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Randomly decided to click on the thread after reading that my home state, Minnesota, is one of the fastest warming states in the country, expecting to see talk about climate change science and politics. Instead I'm treated to utter drivel from a band of delusional luddites on the nobility of savages. Yes, Desmond, the positions you hold engender anger because they include not only a solidly rose-tinted of early human development, but also because you reject out of hand all the good that has come with millennia of progress. My ultimate quibble is that you would rather doom humanity to "enlightened" stagnation than work to solve existing problems. For all the mind-boggling destruction wrought by "civilized" states over the past 2000 years, civilization has allowed great men and women to stand on the shoulders of their ancestors to work miracles. I, you, and the majority of the people on these forums owe their lives to humanity's great works: from more efficient agricultural techniques/implements that provide us abundant foodstuffs, to the medicinal accomplishments that free us from debilitating disease and parasites. Without the opportunities of civilization, I would likely have died at the age of 19 when my appendix burst. Giving up what humanity has accomplished is not the answer. The sane answer is to instead work to correct the problems, insurmountable though they may be. Cleaner fuel sources can be found, unsustainable living can be made more sustainable, and social ills can be remedied. There's no clear-cut answer to any of these nigh-impossible problems but working to fix them is infinitely more mature than throwing your hands up and saying, "Fuckit, I'ma pick some wild apples and throw a spear at reindeer like my greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgranddaddy Fritz." You all seem to possess a longing for closer-knit community and a reconnection with nature that is achievable in the modern world and did not truly exist in the idealized forms you put forth. The "play"-work of your noble savages probably wasn't so fun when game turned scarce, the weather turned hostile, or when a belligerent neighboring tribe with an excess of males came to raid for the resource they were lacking--women. External factors excluded, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle as I see it is intensely conservative and patriarchal. While your anarcho-primitivist friends might succeed in tolerance of all and much joyful drumming, others are more likely to be intensely wary of outsiders and skeptical at best of sharp deviation from the group norm. In any case, it is impossible for humanity to devolve back to such a state without a near extinction-level event. The "collapse of civilization", whether in slow motion or as a sudden shock, would simply be the transformation of the current order into something else. Assuming resource scarcity brought on by climate change and general overextraction, a retreat to something akin to feudalism would be the obvious path for civilizations still nominally possessing the technologies (armaments) and hierarchies of their heydays. So yeah, it's hard not to be completely disdainful of the whole anarcho-primitivism thing. By all means, start a thread about how awesome it is to be a hunter-gatherer. I'm a bit disappointed there isn't more climate in the climate thread, but I guess it's to be expected when the supposedly left-leaning president is unwilling to raise the subject.
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Jun 17, 2012 12:19
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Primitivism is a white middle-class conceit. Go to any developing country and try advocating it to a local and you're going to get laughed at. The worst part is that its advocates haven't actually experienced life under primitivism.
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Jun 17, 2012 13:07
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So what are the alternatives to some form of society based on sustainable autonomous communities that doesn't involve BILLIONS OF DEAD or waiting for the current system to erode and desertify all the farmland which curiously enough is also leading to BILLIONS OF DEAD?
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Jun 17, 2012 13:34
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Cugel the Clever posted:Randomly decided to click on the thread after reading that my home state, Minnesota, is one of the fastest warming states in the country, expecting to see talk about climate change science and politics. Instead I'm treated to utter drivel from a band of delusional luddites on the nobility of savages. Yes, Desmond, the positions you hold engender anger because they include not only a solidly rose-tinted of early human development, but also because you reject out of hand all the good that has come with millennia of progress. My ultimate quibble is that you would rather doom humanity to "enlightened" stagnation than work to solve existing problems. quote:For all the mind-boggling destruction wrought by "civilized" states over the past 2000 years, civilization has allowed great men and women to stand on the shoulders of their ancestors to work miracles. I, you, and the majority of the people on these forums owe their lives to humanity's great works: from more efficient agricultural techniques/implements that provide us abundant foodstuffs, to the medicinal accomplishments that free us from debilitating disease and parasites. Without the opportunities of civilization, I would likely have died at the age of 19 when my appendix burst. quote:Giving up what humanity has accomplished is not the answer. The sane answer is to instead work to correct the problems, insurmountable though they may be. Cleaner fuel sources can be found, unsustainable living can be made more sustainable, and social ills can be remedied. There's no clear-cut answer to any of these nigh-impossible problems but working to fix them is infinitely more mature than throwing your hands up and