Human Iterations

(#14: Hard though the struggle may be, the ease of partial victories will always cost us more.)

An Anti-Primitivist Essay

Demand nothing less than everything and take whatever you can get.

But don't take at the expense of gaining further ground. It's a simple premise. Take pie, but don't trade way any hope of taking the pie factory in the process. Take whatever scant freedom they allow but, for the love of god, don't ever cease fighting for infinity. We have a cuss word specifically set aside for people who do that: Liberals.

Primitivism today exists at the nexus of a modern trend in Anarchism to embrace only what's “winnable” and dismiss the rest. The consequence is a race-to-the-bottom in laziness. How to get the most dramatic of victories with the least expenditure. The Crash, of course, is the natural endpoint of such regression. The promise of massive social change with almost zero personal exertion. (And cinematic scenes of explosions and mass struggle are always more aesthetically pleasing than tame FNB gatherings.)

Don't get me wrong, the problem with The Crash is not that it's too easy a solution (no one should have to bleed to see change in this world, martyrdom is for nihilists, people who give a shit what others think about them and closet authoritarians). But even if we are to momentarily ignore the fact that it's impossible, the anarcho-primitivist dream paradise doesn't go far enough. The nature of The Crash sets permanent limitations to future generations. If logging CEOs don't give a crap about humanity 500 years from now, primitivists most definitely don't give a crap about humanity 100,000 years from now. Because somehow violently murdering 6.5 Billion People to supposedly make a better world 500 years from now at the expense of our ancestors longing for rocketships when the next meteor hits is supposedly better than killing off some spotted owls to make a quick buck for one's family. Christ. Even thinking in those terms gives me a headache. I honestly have no clue how the Collapse Cheerleaders can sleep at night. ...They're certainly not sleeping with transsexuals, epileptics, women with small birth canals, or anyone alive thanks to continued surgery, medication or mechanical assistance.

So if not The Crash, and not some sort of draconian social imposition of arbitrary technological limitation, what are we left with?

Well, right away let's make clear that a stasis with our current technology via some unmitigated classical left-wing anarchism would be unsustainable. Never mind that work is hierarchy in action, the very factory infrastructure that syndicalism or other federated communalistic schemes revolve around are utterly illogical. Though primitivist societies may be more oppressive, such doesn't change the basic physics of our biosphere. Technological change is needed.

It's a pretty common flippant assertion on the part of primitivists that the only endpoint for technological advance is a nightmare of fractal chaos and mechanical death. I think this is some pretty fucking ridiculous immature masturbatory nihilism. Certainly our technologies could go all kinds of nasty places. But I don't think the “upbound technological curve” that futurists speak of these days is heading in any of these directions. And I certainly don't think a world of infinite technological possibility would make fascism an inevitability.

If we are to presume continued technological advance in the general direction of greater dynamic integration, we must consider the consequences of more fluid information technologies, mechanical refinement and biochemical mastery. (We can more or less ignore transportation tech, as it doesn't matter where or in what context we locate a society, these same basic realities will remain.)

As far as information technologies go, it's obvious that advances will progressively bring about the dissolution of public privacy. Everything you do in the presence of others will eventually be able to be remembered in perfect clarity and such memories instantly transferred to others. Inert matter will evolve a deeper capacity for recording. Our footsteps will be apparent to anyone who cares to look.

To the degree that the government or any power structure manages to secure control over this process they will gain absolute power to define truth. And, of course, absolute knowledge of their constituents. Which will threaten to permanently quash any semblance of resistance. Though some distorted liberal populist democracy might survive in such a state for as much as a century, the fascist tendency will evolve the institution rapidly. And if the state successfully eradicates the grassroots development of rival technologies, permanent perpetual fascism will be assured. Humanity will be progressively regulated into machinery and the sum structure will die a heat death, our unthinking bodies locked in step or something. It doesn't really matter. In the onset of global fascism, whatever its form there is a point of singularity past which we can only die. Don't believe that insipid shit about “so long as there is one beating heart.” Let me tell you, they'll have a big fucking board displaying every heart that dares to beat. And then the robo-wolves will get 'em.

However, to the degree that our accelerating information tech is decentralized and access to it is equalized, our natural antibodies to abuse, oppression and control will engage with extreme efficiency. The externalities of our actions will become instantly apparent and there the “tragedy of the commons” will cease. It's worth noting that, in the absence of centralized power, individual and consensually arranged mutual privacy will continue. So long as anonymity is publicly desired in any venue, basic market forces will supply it. But it won't help you get away with murder. The main result will be that, since access to any information desired will be distributed and truth commonly valued, it will be practically impossible to rule or coerce others.

Authority is derived from information scarcities and a post-scarcity society would annihilate the very concept of state secrets. Freedom of association and basic tools of defense would make prisons and, in fact, all retributive systems of “justice” starkly purposeless. Through uncountable processes the desire for freedom and social connection would make any anarchy so effective as to make even the very idea of sitcoms seem insanely dystopian.

...Which brings us to the second field of technological advance, self-knowledge. As medical knowledge moves out of the bumbling script-kiddie realm and into actual understanding, we'll gain such strength and security as to instantly abolish almost every major cultural -archy. Sex, “race”, gender, prehensile-tail or no prehensile-tail... all that stuff will dissolve. The most immediate physical limitations that facilitate power psychoses will give way. When we master biochemistry to the degree that we actually know what we're fucking with an incredibly potent window will open up to us.

