Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections

by John Zerzan (Editor), Kevin Tucker (Preface)

“Read it and you will never think of civilization in the same way again.”—Kirkpatrick Sale

This anthology about "the pathology of civilization" offers insight into how progress and technology have led to emptiness and alienation.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, Anthropology, History, Sociology, Anarchism

276 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1998

About the author

American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author.

His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of hunter gatherers as an inspiration for what a free society should look like.

Some subjects of his criticism include domestication, language, symbolic thought (such as mathematics and art) and the concept of time.

Reviews

[Lance Grabmiller · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dacia spied this beside my chair recently, flipped through it and muttered that it sounded like just a bunch of angry old men. Sadly, it didn't even live up to that. The way themes overlap in the first half of the book is a textbook case of how NOT to do an anthology - the repetitions were pointless and/or borrowed from each other or the same choices. What saddened me most was finding a few good pieces in this awful mess of sloppy analysis and even sloppier anthropological allusions. I have been an enemy of the included Rousseau piece and its "man in his natural state" for almost as long as I've been alive and this anthology has nothing more to add as even its best pieces are poorly chosen, excerpted or surrounded with such mass BS. Would have loved to love this and have been wanting to read Zerzan for the longest. Hugely disappointing.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some really good essays in here. I like the ideology of the primitive movement but it's pretty much impossible to go completely back to nomadic existence without killing 99% of the human race, given the planet's inability to provide foraging. If you want to get something out of this book it's best to accept their main point at face value, that civilisation is destructive and Stone Age life was immeasurably richer than modern life in all the ways that really count.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pope Pius IX did not permit a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals to be founded in Rome because, as he declared, theology teaches that man owes no duty to any animal.” Rousseau won a prize for an essay called, “Civilization as stultification.” John Steinbeck wrote, “I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.” Joseph Tainter writes that it was not rare for people in history to leave civilization and go back to the “barbarians”. In the 19th century, civilization/the culture was attacked by authors Goethe, Hegel, Kiefkegaard, Melville, Thoreau, Nietzsche, Flaubert and Dostoevsky while sociologist Durkheim noted how suicide and depression increased under its influence. “Civilization has been a labor camp from its origins.” Our problem is that we don’t think outside of civilization. Few under its influence stop to see its war on “soil, animal and tree.” Indicted in our downward fall, should be metallurgy as well as agriculture. Once in the stationary agricultural state, George Marsh writes that “man at once commences an almost indiscriminate warfare upon all the forms of animal and vegetable existence around him”. Missionaries preached charity to natives at the micro level but forgot to tell natives how their even bigger God called Capitalism kills charity much greater at the macro level.

The lie is that primitive people died early, however accounts by 16th century Spanish eyewitnesses talk of Indian fathers in Florida living to see their own fifth generation. !Kung have heard a single engine plane flying 70 miles away and “many see the four moons of Jupiter with the naked eye”. “Civilization is disdain of the dirt, the soil, the mud.” Civilized people “no longer have a relationship with the living earth.”

In the 80’s, a single 12 lb. goose took down a $30.9 million Air Force F-111 jet by flying into its nose. Before the rise of the state and agriculture, humans lived in small groups where group survival required generosity. One of the !Kung explained, “We refuse one who boasts, so we always speak of his meat as worthless. This way we cool his heart and make him gentle.” If a member of the !Kung became too rude, the rest would merely pack up and leave him to be king by himself.

Richard Heinberg knows that thanks to civilization’s destruction of the planet, “our descendants will be living very differently in a few decades”. Lao Tzu, Rousseau and Thoreau saw how man should live a simple life close to nature. The 1998 book, the Paleolithic Prescription, was about the better diet and healthier life of pre-state pre-agricultural people. Herbalism dates back 60,000 years at least. Many manufactured drugs replacing herbs aren’t safer or better, they exist because they simply generate more profit to manufacture. This culture sadly has only numerical answers to the question, what is this cute dog worth, this animal, this mountain, or an hour of this person’s life? Anarchists believe that people by themselves can solve things by cooperating, working it out together for mutual benefit without top-down power. The civilized believe something is only valuable if it is of use (or potential use) to humans. Richard ends his section with saying that civilization’s enterprise is: “the destruction of own life-support system.” Proof this culture is insane.

