Human Iterations

(#12: Technology can be applied dynamically.)

An Anti-Primitivist Essay

Language can be a real downer. Words and concepts gather associations that weigh heavily upon us and can obscure the underlying reality. We make simplifications and structures to deal with a given context. To the degree that these structures are integrated with the world around us they can facilitate stronger and more dexterous connections. To the degree that they become more rigid or desolate, such structures prove disastrously dis-integrated with the dynamics surrounding us.

So too, when constructing language and theoretical models around a basic reality is it vitally important that our mental structures be deeply rooted in that reality. Blindly accepting and working from previous or popular macroscopic simplifications can only result in a structure that is out of touch with the underlying dynamics.

Although concepts like "civilization" and "technology" can be simplified into some of their popular associations, any significant analysis built off of such structures will be critically unable to integrate with the root realities touched by said associations. References to "technology" as the rigid and brittle structures so obvious in today's society can be said to effectively encompass the most visible aspects of what currently exists. But such focus obscures what could exist. ...As well as some of the finer points of what is already in effect, but still overshadowed.

By attacking the dominate rigid forms of technology under the premise of all "technology", the anarcho-primitivist discourse builds itself around macroscopic simplifications and blinds itself to details. Though a popular abstraction of "technology" is what is adroitly attacked, the actual and full definition of technology is what's consequently thrown out. Rigidity is critiqued but, through the misapplication of broad language and concept, human agency in our environmental integration is what's ultimately dismissed.

As such, "technology" is misidentified as stemming from a desire of control rather than contact, experience and understanding.

But the reality is, given its popular breadth as a concept, technology actually refers simply to how we interact with the world. And it is the nature of this how is the real issue, not that there is a how in the first place. There will always be a how. By attacking the very idea of hows we simply choose to blind ourselves to the hows we're already using. And then they use us.

So the real question is what nature of technologies should we turn to. And, yes, our options include the few primitive technologies our species was once born with as well as the wide variety of structures that have been developed and applied since, but not just those.

Of course, I think we would all agree that today's dominate technological infrastructures are unacceptable, or, at very least, less than they could be. Today most acts of creation are perverted towards structures of control before they even leave the inventor's mind. We open up new avenues of contact and then work harder and harder to force methods of control upon them.

But the point is not all desire for contact is a false-face for the pursuit of control. In fact one might say that control makes contact impossible. We can never really know those or that which we control. Rather our worship of control is always one of surrender to security. Control is about imposing rigidity. It's about orchestrating the world around us so that it can't interfere with the structure within. We do this so that we might cling to this remaining structure and claim it as an identity. Control is about creating a husk to die in. To truly touch, to have contact with the world around us is irreconcilable with such. It smashes through structures of control and rebuilds them as veins and currents.

Contact is conducted though dynamic systems. And this includes systems that we popularly classify as “advanced technology.”

Telescopes, microscopes, radios and phones. Fiber-optic cables, WiFi mesh networks, satellites and infrared sensors. The more complex, the more dynamic. The more points of inter-contact. The more fluid and organic such systems become. The more adaptable.

As our new structures and approaches become more dynamically refined, the better they're able to integrate with the realities of their operating environment. In fact, beyond a certain point the technologies we create can become more dynamic than this frail, scummy planet-skin we were born into. Nanotech and biochemistry embody the current cutting edge of this drive to offer stronger and finer degrees of contact through our own bodies. (Although with both, just as with anything else, the impulsive, blind pursuit of control in such areas rejects understanding and meaningful contact at the cost of potentially catastrophic results.) We are finally gaining choice in all the myriad workings of our material world. No longer content with clunky macroscopic abstractions and simplifications, we are finally grounding the roots of our interactions and integration with the world around us.

It's a move to stop beating the world with a crude hammer and instead begin to stroking its skin.

And, with such fine understanding and contact, we are opening up possibilities previously closed. The deaf can hear. The blind can see. The crippled can walk. The old folks can get it on.

