Neo-Luddism & Anarcho-Primitivism. Thoughts?

[LeroyJenkem]

Linkola had the closest thing to a functioning model of ecofash, but imagine getting your average person of Walmart on board with reject technology / return to fishing

 

[Smug]

The problem with going back further than the late 20th century is it inevitably involves a mass cull of the population. Now yes, a LOT of land globally was never developed to its "maximal" (pre-industrial standards i.e. 18th century Europe) limits, but there's no way there could be more than 3 billion people or so even it were,

The only industry required to sustain population of several billion is the Haber process - used to effectively make fertiliser (ammonia specifically) from air. The biggest population bottleneck was previously lack of food, and without manufactured fertiliser, the best you could do for growing mass crops was to waste most of your farmable land doing crop rotation, and/or sail around the world collecting bird poo to use for fertiliser instead.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

The only industry required to sustain population of several billion is the Haber process - used to effectively make fertiliser (ammonia specifically) from air. The biggest population bottleneck was previously lack of food, and without manufactured fertiliser, the best you could do for growing mass crops was to waste most of your farmable land doing crop rotation, and/or sail around the world collecting bird poo to use for fertiliser instead.

My concern would be the logistics behind producing the fertilizer and the transport of all the grain. That's going to require a lot of energy and transporting the grain will require steamships and/or trains, even if the population clustered in the agricultural region (which they'd have to, since harvesting it would require a lot of manpower).

Oh shit, that would work. AI rulers saving us from dangerous technology because they have the monopoly on fertilizer producer. All the fertilizer is made in some giant factory in space/Antarctica/some artificial island which is protected by drones and bioweapons and shit to kill anybody going near there.

 

[Frostnipped Todger]

Anprims are all trannies.

All the neo-luddites I've met are addicted to the internet.

It's over.

There are a few An-Prims I know that just went bush and never came back. I used to go and visit occasionally, and they're living their dream.
Unfortunately, where politics are involved, people lose their minds and can't just "live and let live"... So you end up people on the internet arguing that the internet shouldn't exist.
It's the political equivalent of "Tradwife" tiktokers.

 

[Mr Bubbless]

Without technology we wouldn't have the McRib so all your points are invalid.

 

[DDR Yoga]

I find Kaczynski, Zerzan, Linkola's etc. arguments on these matters to be utterly convincing. All the civilisations of yesteryear had one thing in common; they collapsed. Unfortunately, for all their ability to identify problems, none of the anti-tech writers have been able to offer anything close to a workable solution. Kaczynski's people's revolution is pie in the sky, Linkola's eco-fascism is idealistic beyond Communism and Zerzan is standing with his hands in his pockets.

I hate to say it but global collapse is the only outcome I can envisage, and if there are survivors, a new technological arms race is the only future I can see beyond that. I'm terminally pessimistic but I must stress, never a nihilist. I believe in the natural the supernatural and I cherish every moment I get to spend away from the unnatural.

The main reason that anti-tech ideologies are largely thought experiments rather than a feasible ideology is the fact you can't make people forget previously experienced convenience. If the grid collapses, someone will rebuild it, because the knowledge never goes away. Burn every book and manual, and you're still gonna have someone jury rig comparable setups because they miss hot showers and indoor plumbing. Short of complete human extinction, tech is here to stay and will be expounded upon accordingly. Sucks, but it is what it is.

Some have argued that since we rely on oil to fuel the complex network of machinery we use to acquire and distrubute oil in the first place, any collapse which involves oil wars or some oil-based catastrophy could leave us in a situation whereby we are simply unable to get to the oil again, making an industrial rebuild almost impossible. In time though, we would technologise via other routes.

 

[DDR Yoga]

What I really want to know is why John Zerzan is so staunchly pro-Trans and anti-TERF.

Despite Zerzan's calling upon his readers to abandon post-leftism, he is decidedly post-leftist and it became the wedge between his and Ted Kaczynski's friendship. Zerzan believes that man's natural state is egalitarian but Ted proved to him, with autistic precision, that primitivism doesn't guarantee the rise of any particular set of values or ideology.

I like much of what Zerzan has to say but he's never been able to shake his old leftist delusions.

 

[Smug]

My concern would be the logistics behind producing the fertilizer and the transport of all the grain.

Only the fertiliser needs to be transported. The grain is plentiful and of no concern. With plentiful fertiliser, you simply need to farm with full confidence that the crops will be 21st century quality.
To put it simply, grain will be made more or less fucking everywhere, and that doesn't matter. What matters is the quality of soil which essential crops are grown in.