saying, "Fuckit, I'ma pick some wild apples and throw a spear at reindeer like my greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgranddaddy Fritz." quote:You all seem to possess a longing for closer-knit community and a reconnection with nature that is achievable in the modern world and did not truly exist in the idealized forms you put forth. The "play"-work of your noble savages probably wasn't so fun when game turned scarce, the weather turned hostile, or when a belligerent neighboring tribe with an excess of males came to raid for the resource they were lacking--women. External factors excluded, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle as I see it is intensely conservative and patriarchal. While your anarcho-primitivist friends might succeed in tolerance of all and much joyful drumming, others are more likely to be intensely wary of outsiders and skeptical at best of sharp deviation from the group norm. There you go with noble savages again. It's like a catch phrase that says nothing. You can degrade the culture all you want, but I will remind you that today's world also has many negative things that I really don't think are worse/better than any other time. There are still people who die of drought and cold in modern times. There are many who die of hunger and disease. There are many hostile neighbors, murders, terrible acts in today's world. You are wrong about the patriarchial society though. Hunter gatherers were egalitarian. Patriarchial society is very much something that came about with agriculture. This has been discussed in this very thread, not a page or two back. Hunter-gatherers were so against one person being in charge they sometimes practiced reverse dominance, where if let's say a young man killed an animal for a meal, he would get made fun of and even shunned unless he acted with humility. If he boasted and bragged, that was looked down upon. They very much treated women, elderly, and everyone with equal rights. quote:In any case, it is impossible for humanity to devolve back to such a state without a near extinction-level event. The "collapse of civilization", whether in slow motion or as a sudden shock, would simply be the transformation of the current order into something else. Assuming resource scarcity brought on by climate change and general overextraction, a retreat to something akin to feudalism would be the obvious path for civilizations still nominally possessing the technologies (armaments) and hierarchies of their heydays. quote:So yeah, it's hard not to be completely disdainful of the whole anarcho-primitivism thing. By all means, start a thread about how awesome it is to be a hunter-gatherer. I'm a bit disappointed there isn't more climate in the climate thread, but I guess it's to be expected when the supposedly left-leaning president is unwilling to raise the subject. Edit: added a couple points. Jenny of Oldstones fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Jun 17, 2012 |
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Jun 17, 2012 13:35
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Guys I'm scared and don't want to acknowledge that the lifestyle of myself and my parents is the cause of the problem. Please stop discussing how the science says "we're hosed" and that politics is completely unable to address the problem.Somaen posted:So what are the alternatives to some form of society based on sustainable autonomous communities that doesn't involve BILLIONS OF DEAD or waiting for the current system to erode and desertify all the farmland which curiously enough is also leading to BILLIONS OF DEAD? Nationalization of all power utilities to convert the grid to nuclear/renewables. A major drive to encourage urbanization and (electric) public transportation. Research into open source GMOs and climate controlled agriculture (hydroponics). Then you might just see millions die, but since there's massive poltical and economic resistance to all things well, tl;dr We are so screwed.
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Jun 17, 2012 13:49
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Desmond posted:There you go with noble savages again. It's like a catch phrase that says nothing. You can degrade the culture all you want, but I will remind you that today's world also has many negative things that I really don't think are worse/better than any other time. There are still people who die of drought and cold in modern times. There are many who die of hunger and disease. There are many hostile neighbors, murders, terrible acts in today's world. Primitive civilizations have less institutionalized oppression, sure. You just don't have enough abstraction from the members of your tribe to cause that; it's really hard to treat your close friends and family as some kind of other to oppress. The problem is that, in the same way, tribe members don't give two shits about those outside the tribe. Not every tribe is cartoonishly violent, sure, but I'm not aware of any who even pretended to hold a universal concept of human rights. Don't get me wrong, I like not being systemically oppressed, but I like not being killed when the next tribe over decides they want our stuff too.
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Jun 17, 2012 13:53
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Amarkov posted:Primitive civilizations have less institutionalized oppression, sure. You just don't have enough abstraction from the members of your tribe to cause that; it's really hard to treat your close friends and family as some kind of other to oppress. If you're talking about hunter-gatherers, they didn't have other hunter-gatherers taking over, at least that was not the norm. Agriculturists taking over, yeah, because by that time land was needed for food. Hunter gatherers pretty much got wiped out by agriculturists, and those who exist today do so mostly on land that doesn't have resources desired by the outside. Most hunter-gather bands were about 10-50 strong and they would occasionally get together with others, up to maybe 100.