Genocide is akin to weeding according those who commit it. The Roma, Slavs and Jews didn’t fit the Nazi perfect society and must be weeded out. The Holocaust could only come from civilization, barbarians never did anything close. Every part of a Space Shuttle was built by the lowest bidder.

Civilization had long tried to silence the primitive mind, but without it, how do you have “a frame of reference for a good and decent life?”The old way was “sharing” and kindness”. Those who still follow it must witness “the slow poisoning and dismemberment of the Sacred-Mother-Source.” “Modern culture …constructs its own identity out of distrust of nature.” “The Civilized talk a lot, the Native listen and learn.” “Human-made things need regular input, while natural things keep giving.” “Work is a concept only known to civilized people.” The solution to today’s problems come from our collective pre-state past and involve “kinship, solidarity, community, direct democracy, diversity and harmony with nature.” Conquered peoples were often threatened with death if they went back to their old ways, ways that were kind and sustainable. In the civilized, the false self occupies the mind. John Mohawk writes, “what we know about modern primitives is that they are absolutely sane and coherent people.” Rudolf Bahro writes that we all come into contact with about 100,000 chemicals.

When we go on vacation some place exotic, we often see not just rich Americans but ordinary locals with heavy leisure time, “sitting in the sunlight, conversing around a fire, food-sharing, walking,” enjoying an easy laugh with friends. They are largely doing for free what all humans did for millennia before being captured by the state, living lightly on earth. We return to the city after vacation and see peoples concern for each other and the natural world faded with the refocus on the self. Why did those islanders seem so content and happy with little when office dwellers with so much, were anything but? “Civilization has enslaved us in the chains of dependency, isolation and artificiality”, say Glen Parton. The pre-state tribal ideal ends up being the “antidote” to the wounds of civilization; it’s time to reject the pathological narcissism within the self and within the dominant culture. Roman Pliny the Elder wrote many stories of animal resistance to civilization which he saw or knew of. Herman Hesse wrote, “we kill when we close our eyes to poverty, affliction or infamy.” Adam Smith said the first role of a government was to protect those who run the economy from “the outrage of injured citizens”.

So here we are, living in boxes away from each other, away from our food sources, away from nature, away from a sustainable pre-state lifestyle. We bomb others from miles above and never see the blood and death, buy packaged flesh in stores but never see the blood and death; our entire capitalist economy is based on death, but we don’t see that either. Like live captive lobsters waiting in a seafood restaurant fish tank, the value of life is death. Civilized man alone decides which species get to live or die. For example, coyotes mostly eat rodents and yet they are a threat to “civilized” man. Each step away from civilization are seen as a raindrop on the earth by the indigenous. The day is coming when nature will stop the electricity.” “They have forgotten how to make do without the machine.” Before Daniel Quinn wrote about Takers and Leavers, John Zerzan was writing about “the takers and the givers”. Isn’t it cool how many people wrote basically the same critique over the centuries when diagnosing the problem with civilization?

[Vijay Rangachari · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a scintillating book, which is a collection of gems of thought on anarchistic basis of life. Collectively they argue that primitive ways of life is what makes us human, and that the so called 'development', as in civilization, is actually a deviation form what we are to say the least. Every single work this book depicts is brilliant, and my personal favorite is the one from Sigmund Freud. Overall, John Zerran has elegantly laid out reasoning to question our own ways of life, and to ponder about the sheer beauty of a life that we have never seen or experienced.

Contains extraordinary collection of articles that provide insights into a systematic transition of humanity into abyss, diabolically called, 'civilization'. This consolidates my long-held belief and innate unease about our current ways of life, and modernity at large. I have been struggling with my inability to articulate and find precise reasoning for my unsettlement. This brilliant collection of work put together by John Zerhan have consolidated my beliefs, which have remained rather innocuous to any counter arguments, and even shown a new trail of thoughts. More than anything, I realized after reading this book that that my thoughts on 'anti civilization' were neither radical nor new, and have remained with us for centuries. Superb read!

[Patrick Walsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots of short, but moving works about the pathologies of civilization. I felt that especially the portraits of primitive life were profound and often moved me to tears from some fundamental resonance with that wild ferality.

[MikePeterS · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m usually not too critical of the books that I read; and so a good number of them have received 4/5 or 5/5 stars on this app. But I must say, this book truly does deserve all 5 stars. The impact it has had on my thinking with regards to the “civilized” systems and artificial living that our species engages with these days is monumental.

