I’ve been waiting for someone to write a post about this for awhile now. Thank you.

Thank you for the pamphlet. That’s great stuff.

in good heart,
Evan

You might find it interesting…

the .pdf is here:
http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/special/Publications/NewDirections.pdf

Take a look:
http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Economy-Wealth-Communities-Durable/dp/0805076263

Thank you for your comment.

Brian,

I don’t want to take collapse lightly, though I speak rather flippantly about it. I feel that collapse is already here and happening. Rainforests are undergoing collapse. Glaciers are undergoing collapse. Permafrost and Ice Sheets are undergoing collapse. Coral Reefs are undergoing collapse. Wild Salmon Populations are undergoing collapse. Watersheds in the southeast are undergoing collapse. Old Growth Forests are undergoing collapse. Wild Ecosystems everywhere are undergoing collapse. The Climate is undergoing Collapse. This is all awful, awful, awful beyond words. We live in a time of great Suffering, inescapable Suffering and Collapse. It’s not that the prospect of Collapse appears on the horizon, but that we are living in it.

I feel that what the primitivist perspective offers in these times is a needed critique of fundamental assumptions about technology and society as well as carving out possibilities and ways humans can once again return to the fullness of human life in relation to our more-than-human brothers and sisters.

I don’t want to turn this into an ideological divider, or to indicate that anything that’s not “primitivist” in nature shouldn’t be done. I only want to ask questions and provide alternative possibilities. In talking with friends in my community, I have found that opening up a dialogue that goes deeper than talk of “Solutions” has been, in its early stages, incredibly valuable. The other night, a discussion on cars came up as talk began about what happens as we turn away from fossil fuels. A number of folks talked about prospects of hydrogen, and I interjected asking why Car Culture is so valuable that we would want to keep it going? These are the questions I try to ask in my community, and I’m trying to bring these into the larger “Youth Climate Movement” discourse. Among my community, these conversations feel like they will lead to deeper, longer-lasting transformation of our lives.

I think grief and celebration can be interwoven. As we undergo collapse, can we sob and weep for all the suffering whilst taking joy in the emergence of new communities, new lives, and new relationships? I’d like to think we can.

I hope this clarifies my motivation for this post a bit. I do apologize that my posts do have a knee-jerk/flippant feeling. I do not wish to be insensitive and uncaring.

in good heart,
Evan

I completely agree that things would be a lot better in many ways if there was magically a few million humans, instead of a few billion, and if we were all living closer to the Earth.

But guess what: that is NOTHING like the world we live in and having our heads in the clouds with this primtivist fantasy land is not much better than having your head in the sand and not believing in global warming.

I find no joy WHAT-SO-EVER in thinking about the death of BILLIONS of people after which some happy vision like this can somehow (quite unbelievably if you ask me) emerge.

I frankly find the idea of art work glorifying that path to the future to be disgusting.

[Not to mention that this specific art work you link to is RIFE with border-line racist appropriation, sterotyping, and hyper generalization of the indigenous cultures of the land now called America.]

Getting close to nature again is critical.
Questioning the role of technology is essential.

This glorification of collapse, even a hint of it, greatly distracts from and undercuts your main (and valid!) points about being extremely cautious in our relationship with technology.

It has extremely violent undertones, and as always when there is violence in the world, it is less likely that computer savvy bloggers will be the ones suffer.

It is a bit sick I think to sit in our enormous place of privildge and even slightly glorify “collapse”.

If and when the collapse comes, I for one hope to be trying my best to support all of us trying to survive, not breaing out the kazoos and party hats.

I can’t help but think your perspective if you lived in Somalia, Darfur, or even New Orleans, would be quite a bit different.

Yes we need to get population stable. However, once that occurs, you can consider a far future where human civilization would not be bound to a single planet. Now I probably sound too weird, but maybe a little more practical than just reverting to a low population that scrounges a living.

The Earth does have a carrying capacity for humans. We have exceeded it — overshoot. What happens after overshoot of a population? Collapse. This is natural. I don’t glory in the suffering of humans, but starvation is already rampant and no increase in production of food will mean that there will be any less starvation. There’ll just be 9 billion people with a few million starving, just like now. That’s not an improvement.