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Jun 17, 2012 14:07
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McDowell posted:Nationalization of all power utilities to convert the grid to nuclear/renewables. A major drive to encourage urbanization and (electric) public transportation. Research into open source GMOs and climate controlled agriculture (hydroponics). Then you might just see millions die, but since there's massive poltical and economic resistance to all things well, tl;dr We are so screwed. Yeah, "science will find a solution" is the asnwer number uno. The problem is there is no way to address this quickly enough even with a completely centralized government:  I don't see a way to avoid billions of dead and accusing primitivists of being genocidal while supporting the "let's wait for scientists to figure this one out" is loving stupid
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Jun 17, 2012 14:11
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^^ I never said science would fix the problem, I was just laying out an alternative to burn it all down and live in teepees primitivism. At best we can cut emissions drastically and work to maintain a decent standard of living. Let's talk about the Noble Savage. The idea came from the enlightenment and European contact with the American Indians (who were just beginning to recover from depopulation from diseases introduced in 1492). It inspired our current notions of individual liberty, since the Indians had a society without kings and feudalism. "The Other" is part of human nature, it was usually the other tribe. Larger more complex societies have both internal and external others (Welfare Queens, Iranians). If there is a "natural" state for humans it would be small groups living in caves and working together to make spears, plan tactics to capture game, and collect nuts and berries. Depending on the amount of game, nuts, and berries we are either uneasily trading with the neighboring tribes or murdering and cannibalizing each other. The only constructive way forward is Star Trek futurism, working to create a new natural state where individuals are enriched and served by technology; and society actively discourages the otherization of fellow humans. Mc Do Well fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Jun 17, 2012 |
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Jun 17, 2012 14:12
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Your Sledgehammer An existential question: "What is my human nature? Am I meaningless? What has removed me from my search for meaning and sustainability of the spirit?". 2, 000 words in defence of a Weltgeist that compels us to eugenicise the sick and disabled. A return to a lost authenticity where purity, nobility, and the human nature can triumph over the mechanistic aloneness of urban living. In the name of simplicity and in the jargon of culture you fit your words around arbitrary language. I mean, you say you will show how you are not falling to the noble savage stereotype, or that you are naive. Yet you call upon imagery in defence of societies that would make Kincaide blush, where pure people shed pure tears as they leave a young one to die. It reads like a eulogy for dead thoughts of heavy hearts, universalised indignities and gone but not forgottens. It is a good thing that these noble societies were not corrupted by the touch of contemporary civilisation otherwise the Painter of Light would have made a fortune from them. You want to dispel notions of naivety but call upon all the reserves of Romanticism in your argument to project them into the present. Like all romantics, you've taken up the mantle of a transitory time and projected it forward so that we too might believe they were a product of our essence. It's the clarion call of upper-middle class existential meaninglessness - the kind that starts with words but stops just short of thought (as is the case with so much of primitivism). As opposed to the half-life we live, you seek the hale life, which is far removed from social conditions and exists only in a mythic world where things remain undivided, insular, rhythmic, continuous - from work to war. Of course, for such a thing to exist, the core of man, usurped by the evils of the economy, division of labour and civilisation, must contain in essence those things from which he has been driven. It's a self-centred question, which is why we can let the old die young and the sick die quick so we may let the natural rhythms of the world begin to be heard again. As Adorno put it in his critique off Heidegger and authenticity: "It is a question of man and not, for the sake of men, of the conditions which are made by men and which harden into opposition against them" What you've put at stake is the authentic existence of man* in a world that hides it but where he nevertheless remains central. Although civilisation is a machine, men are still the cogs - the fundamental part. This is a universal humanity where civilisation is an illusion that corrupts the essence. Your analysis turns to the birth of agriculture and calls upon necessity and appearance, but also ignorance of what that knowledge would cause. You've written your own Creation story and, like all origins and essences, catastrophes and apocalypses, it's always just on the edge of vision - indistinct enough that we can fill it with our own thoughts and evidence. In our current case, it is the climate catastrophe through which we can uncover the true meaning of ourselves - our human nature. Cycle back so many years and authenticity was found in the Native American's cryptic spirituality. Back in the 30s and the farmyards of Heidegger and Lewis Grassic Gibbon contained the essence. Run back further and the honest peasant of rambling Russian prose heard the rhythm of the earth better than the farmer or the Native American. Your primitivism excavates a mythology and presents it as a universal fact - as a necessary cause for humanity to pursue in all its natural uniform human nature, a nature which of course flows from your own existential question. It is, at its core, parochial in its attempt to substantiate and purposefully naive in its approach linguistically and materially. Better to hide its selfishness under the turn of authenticity and human nature than let it be known forthright. *apologies for the use of man as a term for humanity - it is to make the phrasing run with the previous quote
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Jun 17, 2012 14:17
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Somaen posted:Yeah, "science will find a solution" is the asnwer number uno. The problem is there is no way to address this quickly enough even with a completely centralized government: I always wonder when I look at charts like this - Why does the majority of the world get less precipitation as the planet warms up? In the past when the planet was super warm, didn't we have rainforests out the rear end? It seems like higher temperatures would, in general, increase the amount of vapor in the air, increase the amount of rain, etc. What am I missing here?
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Jun 17, 2012 14:30
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quote:*apologies for the use of man as a term for humanity - it is to make the phrasing run with the previous quote This isn't one of those social justice tumblrs full of shrieking morons. You won't get in trouble just for saying "man" around here.
