c sudden loss of technology, especially in the beginning - keep the power plants running without civilization is impossible, but we could still rig a community center with wind turbines or solar panels. But, thats even better, given how much technology is designed to alienate and discourage human contact, private use of these is undesirable. 




> I think it's a matter of perspective. This society (talking about the first world countries) has made incredible jumps in technology and culture. At the same time, I think that harm is a natural by-product, regardless of what the society happens to be. There are certainly aspects of this society that are harmful, but others that are good. I think it's too ambiguous and irresponsible to just write this society off as a whole, though.


Well, I definitely -don't- think its irresponsible to write off this society, I'd take the anti-civ approach before I'd take this, and given the astronomical rates of depression in "first world countries", so would most. What I'm most confused about are these supposed "incredible jumps in culture". What is remotely desirable about modern culture? I have to say thats one area where primitives win hands down.


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## User Name

Gudj said:


> So, there are already threads about "green anarchy", but this is different.
> 
> 
> What do you think about the idea that this civilization was destined for more harm than good from the beginning and the sooner it's over the better?



It's unsustainable and will end.


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## Franny

Gudj said:


> What do you think about the idea that this civilization was destined for more harm than good from the beginning and the sooner it's over the better?



I've been thinking about this A LOT lately. I agree with your statement wholeheartedly. We've done more damage to ourselves and the Earth in the past 100 years than should even be possible. Climate change, deforestation, toxic waste, new diseases, etc.

I've been planning to make some changes. My family wants to buy land and start farming again. If that pans out I'm going to build myself a nice little cabin in Alabama and live as far apart from modern civilization as possible. I've got all these health problems- multiple sclerosis, STRESS, kidney dysfunction...and what my heart tells me is I can fix it by getting back to how I'm biologically programmed to live.


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## veggieguy12

*Gudj*, you should explain your view, starting with what "Civilization" is; I believe *connerR* does not understand the term the same way you do, he seems to be distinguishing "First World" nations from the "Global South", which are all equally Civilization.
What is Civilization, and if not that, then what? What does Civlization contrast with or compare to? Have you any recommended resources for further exploration of the topic, online or off-line?


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## User Name

veggieguy12 said:


> *Gudj*, you should explain your view, starting with what "Civilization" is; I believe *connerR* does not understand the term the same way you do, he seems to be distinguishing "First World" nations from the "Global South", which are all equally Civilization.
> What is Civilization, and if not that, then what? What does Civlization contrast with or compare to? Have you any recommended resources for further exploration of the topic, online or off-line?



Civilization is what began roughly 10,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture in Mesopotamia (now a desert and before agriculture wasn't) and a shift to sedentary lifestyles centered around agriculture. That means everything from small farmers in the "Global South" to the post-industrial technocratic states which feed off of them are Civilized. The only humans not included are those which still practice our original way of life of gathering and hunting (mbuti, Zoe, and Ju/'hoansi).


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## connerR

True. When I see the word civilization, I think of my immediate civilization, which I assume is the same as Gudj's. We could use this definition: "the stage of human social development and organization that is considered most advanced." But if we use: "the society, culture, and way of life of a particular area", then civilization describes a million different things.


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## Gudj

connerR said:


> True. When I see the word civilization, I think of my immediate civilization, which I assume is the same as Gudj's. We could use this definition: "the stage of human social development and organization that is considered most advanced." But if we use: "the society, culture, and way of life of a particular area", then civilization describes a million different things.




To me, civilization does not just include wealthy, technologically advanced peoples. 
I share a similar definition with User Name. Civilization includes any people who have turned away from hunting/gathering and are now absolutely stuck with stationary agricultural societies. So, as User Name said, _virtually_ all peoples on earth today are part of civilization, from the richest to the poorest. 

Maybe also included are people who are not part of civilization but who aspire to be. Such as the (mythical, unless someone want's to somehow show me evidence) "savage tribes" who are just dying to become civilized.


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## veggieguy12

So agriculture is one of the main facets of Civilization, in contrast to foraging, hunting/gathering; what about writing, recording, in contrast to strictly oral/hand communication in-person?


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## User Name

veggieguy12 said:


> So agriculture is one of the main facets of Civilization, in contrast to foraging, hunting/gathering; what about writing, recording, in contrast to strictly oral/hand communication in-person?



Writing and other forms of symbolic thought are facets of Civilized life. While there have been oral Civilized cultures, there have been no uncivilized societies with written word.

Symbolic thought also tends to take away from the immediate.


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## xmaggotx

User Name said:


> Writing and other forms of symbolic thought are facets of Civilized life. While there have been oral Civilized cultures, there have been no uncivilized societies with written word.
> 
> Symbolic thought also tends to take away from the immediate.



someone's been reading some zerzan...

i agree with a lot of what zerzan has to say, my only criticisms are that he seems to want to go really deep to the root of the problem, and in so doing makes the task seem even more impossible than it already is (not that it really is 100% impossible, as i think sooner or later its inevitable) 
anyway, as most of you know, i agree with the anti civ folks. joi the new group y the way!


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## Gudj

I haven't read Zerzan (although his newest book should be arriving shortly).
But it seems to me like something like symbolic thought doesn't have a solution... we can't just stop. Also, we aren't the only animals who are capable of symbolic thought, and if someone says that dolphins, other primates, birds, ect are part of the problem (or civ), that seems speciesist and weird. But I haven't heard his argument or thought to hard on it really.


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## hassysmacker

Because I'm lazy and don't feel like paraphrasing at this juncture, I'll repost an excerpt from a book that I value highly named Endgame, which I'm sure anyone here who already identifies as anti-civ very well may have read already, but I'll post it for those who may not share the same opinions to analyze and discuss:

"If I’m going to contemplate the collapse of civilization, I need to define what it is. I looked in some dictionaries. Webster’s calls civilization “a high stage of social and cultural development.” The Oxford English Dictionary describes it as “a developed or advanced state of human society.” All the other dictionaries I checked were similarly laudatory. These definitions, no matter how broadly shared, helped me not in the slightest. They seemed to me hopelessly sloppy. After reading them, I still had no idea what the hell a civilization is: define high, developed, or advanced, please. The definitions, it struck me, are also extremely self-serving: can you imagine writers of dictionaries willingly classifying themselves as members of “a low, undeveloped, or backward state of human society”?

