Are the anarcho-primitivists SURE they're optimists?

Post Reply New Topic

http://anthropik.com/

This is the site that's plunged me into anguish. No, not over being an entity of civilization. (Interestingly, if I'm reading the Thirty Theses correctly, even if—IF—civilization is a chimera, the source tripwire wasn't an act of evil/insanity/etc., but simply us no longer being in a glacial climate...) Rather, two things...

1. The claim that humans are inherently band-based creatures. I think you can see how that might be a problem for Aspergerites like us. I thought AS was a thing of superiority, not inferiority. (Immunity to peer pressure should be enough for that. So why does that claim make it sound like said immunity is a baleful thing...?)
2. There is one big thing that makes me dread the idea of an irreversible collapse of civilization and anything beyond stone/glass artificing. It would keep us Earth-bound. Ultimately, without high-grade technology (albeit of a sort that, at this point in time, would look more like sorcery than anything else), what hope do we have to save the cosmos from the omnihatred that is Entropy? I cannot bear the idea that, even several trillion or quadrillion years in the future, Entropy will have devoured all of the cosmos, and all that transpired before will have been utterly for naught...

I care not what the laws of physics claim. Entropy's survival is an insult to justice--what can the cosmos possibly have done to deserve total effacement? There must be a way to drive Entropy back out of existence...

I think anarcho-primitivists are idiots. Then again, I am a transhumanist, which makes me the spawn of Satan in their eyes.

I agree with Odin. Anarcho-Primitivism DEFIES human nature. We are given the gift of knowledge, sentience, creativity, and it would be a huge shame for all that to go to waste. In fact, I am strongly opposed to primitivism.

{quiet chuckle} You'll have to explain to me how gatherers have no creativity. You don't think artificing tools was uncreative, do you? Nor that they have nothing in the way of music? (The site I found didn't go to Zerzan-level extremes) Making flutes, fiddles, and drums (for example) probably isn't impossible for gatherers—the basic materials are there. And gathering at ALL (mobile food and non-mobile food alike, as well as knowing what classifies as ready-to-pluck medicine) involves knowledge.

Those aren't my worries. My worries are (a) how Aspergerites (and autisitics in general) are supposed to thrive in what is probably a largely routine-less existence…or at least difficult-to-predict existence (Well, maybe we'd do well as gatherers or lorekeepers...), and (b) how we're supposed to do our duty to the cosmos that caused us to exist, and destroy entropy, when we're caught at an existence level that affords us very little in the way of doing that...

Exactly. The world can't support 6.5 billion hunter-gatherers right now. Also, what are they going to do if they get cancer or something?

1

I disagree as did Huxley. Humans arn't inherently social creatures we are gregarious ones. Although it's not difficult to group things (humans included) it's doesn't really impress me given how disorganized humans are in everything they do and want to do. Feline influence should of been talked about alongside with the chimps. The dipsticks on that arrogare website have so narrowmindedly abused anthropological findings as to fit their beliefs and opinions. I was waiting for the cannibalism article but I never found it. It's hard for me to take that site seriously. Every article was so childishly manipulative in it's propaganda techniques. For me personally the logic of their premise was really lacking. Agriculture can be metaphorically Pandora's Box but it is a tool and has enormously benefited humans as much as it has hurt us as a species. I don't think linear comparisons can be made between our ancesters and ourselves in the 21st century. We perceive the world differently and biologically and culturally we are drifing further and further away from our ape brethren. Violence is a useful tool as well; it's not necessary a bad thing when it's used as a last resort. I only agree with the arrogares' on two points. The first being that violence has gotten more sophisticated in it's use over the centuries. The second point they got right is that the New World was already going to s**t before Columbus decided to find his fame and glory across the blue seas.

That is the biggest achille's heel that groups such as the primitive wannabees have. We can't live in the past's world anymore then past humans (anthropods included) could have lived in ours. It just scares the crap out people that humans are changing so rapidly because their culture is. On one level I can understand the fear of irreverisible change but on the other hand like you I don't think it is an excuse to try to go backwards. Ironically this is what seperates us from the apes the most yet there are humans out there who would rather live like an ape than to accept the consequences of living like a human.

(Arrogare...? Never heard that one. What does it mean?)

What is this cannibalism article you speak of? The only type of cannibalism I can think that was even somewhat regular was the ritual cannibalism that groups like the Mohawks engaged in—and that was solely to adsorb the strength of the fallen enemy warriors! Maybe once or twice a year at most, depending on how sour Algonquin/Iroquois relations were those years (read: how often the Algonquin had cause to send assault bands against the Mohawk)...

One thing that bugs me about Anthropik's claims is that they act as though ethnocentrism is perfectly all right (at least on the tribal level they're talking about). {sigh} Not from a neutral standpoint. The relativism that multiple ethnocentrisms would need to thrive is essentially trying to cut reality into separate pieces—something that can't be done.