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Jun 17, 2012 14:34
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Desmond posted:Someone mentioned anecdotal "evidence" of Brazilians they met who wished for modern health care. The primitivist viewpoint is that without introduction to outsiders, would they have the diseases that they do or the poor living conditions that may be due to outsiders coming in and burning down their rainforests or polluting their water resources, taking away their way of life? I don't know the whole situation, but all things must be taken into consideration, not the least of which is the underlying fact that earlier cultures had no frame of reference from their lifestyle to larger modern societies and health care. And once they are assimilated, the damage is done and therefore to deal with outside disease/lack of resources, that is when they start needing health care. That is one of my problems with primitivist thinking here, it seems to fail in addressing the fact that 99,sth% of humanity is now "assimilated", as you put it. Civilisation -as a mode of thinking- has been adapted by almost everyone alive, it's cemented in our minds and there is no way to eliminate its remains in our heads. Even if the coming collapse would reduce humanity to a few survivors, they would necessarily have lived in civilisation and know of its advantages (and disadvantages). Why would they - surrounded by the all-present remains of their "better" days (as far as one considers humans who are in massive shock after loosing their standard of living) - consciously decide to keep themselves spread over the land as hunter-gatherers when every look at the horizon remains them of what was "lost"? In that regard we would all act like these Brazilian tribe members. Even if things might be acceptable (or better in some aspects) if they cut off their contacts with civilisation and returned to their old life style, almost none of them do. Of course, in their case, the economical and ecological pressure from outside sources is an important factor, but it seems very logical for everyone who has ever experienced the addicting qualities of civilisation to crave for some kind of replacement. People have flocked together once to form the first agrarian societes, and now, that we have tasted the forbidden fruit (sorry, couldn't resist here), we will do so even more willingly. I really sympathize with other notions of primitivist thought: the life of hunter-gatherers can be more fulfilling and less (emotionally) stressfull than at least most civilized lifestyles...but for me, that does not really matter, because we - as a species- can not turn back to that life style, now that we let the genie out of the bottle. At least not without social engineering of the highest level (breeding kids isolated from any form or artefact of civilisation, never telling them about the past so they do not get a chance to get that "craving" that I identify with civilisation).
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Jun 17, 2012 14:45
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Desmond posted:If you're talking about hunter-gatherers, they didn't have other hunter-gatherers taking over, at least that was not the norm. Agriculturists taking over, yeah, because by that time land was needed for food. Hunter gatherers pretty much got wiped out by agriculturists, and those who exist today do so mostly on land that doesn't have resources desired by the outside. Most hunter-gather bands were about 10-50 strong and they would occasionally get together with others, up to maybe 100. Conflict between neighbouring hunter gatherer bands is actually pretty hard to quantify either way. Archaeological evidence is scant, and modern groups are surrounded by so many agriculturalists that you can't extrapolate back their behaviours. However by examining a wide range of groups and using what evidence you can, with proper control for biases, you can come to some broad conclusions. In such research there's pretty strong evidence that a large portion of deaths in many groups were caused in violent attacks involving other humans even before contact with colonial powers or local agriculturalists. Exact numbers vary and are hard to verify, but it's almost always there and frequently significant, with behavioural codes and other cultural artifacts in surviving groups which underline the fact that killing of other humans (in whatever context and for whatever reason) was a routine occurrence. Even without full scale tribal war, a series of escalating boundary disputes, blood fueds and cycles of revenge could kill a large proportion of a pair of neighbouring groups over time. http://researchpages.net/media/reso...l_Behaviors.pdf has some numbers and uses a wide range of sources including archaeological evidence (since contemporary behaviour can of course be significantly influenced by contact with non hunter-gatherers). Adult mortality due to warfare ranges from nothing (in just a single group), through single figures and up to 46%, with the average being around 10-15% in the groups surveyed. It's not specified here but from reading other research violence tends to predominantly involve men, so actual numbers are likely closer to 15-25% of men and 5-10% of women killed in violent conflict. The writer excludes conflict between hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists and discusses possible biases in the data. Ignore the rest of the paper it goes into a bunch of evolutionary models which are not relevant to the matter at hand, I'm just interested in the raw data, not his conclusions. I won't deny that the outright destruction of hunter gatherer groups and the hunter gatherer way of life was predominantly because of agriculturalists, but before they arrived/developed most hunter gatherer regions were in a state of perpetual low-level violence between groups which killed off a significant portion of group members. Fatkraken fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Jun 17, 2012 |
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Jun 17, 2012 14:52
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lapse posted:I always wonder when I look at charts like this - You say the majority of the world, but that map only shows land - ocean might be the missing bit.
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Jun 17, 2012 15:06
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-Troika- posted:This isn't one of those social justice tumblrs full of shrieking morons. You won't get in trouble just for saying "man" around here. It was more to clarify the change in language since I consistently use the term "humanity" elsewhere, but I'm not about to stop you projecting.
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Jun 17, 2012 15:08
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Ronald Nixon posted:You say the majority of the world, but that map only shows land - ocean might be the missing bit. I believe that is the case. Additionally, temperature changes tend to also be concentrated over land. This is dangerous in that it can lead to people underestimating the real effects of a stated temperature change: a rise of 2 degrees for example will actually be a range from 0 to perhaps 10 degrees depending on where you look, and with most of the smaller numbers occurring in the middle of the ocean, rises of 3, 4, 5 or more degrees over most of the land are the likely outcome. Precipitation is also likely to become more seasonal in many regions, floods in the Winter and droughts in the Summer.