I suddenly remembered that all writers, including writers of dictionaries, are propagandists, and I realized that these definitions are, in fact, bite-sized chunks of propaganda, concise articulations of the arrogance that has led those who believe they are living in the most advanced—and best—culture to attempt to impose by force this way of being on all others.

I would define a civilization much more precisely, and I believe more usefully, 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. Thus a Tolowa village five hundred years ago where I live in Tu’nes (meadow long in the Tolowa tongue), now called Crescent City, California, would not have been a city, since the Tolowa ate native salmon, clams, deer, huckleberries, and so on, and had no need to bring in food from outside. Thus, under my definition, the Tolowa, because their way of living was not characterized by the growth of city-states, would not have been civilized. On the other hand, the Aztecs were. Their social structure led inevitably to great city-states like Iztapalapa and Tenochtitlán, the latter of which was, when Europeans first encountered it, far larger than any city in Europe, with a population five times that of London or Seville. Shortly before razing Tenochtitlán and slaughtering or enslaving its inhabitants, the explorer and conquistador Hernando Cortés remarked that it was easily the most beautiful city on earth. Beautiful or not, Tenochtitlán required, as do all cities, the (often forced) importation of food and other resources. The story of any civilization is the story of the rise of city-states, which means it is the story of the funneling of resources toward these centers (in order to sustain them and cause them to grow), which means it is the story of an increasing region of unsustainability surrounded by an increasingly exploited countryside.

German Reichskanzler Paul von Hindenburg described the relationship perfectly: “Without colonies no security regarding the acquisition of raw materials, without raw materials no industry, without industry no adequate standard of living and wealth. Therefore, Germans, do we need colonies.”

Of course someone already lives in the colonies, although that is evidently not of any importance.

But there’s more. Cities don’t arise in political, social, and ecological vacuums. Lewis Mumford, in the second book of his extraordinary two-volume Myth of the Machine, uses the term civilization “to denote the group of institutions that first took form under kingship. Its chief features, constant in varying proportions throughout history, are the centralization of political power, the separation of classes, the lifetime division of labor, the mechanization of production, the magnification of military power, the economic exploitation of the weak, and the universal introduction of slavery and forced labor for both industrial and military purposes.”(The anthropologist and philosopher Stanley Diamond put this a bit more succinctly when he noted, “Civilization originates in conquest abroad and repression at home.”) These attributes, which inhere not just in this culture but in all civilizations, make civilization sound pretty bad. But, according to Mumford, civilization has another, more benign face as well. He continues, “These institutions would have completely discredited both the primal myth of divine kingship and the derivative myth of the machine had they not been accompanied by another set of collective traits that deservedly claim admiration: the invention and keeping of the written record, the growth of visual and musical arts, the effort to widen the circle of communication and economic intercourse far beyond the range of any local community: ultimately the purpose to make available to all men [sic] the discoveries and inventions and creations, the works of art and thought, the values and purposes that any single group has discovered.”

Much as I admire and have been influenced by Mumford’s work, I fear that when he began discussing civilization’s admirable face he fell under the spell of the same propaganda promulgated by the lexicographers whose work I consulted: that this culture really is “advanced,” or “higher.” But if we dig beneath this second, smiling mask of civilization—the belief that civilization’s visual or musical arts, for example, are more developed than those of noncivilized peo-ples—we find a mirror image of civilization’s other face, that of power. For example, it wouldn’t be the whole truth to say that visual and musical arts have simply grown or become more highly advanced under this system; it’s more true that they have long ago succumbed to the same division of labor that characterizes this culture’s economics and politics. Where among traditional indigenous people—the “uncivilized”—songs are sung by everyone as a means to bond members of the community and celebrate each other and their land-base, within civilization songs are written and performed by experts, those with “talent,” those whose lives are devoted to the production of these arts. There’s no reason for me to listen to my neighbor sing (probably off-key) some amateurish song of her own invention when I can pop in a CD of Beethoven, Mozart, or Lou Reed (okay, so Lou Reed sings off-key, too, but I like it). I’m not certain I’d characterize the conversion of human beings from participants in the ongoing creation of communal arts to more passive consumers of artistic products manufactured by distant experts—even if these distant experts are really talented—as a good thing.

I could make a similar argument about writing, but Stanley Diamond beat me to it: “Writing was one of the original mysteries of civilization, and it reduced the complexities of experience to the written word. Moreover, writing provides the ruling classes with an ideological instrument of incalculable power. The word of God becomes an invincible law, mediated by priests; therefore, respond the Iroquois, confronting the European: ‘Scripture was written by the Devil.’ With the advent of writing, symbols became explicit; they lost a certain richness. Man’s word was no longer an endless exploration of reality, but a sign that could be used against him. ...For writing splits consciousness in two ways—it becomes more authoritative than talking, thus degrading the meaning of speech and eroding oral tradition; and it makes it possible to use words for the political manipulation and control of others. Written signs supplant memory; an official, fixed, and permanent version of events can be made. If it is written, in early civilizations [and I would suggest, now], it is bound to be true.”

I have two problems, also, with Mumford’s claim that the widening of communication and economic intercourse under civilization benefits people as a whole. The first is that it presumes that uncivilized people do not communicate or participate in economic transactions beyond their local communities. Many do. Shells from the Northwest Coast found their way into the hands of Plains Indians, and buffalo robes often ended up on the coast. (And let’s not even mention noncivilized people communicating with their nonhuman neighbors, something rarely practiced by the civilized: talk about restricting yourself to your own community!) In any case, I’m not certain that the ability to send emails back and forth to Spain or to watch television programs beamed out of Los Angeles makes my life particularly richer. It’s far more important, useful, and enriching, I think, to get to know my neighbors. I’m frequently amazed to find myself sitting in a room full of fellow human beings, all of us staring at a box watching and listening to a story concocted and enacted by people far away. I have friends who know Seinfeld’s neighbors better than their own. I, too, can get lost in valuing the unreality of the distant over that which surrounds me every day. I have to confess I can navigate the mazes of the computer game Doom 2: Hell on Earth far better than I can find my way along the labyrinthine game trails beneath the trees outside my window, and I understand the intricacies of Microsoft Word far better than I do the complex dance of rain, sun, predators, prey, scavengers, plants, and soil in the creek a hundred yards away. The other night, I wrote till late, and finally turned off my computer to step outside and say goodnight to the dogs. I realized, then, that the wind was blowing hard through the tops of the redwood trees, and the trees were sighing and whispering. Branches were clashing, and in the distance I heard them cracking. Until that moment I had not realized such a symphony was taking place so near, much less had I gone out to participate in it, to feel the wind blow my hair and to feel the tossed rain hit me in the face. All of the sounds of the night had been drowned out by the monotone whine of my computer’s fan. Just yesterday I saw a pair of hooded mergansers playing on the pond outside my bedroom. Then last night I saw a television program in which yet another lion chased yet another zebra. Which of those two scenes makes me richer? This perceived widening of communication is just another replication of the problem of the visual and musical arts, because given the impulse for centralized control that motivates civilization, widening communication in this case really means reducing us from active participants in our own lives and in the lives of those around us to consumers sucking words and images from some distant sugar tit.