The cover of this text quotes Kirkpatrick Sale, saying, “Read it and you will never think of civilization in the same way again.”

It’s shocking how true that is. I am happy that this book was my 20th read of the year; a worthy finale to a year-long goal.

[Johanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Otrolig samling av texter. Mycket jag har tänkt på det senaste året och som fått mig att känna mig ensam och isolerad: plötsligt läser man en annan klartänkt människa skriva samma sak och man inser 'jag är inte ensam här!'
Det som var mindre bra (som drar ner till en 4) var det något oförklarade urvalet, avsaknad av ordentliga källhänvisningar och att det inte var jättetydligt när texter klipptes. Men jag uppskattar verkligen mängden av olika källor och att det var korta utdrag och smakprovet av olika skribenter och genrer. Liksom båda Ursula K. LeGuin och Unabombaren!

[6655321 · Rating 2 out of 5]

confession time: used to be hugely into anarchoprimmie stuff
another confession: it's really not a hard argument on a theoretical level and like there is this weird tendency for everyone to kind of cite the same thing and this collection ends up feeling *really* homogenous. Like, given the popularity of the arguments: just include most of Stone Age Economics rather than have a bunch of people cite it? Also was Lord of the Salmon himself really a necessary inclusion? like, of all of the essays in this collection, his was the least necessary (also why timeline when things were published if that seems completely immaterial to anything that is going on?). I still on some level will always be that 14 year old who was *way* into reading Karl Marx and John Zerzan but this primer is less of a trip down memory lane for me than a trip to "god why does no one innovate these arguments even a touch"

[Kyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is a decent collection of essays, and you'll probably agree with many of them if you think nature is important or that technology is a potential danger. That said, the primitivist 'movement' isn't much more than a theoretical critique, even if its one we may want to listen to. Most of the essays in each category cover the same topic, which is probably the biggest problem I had with this book; there is little in nuance and new ideas. Zerzan just cuts and pastes the stuff that fits his headers, leaving out all the actual interesting bits, which is a shame. You'd probably be better off buying a classic by Thoreau, Ellul, Emerson, etc.

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Now I’m convinced that it was the entertaining of anprim thought through inappropriate levels and placement of white guilt that led to the anti- vaxxing of esoteric fascism. How else does my mom’s siblings go from Zen and Native American motifs and listening to reggae and their meeting my dad at the Cleveland sewer department to voting for Trump like their lives depend on it? More to Parenti’s and Engels’ point about don’t trust an anarchist. They may be on the wrong side and using the situation.

This is the type of book that makes me hate reading and think I read just to read.

[Eman · Rating 2 out of 5]

أخرج منه بِثلاث مقالات جميلة وبضعة نصوص :)

[Mack · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the outset I feel I need to make it very clear that prior to reading this book I was already well aware of the existence of both Green-Anarchism and the Anti-Civ Movement. But even though I had been aware of them and had engaged in discussion with some individuals I had not had a chance to really read over some related literature until this time. This was my first foray into that sub sect of Anarchism.

I read the first edition of this book, which was published in 1999. The one listed here in Goodreads is apparently the second edition published a decade later with 60 pages of new material, as well as illustrations. Sitting here typing this in 2014 I can only imagine what scathing indictments are contained in those pages from 2009 regarding that prior decade...

Against Civilization is itself a collection of stand alone pieces and selections from larger works. They broader argument put forth is that as long as Humans have existed in some from of greater organized "civilization whether it be in Mesopotamia, Africa, China, Europe etc, philosophically yearned for something simpler a golden age pre-civ, some contributors arguing this is connected to a buried race memory from when we were nothing but nomadic tribes.

However the that philosophical yearning was only part of the issue. As time passed we domesticated all manner of flora and fauna. Many argue that we even domesticated ourselves. Shutting ourselves off from that core connection and instead turning towards the business of systemic ecosystem damage for the business of resource profit or population expansion.
Later sections of the book dealing with more present day issues: pollution, overpopulation, a persons need to unplug from this complex machine we call civilization; come from the 18th to the 20th century.

Probably the most chilling piece provided in the edition I read was a selection of one the letters written by Ted Kzynzski aka "The Unabomber". For those who are unfamiliar with who he was prior to becoming infamous, Kazynski was a brilliant mathematician, I was one of the top minds in the US. But he went so far into the numbers that when he came out on the otherside that's the only way he viewed humanity. Conversly when he saw what humanity was doing to the planet it horrified him and he unplugged and went to live in aseries of cabins and finally a tent, all while making and sending bombs.