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Jun 17, 2012 15:11
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John_Anon_Smith posted:It was more to clarify the change in language since I consistently use the term "humanity" elsewhere, but I'm not about to stop you projecting. Eh, I occasionally see people posting unironic trigger warnings and other such bullshit in D&D. You never know vOv
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Jun 17, 2012 15:22
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-Troika- posted:Eh, I occasionally see people posting unironic trigger warnings and other such bullshit in D&D. You never know vOv Trigger warnings are fine in the limited context they were intended for: posting graphic descriptions of (usually sexual) violence which might cause people who had lived through similar things to experience flashbacks and PTSD. "Tumblr trigger warnings" are what has brought the term into disrepute, check out the thread in PYF for examples of people demanding trigger warnings for the mere mention of happy families, vomit, spiders and the fact that if you have an imaginary Sephiroth living in your head it might be worth considering that maybe he isn't real.
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Jun 17, 2012 15:29
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Desmond posted:Someone mentioned anecdotal "evidence" of Brazilians they met who wished for modern health care. The primitivist viewpoint is that without introduction to outsiders, would they have the diseases that they do or the poor living conditions that may be due to outsiders coming in and burning down their rainforests or polluting their water resources, taking away their way of life? You really need to calm down with the whole noble savage thing. Yes white people are assholes but that doesn't mean that native people are all untouchable gods of purity and wisdom who were immune to all things bad until the evil white people came and we should all just live like them because their way of life is superior. Seriously, your posts read like a rejected script for Disney's Pocahontas.
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Jun 17, 2012 15:35
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SavageGentleman posted:That is one of my problems with primitivist thinking here, it seems to fail in addressing the fact that 99,sth% of humanity is now "assimilated", as you put it. Civilisation -as a mode of thinking- has been adapted by almost everyone alive, it's cemented in our minds and there is no way to eliminate its remains in our heads. Even if the coming collapse would reduce humanity to a few survivors, they would necessarily have lived in civilisation and know of its advantages (and disadvantages). Why would they - surrounded by the all-present remains of their "better" days (as far as one considers humans who are in massive shock after loosing their standard of living) - consciously decide to keep themselves spread over the land as hunter-gatherers when every look at the horizon remains them of what was "lost"? I addressed all this above, and yeah it is not possible to un-remember our lives so far, and as well early hunter-gatherers had a world abundant with natural resources. We won't. Fatkraken, I am familiar with Bowles a little but don't have the time to completely read that study at the moment. But I did skim through it, and though he is not supposedly talking about agriculturists, I wonder if his models were based on nascent agriculturists with growing populations in the Paleolithic. Edit: I still didn't completely read that study. It is hard to read the PDF on my small screen. But I had another thought later this morning, remembering reading that skirmishes would occur between bands (most likely with larger tribes). But they would have more to do with feuds than land acquisition. I could be wrong and do want to research it more. Regardless, I don't know much about warfare that existed in the thousands and thousands of years that foragers were prominent. While the level of fighting is probably somewhat controversial among anthropologists, I'm pretty sure it had to do with climate change and larger populations. There is no black/white forager one day and farmer the next day, anyway. It was a transition that began with homo-erectus nearly 2 million years ago and lasted a very long time; the transitions included horticulture, more complex hierarchy, etc. But to be sure, the hunter-gatherer was taken over (re: my original post) by agriculturists. Jenny of Oldstones fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Jun 17, 2012 |
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Jun 17, 2012 15:50
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the kawaiiest posted:Yes they would have a whole bunch of diseases with or without us, it's not as if natives didn't get sick before we came along. They're not superhuman, they have headaches and diarrhea just like we do. They have always had to deal with all sorts of medical problems such as infections, constipation, tooth aches, etc. and their methods for dealing with such things were often unreliable and/or not very effective. The idea that they were somehow immune to disease and had no medical problems or the desire for things like better birth control before we came along is completely absurd.
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Jun 17, 2012 16:24
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It's unsurprising that the only people bringing up the whole noble savage things are critics who can't be bothered to actually read correctly, and prefer to project their own absurd ideas onto Your Sledgehammer/Desmond. Primitivism has nothing to do with savages and nothing to do with nobility. It's not about changing human nature. It's about building a social structure (or reverting to an old one) which accommodates human nature better than civilization currently does. But please don't let that stop you from saying I believe hunter gathers have magical powers or are monks or some such bullshit.
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Jun 17, 2012 21:43
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ANIME AKBAR posted:It's unsurprising that the only people bringing up the whole noble savage things are critics who can't be bothered to actually read correctly, and prefer to project their own absurd ideas onto Your Sledgehammer/Desmond. The myth of the noble savage is not that they have magical powers or whatever you think. It's precisely the claims you asserted in the previous two sentences; that primitive socities are more in tune with human nature, and that being more in tune with human nature is always desirable. Both of these are incorrect, and aren't really possible to believe if you have a passing knowledge of actual primitive socities.
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Jun 18, 2012 04:04
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Desmond posted:I was saying that they may not have the diseases they do (today) that are specifically introduced by outsiders. I didn't say they never got sick. That would be kind of dumb, don't you think? As for birth control, I didn't mention that at all. I've also never said white men were evil or natives were gods. You're writing your own script here and yeah it's pretty lame. And anyway, I never said that they were talking about treatment for the diseases that we brought in, I said simply that they wanted access to our medicine because they realized that it was more effective and reliable than theirs. That was about everything, from antibiotics to aspirin. They understand that their way of life is by no means perfect. It's cold and wet and miserable a lot of times and they can't eat if the hunters had a bad day or they couldn't find enough edible plants or catch enough fish for everyone. They can't always treat things like infections which are very common and kill a lot of their people. It's true that our way of life is terrible and destructive, and I completely agree with you that it needs to change, but what we need to do is not revert back to the "good old ways", because they're not that good, and I'm not saying that because they don't include cars, iPhones and air conditioning.