I have another problem with Mumford’s statement. In claiming that the widening of communication and economic intercourse are admirable, he seems to have forgotten—and this is strange, considering the sophistication of the rest of his analysis—that this widening can only be universally beneficial when all parties act voluntarily and under circumstances of relatively equivalent power. I’d hate to have to make the case, for example, that the people of Africa—per-haps 100 million of whom died because of the slave trade, and many more of whom find themselves dispossessed and/or impoverished today—have benefited from their “economic intercourse” with Europeans. The same can be said for Aborigines, Indians, the people of pre-colonial India, and so on.

I want to re-examine one other thing Mumford wrote, in part because he makes an argument for civilization I’ve seen replicated so many times elsewhere, and that actually leads, I think, to some of the very serious problems we face today. He concluded the section I quoted above, and I reproduce it here just so you don’t have to flip back a couple of pages: “ultimately the purpose [is] to make available to all men [sic] the discoveries and inventions and creations, the works of art and thought, the values and purposes that any single group has discovered.” But just as a widening of economic intercourse is only beneficial to everyone when all exchanges are voluntary, so, too, the imposition of one group’s values and purposes onto another, or its appropriation of the other’s discoveries, can lead only to the exploitation and diminution of the latter in favor of the former. That this “exchange” helps all was commonly argued by early Europeans in America, as when Captain John Chester wrote that the Indians were to gain “the knowledge of our faith,” while the Europeans would harvest “such ritches as the country hath.”It was argued as well by American slave owners in the nineteenth century: philosopher George Fitzhugh stated that “slavery educates, refines, and moralizes the masses by bringing them into continual intercourse with masters of superior minds, information, and morality.”And it’s just as commonly argued today by those who would teach the virtues of blue jeans, Big Macs™, Coca-Cola™, Capitalism™, and Jesus Christ™ to the world’s poor in exchange for dispossessing them of their landbases and forcing them to work in sweatshops.

Another problem is that Mumford’s statement reinforces a mindset that leads inevitably to unsustainability, because it presumes that discoveries, inventions, creations, works of art and thought, and values and purposes are transposable over space, that is, that they are separable from both the human context and landbase that created them. Mumford’s statement unintentionally reveals perhaps more than anything else the power of the stories that hold us in thrall to the machine, as he put it, that is civilization: even in brilliantly dissecting the myth of this machine, Mumford fell back into that very same myth by seeming to implicitly accept the notion that ideas or works of art or discoveries are like tools in a toolbox, and can be meaningfully and without negative consequence used out of their original context: thoughts, ideas, and art as tools rather than as tapestries inextricably woven from and into a community of human and nonhuman neighbors. But discoveries, works of thought, and purposes that may work very well in the Great Plains may be harmful in the Pacific Northwest, and even moreso in Hawai’i. To believe that this potential transposition is positive is the same old substitution of what is distant for what is near: if I really want to know how to live in Tu’nes, I should pay attention to Tu’nes.

There’s another problem, though, that trumps all of these others. It has to do with a characteristic of this civilization unshared even by other civilizations. It is the deeply and most-often-invisibly held beliefs that there is really only one way to live, and that we are the one-and-only possessors of that way. It becomes our job then to propagate this way, by force when necessary, until there are no other ways to be. Far from being a loss, the eradication of these other ways to be, these other cultures, is instead an actual gain, since Western Civilization is the only way worth being anyway: we’re doing ourselves a favor by getting rid of not only obstacles blocking our access to resources but reminders that other ways to be exist, allowing our fantasy to sidle that much closer to reality; and we’re doing the heathens a favor when we raise them from their degraded state to join the highest, most advanced, most developed state of society. If they don’t want to join us, simple: we kill them. Another way to say all of this is that something grimly alchemical happens when we combine the arrogance of the dictionary definition, which holds this civilization superior to all other cultural forms; hypermilitarism, which allows civilization to expand and exploit essentially at will; and a belief, held even by such powerful and relentless critics of civilization as Lewis Mumford, in the desirability of cosmopolitanism, that is, the transposability of discoveries, values, modes of thought, and so on over time and space. The twentieth-century name for that grimly alchemical transmutation is genocide: the eradication of cultural difference, its sacrifice on the altar of the one true way, on the altar of the centralization of perception, the conversion of a multiplicity of moralities all dependent on location and circumstance to one morality based on the precepts of the ever-expanding machine, the surrender of individual perception (as through writing and through the conversion of that and other arts to consumables) to predigested perceptions, ideas, and values imposed by external authorities who with all their hearts—or what’s left of them—believe in, and who benefit by, the centralization of power. Ultimately, then, the story of this civilization is the story of the reduction of the world’s tapestry of stories to only one story, the best story, the real story, the most advanced story, the most developed story, the story of the power and the glory that is Western Civilization."


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## hassysmacker

Sorry for the length of said excerpt, but I feel that anyone who may want to seriously take part in this conversation may find it a valuable snippet to this thread, regardless of whether or not they agree.


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## veggieguy12

It's funny how neither the guy whose book you quoted (Derrick Jensen) nor Lewis Mumford mentioned agriculture. That is clearly (to me) the basis for all the development of kingdoms and specialized trades and commerce and transportation and eveything that came to be identified with Civilization thereafter.


