Human Iterations

(Fifteen Anti-Primitivist Theses)

1. Biology's constructs and dichotomies are not useful.
2. The biosphere is not inherently good or superior, just very dynamic.
3. Humans can choose their dynamics.
4. Role-filling is moral nihilism.
5. Individuals flourish with increase of dynamic connections.
6. Understanding is not dependent on process but capacity to experience.
7. Physical limitation inspires social oppression.
8. Spatial limitation ingrains social hierarchy.
9. Freedom of information is necessary for free societies.
10. It's impossible to speak of regional liberty.
11. Any society that embraces death will embrace oppression.
12. Technology can be applied dynamically.
13. We do not live in a closed system.
14. Hard though the struggle may be, the ease of partial victories will always cost us more.
15. The new is possible.

Twenty years ago a group of Detroit anarchists began work on a new synthesis of environmental and anti-authoritarian thought. Differencing themselves from other burgeoning ecological movements in the Eighties anarcho-punk scene they sought to draw inspiration directly from the primitive roots of Humanity. Anarchy, they declared, was not an abstract state to be politically won, but a living experience and extensive historical reality. Reevaluating the ideologies and dogma of the classic Anarchist movement, they turned attention to the archaeological record and existing indigenous societies. By building on post-left critiques they passionately and fluidly deconstructed mental, social and physical expressions of totalitarianism.

And finally, having recognized the mythological Fall in Humanity's embrace of Civilization, the movement chose to target the complete technological infrastructure and mental hierarchies originally launched by the onset of agrarianism.

The radical core of a vast Green Anarchist reawakening, Anarcho-Primitivism blossomed across the North American anti-authoritarian community and then beyond. Concurrent and intermingled with the birth of organizations like Earth First and the Earth Liberation Front, it kept up a hard-line intellectual argument while actively inspiring a more fervent exploration into personal and relational power issues than had ever been accomplished under the old European Anarchist ideologies.

High-profile operations such as Earth First's creation of the Cascadia Free State to block old-growth logging built an international momentum around Green Anarchy and indigenous movements like that of the infamous Zapatistas buffered their status. At the same time intellectuals like John Zerzan gained public exposure in defense and support of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski's anti-civilization politics. In the Seattle riots against the WTO a sizable Anarcho-Primitivist group from Eugene stole the spotlight with their widespread participation in property destruction. Today the various shapes of Green Anarchy have become diffuse and deeply integral in the broader Anarchist movement and Anarcho-Primitivism enjoys a vast influence.

Naturally this has come with sizable criticism.

Within the traditionally socialist and unabashedly Leftist veins writers such as Michael Albert and Murray Bookchin have been repulsed at the movement's radical rejection of everyday basic technology and universally accepted constructs like Language itself. Socialists deride a lack of engagement with the class conflict and colonial realities. Autonomists occasionally take issue with the mainly-first world adherents' disengagement from solidarity. Furthermore, identity issues and accusations of irrelevancy have plagued the mainly economically-privileged white Anglophone movement.

As the dialogue has seeped out into general platform and as the Anarchist community continues its exponential growth, there have also been some noticeable effects on attitude. Predictions of an inevitable and permanent crash of civilization have sapped the perceived need for revolutionary action and, with the popularity of nature skills, small doses of survivalist elitism have taken root.

But, as with any political philosophy or revolutionary paradigm, the demographics and particular social consequences are far less important than what Anarcho-Primitivism actually has to say. Radicalism alone is never reason for rejection and, whatever tactics might be concluded from an assertion, if the underlying idea is inviolate, the consequence of it should not blind us to that reality.

The actual argument behind Anarcho-Primitivism is fierce. It is intelligent and complex, yet beautifully simple at root... And it is ultimately wrong.

Precisely one year ago, through his tribe Anthropik, Jason Godesky launched a series of essays in a kind of master attempt at detailing their Primitivist argument. Invoking Martin Luther's theological rebellion, Godesky named them The Thirty Theses.

Though I mean this similarly named project in response, I do so not to his specific prose or logic but in engagement with the broader movement.

While it is true my father long positioned himself within and introduced me to a more classic Anarchism, it was the unquenchable reason I found in Anarcho-Primitivism that first rooted my personal politics. Its sensibility, unflinching radicalism in analysis and passionate focus on abolishing power from our interpersonal relationships have given heart to my life for over a decade. Though I maintain significant differences with some elements of the radical environmentalist diaspora, I am an Anarchist who believes in living Anarchy as the perpetual resurgence of the human spirit and I think the words "Green Anarchy" are self-evidently redundant. At the same time I also see a future beyond the physical restraints of the frail bodies chance dealt us, a society of infinite freedom. But in body as well as mind and love. Spread across the unlimited heavens and pressed up against the fabric of reality. ...A self-banishment back behind the walls of our lovely garden is not reconcilable with that.

In giving memetic flesh to these fifteen theses I seek not to call out the eco movement wholesale. Nor do I mean to limit myself to some official orthodoxy of Anarcho-Primitivism proper. Rather I mean to address what I consider the core "Primitivist" strand in Anarchism today and the deep failings that have come to define it.

Hopefully I won't fuck this up too horribly.

[Afterword]

[Why & How Jason Godesky Is So Wrong His Ancestors Are Wrong]