What was so scary about the piece of his that printed, was that most of it has already come pass, or is happening right now. I know you live in odd times when you're reading a letter from the unabomber and you realize you are nodding you're head with what he wrote back in 1995....

In the final Analysis, while I am an anarchist, am patently not anti-civ. In fact I would challenge the defenition of the term civilization. Anarcho-primitivism is not the answer. But neither is our present course. Against Civilization is good food for thought here in 2014. As we listen to the fracking drills, and watch the great Pacific plastic mass slowly grow.

[Rowan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of essays regarding nature, society, and civilization, is split into 5 sections, each containing a number of essays which are to be in some way or another strung together via similar ideas. I won't hit every section, and I apologize for the lack of organization, I've been very busy and already have a backlog of reviews to finish, and figured I'd rather spend my free time on those books rather than this one which a) I didn't like all too much, and b) is not one concentrated work, but rather a loose connection of essays from various people who likely have a plethora of complaints against each other.

Section I: Outside Civilization
This section I found to be none too enlightening. There was an interesting selection of writings, spanning from essays to poetry, but the ideas promoted here aren't so very novel. The best thing that can be said here is that it was surprising and somewhat harrowing the things that were being said in these essays over 50, if not 100+, years ago, which today seem like such obvious observations. In particular, I refer to the weakness and pacification of the modern man, the feminization of the savage, if you will, as comfort and convenience has surrounded him. It's somewhat amazing to think that Jean-Jaque Rousseau could say, in comparing wild vs domestic animals to man: In becoming sociable and a slave he becomes weak, fearful, servile; and his soft and effeminate way of life completes the enervation of both his strength and his courage. This is a sentiment that may be commonly expressed these days, particularly among right-wing male commentators, but to here this in 1754 with seemingly no heeding of said warning is quite surprising.

One essay in the third section uses the Holocaust as an argument against civilization. Essentially, the argument is that only in the confines of "civilization" could something like this occur. He argues that it wasn't a failure of civilization as is commonly argued, but in fact could only be brought into place because of it. "The Nazi mass murder of the European Jewry was not only the technological achievement of an industrial society, but also the organizational achievement of a bureaucratic society". I see the point he's making here, but I don't totally agree. Obviously something on this scale could only exist under this context, but the "organizational success" goes both ways. In a sense, it's the "accepted risk" one takes to live "civilized".

I have mixed feelings on the organization and arrangement of the various selections included in this book. For one thing, I do think it eases in decently well to the whole anti-civilization thing. It doesn't start heavy handed, but rather begins with a romanticized account of pre-civilization and then gradually builds into the nature of civilization and its flaws. I think it works well because essays like the previously mentioned Holocaust one may come off as off-putting were it to be toward the front of the selection, but work rather well as you work your way in. That being said, there are plenty of duds that don't seem to fit the picture so well. Right after the insightful Holocaust essay is this edgy, teenaged attempt at a poetic blend wrapped in prose on "Civilization is Like a Jetliner"

Section IV: The Pathology of Civilization
At first glance, this and the previous section seemed to be the same, though the author explains this immediately. He points out very specifically that, unlike the first three sections, this one can't be totally severed from the one right before it. Instead, he outlines that the difference beteween section III and IV is in emphasis. In particular, Section III emphasized civilization as it is in concept, and Section IV (supposedly) refers more to the logical conclusion of, or the future potential developments of, civilization. There are

Section V

Section V is when this book really loses me. It turns from more of a naturalist perspective to a whiny liberal one. Furthermore, the outlook is very bleak and nihilistic, making most of the selections prior seem worthless. The editor kicks off the section saying essentially that the focal point from the selections in this section is that the writers essentially think the whole prospect his hopeless and that there's nothing we can do. That we're just stuck in a world of our own reckoning, with no escape. How dismal and disappointing. A seemingly precise and dissecting approach building all to the master solution of "it doesn't matter anyways, we're all doomed :("

Also, this section brings out more clearly that part of this is hidden not in a love for the world, but for a nasty hatred for something else. There are vain platitudes against some vague patriarchy, and several anti-Church and anti-religion jabs spread throughout the final section. It makes the whole thing feel disengenious, as if it was really a hidden political frustration, rather than a consequential and worldly one.