As we've seen the drive for experience, for pleasure and life itself are matters of technology, the methods and structures of our interaction with the world. Information and communication technologies, transportation technologies and science itself (science in the “pursuit of understanding through touch” sense, not the “imperialism” sense) all demonstrate such emerging tendencies.

Core to the primitivist mantra is the assertion that these means of “artificial” communication and the like are, at the end of the day, utterly dismal, leaving us disconnected and constantly enslaved. It's the least eloquent assertion and almost entirely dependent upon populist “common sense” appeals. ...Because it's completely fucking ridiculous. Whose fault is it if you can't turn off your cellphone to just enjoy some natural solitude? Stop blaming the phone (or the blasted dagnum computer with its “email”) and take responsibility for the way you integrate with such technology. If our society doesn't facilitate long uninterrupted walks on the beach then change society, don't launch a crusade to abolish our ability to play with such fun toys.

Personally, I abhor phones. I just dislike the way they unevenly filter our preexisting social language. In person I'm all about the body language, hand gestures and facial quirks. But that's just me. In contrast, I love the bulletin-board format. I was prolifically using the internet long before I really started making phone calls and I feel deeply at home with its social intricacies.

Although personal, face-to-face contact provides hella more bandwidth, at the end of the day it's only a matter of bandwidth. There isn't anything any more magical about so called “direct” physical contact. And any connection is a dramatic improvement over nothing. Being able to still contact friends, no matter how distant their desires take them, is a wonderful thing. To reach out and touch Bangkok and Berlin, to be a shoulder to cry on or a ecstatic confident, to watch a volcano explode on another continent or pick out the wobbles of a distant star... Such connection is a thing of liberation. We really do feel better for our use of advanced technologies. All that's required is a shedding off of our own rigidities and a refusal to lazily feed ourselves to new ones.

But, of course, with the more spiritual, psychological, sociological or philosophical claims against technology for which it is famous, anarcho-primitivism has developed two pragmatic arguments as crutches.

The first is that of diminishing returns. With “technology” we are said to inevitably work harder and harder to take smaller and smaller steps (something noticeable in limited frameworks such as agriculture where more energy exerted on the same amount of land is said to produce less and less per-investment). This is wrong of course, and the misapplication of the “diminishing returns” inference upon the whole of our drive towards more dynamic technologies stems from a misunderstanding of the root reality. The reason some “areas” of technology demonstrate such behavior while others do not is not because things like computer manufacturing have yet to hit some inevitable barrier (although certainly, the universe has an informational carrying capacity), it's because things like “agriculture” are not discrete species of technological development but cast off, inherently limited, sections of a single progression. Computers are one of the rare technologies that haven't yet reached diminishing returns, because there's no limit to what a “computer” is! Yeah, when the length and breath of a single limited structure has been explored it sees less and less growth within those arbitrary boundaries. So fucking what? There can still be growth somewhere else! The conceptual division of technology into discrete fields creates the limitation that is then identified. And, ultimately, the accelerating “areas” of technology like nano-tech computing will inevitably turn around and drastically revitalize lagging areas like “agriculture,” letting us take in sustenance by, say, chlorophyll in our backs, leaving behind the awkward and brittle orchards we once mistakenly built to rewild themselves.

The second argument appeals to the authoritarian nature of today's technological infrastructures. It's sometimes boiled down into sloganeering with phrases like “who's going to go down into the caves to get your iron?” Of course the instantaneous response of “we'll build machines to do that” is spot-on. There's a reason the modern corporatist-socialist-statist economy feeds so ravenously on human labor when it could easily provide comfort. Socially we place value in power rather than liberation and thus market forces move at a relative snail's pace towards post-scarcity. If we really cared about it, we could immediately make huge strides towards abolishing even the frailest degree of “work” without anyone sacrificing a steadily advancing first-world living standard. This much is, at least in part, plainly obvious to just about everyone. And the perpetual response of primitivism, that mechanization isn't a real solution because someone would still have to occasionally fix the machines, is a cop-out. I'd much rather be playing around with the gears of mining machines than wheezing out my lungs in some coal mine. And then I could move on to something else. I would be free to learn another role. But all of this talk of new mining processes is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if we have the machinery or not. If there are no telescopes in the whole fucking world, I'd more than gladly go down into the mine myself and personally complete all the so called “work” required to build it myself. And you know what? I'd be more than willing to share it. That's the whole fucking point.