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## User Name

xmaggotx said:


> someone's been reading some zerzan...
> 
> i agree with a lot of what zerzan has to say, my only criticisms are that he seems to want to go really deep to the root of the problem, and in so doing makes the task seem even more impossible than it already is (not that it really is 100% impossible, as i think sooner or later its inevitable)
> anyway, as most of you know, i agree with the anti civ folks. joi the new group y the way!



Not since '05...

I think the deeper you dig, the better.



Gudj said:


> I haven't read Zerzan (although his newest book should be arriving shortly).
> But it seems to me like something like symbolic thought doesn't have a solution... we can't just stop. Also, we aren't the only animals who are capable of symbolic thought, and if someone says that dolphins, other primates, birds, ect are part of the problem (or civ), that seems speciesist and weird. But I haven't heard his argument or thought to hard on it really.



Those animals express symbolism? Do you have some information I haven't see?



hassysmacker said:


> Sorry for the length of said excerpt, but I feel that anyone who may want to seriously take part in this conversation may find it a valuable snippet to this thread, regardless of whether or not they agree.



I didn't read that because it's much too long and on a computer screen which strains my eyes, but I've read both volumes.

Jensen really touched me with his writings but they tend to be very emotional as opposed to factual (not that they don't contain facts) and he's exposed himself as a dumb ass as of late apparently (supporting intellectual property, distancing himself from Anarchism, saying cops in post-civ scenario isn't a bad thing).



veggieguy12 said:


> It's funny how neither the guy whose book you quoted (Derrick Jensen) nor Lewis Mumford mentioned agriculture. That is clearly (to me) the basis for all the development of kingdoms and specialized trades and commerce and transportation and eveything that came to be identified with Civilization thereafter.



Bingo. "DJ" is kind of weak. Again he has written some things which influenced my development though.


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## hassysmacker

I agree. I can't imagine civilization/cities coming to fruition without the surplus' provided by agricultural food production. 

In my opinion, agriculture is a necessary function of civilization, but, unlike Zerzan et al, I do not believe that semi-agricultural domestication of plants and animals (sustainable horticulture, agroforestry, permaculture) will necessarily lead to civilization. As in, I'm not "Hunter/Gatherer or bust!".

But yeah, funny that they do not mention it, but I am quite content with the definition he offered, when coupled with the opinion of mine I just mentioned.


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## Gudj

User Name said:


> Those animals express symbolism? Do you have some information I haven't see?



Well, my information has come from Discovery Channel, which is a weak source, but I will find the actual studies and get back to you. But, even without studies, it's obvious to me that many animals have problem solving abilities and can use symbolic thought. 
The specific cases I am thinking of involve an orangutan doing simple math, learning how to solve a 'trick question', and associating meaningless, man made symbols with real life objects for a reward. The orangutan also recognized a friend orangutan on tv that he hadn't seen for years. Similar things have been done with dolphins. To me, that type of thought also probably distracts from the "here and now". 

Thanks for calling me out, I swear I will find documentation of all that when I have the time.


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## veggieguy12

User Name said:


> Jensen ... exposed himself as a dumb ass as of late apparently (supporting intellectual property, distancing himself from Anarchism, saying cops in post-civ scenario isn't a bad thing).



Oh, who gives a fuck about "anarchism".

I wouldn't mind to see quotes regarding these things you mention, but I really don't care what he wants beyond the end of Civilization.
"Cops" in a post-Civ world will not possibly be cops as we know them now. There's gonna have to be some kind of community patrols/pretection service to keep marauders and raiding parties from preying on the vulnerable. (Uh, rapists?)
And there won't be jails, so what do you think will happen if someone gets sent out of the group and decides to come back or tries to steal from a village? And why shouldn't they be killed?

I'll just go ahead and say that if I could vote in someone who would secretly be wanting to stop the destruction, or if I could get elected and make any substantial impact, I would take office or vote for such a person. Fuck being pure and ideal.
There you have it. I'm a bad anarchist and I don't even care.
Tell the Anarcho-politburo, they can revoke my party card.

Also, *User Name*: please consolidate your posts, don't do a row of three separate ones. Thanks.


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## Gudj

Also, STP user Magpie did an interview with DJ in which he said:

“An anarchist is one who, given the choice, chooses responsibility.”

DJ: That’s great, under that definition, yeah, I’ll call myself an anarchist. One of the problems I’ve had with a lot of anarchists, is that frankly, I’ve known a lot of “anarchists” for whom it was basically an excuse to be irresponsible, and to be fuckups. I got into this little argument with these kids several years ago. They were saying that anarchism is about doing whatever you want whenever you want to do it. I said, you know, let’s say we’re all going to do an action. And you decide at the last minute that you don’t feel like doing it tonight, you’re going to watch a movie, you’re going to stay at home and smoke pot. And because you don’t show up, the action fails and my brother dies. I’m gonna kill you. Because my brother is dead because of you, because you chose to stay home and smoke pot. There has to accountability if we’re going to have any sort of real movement, there has to be discipline. The truth is I would want to vet him out before hand, so I wouldn’t get in the position where I was relying on him in the first place.


Not that it has anything at all to do with anti-civ.


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## User Name

hassysmacker said:


> In my opinion, agriculture is a necessary function of civilization, but, unlike Zerzan et al, I do not believe that semi-agricultural domestication of plants and animals (sustainable horticulture, agroforestry, permaculture) will necessarily lead to civilization. As in, I'm not "Hunter/Gatherer or bust!".



I think horticulture isn't a terrible idea. Anything more is depending too much on domesticated plants which are less nutritious than their wild counter parts and have higher rates of infection due to lower immunity. Gathering and hunting supplemented with a light horticulture garden largely indistinguishable from it's surroundings might be a good transition. It did lead to our transition to agriculture however.


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## finn

Well, it's said that there was a total of 3 agricultural "revolutions" that occurred for civilization to have gone where it is today. The first one was the domestication of plants, which allowed permanent settlements to form. The second one was the mechanization of agriculture which started with the seed drill, invented by Jethro Tull, which allowed more people to enter in the cities with a surplus of labor. The third one, also known as the "green revolution" was the industrialization of agriculture in which it became a fossil-fuel powered enterprise. In essence, it turned oil into food.

The third development can definitely not last, but to say that the domestication of plants would lead to that is not understandable to me. Furthermore, how would you prevent technological change?