 

[Meat Target]

You would be bewildered if you lived back in the days you romanticize, before electricity and clean, running water. People had big families back then because of shorter lifespans, high mortality rates among women and children, and lack of adequate healthcare.

You'd have a mental breakdown at the levels of violence and indifference to human life. It'd be all those Chinese LiveLeak videos you've watched would come to life, with the added horror of it being your own race and culture committing it.

All the grimdark lunacy you've seen in something like Warhammer 40K was the norm for most of human history (and for millions, it still is today).

As fucked as Clown World is, it is tame compared to what came before us. It's a miracle that our ancestors survived long enough for us to be born.

This is why, even though I think it's prudent to doomsday prep, that accelerationism is moronic. You are currently living in the "good old days".

I get it, we all hate being stuffed in wagecages, and dream of an exciting contest to survive. But if and when society goes to shit, you will miss these halcyon days of shitposting and laughing at retards you'll never meet.

The problem is not with technology unto itself. It's morally neutral, just like wheels or hammers or anvils or ships. The problem is that our brains aren't keeping up with how rapidly technology is advancing. The digital world is like the Monolith, and we are still monkeys. We don't know what to do with it.

The solution is not to renounce modernity (which is not the same as modernism, the fallacy that "new is always better or more true"). The solution is to keep it in perspective. Like money, it should be your servant, not your master.

 

[ArnoldPalmer]

As far as connecting to your roots, nobody is stopping you from moving somewhere rural. You can hunt, you can fish, you can homestead your heart out. You just have to decide to do it.

All of the humans on earth would fit in the land area of NYC standing shoulder to shoulder. The Chinese would take up about Manhattan. There’s room.

1. Give it five years. The WEF goblins have been trying to put a stop to that for over a decade, and they will succeed. If you think they and their ilk are going to leave you alone just because you're trying to opt out by living off the fat of the land, you're going to be in for one hell of a rude awakening when the US Marshals or UN Blue Helmets doorknock you. Every square inch of habitable land on this planet, is being monitored, and in real time. And you think escape is possible. Lol. Lmao.

This isn't even factoring in what you're allowed to do with land, and as a landowner in both urban and rural settings, it's nowhere near as much as you think.

2. Technically true, but realistically stupid. If I were even less charitable, I would call this a lie by omission. The only people who say that "the entire human race can fit inside of X", are people who have no respect for the human condition (those who would want you to live asses-to-elbows in cramped urbanite filth), or lack an understanding of just how much land area it takes to float a population (agriculture, the public works, manufacturing, federally-claimed land, et al. All of these require exponentially more space, even if the population grows logarithmically or linearly, which it doesn't, that's also exponential, and has been for about 200 years). Where people live isn't even close to the largest part of the equation, here. There's still the whole, like, remainder of non-human life on planet Earth to consider. Ten, twenty billion eaters on the planet, isn't going to do the rest of the ecosystem any favors, and as it turns out, funneling millions of them into cramped concrete hellscapes is one of the most psychologically unhealthy things you can possibly do to people. Bill Gates is not completely incorrect in his assessment of world overpopulation, but his methodology is.

In any case, your assessment that modern technological achievements are a net good, simply isn't true. They have done plenty of good, but more harm has been done than could ever possibly make up for it, in what we get out of these technologies. Is breaking apart the family unit as a cultural cornerstone worth Words with Friends and Disney+? Is having a meaningless office job, that, by all accounts, should have been automated in the 1990s, worth having, just to prop up a scammy, half-socialized medical system? Is having a Tesla Model X worth "employing" the hundreds of Chinese-owned African slaves who mined the Cobalt and Lithium to produce it? Nothing is free, and that goes most especially for technology. 1980s Cellular Phones were destroying sperm counts, and it became a huge piece on the news for years, so much so, that that's what early cell phones are still known for. Do you think that stopped, or do you think people just stopped talking about it? Do you think that the five or six additional radios that have been added to modern phones as a baseline standard feature are not as bad for you, compared to the old Motorola Brick? Come on, now.

Bubble, bubble
Toil and trouble
What makes a man
In society's rubble?
Is our blood and flesh
A mere slave to vice?
Drink this potion, dearie
And don't think twice.
We all believe we can sate our ills
With banal distractions, or dubious pills
It won't fill the void, at least, I think
We're meant to thrive, but instead, we sink
Technology's great. It's cool, it's fun.
Then SkyNet goes live, and, BAM!
We're done.