The advancement towards more and more dynamic technology has never innately required and does not innately require any oppression whatsoever.

Nor, in fact, does such advancement make for any inherent catastrophes or sacrifices. The pursuit of dynamic technology is grounded in the valuing of knowledge and adaptability. It has never been about diddling around with our surroundings until we find something immediately gratifying. That's not “technology,” that's a just single methodology of developing technology. And in such behavior no conscious or creative effort is involved, it's simply the mechanistic/entropic eating up of that which is around you. Entirely focused towards power, profit and control now, understanding later.

But why not understanding first and action later?

Anarcho-primitivism is famous for its hesitancy, conflict and sketchiness on what constitutes appropriate technology.

Reaching into an anthill with a stick, fashioning a bow, grunting sweetly or meanly, utilizing symbolic mental structures, teaching a mother to pat a baby over her shoulder, building a hut, drawing in the mud... and god forbid we talk about permaculture or bicycles!

On the whole its most obvious weakness (and yet best rhetorical defense) is that there is no clear line. Folks talk of “that which doesn't start to control you” but never really stop to deeply analyze that. They take it to obviously call for the abolishment of satellites, airplanes, computers and genetic engineering, but that's not necessarily true.

Such control is a choice. We don't have to be controlled by our technology, no more than we have to crank out and obey rigid mental structures. Just as internal rigidity is a consequence of our choices so is the resulting external rigidity. In every moment in our lives we can choose life or undeath. We choose to be governed by the environmental structures we interact with or we can choose to move through them as we desire, unhindered. The internalization of rigid structure is not innate to dealing with structures. We can change and create them and ourselves. We can be rather than accepting the world and our relations to it as is. We can constantly reshape and redefine our relations to the world. Rather than following input, we can become fountains of output.

If we are sincere in our rewilding, we cannot turn to something as limiting as primitivism.

Why not nano-tech, space tech, permaculture, and dynamic technology in general? Think about how we might have built civilization if we'd been true anarchists from the beginning!

Wide-eyed technological lovers oft receive fiery denouncements for wanting to play god. By seeking deeper contact and understanding, of each wanting to be gods. But if one accepts the universe of Einstein and Spinoza where existence is god. Is this such a bad thing? Rather than reject and hide from our birthright as part of the universe should we not instead finally embrace it in all of its glory? To be more godly? To be more integrated with the world around us. Is not the embrace of some random, rigid biological structure alone ultimately a embrace of alienation from the universe?

Many techno-utopians fall into a similar rut as the primitivists by treating technological progress as an undeniable external force. A salvation that will inevitably arrive someday. Both attitudes smack of an "I'm only on this side because our victory is assured" morality. A legacy borrowed from the Marxists' perpetual wait for The Revolution, and before them, the Christians' perpetual wait for the Rapture. The reality is that our technologies are just the embodiment of our choices.

The solution? Be smarter!

Choose to think rather than abdicating from it at every opportunity.

Radiate life in your every process and action.

The failings of technologies are the failings of ourselves. Our laziness and nihilism. Our greed and hate. All these are ultimately consequences of mental rigidity. Is it any wonder we excrete this stuff in physical form? The rigidity of our technology stems from psychoses that we have the agency to overcome. To surpass. To shed off. Some primitivists have outright argued that we simply don't have the neurological capacity for mass society, the capacity for more than a certain amount of contact or freedom.

Why not? What's stopping us? What enforces this limited capacity? We make ourselves. Unshackled, we practically burst with creativity. Why should we snuff it out?

As long as we are alive there is no such thing as an inevitability.

[Next up: The Crash]