Human Iterations

(#7: Physical limitation inspires social oppression.)

An Anti-Primitivist Essay

The problem with the rejection of technology (or more precisely, the precise allegiance to one limited set of possible technologies) is that scarcity and restraint is built in. The greater the technological limitation, the greater the constraint imposed.

Because our given bodies require certain forms of environmental integration and because we desire greater connection, we've historically traded for this on a fractured, individual level, at the expense of greater social freedom and equality. For all the reasons and things discussed earlier, the restraints of rigid-technologies naturally chafe people and inspire them to take short cuts by utilizing that which is at hand by turning people into their technology. Enter alienation and all forms of oppression.

It's a simple reality that want and dependency together progressively facilitate the psychosis of power.

Certainly want can be reduced significantly, but there is an inherent and significant limit. Being restricted in your integration with the environment (having limited technology) means that there is a much more finite limit on survival knowledge carrying capacity and yet simultaneously restrictions on adaptability. Being limited to a very small area of the total dynamic system means that natural chaotic systems dynamics can occur beyond the periphery of one's limits only to suddenly and drastically effect that within. Sudden regional change is a fundamental reality of the biosphere. It's dynamic.

Want will happen. And it will do so sharply. Because society will be more regionalized. The total sum of humanity won't be able to flow around and mesh with the biosphere as a whole, it will be broken into components that will have much less scope and fluidity. Society will be more compartmentalized into autonomous cells, and these cells will be more rigid.

We can argue about degree, but the point is there will be some non-insignificant degree of this.

This is where interdependency exits the realm of mutual aid and develops the potential for serious nastiness. Where there is social want and where the fulfillment of individual want is deeply dependent upon others, there is much greater temptation on the part of the individual to drastically simplify their operating processes. To become machines in pursuit of survival. And, perhaps most importantly, to simplify away the presence of other individuals. To reinterpret them as machines as well.

With every biological mechanism shouting at a cacophony of simplistic structural procedures. (Get water. Get food. Etc.) It's very easy for the individual to despairingly become progressively rigidly locked. They start applying such rigid structures to their interactions with people. Bang. Dehumanization. Faith. Power structures. Social oppression.

Where does alienation originate? It is instilled by the overwhelming omni-presence of rigid structure. A lack of fluid, dynamic integration with the world. Baseline human biological structures have certain limitations to dynamic integration built in. Certain structural predispositions. We can't just realign our genes and grow chlorophyll to take in sunlight through our backs or weave wings to glide through canyons hunting deer. The baseline human body is relatively rigid technology.

And people are inspired by limitation, by want, by the encroachment of rigidity, to oppress.

Limitation upon understanding likewise has this effect.

Limitations to our capacity to experience have been consistently surpassed throughout history, a flower bursting through concrete. But when others are left frozen in the concrete they can bear the brunt of such blossoming understanding.

In order for a Victorian Physicist to reach out, to explore and make discoveries involving vacuum, thousands of man hours were needed. To get the rubber, the pump, the glass, the metal... all the tools necessary to peel away the air and peer beyond the norms of our immediate environment, a massive amount of matter had to be positionally reorganized. But it would be inconvenient to educate, explain and get everyone to consense on the benefit of achieving this vector of increased integration with the world, and because most of the people in the world were still far more entrapped by more fundamental physical wants, it was very easy for the Victorians to put the wants and flourishing of the rest of humanity aside. Because the Physicist's own rigid technological and structural entrappings have promoted an alienation from others, limited connection fails to fully reveal the effects of his actions, and centuries of aggregated social psychoses have ground down his empathy. Thus, through a diffuse system of intermediaries, Congolese miners are enslaved, ship hands are whipped and a colossal monster of wood and metal is driven across the ocean. Though the desire for integration and understanding persists, when framed by such alienating structures it can be rechanneled into driving social oppression.

Though the imagery of such Victorian Imperialism is dramatic, it is not particularly original or even that worse than similar processes on less visually epic scale.

Think of the elder whose pursuit of understanding seduces the tribe into recognizing his role and position, turning the product of their work and efforts into tendrils of his own tech. Can't spend all day on mushrooms unless there's folk who're gonna provide you with food. You get social stratification. In order to preserve the elder's high degree of mushroom-related pursuits it's real easy to apply social coercion, personal and cultural power structures so that even in a period of want, others are forced into sacrificing their own food to the self-proclaimed elder.

Physical limitation doesn't causally dictate oppression. What it does is grease the gears. It makes it easier to adopt the psychoses of power. Makes them progressively more alluring. Physical rigidity leading to mental and social rigidity. The more physical rigidity, the more and more likely social oppression will spontaneously emerge from all facets.