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## User Name

veggieguy12 said:


> Oh, who gives a fuck about "anarchism".
> 
> I wouldn't mind to see quotes regarding these things you mention, but I really don't care what he wants beyond the end of Civilization.
> 
> "Cops" in a post-Civ world will not possibly be cops as we know them now. There's gonna have to be some kind of community patrols/pretection service to keep marauders and raiding parties from preying on the vulnerable. (Uh, rapists?)
> 
> And there won't be jails, so what do you think will happen if someone gets sent out of the group and decides to come back or tries to steal from a village? And why shouldn't they be killed?
> 
> I'll just go ahead and say that if I could vote in someone who would secretly be wanting to stop the destruction, or if I could get elected and make any substantial impact, I would take office or vote for such a person. Fuck being pure and ideal.
> 
> There you have it. I'm a bad anarchist and I don't even care.
> 
> Tell the Anarcho-politburo, they can revoke my party card.
> 
> Also, *User Name*: please consolidate your posts, don't do a row of three separate ones. Thanks.



I do. If you want to get into why I'll explain.

If you don't care, I'll forgo the quoting for my convenience.

Cops are cops. Cops can not exist without some form of a centralized state. Patrolling your community isn't the same as a police force.

They should be killed immediately, where have I argued otherwise?

I don't think many people serious about Civilization critique disagree with that sort of sentiment. I would do many things that I find worthless to end Civilization, but to bring that up is pointless. Might as well starting praying Civilization away.

I don't know how, other than supporting a potential police force, that makes you a "bad anarchist" but alright.

I'll bring it up at the next consensus meeting (joking, consensus is lame).

I'll think about it, but I probably won't do that because I reply as I read. Can you not rant on in a knee-jerk reactionary manner as if I hurt your feelings next time?


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## User Name

changed my mind about this post.


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## User Name

finn said:


> Well, it's said that there was a total of 3 agricultural "revolutions" that occurred for civilization to have gone where it is today. The first one was the domestication of plants, which allowed permanent settlements to form. The second one was the mechanization of agriculture which started with the seed drill, invented by Jethro Tull, which allowed more people to enter in the cities with a surplus of labor. The third one, also known as the "green revolution" was the industrialization of agriculture in which it became a fossil-fuel powered enterprise. In essence, it turned oil into food.
> 
> The third development can definitely not last, but to say that the domestication of plants would lead to that is not understandable to me. Furthermore, how would you prevent technological change?



It doesn't necessarily have to lead to industrial agriculture, but it's still harmful. It destroys topsoil and saps the land of nutrients. Mesopotamia is now a desert. As are other sites where intensive non-industrial agriculture was practiced.


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## oldmanLee

Well,we do still run into those two sticky little issues with the dropping of civilization:
When you pull the plug,how far from current civilization do you want to go?
As the earth's current population level is pretty much dependant on the structure now in place,how and who makes the decision as to them that lives and them that don't?


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## veggieguy12

oldmanLee said:


> When you pull the plug,how far from current civilization do you want to go?



As far as it takes to return to being part of the eco-cycle.



oldmanLee said:


> As the earth's current population level is pretty much dependant on the structure now in place,how and who makes the decision as to them that lives and them that don't?



Those who live will be those who are able, those who are cooperative with others and defensive of themselves and their community. Those who know how to integrate back into the regional ecosystem of habitation. In short, those who are *able* to survive without all the trappings and conveniences of Civilization.



User Name said:


> Cops are cops. Cops can not exist without some form of a centralized state. Patrolling your community isn't the same as a police force.



Yes, well let's please not confuse community policing and cops. You wrote that Jensen supports "cops", then you write that I too support having them, though you have here acknowledged the distinction for which I made support. I don't think the terms are terribly important, because as I mentioned, there will be no centralized state, and I suspect that Derrick Jensen doesn't think that post-Civilization there will be any such thing as a State power or courts or Sheriff's department with a budget and shiny badges. And I don't thin that you think he expects that - this is the reason I take issue with you penalizing him for the point. If he literally said "I want cops around after the collapse", please let's have the quote. I could point you to another article pretty critical of police at all, so I think that _at most_ we could say he's conflicted or contradictory, but not at all supportive of cops.



User Name said:


> They [troublemakers to post-Civ societies] should be killed immediately, where have I argued otherwise?
> 
> 
> 
> You haven't argued otherwise; my point was to illustrate that the task of police/courts/government - the ideal, the principle fpr which government is supposedly established - will remain with or without courthouses and parliaments. Whether we call them the village patrol or cops, we are going to need people in the role of cops. Much will be different about the people and the society they/we inhabit, and I assume that everyone here understands this, as I assume that Derrick Jensen (of all people) knows, and is considering/envisioning when he makes the point that [protective forces] will need to be present post-Civ, whether he actually said "cops" or not. I don't have much more to say on this; I'd like to think we agree and can work together just fine, but if you really believe that Derrick Jensen wants Joe Arpaio or Kevin Beary or John Timoney or Stacey Coon roaming around (or even kept alive) after Civilization topples, then we just disagree on that.
Click to expand...


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## Beegod Santana

Not that I'm eager to join in on another one of these, but I can't help commenting on the agriculture issue. I agree that it is definitly one of the main aspects that you need for a civilization to form, but the one point I haven't seen anyone make is that native americans practiced agriculture extensively. Some did it permanately in one spot, but many moved around the country, would grow some crops in one spot during the spring /summer then move on after the harvest. Here in New England we have tons of town names ending with "field" and its because when the europeans got here most of the new england country side was native farm land. MA now actually has way more trees than it did 200 yrs ago because the majority of the farms moved south or west and the forests were able to grow back (and of course now people want to cut em' down again to build casinos).

and I swear that's the only post I'm making in here.


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## hassysmacker

Well Beegod, I believe the difference is for those natives that had agricultural practices, their food production tended to be very consciously worked into the native ecology in the way that was healthy for it. For example often times, natives would use land management practices such as burning, as controlled burns are known to generally exponentially regenerate life in an area. 

I would certainly refer to the food production methods of many natives more as horticulture or agroforestry than agriculture, and a very fact filled book that I can recommend on this subject that is more or less a case study of western native americans and their land management practices is "Tending the Wild" by M. Kat Anderson.