It also becomes increasingly clear to me that the construction of this book, and the continuity of the selections really isn't all that great. For one thing, it's just not a unified effort. When I read through these nonsensical bleeding heart rants in the later sections, it becomes hard to fathom that TJK was somehow also selected, and I would assume possibly to his dismay. This is to say, if we're to believe the ideas here are all a shared sentiment trying to culminate in one ultimate message from the editor, then we would be quickly disappointed to find how many of these selections seem totally incompatible with others. You may argue this is just a presentation of diversity of thought on the topic, but I disagree. Really it just makes it difficult for this book to truly grasp any one reader, and aside from some platitudes of "le society bad, monke good", it hardly makes any one clear statement. This is all confounded by the foreward to section V, which abandons these formerly impassioned messages by essentially brushing it all off as "it's over. There is nothing we can do". Funnily enough, this is exactly what TJK made fun of in his Anti-Tech Revolution book which I just read.

Overall, there is value to be gleaned from this collection where you choose to find it, but it's somewhat sloppy, and builds into an underwhelming climax to say the least. That, and all of the insane self-victimizing essays (which ironically is a behavior I would subscribe to the rise and perversion of society), land this book firmly in the C- Tier.

[Tadeas Petak · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We are to the natives what cows and chicken are to bears and eagles."

What is civilization to you? I mean, for real.

Before you continue, just pause here for a while if you've got a minute and ponder that question. It might turn out it feels a little like the two young fish asking "What the hell is water?" in this beautiful (and chilling) speech by David Foster Wallace.

Anyways, once you're ready, here's one take on it from the book:

"There are many possible definitions of the word civilization. Its derivation from civis, “town” or “city” suggests that a minimum definition would be “urban culture.” Civilization also seems to imply writing, division of labor, agriculture, organized warfare, growth of population, and social stratification."

Dry, but certainly true. You might protest that it, for example, fails to mention prolonged life expectancy. But, that would be true only for the last couple of centuries, only maybe, and definitely with a gigantic elephant in the room with "quality of life" written all over its floppy ears.

You might wonder where increased luxury has gone, but that would largely depend on what you define as luxurious and whereabouts you live these days. The hunters & gatherers probably had it better than your average middle class in a developing country in terms of access to clean water, diet variety, and quite possibly even safety.

If you mean luxury as a means to happiness, then it's important to realise that happiness is, more or less, objective reality meeting your subjective expectations. In other words, adjust your expectations to "I'm a nomad in the savannas of central Africa, clothes and possessions are both ridiculous and absolutely futile, and I know no greater joy than wind in my face while chasing a leopard." and luxury as we think of it today seems preposterous.

"Being nomadic means being adaptive: that is the key to anarchy." (Note: What a different connotation to describe someone as an adaptive person instead of an anarchist, hey? Some words are so loaded.)

How about knowledge and education? Again, depends largely on how you look at it. In our individual, artificial bubbles, we certainly know more than the nomads ever did. But our division of labour is very horizontal. I mean, do you know anyone who could make a water power plant, flatten out the irregularities of its electricity production, obtain wolfram, make a wire and put it into a glass vacuum, carve out the tread and finally make the home-made bulb light up the room? This horizontality goes right against survival in nature in its purest; there, you have to take things from scratch all the way to the end or you're toast.

As the essayists point out — in particular, this is Zygmunt Bauman, whose paper Sociology after the Holocaust changed the way I think about genocides — there is another problem with dividing labour this way. "This division of labor, or specialization, works to dissolve moral accountability." Imagine swapping the horizontal slices of responsibility for vertical ones: A single person picks up a Jew in their home, brings them on a transport, and finally is also in charge of gassing them. Do you reckon there'd be so many dead if everyone could see the full cycle?

It's not that civilisation is holocaust, but holocaust needs civilisation. We need to realise that while chasing the optimum, there's nothing objective or rational telling us holocaust shouldn't happen again. We just need another insane gardener who picks a certain set of features, proclaims them undesirable, and sets out to purify our civilised garden by weeding them out.

You might object... we might go like this forever, you get it. The entire point of the book being:

"To assail civilization itself would be scandalous, but for the conclusion, occurring to more and more people, that it may be civilization that is the fundamental scandal."