Self-knowledge and agency in the workings of one's own body is a big deal, and unlike the destruction of public privacy it's hard to imagine any downsides to achieving having such. I mentioned transgenders previously and how there's not even the barest of pretenses that primitivists are on their side in any way whatsoever. But let's cut to the chase: The Pill. Would you really trust your body with some herbal concoction? Oh, wait, nine times out of ten the primitivists hawking “indigenous” forms of birth control are talking about someone else's body.

Of course it's true that as things stand, with greater medical refinement, the lethargic small-mindedness of our current market would acquire greater potency. And, indeed, so long as a corporatist economy has a hierarchical stranglehold on technological development (which pretty much boils down to intellectual property), chances are we'll be fucked long before any honest, hard-working gene-hacker starts growing his own glow-in-the-dark butterfly wings. We all know it's probably only a matter of time before some GM foods haxored by a greedy and lazy corporate PhD spins out of control and kills us all. If corporate capitalism persists.

Which brings us to le Nanotech in general.

On the upside we've got both the absolute end of scarcity and the fulfillment of the old Red & Black dream wherein each and every “worker” controls the means of production individually. The production not just of Red T-shirt model #12, but of anything they desire. ...On the downside it means that one day each and every one of these “workers” will more or less have their finger on the button to Armageddon. Today I can make a military EMP for a couple thousand dollars. Imagine what'll be possible tomorrow.

So, yes, there's a tension there. A need to make the world a better place today, so that when such higher tech eventually becomes omnipresent there aren't any disgruntled folks to be cataclysmically angry about something.

We've got four possible futures: Complete Annihilation. Permanent Fascism. Permanent Post-Scarcity Anarchy. or Repeat Struggles Endlessly.

By embracing the drive towards more dynamic technology we reject perpetual struggle and try to chance it between the first three (not that Annihilation and Fascism are different in anything but cosmetics). If we go with primitivism and somehow survive the cracked bio-warfare labs we get Endless Struggle for a lengthy period followed inevitably by Complete Annihilation. The human drive for greater contact and deeper channels of experience will press up against the permanent technological limitations of a post-collapse Earth and conduct such physical limitation into the social realm. Oppression will be rampant.

But, yes, it will not even near the infinite amount of oppression we risk if we continue to pursue technological advances. As technology grows so do the stakes. Things run faster. Collapse, Armageddon, the Police State... one deviation and any of them could take the entire world.

But they're not the only ones.

The internet has seen far greater propagation of anarchist values than anything else in history. With every technological advance the struggle has been getting more intense. While the sane have built telescopes and phones, the abusive spouses and tribal elders of prehistory have progressively gained tanks and fighter jets. Hitler's Germany couldn't even begin to rival the insidious powers rife across the world today. But neither does the Spanish Revolution hold a fucking candle to the anti-authoritarian insurrection bubbling in every city in the world today. The strength brought to bear by today's oppressive power structures is utterly without comparison. And yet they aren't winning. We can march on Washington in an outright black bloc two thousand strong and despite a military that amasses in every every continent on Earth, despite enough nuclear missiles to vaporize the topsoil, despite an economic system beaten into every child at birth, despite orbital platforms that can trace the flight of dragonflies, despite mobile EMPs that can cause car accidents without trace, despite an unprecedented coordination between every major nationstate on Earth so that they can archive 95% of their citizens electronic communications... they dare not even mow us down with bullets.

We took Seattle and all they could use was clubs, pepper spray and tear gas. We held Oaxaca for half a fucking year and yet they were so afraid of public opinion they barely killed anyone. We kill cops in Greece, blow up banks, prisons and police stations on an almost monthly basis, and yet they barely dare to respond. We still have a union a million strong in Spain. For a few months we were Argentina. We gather armies and armed with nothing more than sticks evict the police from the streets of South Korea. We write code in our mothers' basements that destroy their desperate, last minute, multi-billion dollar attempts to control our technologies. We flagrantly run community centers, libraries, schools, factories, radio stations, and gardens in full view of the public in dozens upon dozens of countries around the world. We fucking outright, absolutely, 100%, unabashedly, militantly, and vocally, oppose every last power structure in the world. And they fight for dear life just to tap our phones.

Because we are but the tip of billions. The radical blade of the entire world's conscience.

And despite the hundreds of fucked up psychotics who've had their hand on the keys to global annihilation we are all still here.

But let's be fucking clear here. We've never had anything but the slimmest margin of a chance. If you're in the movement even the slightest bit because you think it's inevitably or even likely destined for power, you're in the wrong movement. Get the fuck out now.

The point isn't that we're fighting a losing battle with next to no chance, oh poor martyrs us. The point is that we fucking have a chance. The sheer ecstatic, miraculous implausibility of that. That, against all odds, it is feasibly possible for good to actually win. All that's required is to, at the end of the day, have inspired each and every single one of 6.5 billion people to become full-fledged Anarchists. To personally choose to throw away the power psychosis.

I've seen worse odds.

Knowing that we've got a shot. Knowing that we do have that choice. Knowing that we do have agency in the world. That's what makes me jump out of bed in the wee hours of the morning to punch the sky, climb dew-laden trees, dance through the empty city streets and cry out thanks to the stars.

Though there may be near infinite night around, even the smallest drop of light makes the darkness irrelevant.