From the online synopsis:
"John Muir was an early proponent of a view we still hold today—that much of California was pristine, untouched wilderness before the arrival of Europeans. But as this groundbreaking book demonstrates, what Muir was really seeing when he admired the grand vistas of Yosemite and the gold and purple flowers carpeting the Central Valley were the fertile gardens of the Sierra Miwok and Valley Yokuts Indians, modified and made productive by centuries of harvesting, tilling, sowing, pruning, and burning. Marvelously detailed and beautifully written, Tending the Wild is an unparalleled examination of Native American knowledge and uses of California's natural resources that reshapes our understanding of native cultures and shows how we might begin to use their knowledge in our own conservation efforts.

M. Kat Anderson presents a wealth of information on native land management practices gleaned in part from interviews and correspondence with Native Americans who recall what their grandparents told them about how and when areas were burned, which plants were eaten and which were used for basketry, and how plants were tended. The complex picture that emerges from this and other historical source material dispels the hunter-gatherer stereotype long perpetuated in anthropological and historical literature. We come to see California's indigenous people as active agents of environmental change and stewardship. Tending the Wild persuasively argues that this traditional ecological knowledge is essential if we are to successfully meet the challenge of living sustainably."


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## xmaggotx

brrgood, i realize you dont want to post on here, but please do at least post where you found information that says MA has more trees than it did 200 years ago. and im not talking about saplings i want evidence of more actual forest, since that is what you claimed. i dont know about that state inparticular, but i know that logging companies and others who stand to make profit like to claim that there are "more trees now than before [the industrial revolution/logging/european settlement/etc], based upon the fact that in the place of living ecosystems and old growth forests, our culture (or at least companies within the culture) has planted mass amounts of saplings. and a row of a thousand saplings does not constitute having "more trees" than say, 500 old growth redwods. not if we're being reasonable.


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## finn

I don't know about MA, but in some areas, the natives would burn down forests so that the land would support a different ecology. This isn't the slash and burn agriculture practiced in South America, although some parallels can be drawn. They weren't all technically agriculturalists (though some were) but instead were something termed as "ecosystem engineers." A nonhuman example of this is a beaver- forming lakes via dams which create an ecology which supports their niche.

Now the logging companies will always talk about trees because they are in the business of farming trees, but tree farms are not forests. That is the important distinction. There are less forested areas now than there have ever been, even if there are more trees.


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## connerR

What do you guys think of the theory that society as it stands now is the natural evolution of mankind? That living like early humans did in the preciviization world would, in fact, be the unnatural one for this modern day and time? 

If so, would the eradication of plants and animals be a part of some natural process (regardless of what it is that causes them to be destroyed?) It's kind of like saying that elephants with small tusks have favorable traits in the modern world because they aren't hunted as much as those that have larger tusks. 

Or would you say that that's just nonsense?


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## hassysmacker

I think it's pretty ludicrous to say that one method of living by humans (versus the previous 99.9 percent of Homo existence that did not resemble it in anyway) that has inherent expansion at the sake of everything in its way (more accurately, dependent on the gobbling up of everything in its way) is the natural evolution of mankind. Considering this is a way of life/culture, not a physical evolution (besides us getting physically weaker due to our heavily grain based diet and disconnect from natural ecosystems), how could it be called the natural evolution? It just happens to be the way of life that is currently dominant. I think that proposing that this is the natural evolution of mankind is just falling into the "One right way to live" cultural myth.

The eradication of some species occurs everytime a new introduction is made to any given ecosystem is ecologically natural. It happens. However, one species being the cause of a global mass extinction (200 species a fucking day!), is not.


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## Gudj

connerR said:


> What do you guys think of the theory that society as it stands now is the natural evolution of mankind? That living like early humans did in the preciviization world would, in fact, be the unnatural one for this modern day and time?
> 
> If so, would the eradication of plants and animals be a part of some natural process (regardless of what it is that causes them to be destroyed?) It's kind of like saying that elephants with small tusks have favorable traits in the modern world because they aren't hunted as much as those that have larger tusks.
> 
> Or would you say that that's just nonsense?




I think it was DJ who answered that with some smartass comment like: 
"So millions of years of evolution was meant to facilitate you sitting on your couch watching tv?" 


I don't know why civilization started (so relatively suddenly), maybe this is our natural evolution or maybe something weird happened that fucked everything up. 
Unlike the theory that the world will be better after civ, whether or not we got here by fucking up bad or by doing what we are supposed to can't really be tested.


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## xmaggotx

well, evolution (even cultural evolution, as in apes using certain tools, etc.) does not take place over such a brief time period as 10,000 years, especcially at the rate this culture has been changing. i would say this culture is trying to cheat evolution. it could be argued that in its early stages civilization was an evolutionary branch, but it failed in every respect: it failed to keep balance in the ecosystem (name any other animal that "evolved this way) it failed to help humans in a practical way (sure you can argue that we have more things now, but we spend far more time working for food than we ever did, and in general far more time working for all of the necessities of life, which were previously available to us in abundance.

also, 99% of human existance- about a million years (and many millions of homo-species before that) was spent living in harmony with nature. and that worked for us as a species. there would be no evolutionary reason for humans to develop civilization. i mean what, just out of the blue, BAM, a million years (again, more if you count previous species who are now thought to be as smart as us in nearly every way) of living one way, complete 180 degree turn in 10,000 years...its ludicrous scientifically, and logically. but i guess if you want to reach around (not accusing you of this) for some reason to hold on to the notion that this culture is doing good, its no more ridiculous than a lot of other arguments i've heard.


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## tagvolatile

I think the sooner man is gone from the earth, the better, but is it sustainable, even then? Perhaps, for a while longer. But that does seem the best thing that can be done, in my opinion. Some believe in Malthus's views, that destruction is inevitable, population growth is far more exponential than that of which the earth's resources shall consist.. but even if man had reduced in numbers, unless man would be wiped completely, eventually, as people grow, it seems everything that can be, will be. someone may yet again seek to advance technologically, to make life "easier". There'll be those that oppose.. ahem. but I don't know. This civilization seems bound to fail. 
It's too bad people couldn't be content with just walking the earth, lowering our standards. impatience may have cost the planet, i.e. guns: to kill faster, cars: to move faster, money: to trade? faster..I could go on. Always looking for the easy way, despite repercussions. And fuck, there are repercussions.


