@MemeticSect
A Khanty mother and her child eating raw reindeer meat in the Yamal Peninsula (Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug), northern Siberia, Russia, 1991.
A Khanty mother and her child eating raw reindeer meat in the Yamal Peninsula (Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug), northern Siberia, Russia, 1991.
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The anarcho-primitivist who wants us all to give up technology
VICE: When did you have your epiphany about all of this?
J. Zerzan: I didn’t have one epiphany. I began to see that there is an intentionality to technology. It isn’t just some neutral thing. The Industrial Revolution wasn’t just about economics. As Foucault says, it was more about imposing discipline. It started to dawn on me, maybe technology has always been that way. People are not yet thinking too much about it, but Hollywood is thinking about it. Look at Her. Look at Transcendence. These are amazing movies that just put it right on the table. You want more technology? You want to be absolutely dehumanized and humiliated? This is what it looks like.
continue here: [2]
VICE: When did you have your epiphany about all of this?
J. Zerzan: I didn’t have one epiphany. I began to see that there is an intentionality to technology. It isn’t just some neutral thing. The Industrial Revolution wasn’t just about economics. As Foucault says, it was more about imposing discipline. It started to dawn on me, maybe technology has always been that way. People are not yet thinking too much about it, but Hollywood is thinking about it. Look at Her. Look at Transcendence. These are amazing movies that just put it right on the table. You want more technology? You want to be absolutely dehumanized and humiliated? This is what it looks like.
continue here: [2]
VICE: Is there any way that technological advancement might turn out OK?
J. Zenzan: No. I don’t think so. The trans-humanists say that if we just have more technology, we’ll have a quantum leap and everything will be OK. We will solve all the problems. We will live forever. Well, how is that working out so far? We’re seeing the collapse of the global environment. We have these mass shootings. “We’re all connected,” they say, but we've never been more disconnected from each other in history.
continue here: [3]
J. Zenzan: No. I don’t think so. The trans-humanists say that if we just have more technology, we’ll have a quantum leap and everything will be OK. We will solve all the problems. We will live forever. Well, how is that working out so far? We’re seeing the collapse of the global environment. We have these mass shootings. “We’re all connected,” they say, but we've never been more disconnected from each other in history.
continue here: [3]
VICE: So, if civilization does collapse, what do you think the re-wilding process will look like?
J. Zerzan: That’s the number one question. How are we going to live? We’re so de-skilled, how do we reskill? Even something as far back as making stone tools, knowing what plants are edible. I mean, how anxious will you be to pull down civilization if you don’t know how to live without it? So, we have to start getting those skills.
continue here: [4]
J. Zerzan: That’s the number one question. How are we going to live? We’re so de-skilled, how do we reskill? Even something as far back as making stone tools, knowing what plants are edible. I mean, how anxious will you be to pull down civilization if you don’t know how to live without it? So, we have to start getting those skills.
continue here: [4]
VICE: And maybe it’s not just learning long-forgotten skills, but also learning to forget. Will we forget what stars are, for example? In the past, people would look up and they wouldn’t know what they were, and it wasn’t so much an absence of knowledge, but a presence of mystery.
J. Zerzan: Right, why do people need to know those things? What’s the instrumentality? I would contend that it’s not ignorance. It’s actually the opposite of ignorance. The hunter-gatherer people could see a bent blade of grass and tell you eight things about what it meant. Is that not science?
continue here: [5]
J. Zerzan: Right, why do people need to know those things? What’s the instrumentality? I would contend that it’s not ignorance. It’s actually the opposite of ignorance. The hunter-gatherer people could see a bent blade of grass and tell you eight things about what it meant. Is that not science?
continue here: [5]
VICE: The lack of information also allows the individual to project themselves into that absence. There’s a creativity to giving one’s own personal meaning to things rather than having the meaning imposed from without.
J. Zerzan: That really hits the nail on the head. Here’s a real quick little story. Some of us were gathering up in Olympia at an anarchist workshop and we overheard these people say, “Man, these primitivists are crazier than we thought. One of them was saying that Earth is flat.” What [the primitivist had] really said was that if you live in band society of 60 people, it doesn’t matter if Earth is round or flat. We look at this marvelous photograph of Earth taken from the moon. Here we are on this fragile little globe, but what did it take to get that picture? What kind of massive industrialization project did it take in order to have that one lovely picture?
continue here: [6]
J. Zerzan: That really hits the nail on the head. Here’s a real quick little story. Some of us were gathering up in Olympia at an anarchist workshop and we overheard these people say, “Man, these primitivists are crazier than we thought. One of them was saying that Earth is flat.” What [the primitivist had] really said was that if you live in band society of 60 people, it doesn’t matter if Earth is round or flat. We look at this marvelous photograph of Earth taken from the moon. Here we are on this fragile little globe, but what did it take to get that picture? What kind of massive industrialization project did it take in order to have that one lovely picture?
continue here: [6]