Anarcho-primitivists are the ultimate Luddites — ideologues who favor complete technological relinquishment and a return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. We spoke to a leading proponent to learn more about this idea and why he believes civilization was our worst mistake.
Philosopher John Zerzan wants you to get rid of all your technology — your car, your mobile phone, your computer, your appliances — the whole lot. In his perfect world, you'd be stripped off all your technological creature comforts, reduced to a lifestyle that harkens back to when our hunter-gatherer ancestors romped around the African plains.
8 comments
Skimmed the full article. Failed to find any answer to my question of whenever this guy is indeed ready for the daily struggle to survive, where food is so rough that teeth are going to break, where hunger is the default and starvation common, where most children are going to die, where parasites are a given, where severe injuries are not only more likely, but also way more likely to be a death sentence, and stuff like appendicitis just IS a death sentence - or whenever he expects to permanently frolic on flowery meadows like a disney princess.
In general, most of his answers gave me “old man yells at cloud” vibes.
PS: Be warned, that website has one of these obnoxious spider-in-the-face “GIB EMAIL WE SEND YOU SPAM!!1″ popups…
So this also means no medicine, mostly non-working fake-medicine instead, perhaps a little medicine left. Bad water, parasites, bad teeth, high infant mortality, short life expectancy. High pollution exposition from makeshift fires, fireplaces and dwellings, poor waste management, etc. Probably low to no education, tribal isolation and infighting, plus superstitions to promote more of it. High inequality is also not resolved by this way of life. Anyone around who doesn't do the same is also generally more powerful.
Apparently it happens at times and places in crisis that some groups flee and fall back to a similar state (there are little to no original "primitive" groups today).
But also problematic is that while it may be nice to go live differently, especially temporarily if you have the ability to come back, advocating for the whole society to change also means fighting against society. Many radicalized groups continue to fight against it for whatever reason and they rarely have good enough justifications, so are unable to convince the rest to follow them. This also means that some of them want to resort to force. Some go as far as terrorism...
@Croquemitaine #174134
At least as far as medicine, there is quite a bit more found in nature that helps than many people realize. Unfortunately, because of more effective, cheaper, easier to produce medicines replacing old herbal remedies that do work, most of those old remedies are forgotten. Which means, yes, falling back on this kind of primitivism now would put them in an even worse situation than our ancestors 100,000 years ago. Having to relearn and pay the cost again that the ancestors of our ancestors paid to get to the point they were at.
Yeah, they really have no concept of what they’ll get themselves into. Very few people are up for this kind of lifestyle, and even most of those who mostly do, still depend on society to meet many of their needs.
@KZadBhat #174138
I don't really believe in herbalism personally, maybe with limited exceptions. Chewing an aromatic plant may help temporarily with bad breath, a strong enough natural drug that is easy enough to extract might temporarily help against pain, or help to escape reality, but when so, these are generally also very toxic in the quantities needed to have an effect (even alcohols, it's also why in modern medicine we keep discovering and using better targetting molecules and rarely resort to 1st generation antipsychotics or pain killers for instance)...
Anything thick enough to be bacteriostatic can help a little on a wound, but those who used honey for that didn't understand why, also assumed that its consumption does the same, etc. Then of course, in traditional systems, the tenets are weak, so the claimed relationship between why a particular plant might be useful and the organ or condition, are often actually false (i.e. the humors system is long discredited, the traditional chinese medicine system is flawed, homeopathy is nonsense)...
On the other hand I can agree up to some point too, instincts and intuition are better than nothing: when we're thirsty or hungry we know what to do and then get rewarded by wellbeing. Some researchers also evaluate how attention alone can help to comfort patients no matter if the medicine is effective...
I have two electric bikes. Doing a little tweaking in the settings in the displays of such (third party ones not supplied with the conversion kits, designed to connect with 5-in-1 cables to ensure control of the lights that are part of the circuit, again, non-standard with the original kits along with different motor controllers which have that lights-connection facility) I increased the maximum speed of such from 15.5 MPH to 18 MPH. So you want to take my electric bike from me?
You’ll have to catch me first, OP.
And the only possible way you’ll be able to do that is with a car.
There’s your own opinion destroyed: and by yourself .
@KZadBhat #174138
And health isn’t the sole issue. Most people doesn’t know how to hunt and fish, which berries are good to eat and which ones are poisonous, how to build a shelter… The only people which might be able to pull it would be the survivalists.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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