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## macks

xmaggotx said:


> well, evolution (even cultural evolution, as in apes using certain tools, etc.) does not take place over such a brief time period as 10,000 years, especcially at the rate this culture has been changing. i would say this culture is trying to cheat evolution. it could be argued that in its early stages civilization was an evolutionary branch, but it failed in every respect: it failed to keep balance in the ecosystem (name any other animal that "evolved this way) it failed to help humans in a practical way (sure you can argue that we have more things now, but we spend far more time working for food than we ever did, and in general far more time working for all of the necessities of life, which were previously available to us in abundance.
> 
> also, 99% of human existance- about a million years (and many millions of homo-species before that) was spent living in harmony with nature. and that worked for us as a species. there would be no evolutionary reason for humans to develop civilization. i mean what, just out of the blue, BAM, a million years (again, more if you count previous species who are now thought to be as smart as us in nearly every way) of living one way, complete 180 degree turn in 10,000 years...its ludicrous scientifically, and logically. but i guess if you want to reach around (not accusing you of this) for some reason to hold on to the notion that this culture is doing good, its no more ridiculous than a lot of other arguments i've heard.


 
So, evolution is a pretty loaded term when used like this. If you are talking about evolution like Darwin's theory of evolution then the statements you made don't really make sense. The only thing that drives that kind of evolution are individual organisms trying to maximize their reproductive output against enviornmental factors. There is no "group" evolution theory that holds water, there is also no higher goal such as living in harmony with an ecosystem.


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## Critical Rupture

Interesting thread.

First of all, though perhaps DJ may not have every facet of post-civ (whether anti-civ or other) articulated 100%, or for that matter his definition (thanks for posting it) of civilisation (and hence critique of it), I think his role is important. His analysis is obviously an example of his base of knowledge, whereas a writer like Ward Churchill (when in talking on similar issues) articulates the indigenist paradigm. 

And this brings me to another point brought up here that I think is fundamental: agriculture. In any analysis of the destruction of the planet, and deconstructing anthropocentrism, talking about something that is all about producing stuff for us, denying the land/soils use for others (nonhuman especially), is ever so central to this discussion.

Anyone read Lierre Kieth's "The Vegetarian Myth"? Indeed an antagonistic title, but I feel this book adds another dimension to the critiques of DJ, JZ, and Ward Churchill. Soil, especially top soil, is fucking central to life. If it ain't healthy, the planet ain't. Suddenly all this permaculture stuff is like... needed. Important. Life saving. Annual monocrops don't really feed the soil. Look this shit up. I'm too lazy to explain how deep this shit is. Hell, I'm far from a permaculturist (though, it's where I wanna go, haha)

Apparently DJ and Lierre Kieth are working on a book together at the moment. Could be interesting.


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## finn

Has anyone read "Becoming Native to this Land" by Wes Jackson? It's about agriculture and ecology, it would fit very well with those interested in this thread. I think I have a copy of it online somewhere, but in txt format, not pdf or anything fancy.


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## JungleBoots

would anti-civ be considered something like primitivist anarchism? the belief that humans would live better lives if most technology was erradicated and were left with essentially primitive technology to maintain existance.

so as to eliminate class struggle, commodity fetishism, and media mind control.

im a proponent. please bring on the appoc.


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## Critical Rupture

I think it's also important to think about the distinctions between the terms _primitivism_, _indigenism_ (at least in terms of radical ecologism), and _anti-civ_.

_Indigenism_ relates to the ideas and practices of the relationship to the land and to community held by indigenous peoples. A term used by them to describe themselves in the coloniser language. See Ward Churchill for example.

_Primitivism_ takes inspiration from the previous (but not limited to), but relates more to non-indigenous, especially thinking about possible links to _anarchism_ (being originally from Europe). So it's a term used by the coloniser and/or the colonised describe a group of ideas and practices similar (but not the same) to _indigenism_.

_Anti-civ_ is similar to _primtivism_, but in one simple way could be viewed as simply not as extreme. For example, like it's counterpart, believes in the complete destruction of civilisation as we know it, but does not follow it to the extremity of it's post-apocalypse vision. Like the ideological difference between JZ and DJ for example.


Does that make sense? Obviously this is somewhat interpretation. I couldn't find links for such definitions (I didn't look very hard, but maybe I'm actually wrong???).


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## hassysmacker

I would say a more accurate comparison of anti-civ Vs. primitivism would be that all anti civ thought is opposed to the existence of civilization, which is necessarily based on the emergence and growth of cities (which is necessarily based on monocropped, grain based, "totalitarian" agriculture), while acknowledging that there is a wide spectrum of sustainable, uncivilized lifestyles that were practiced the world over, ranging from hunter-gatherer bands, to agroforestry, to small scale horticulture, to a little bit of each, etc..

Primitivism on the other hand tends to argue essentially "hunter-gatherer or bust!" claiming that anything larger than band (note: much smaller than any sort of tribal existence) society inherently stratifies, and is opposed to the domestication of any species of plant or animal, regardless of whether or not in benefits the local ecology, and posits that any degree of domestication WILL eventually lead to civilization, no questions.

DJ vs. JZ ideologically, is a very apt description.

Obviously, this is my interpretation.


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## HIS HERO IS GONE

I definitely believe that civilization does more harm than good... with the growth of our technology, we've been destroying more and more forests and building more cities and constantly building structures. We've abused the earth way too much and I truly believe if we continue to exploit the environment it will result in our extinction. Capitalism only throws fuel on the fire. When the economy goes, we want to build more to make more jobs. They destroy not only the forests but the animals homes that live there. And for what? Ski resorts, hotels, malls, fast food places all for money. Industrialization is terrible for the earth. What's it like in the cities? It's the most unnatural, disgusting place with terrible air to breath in. The way our civilization works is that it's dependent on destroying the planet. Even if your vegan, if you're a consumer in our civilization your consumption helps pay for the earth's destruction. The plastic rapping around anything you would buy in a store or a water bottle contributes to oil industry and putting gas in your car. The oil industry is terrible and its spills kill wildlife. If we lived in modern-style tribes where we could all talk face-to-face about how we want things to be without so much technology, the earth and us, would be in a lot better shape.