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Jun 18, 2012 04:22
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Amarkov posted:that primitive socities are more in tune with human nature, and that being more in tune with human nature is always desirable. the kawaiiest posted:It's true that our way of life is terrible and destructive, and I completely agree with you that it needs to change, but what we need to do is not revert back to the "good old ways", because they're not that good, and I'm not saying that because they don't include cars, iPhones and air conditioning. ANIME AKBAR fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Jun 18, 2012 |
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Jun 18, 2012 04:31
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ANIME AKBAR posted:What the gently caress does this even mean? It sounds like nonsense, and is completely unrelated to anything I've actually said. Edit: Edited for clarity. Radd McCool fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Jun 18, 2012 |
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Jun 18, 2012 04:33
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Radd McCool posted:Are you saying that primitivism better accommodates human needs without being more in tune with them? I'm saying I don't understand what being "in tune with human nature" actually means.
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Jun 18, 2012 04:37
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ANIME AKBAR posted:I'm saying I don't understand what being "in tune with human nature" actually means.
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Jun 18, 2012 04:51
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ANIME AKBAR posted:And I don't think anyone is saying that the problem is medicine, either.
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Jun 18, 2012 04:59
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the kawaiiest posted:Just because you didn't outright say it doesn't mean you didn't imply it, and you have been, with phrases like "outsiders coming in and burning down their rainforests or polluting their water resources, taking away their way of life", etc. I never denied that we all hosed things up for them, but you seemed to be implying that we are the root of all their problems. I can say that without implying that "all white men are evil and all natives are gods." Those are your words, not mine. Why the hell would I say all white men are evil? I had a loving father until he died. My brothers are awesome. My husband is great. I don't really know anyone who I would consider evil. I would say that in the future to come, if there is one thing we can learn from the GOOD that came out of primitivist cultures (ie living within confines of resources rather than depleting them as we are now), that would certainly be something to work toward, wouldn't you think?
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Jun 18, 2012 06:09
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ANIME AKBAR posted:Primitivism has nothing to do with savages and nothing to do with nobility. It's not about changing human nature. It's about building a social structure (or reverting to an old one) which accommodates human nature better than civilization currently does. You literally deny that you're making the noble savage trope then immediately go on to immediately contradict yourself by affirming the noble savage trope.
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Jun 18, 2012 09:43
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Radd McCool posted:Ah. I think it's basically what you said but with primary connotations of existential harmony. Which isn't new agey, as I'd contend that what confers resistance to numerous disorders and diseases is the same as what engenders contentment and health - of the sort associated with the Noble Savage's harmonious e istence, hence the tie-in. That was my read, anyway the kawaiiest posted:My post was in reference to that specifically as I've been bringing up the fact that primitivism rejects modern science John_Anon_Smith posted:You literally deny that you're making the noble savage trope then immediately go on to immediately contradict yourself by affirming the noble savage trope. ANIME AKBAR fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Jun 19, 2012 |
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Jun 18, 2012 11:59
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The question about the role of technology is an excellent opportunity to rein the discussion back in towards climate change. The difficult truth that we must be willing to confront is that climate change is a direct result of our use of technology. When the ecological footprint of human enterprises is considered, the ecological catastrophe we are facing is very easy to understand. Look around you. Every single thing in your home - your computer, all the furniture, the medicine in your medicine cabinet, the food in your pantry, the structure of your home itself - all of those things require both matter and energy to refine the matter. All that matter and energy has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the Earth. Much of that matter and energy we are taking for ourselves would have otherwise been used to support other life - all sorts of greenery as well as wildlife. Granted, most of our energy inputs come from fossil fuels, but my point stands. With this in mind, is it really any surprise that we've been party to a mass extinction? We can sputter, shut our eyes in horror, cry and wail, or get mad about this, but it'd be just about as effective as getting mad at gravity. There are certain rules at play here on Earth, and we are not exempt from them, though we may think otherwise. I am not saying that technology is devoid of enormous benefits. Go back through my posts - I have never said this. Will never say it. I'd be a fool to do so, because technology has a number of overwhelming benefits. Those benefits, however, do not mean there are no costs. For those of you expressing concerns about the availability of modern medicine in any future society - I understand and deeply sympathize. I've watched modern medicine vastly improve my life as well as save the lives of a number of family and friends. Modern medicine is a truly wonderful thing - nigh miraculous, even. However, I have a question that I feel must be asked - is it possible to provide modern medicine to ~7 billion people (why should any person be denied?) without resorting to mass environmental destruction and/or unsustainable resource use in order to create the medicine (including all the tools of surgery) and use it? This isn't a rhetorical question, either, and I'm not trying to be a dick. I'm honestly curious as to what you folks think. Here are the beefs I have with technology: 1. It is implemented without any genuine attempt to understand or predict the consequences, particularly the negative ones. The automobile is a great example. The greenhouse effect was well understood by 1896, and though I'm not positive, I'm fairly sure that it was understood that CO2 would be one of the byproducts of gasoline-powered engines, even as the Model T Ford was rolling off the assembly lines in the early 1900s. A clear-thinking and intuitive individual could have guessed that large-scale automobile use might eventually prove problematic, but most folks were so excited about driving around town that no one even bothered to wonder about those sorts of things. In many cases, the consequences of using a particular piece of technology are impossible to predict. The "Chicken Little"-type fears surrounding nanotechnology, though probably overdramatic and unlikely, illustrate this well. I shouldn't have to explain why extraordinary caution should be used when dealing with technology whose consequences are impossible to predict. 