Why is that? Well, looking at where we are — climate being systematically devastated, depression and suicide rates skyrocketing, cynicism in general being considered a norm — it might make sense to stop blaming socialism, democracy, market economy (i.e. the implementations) and scrutinise what it is they attempt to put in practice.

"The fence was the ultimate symbol of this [civilized] development." This rings so true as it would seem one of the core features all the above try to implement is domestication: taming the animals, the wilderness, the human freedoms, building fences, calling the tame correct and the wild chaotic and unpredictable, meaning wrong.

Yet, creativity only ever springs from chaos, and the wild nature, the winds, the weather, the wilderness, they are the context of our farms, not their opponents. What if you don't try to fight nature, the frame you're in, but rather throughout your life form relations between itself and yourself?

Most recently, I thought of this when The Lord Protector (Oliver Cromwell) in the beautiful Wolf Walkers states that "What cannot be tamed must be destroyed." — that's the gist of what we do, isn't it? To paraphrase, you could swap tamed for explained, understood, or exploited, and the sour aftertaste would stay the same, as would the meaning.

"Primitive is trusting, trusting, trusting." ... "Civilization is not – not sleeping, not dreaming, not farting, not touching, not crying, ..." (Note: To a large extent, this is exactly what we traditionally call education; the don'ts come way before the dos.)

I think my core conclusion stems from the following quote: "Earth herself, unburdened and untouched by the hoe and unwounded by the plougshare, gave all things freely."

In his Parent Effectiveness Training, Tom Gordon says something along the lines of "One of the beautiful paradoxes of life is that it is only when you feel fully accepted that you find the motivation, will, and strength to change." Could it be that if we fully accepted Earth again as it is, without trying to fix or improve it in any way, we would would get from it all we could ever wish for, just like us becoming the best versions of ourselves when feel no obligation to do so?

"Man only plays when he is in the fullest sense of the word a human being, and he is only fully a human being being when he plays."

The only downside of this read, really, is that there's no recipe for a way out other than "back to the roots, simplicity is the key, be human". Of course, there can't be a recipe. After all, at its very core, any recipe is civilisation.

P.S. It seems an idea to finally read at least some of the following: Goethe, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Melville, Thoreau, Nietzsche, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Landau.

[Eduardo Fort · Rating 4 out of 5]

La obra del profesor John Zerzan es inusual en el panorama académico estadounidense. Filósofo y autor anarcoindividualista y primitivista, sus trabajos critican la civilización como inherentemente opresiva, y defienden la vuelta a las formas de vida del cazador-recolector prehistórico como inspiración para la forma que debería tener una sociedad libre. Sus críticas se extienden a la domesticación, el lenguaje, el pensamiento simbólico (como la matemática) y el arte, así como el concepto del tiempo. De todo eso -y de mucho más- habla en Against civilization, prolija recopilación de sus ensayos más importantes.

[Iain Clowes · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good intro text to the primitivists, but the treatment of the postmoderns betrays a reactionary urge to sweep away the problems identified and create a "stable" new metanarrative of the Earth socius. The tensions between the concept of reducing down to a perfect ecological society without power relations and the concept of constructing a new historical lifeblood for society is palpable throughout.

[SH'DYNASTY · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the essays in this book was amazing. I think it was called The Pit. It was only an excerpt, though. The complete piece, even more amazing, is called HERE: A Small History of a Mining Town in the American Southwest, which can be found (in its entirety!) here: http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?...

[Peter · Rating 1 out of 5]

While primitivist philosophy may be interesting, this "collection" is not worth your time. Nor are most other books written by or edited/collected by Zerzan. A waste of time and money.

[C Cec · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weird place.

[Adam]

Writing an online review of Zerzan strikes me as funny.

[Jefferson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been depressed about technology. AI, social media, and biotech have seemed to me to be increasingly alienating and anti-human.

Zerzan did much of his writing in the late 1990s and early 2000s but I still hoped some of this would be predictive or relevant but, unfortunately, it was not helpful for me.

The polemics by Zerzan and associated writers are more often on farming than on computers. Major issues with implementing these ideas as a political philosophy are met with spooky silence. Writers will offhandedly make ridiculous claims like childbirth was easier and illness didn't exist in prehistory but then not explain any argument to support the claim.

I wasn't impressed by the book.