NYEE HEE HEE HEE! You don't always get what you pay for, but you always pay for what you get!

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Maybe this world has always sucked since the dawn of man because Homo sapiens is an overall crappy species design?

Which means anarcho-primitivism, the Luddite way, and modern life all suck overall when implemented in this world?



(of course each way has pros and cons)

 

[Jacob Schiff]

Zerzan believes that man's natural state is egalitarian but Ted proved to him, with autistic precision, that primitivism doesn't guarantee the rise of any particular set of values or ideology.

Having read nothing of Ted, Zerzan is right.

Hunter-gatherer societies are inherently egalitarian due to it being a mode of economy and living that limits accumulation of resources.

It is difficult to hoard animals you’ve hunted or berries you have gathered, especially when you regularly move around taking with you only what you can carry. The genders are also ensured equality since the food resources they exploit and tasks they carry out are roughly equal in output and importance.

The only exceptions are when the environment allows it. Some hunter-gatherer communities living in exceptionally rich environments can settle and thus making it possible for a family or clan to hoard excess resources. This was only the case for a few American tribes.

Or if few plant sources are present it creates a gap in equality between men and women. This is only the case in arctic and arid regions.

I find Kaczynski, Zerzan, Linkola's etc. arguments on these matters to be utterly convincing. All the civilisations of yesteryear had one thing in common; they collapsed.

That doesn't make any sense... all societies, even the hunter-gatherer ones have collapsed at some point.
Now, one of two points apply to all hunter-gatherer societies.

1. They adopted agriculture
2. They were conquered by someone who did

Sedentism allows for higher birth rates and development of more specialised craftspeople, thus ensuring leaps in technology and full time soldiers. These things combined makes it impossible for hunter gatherers to resist agricultural societies. Sedentism always prevails.
Destroy sedentism now and it will return as strong as before.

sedentarism made life unfulfilling because it freed up too much time, which cultivated scientific pursuits (an instance of "surrogate activities" as ted called them) that led to industrialization

Quite the opposite. Sedentism is more time consuming than hunter-gatherism. But sedentism, when developed enough, allows for a surplus of resources to be reproduced and to be used up by a minority that is then capable of pursuing interests other than growing food.

The only industry required to sustain population of several billion is the Haber process - used to effectively make fertiliser (ammonia specifically) from air.

Haber was born in Breslau, Kingdom of Prussia (now Wrocław, Poland), into a well-off Jewish family.

Billions of people around the world only kept alive through jewish ingenuity and goodwill.
Amazing.

 

[DDR Yoga]

In an essay adressing his dfferences with Zerzan, Ted sites numerous examples of non-egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies. John, to my knowledge, has never responded.

 

[BirdUp]

Quite the opposite. Sedentism is more time consuming than hunter-gatherism. But sedentism, when developed enough, allows for a surplus of resources to be reproduced and to be used up by a minority that is then capable of pursuing interests other than growing food.

potato potahto
regardless there is free time that people must waste

Sedentism always prevails.

anyone worth their salt like kaczynski recognizes that sedentarism is inevitable but you misunderstand industrialization as an inevitable stage of sedentarism rather than the combination of many historical factors

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Hunter-gatherer societies are inherently egalitarian due to it being a mode of economy and living that limits accumulation of resources.

Egalitarian to a degree, since even in many small-numbered tribes in the desert/Arctic, inherited status was still a thing since unless their chief's son/nephew (for tribes who practiced matrilineal succession) was a fuckup, they'd almost always inherit the status of chief. And to my knowledge, every society ever has had a servile class, even if in the most egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies they were just poor men who lacked the skill to improve their lot in life. IMO that says a lot about core human nature.

It is difficult to hoard animals you’ve hunted or berries you have gathered, especially when you regularly move around taking with you only what you can carry. The genders are also ensured equality since the food resources they exploit and tasks they carry out are roughly equal in output and importance.

I disagree with the idea of hunter gatherer societies having gender equality, since what they really had were rigidly defined gender roles. There were plenty that restricted the main political roles and inheritance to men, enforced taboos like "do not talk to a woman before hunting this species of animal," segregated menstruating women, etc.

Or if few plant sources are present it creates a gap in equality between men and women. This is only the case in arctic and arid regions.

Ironically, a few Arctic tribes (Alaska Inuit and the Chukchi at least) were somewhat more egalitarian in some senses because it was perfectly acceptable for a woman to sleep with multiple men, assuming each man conducted appropriate ceremonies and offerings.