2. Even when technology has already been implemented and its various consequences are easy to track, it is still treated with a sort of wide-eyed optimism. The true cost is almost never considered. I went on at length about cellphones in an earlier post to make this very point. Do the damage and insurance payouts in texting-and-driving accidents factor into the price of my Iphone that I bought? Of course not. Likewise, the effects of climate change are not reflected in the cost of gasoline. Unfortunately, the costs always show up somewhere, sooner or later. We are seeing the cost of climate change show up in federal disaster relief programs and insurance payouts. We will probably soon see it reflected in rising food prices. --------------- The frequent charge here is that technology itself is neutral - it depends on how you use it. The type of environmental harm required to simply create some of our technology exposes this argument as nonsense. I can't think of any technology ever invented in my lifetime that has been all good without any bad. Thats why I remain skeptical of the proposed technological solutions to climate change - technology is what got us in this mess! Has anyone really stopped to consider what would happen if the energy needs of the entire world were provided by nuclear generation? What the hell would we do with all the waste? How would we create all the materials needed for the nuclear plants without dumping more CO2 into the atmosphere? How do we address the massive wastefulness of consumerism if everyone thinks that the energy they are getting is "clean"? You can't magically separate the positive and negative consequences of technology and only reap the benefits. That's not how reality works. We've got to weigh the benefits with the harmful effects. Is the good worth all the bad, if the bad takes the form of ecological collapse? EDIT: Here's a pretty awesome article on this very subject that gives a good sketch of the two camps that environmentalists are falling into: http://grist.org/article/shaw1/ Your Sledgehammer fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Jun 19, 2012 |
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Jun 18, 2012 22:22
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quote:What the hell would we do with all the waste? Put it in casks, park the casks in the desert somewhere with a fence around them, and put an 18 year old with a rifle at the gate to guard 'em. Or just leave them there-- anyone who manages to open one of those (which isn't easy) is going to regret it. Nuclear waste isn't any harder to handle than any other kind of industrial waste you wouldn't want to touch with your bare hands.
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Jun 18, 2012 22:54
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Your Sledgehammer posted:The question about the role of technology is an excellent opportunity to reign the discussion back in towards climate change. I think the problem is that at least in this forum discussion on it, most people hear "Technology is a problem leading to climate change" and, without understanding the implications, are going to think, "But I rely on technology to live my life." But then some add "You are trying to kill me or remove the quality of my life by thinking that way." The latter is a fallacy/straw man and a sign of weak argument. Just for the record, I spent some time bothering to respond to weak arguments and won't from now on. But if we continue any discussion about primitivism, which is a real critique from real scholars presenting an explanation of why our planet is being depleted, and a challenging position to debate and understand, then we eventually have to transition from critique to action. And this is what I'm not sure about myself. When I first came into the discussion I maybe erroneously thought we were discussing a what-if scenario after an ecological collapse had already occurred in the future, and what systems would we take to rebuild. When I spoke of primitivism, it was with this scenario in mind. That we would rebuild by not making the same mistakes we made to deplete the planet and lead to its degradation to begin with. A few people began responding with "but I want my technology" and my natural response was "but in that scenario, it's already gone, baby." I never got past the "but I want my modern life" response so couldn't continue really with my position. My position is pretty simple: if we ruin what we have due to the way we live ruining the planet, and if we get a second chance, we should learn by mistake and live within the bounds of our resources -- we shouldn't try to grow population too much or develop technology that will once again deplete resources (which by that time would probably be too depleted anyway to bounce back). Find another way. If this means getting outside and nature harmony, so be it, but that's not what primitivism is about. It's not about the noble savage. It's about learning to live within your means and quit acting like you are the dominate species who can impose on all else for your convenience. A hunter-gatherer culture is a shining example of humankind living within its limits without depleting resources, but to even discuss that one has to let down their guard, open their mind, and genuinely compare the advantages/disadvantages of such a culture and our own. In my mind, after weighing everything, I'd much rather leave a healthy planet for my descendants rather than taking everything for myself -- and I find the hunter/gatherer culture the model that would best do that. Other camps fall into two basic schools of thought. One is short-term, not really truly considering what kind of future world they are leaving to their offspring by wanting to continue to expand dirty technologies that deplete land and water and contribute to CO2 emissions (as long as we make money for the next ten years, cool, because "gently caress you tomorrow, I got mine today") and