[Camille · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really interesting take on civilization and its discontents (to quote Freud). Anarchist in nature, basically most of the the authors argue for a return to primitiveism, to a time before civilization where they say egalitarianism reigned, and we were in harmony with nature/the enviorment. A worthy read, especially if you want to understand the so-called radical view of ecology/anarchism. Very readable, the articles range from one page, to 6/7 pages. You can take your time with this book.

[Fred Ayres · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinarily compelling arguments against the existence of civilization. While some selections in this anthology were much more captivating than others, each played an important role in making the case for eschew the trappings and excesses of modern-day culture and reverting back to our primal origins. Now, the question remains how exactly might we undergo that reversion and, better yet, if it's entirely possible.

[Adam Haldis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Civilization bad! I can't help but miss the irony that a book that complains this much about environmental waste would waste many trees worth of pages, when this could have been a pamphlet or a zine and still get its point across.

Some beautiful and well-written essays shine in an otherwise ho-hum collection of repetitive whining. The stand out for me was John Landau's piece, WILDFLOWERS: A BOUQUET OF THESES.
It made me want to read more Landau.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal anthology to expand ones mind about the enslavement of civilization.

[Eldon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truth.

[Enrico · Rating 1 out of 5]

Não é de todo ruim.
"Earning a living reduces activities to interchangeable, abstract labour-time. The quality of things ceases to be their essence and becomes the accidental appearence of their value.
--
The infant lives entirely in the present moment in a state of pure lust and guilelessness, deeply
bonded with her mother. But as she grows, she discovers that her mother is a separate entity
with her own priorities and limits. The infant’s experience of relationship changes from one of
spontaneous trust to one that is suffused with need and longing. This creates a gap between
Self and Other in the consciousness of the child, who tries to fill this deepening rift with
transitional objects initially, perhaps a teddy bear; later, additions and beliefs that serve to fill
the psychic gap and thus provide a sense of security. It is the powerful human need for
transitional objects that drives individuals in their search for property and power, and that
generates bureaucracies and technologies as people pool their efforts.
--
Postmodernism plays an essential role in the defense of civilization. Qualities like cynicism, relativism, and superficiality are part of this, but the postmodern gloss on society goes even further in its efforts to deflect opposition to civilized social existence."

[Cobertizo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Los civilizados cambian el mundo para adaptarlo a ellos, mientras que los Nativos se adaptan al mundo tal y como es; los civilizados están siempre descontentos con su situación actual y dedican toda su vida a cambiarla, mientras que los Nativos están siempre agradecidos por la belleza y la abundancia en la que se encuentran inmersos; los civilizados habitan en los errores del pasado y la esperanza del futuro, mientras que los nativos disfrutan de la plenitud del momento; los civilizados lo atraen todo hacía sí, mientras que los nativos se convierten en todo lo que les rodea; los civilizados se arrastran y mendigan mientras rezan compungidamente, mientras los nativos cantan orgullosamente en alabanza, acción de gracias y asombro; los civilizados tienen psicólogos que les ayudan a adaptarse a sus vidas irracionales, mientras que los nativos viven en la armonía de su entorno; los civilizados tienen religión, los nativos viven la religión; los civilizados hablan mucho, los nativos escuchan y aprenden; los civilizados se encuentran con la muerte tumbados en la cama haciendo todo lo posible para alargar aún más la vida, mientras los nativos saludan a la muerte de pie, si es posible, con su Canción de Pasaje en los labios mientras saludan al Nuevo Ciclo"

[Laurin]

I read this while sitting on a mountain in the middle of the Linville Gorge wilderness. I'll just say that if you're wondering what the whole "anti-civ" thing is about, this books is an excellent way to get your feet wet and get a little bit of exposure to a lot of the people who are writing about deep ecology and anti-civ. It's a collection of short essays and excerpts of essays or longer works centered around the topic of civilization (more accurately, critiques against civilization). IT is divided into 5 sections, Outside Civilization, The Coming of Civilization, The Nature of Civilization, The Pathology of Civilization, and The Resistance to Civilization. A pretty quick read and very informative.

[Dylan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short and diverse compilation of excerpted writing from the Greeks to the present that comes from the anti-civilization and primitivist currents that, the editor argues, have rightly opposed "progress" since the origins of civilization.

I found it to be a powerful and uncommon illustration of the potential depth of a critique of domestication and an exploration of wildness in all domains of human being.