 

[Jacob Schiff]

Egalitarian to a degree

More egalitarian than almost every farming culture.
A slightly advanced farming culture will have inequality unparalleled in the far majority of hunter-gatherer societies.

And to my knowledge, every society ever has had a servile class, even if in the most egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies they were just poor men who lacked the skill to improve their lot in life. IMO that says a lot about core human nature.

Again, their status was still FAR from that of a slave in any farming culture.

I disagree with the idea of hunter gatherer societies having gender equality, since what they really had were rigidly defined gender roles. There were plenty that restricted the main political roles and inheritance to men, enforced taboos like "do not talk to a woman before hunting this species of animal," segregated menstruating women, etc.

That depends on what you define as gender equality. I'd say roles of equal economic importance and having a say in group based and personal decision making is the better definition of equality.

In an essay adressing his dfferences with Zerzan, Ted sites numerous examples of non-egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies. John, to my knowledge, has never responded.

Would like to read that, if you could dig it up.

anyone worth their salt like kaczynski recognizes that sedentarism is inevitable but you misunderstand industrialization as an inevitable stage of sedentarism rather than the combination of many historical factors

Which reminds me: if you like Kaczynski you hate the west.

'The west' less as the modern west and more as the west during the golden age of 1600s and forward. Everything setting the west apart from every other society in history either propelled the west towards industrialisation or was made possibly because of it.

Leading up to industrialisation we have unique religious and cultural traits that enabled greater individuality and focus on individual rights, leading to greater freedom of thought and personal ownership, leading to advances in technology, ideology and meritocracy, leading to advances in science, human rights and of course, industrialisation. And from there on, the west was objectively better and more advanced than any other civilisation and culture in history.

Sciences? Military victories? Art? Philosophy? Technology? Human rights? Everything you as a westerner have ever been proud of?
You agree with Kaczynski, you hate all that.

 

[BirdUp]

science, philosophy, technology and art are just ways that people have spent their excess time

excerpt from part 39 of ISAIF: "Given a person who devotes much time and energy to the pursuit of goal X, ask yourself this: If he had to devote most of his time and energy to satisfying his biological needs, and if that effort required him to use his physical and mental faculties in a varied and interesting way, would he feel seriously deprived because he did not attain goal X? If the answer is no, then the person's pursuit of a goal X is [a way of spending excess time]."

 

[DDR Yoga]

Uncle Ted adresses the myth of egalitarianism:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-the-truth-about-primitive-life-a-critique-of-anarchoprimitivism

The crux of the matter:

"But particularly revealing is Zerzan’ s quotation of “Shanks and Tilley”: “The point of archaeology is not merely to interpret the past but to change the manner in which the past is interpreted in the service of social reconstruction in the present.” [163] This is virtually open advocacy of the proposition that archaeologists should slant their findings for political purposes."

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

More egalitarian than almost every farming culture.
A slightly advanced farming culture will have inequality unparalleled in the far majority of hunter-gatherer societies.

Not necessarily. Plenty of farming societies function with little distinction in wealth and social rank. Like to my knowledge I don't know of any agricultural society that lacks ideas like "nobility vs commoners", but there's plenty of farming societies (like many Indians in the Southwest) where that distinction is almost entirely ceremonial and the nobles are no wealthier than anyone else and all privileges they get are voluntary and based on their personal success as leaders. This is pretty common in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Americas.

Again, their status was still FAR from that of a slave in any farming culture.

Depends which society. Not all slaves had to do the absolute worst shit like the Haitian/Brazilian sugar plantation slaves and some societies like Korea or Japan afforded a fair amount of rights to slaves. You can also read about forced prostitution among West Coast hunter gatherer Indians if you check any explorer's account (since those "loose squaws" and other things they'd call them were slaves assigned to pleasure visitors to make their master rich).

That depends on what you define as gender equality. I'd say roles of equal economic importance and having a say in group based and personal decision making is the better definition of equality.

Then in that definition, gender inequality was really only a thing in the Industrial Age (and even then only for women who weren't poor), since women contributed greatly to important industries like farming, clothmaking, etc. in practically every society and always had a say in how the household was ran.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Agriculture led to the benefits of civilization, but it also to crap like tyranny and large-scale war.

The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race | Discover Magazine

The advent of agriculture was a watershed moment for the human race. It may also have been our greatest blunder.

(also I read somewhere else that it was booze that led to agriculture)

Anprims are all trannies.

If that's true, such was not the case before Current Year.

To those to who the 2010s were a blur, it seems so sudden.