the other camp seems to be that people rely on technology to produce the miracle answer to our current problems: space travel, geo-engineering, etc. I consider this technology plausible for small-scale solutions but not large ones. Getting billions into space after our planet is depleted? Fantasy. Geo-engineering? Too risky at present, with the possibility of just making matters worse if used on a global scale. I don't advocate devolving to a hunter-gatherer state from our current position though, which is what most people think when you dare to mention primitivism. Your Sledgehammer, I'm not sure what your position is on that, and I'm sorry if I missed it, but I am curious that if you want to rewild or de-industrialize the world, what matter of logistics could one go about doing that. The only interim answer is not primtivism at all. It's personal, and though I advocate it would never attempt to force it down someone else's throat. So if anyone has a problem with it, tough poo poo, because I'm not imposing on anyone else's way of life by living how I want. These small solutions are to be careful about contributing to technology that is throwaway or manufactured by abusing animals (as in factory farms) or abusing people (as in sweat shops). I mentioned before about home-making gifts, growing your own food, walking/biking/transit when possible, buying used rather than new, etc. By throwaway, too, there's a lot of technology going into unneeded packaging and items used once and then tossed. Like plastic bottles, plastic bags, fast-food containers, etc. My modern day worldview is more attached to primitivism's ideology too. I have to be careful about using the word ideology because I have no evidence that hunter-gatherers ever sat around a fire scratching their chins with the thoughts "We have to live within our limits, so let's not take more than we need." Ideology for this discussion is something we attribute to the way that they live: and that was a more egalitarian lifestyle that lived within its limits. I'm sure without our highly technological world I wouldn't even know gently caress about how they lived, but I do, and can make new choices based on that. In my mind, we just learn from past mistakes as well as what worked in the past, and move forward from there. We could never be exactly like hunter-gatherers of old. Even if we had a what-if scenario of climate collapse, we would be facing a different world, deprived of resources. That alone would squash efforts to return to that primitive culture exactly. We have new knowledge, different body types, almost a different blueprint than they. A fusion of culture/technology might be the answer, but I have no way of predicting how that would or could go. As far as technology, it's a tricky subject. Technology includes everything from building fire to medical advances. Technology as a bundle in our world today relies on continued resource extraction to the point of depletion of resources and ruining clean water and air. I believe technology and ecology can co-exist, but not the way we are living today. We could do without a lot of stuff, like Big Macs, for instance. If we even cut back on all this unhealthy, throw-away stuff, and had found other cleaner energy sources for getting around, then would we be where we are now? Probably not. But the primitivist viewpoint also suggests that our very way of living encourages unnecessary technology and imposition--religious, land-wise, and other. I talked some of assimilation up above. If we had never abused/removed indigenous people for their resources, in a combination with converting them to our religions (imposition is a key problem with Quinn and others), and lived within the confines of land, would we have been in the position to develop things like advanced medical technology? It's a really tough question. The primitivist viewpoint seems to tip-toe around that challenge with the idea that also has merit but is not an answer: that hunter-gatherer cultures, while not living as long and while also experiencing some sickness and some clashes with other bands, were overall more healthy due to the fact that their lives were less stressful; their food was healthier; they had egalitarian structures where women, the elderly, and children were treated with respect; and they were close-knit with their families and small networks. These things are admirable, but could we develop this structure along with some technology too? Jenny of Oldstones fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Jun 19, 2012 |
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Jun 19, 2012 01:39
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I'm not exactly convinced that moving everything to a smaller-scale more local production is more sustainable - by and large it is the megafarms that do more with the resources they use, although there is definitely the issue that the same efficiency pushes that result in those advances tend to come from a mentality that isn't necessarily too concerned with externalities. If everyone tried to live off organic produce, guess what - that arable-land crunch we find deeply concerning would happen noticeably quicker and with a lot less room to adjust. I don't think you're going to find anyone saying you shouldn't be trying to live more sustainably, but just because something seems greener doesn't necessarily mean the math works out.
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Jun 19, 2012 02:18
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-Troika- posted:Put it in casks, park the casks in the desert somewhere with a fence around them, and put an 18 year old with a rifle at the gate to guard 'em. Or just leave them there-- anyone who manages to open one of those (which isn't easy) is going to regret it. Don't we have the ability now to just recycle nuclear waste, and then re-use it, or at least most of it?
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Jun 19, 2012 02:24
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Aufzug Taube! posted:Don't we have the ability now to just recycle nuclear waste, and then re-use it, or at least most of it? Yes, but currently the general public gets all  about waste. It can still be reprocessed when the political climate is more pliable.
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Jun 19, 2012 02:29
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Aufzug Taube! posted:Don't we have the ability now to just recycle nuclear waste, and then re-use it, or at least most of it? To put it simply, yes. It does take a bit of work to reprocess Light water reactors (the absolute vast majority of nuclear power plants out there). Other setups could potentially use everything in one go and have very minimal waste byproduct, like what Office Thug talks about.
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Jun 19, 2012 02:31
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