The reduction of human populations should also be viewed from a more-than-human perspective. Less humans means more wolves, more black bears, more whales, more salmon, more wild animals. These animal nations would celebrate to be allowed to thrive once more.

And hybrid cars! OMG. those aren’t close to being sustainable:
http://clubs.ccsu.edu/recorder/editorial/editorial_item.asp?NewsID=188

kai,

yes, it is scary and limited in its range — i’m offering a very brief critique of industrial civilization, which has been expounded upon in countless works (a few of which I mentioned and I encourage you to check them out, I especially want to encourage you to look up psychologist Chellis Glendinning’s book. I can link you to some articles by her if you’d like… she offers this critique in a much more eloquent way than I do).

yes, this does question our existence as a species. what is is that our existence is meant to look like? in what context did we evolve and how did humans live on this earth for most of their time? it wasn’t like it is today. and if we didn’t survive in this way for most of our history, then we’re probably doing something wrong. our destruction of the natural world is indicative of this. and this doesn’t just mean that surface level things are wrong… like that we get electricity from coal and nuclear power. it means everything is potentially wrong — sidewalks, grocery stores, shopping malls, electricity, etc. these have to be questioned if we really want sustainable lifeways. things are dire, and we’re all searching for answers and solutions and action-plans. but if these “solutions” are constructed without periods of deep questioning of everything, then they won’t solve anything.

in terms of technology, certainly all cultures have used some tools. stone age folks used stone and bone tools. not all societies have used agriculture, and i think that needs to be mentioned. not all societies have domesticated plants and animals. and many of the sustainable cultures that existed did not not do these things. that doesn’t mean that small scale plantings of a horticulture and perma-culture variety can’t be done.

i would say that “technologies” are fine so long as every person knows how to construct them and can do so with renewable materials found in their bioregion. i have no clue how solar panels work. i can’t mine for gallium here (nor would i be able to without massive machines and explosives). i have no clue how to build a computer from scratch, nor do i have the metals and toxic chemicals required for semiconductor construction in this region. if your local community can build a computer or a solar panel from materials you can gather in your bioregion, more power to you.

also, your response seems to indicate that i am preferring a select few cultures to the vast majority of cultures. i think this is false. again, modern homo sapiens lived on this planet for a few hundred thousand years before the advent of agriculture, domestication, cities, and specialized technology. there were countless cultures that existed in these times. when i mention aboriginal australians, i’m not talking about One Culture, i’m talking about a multitude of cultures. if i recall correctly there were something like 200 languages spoken in that area. in this country, there are countless cultures that have been erased from existence. in my region, there were the sissapahaw, the ocaneechi, the eno cultures that existed (at the least! it’s hard to know because those cultures have largely been destroyed). that’s at least 3 cultures where now there is one, and if we looked at all of the united states we would see hundreds of cultures pushed off and replaced by Monoculture (though some native cultures do still, fortunately, exist though in struggle).

i think it’s very hard for contemporary americans to fathom a completely different and sustainable way of living… the ways of living practiced by these indigenous groups. the general cursory response is that my way of thinking is an idealized, romanticized notion of the past that never existed. i’ve heard this response made, often, by those who have never done any research into these things. i’m not suggesting a past utopia, i’m suggesting a past with an integrated culture that worked, that lived in relation to the land, and guided people through the various stages of life (which euro-american culture does not do. e.g. mid-life crises).

in terms of hope, you’re right. i offer no hope, because there is no hope. there’s only honesty, despair, and picking up the pieces. i’m speaking as honestly as i can here. i think this way of living is fucked up. i think cars are fucked up. i think lawns are fucked up. i think pavement is fucked up. i think computers and the toxics required to build them are fucked up. i think having food under lock-and-key is fucked up. ecological destruction isn’t a superficial problem, we need to question everything — EVERYTHING — in order to have true healing. that’s what i want to suggest.

Evan