You can have the finest egalitarian society you'd like but if your land base is shit you wont be able to live there.


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## JungleBoots

Critical Rupture said:


> I think it's also important to think about the distinctions between the terms _primitivism_, _indigenism_ (at least in terms of radical ecologism), and _anti-civ_.
> 
> _Indigenism_ relates to the ideas and practices of the relationship to the land and to community held by indigenous peoples. A term used by them to describe themselves in the coloniser language. See Ward Churchill for example.
> 
> _Primitivism_ takes inspiration from the previous (but not limited to), but relates more to non-indigenous, especially thinking about possible links to _anarchism_ (being originally from Europe). So it's a term used by the coloniser and/or the colonised describe a group of ideas and practices similar (but not the same) to _indigenism_.
> 
> _Anti-civ_ is similar to _primtivism_, but in one simple way could be viewed as simply not as extreme. For example, like it's counterpart, believes in the complete destruction of civilisation as we know it, but does not follow it to the extremity of it's post-apocalypse vision. Like the ideological difference between JZ and DJ for example.
> 
> 
> Does that make sense? Obviously this is somewhat interpretation. I couldn't find links for such definitions (I didn't look very hard, but maybe I'm actually wrong???).


 so while primitivism is about the utter removal of cluttering commodity and social structure for all time, anti-civ aims to remove it... only to allow it to develope again but from an initial anarchist and pacifist society, rather than from violent and rigid social systems as the current civilization has?


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## hassysmacker

based on my response two posts above i'd say the difference is that while primitivism isnt inherently anti-civ, a not necesarily primitivist anti-civ thoughline such as my own would advocate a completely bioregionally based way of life that obviously varies in specific lifestyles per commmonity and/or region, depending on whatever sustainable, uncivilized way of life is more appropriate there (be it hunter gatherer, or agroforesty based, or whatever) hopefully informed by anarchist/egalitarian social structuring, but most importantly hopefully informed of the reasons and trends that caused agricultural civilization to grow, and be ready to defend against it at all costs (not to mention it would be harder for such a thing to develop as civilization up to this point has destroyed soil fertility so much through grain based, monocroped agriculture, and due to that it would be incredibly difficult to grow food in such a way again, for a long, long timw without the input of fossil fuel derived fertilizers in which topsoil would have the time to develop.)

sorry if that was rambly. i think its coherent. i'm not entirely sober.


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## veggieguy12

This one is adequate for me:



> Deep Green Resistance is a perspective emerging from the current environmental movement that views mainstream environmental activism as being largely ineffective. The Deep Green movement believes that civilization, and especially industrial civilization, is fundamentally unsustainable and must be actively dismantled in order to secure a livable future for all species on the planet.
> 
> This perspective argues that the dominant culture will not undergo a voluntary transformation to a sustainable way of living. Deep Green believes that industrial civilization must be forced into collapse in order to maintain as much of the living world as possible, noting that carrying capacity is further diminished as civilization continues. It supports an active movement with the objective of accelerating the collapse of industrial civilization.
> 
> Within Deep Green theory, lifestyle or personal changes are not considered effective methods of creating meaningful change. The mainstream environmental movement is seen as being distracted by its emphasis on lifestyle changes and technological solutions instead of confronting systems of power and holding individuals, industries, and institutions accountable.
> 
> Deep Green views technological solutions, no matter how well intentioned, as inadequate, and possibly leading to accelerated ecological destruction and pollution (see Jevon's paradox). The Deep Green movement looks to pre-industrial and pre-civilization, land-based cultures as models for sustainable ways of living.
> 
> Deep Green theory draws on elements of deep ecology, ecofeminism, the writings of Joseph Tainter, Richard Heinberg, Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, Richard Manning, Daniel Quinn, Aric McBay, Jerry Mander, and others.


from the Wikipedia entry


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## JungleBoots

yeah i kind of agree with deep green theory as well. but i just find it hard if not impossible to expect these industrys to be held accountable to the extent that they require untill the shock of their true destructive nature finally seeds into the heads of the people.

which will probably unfortunately be too late.


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## hassysmacker

That deep green wiki is succinct, and well put, and I'm very happy that I now have access to that statement of sorts.


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## tallhorseman

There is a Jewish author named Zacharia Sitchin. He claims that the human race is the result of two genetic modifications to the aboriginal humans. The first was to make the humans capable of performing manual labor for the alien race who modified them. The second was to create a ruling class among the genetically modified aboriginals so they could carry on the work for the alien race. He bases this on Sumerian cuneiform text that began being excavated in Iraq in the late 19th/early 20th century. He supports it with biblical text. When you read the bible assuming god was an alien and the characters therein are twice genetically modified ruling class elites it makes much more sense.

It makes sense to me because it would mean that we have been thrust hundreds of thousands of years ahead of the hunter-gatherer society that we should still be. The TERRIBLE mess that we are making of our civilization suggests to me that we are in an unnatural evolutionary state. Like taking eighth-graders and thrusting them into college and expecting them to transition smoothly.

I'M NOT FUCKING TRANSITIONING SMOOTHLY, YOU ALIEN DUMB-ASSES!!!!!!!




Gudj said:


> What do you think about the idea that this civilization was destined for more harm than good from the beginning and the sooner it's over the better?


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## veggieguy12

Well, to be neither dismissive of that alien-modified theory or too accepting of any ol' outlandish suggestion, I'd just note that the origin/history really don't matter all too much; what's important is the future, and what we do now toward that end.
If the alien overlords come to preserve their creation against the resistance, we'll have to fight them too.


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## Gudj

veggieguy12 said:


> Well, to be neither dismissive of that alien-modified theory or too accepting of any ol' outlandish suggestion, I'd just note that the origin/history really don't matter all too much; what's important is the future, and what we do now toward that end.
> If the alien overlords come to preserve their creation against the resistance, we'll have to fight them too.



It would have been impossible to respond to the previous post without detracting from the conversation, although I was so tempted to respond anyway.

Good point, it's in the past, now we have to worry about our future.


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## anne

The only things that really matter are sustainability and quality of life, whether we rebuild a civilized way of life or revert back into hunter-gatherers or both after the crash. I just hope it's not more of the same and that the change comes soon.


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