Eco-primitivism: The downfall of civilization?

Lisa Jackson7 said:The only real value in eco-primitivism or any movement trying to drag us back to the past is that they act as a necessary reality check for those obsessed with progress, the Enlightenment, etc.—basically, they counter Pinker's "Enlightenment Now!" style of thinking.

Humanity is like a guy lugging around way too much luggage—he's stumbling, rushing too hard, dropping stuff everywhere, and constantly having to backtrack just to pick up the pieces.

Spot on.

Lisa Jackson7 said:The only real value in eco-primitivism or any movement trying to drag us back to the past is that they act as a necessary reality check for those obsessed with progress, the Enlightenment, etc.—basically, they counter Pinker's "Enlightenment Now!" style of thinking.

Humanity is like a guy lugging around way too much luggage—he's stumbling, rushing too hard, dropping stuff everywhere, and constantly having to backtrack just to pick up the pieces.

You sound a bit like a passage pulled from an essay by Bill Hamvas... which is actually quite good. I was recently reading a radical progressive piece written in that classic Pinker style: https://www.thenation.com/article/po...-bannon-putin/

Of course, Hamvas was well known for following the traditionalist teachings of René Guénon and, to some extent, Julius Evola.

But according to Pinker and those American ideologues, Nietzsche leads straight to Evola (that's what the madman wrote in his book), which then leads to the far right... whereas Guénon and Evola lead to Darya Dugina and Steve Bannon.

Why couldn't Nietzsche lead to Thomas Mann, or Guénon and Evola lead to Bill Hamvas? You might have asked that same question to Georg Lukács when he was persecuting Hamvas. We all know the kind of answer you would have received in those days. Then again, Lukács had much closer ties to Mann (through his essays, for instance), so he wouldn't have made such a glaring oversight regarding Nietzsche.
Even John Zerzan—who, with his particular set of views, bears a certain resemblance to the Unabomber—serves as a lifeline for some, a way to resist those ideologues. These days, people are showing up at your doorstep threatening death and physical violence if you happen to own the "wrong" books, all in the name of that radical-progressive fanaticism. I've experienced it personally. These are heavy times. And the communists used to hunt down Hamvas. Imagine what it's like today...

It is fascinatingly ironic that the "far-right" today finds its fuel in evolutionary theories of biological racism. It’s a fertile ground that Pinker and his cohort of "evolutionary psychologists" helped till years ago. If you ask me, evolutionary theory will serve their racist agendas much better than Hamvas or Mann ever could. We even have an example right here on this forum (Alyosha) with such theses. But honestly, examples aren't even necessary; it's blindingly obvious to anyone looking. (Those who find it unclear should be viewed with suspicion.)
Though, I suppose we shouldn't get bogged down in questions of race or the right wing. People who claim to be dedicated to "hunting racists"—which sounds like a profession far too noble a name to exist without being a mere front for something else—have plenty of them in their own ranks. And Black Americans aren't even their primary target. Today, anti-Islam sentiment is a regular fixture within these "progressive" circles. For instance, for years, these federal agencies were busy inquiring about Black rights, yet never once did they mention Muslims.
But let's be real, I think it's mostly just a public spectacle designed to mask massive financial and ideological interests behind lofty ideals: human rights, civil rights, gender equality, and so on. It's the classic playbook... blacklists for certain authors, and whitelists for ideals that seem non-existent to everyone else, making them perfect breeding grounds for various subversions. To me, someone who spends all day preaching progress and equality while simultaneously harassing people and threatening them with death is far more suspicious than someone who openly advocates for criminality. It's quite simple to grasp, and you don't need much intellect to see why that is.
Didn't Hegel say: ""Even the criminal thought of a villain is greater and more sublime than all the wonders of heaven."? There is profound wisdom behind that, even if the thought seems foolish on the surface.

Lisa Jackson7 said:Look, society, tech, and the natural world are always bumping heads and messing with each other—it’s constant. Sometimes tech actually helps us out, but half the time? It’s just straight-up destructive.

You can't really take Zerzan seriously—I mean, sure, they probably threw out some interesting ideas about language and symbols, but that’s about it...

"Technology driving development" is such a load of crap—it’s like an ant trying to tell the world how to run things. It's just not realistic, and honestly, it never actually works out for the community as a whole.

Now this is actually interesting... THE HONEY BEE NETWORK: VOICES FROM GRASSROOTS INNOVATORS

Most one-size-fits-all fixes being cooked up for the "green revolution" zones? They aren't going to do squat for marginalized communities living in fragile environments. There’s basically zero organizational structure out there that actually pushes scientists to work alongside people developing tech with limited reach—it just doesn't exist. If we want tech development and rollout to actually mean something for disadvantaged communities and marginalized areas, international and national research orgs need a massive overhaul. Period.

You can't trust the market, the national channels, or any of those big international networks to actually link up global knowledge hubs. It’s a joke—they fail at connecting people in a way that lets local communities and individuals actually build their own solutions for whatever they need, regardless of where they are in the States.

Look, the Honey Bee Network—even with basically zero resources or experience—just proved that this kind of transformation actually works. Their whole model is about empowering people through sustainable tech development; it’s all about boosting income and survival tools by leveraging local knowledge. They do it through documentation, adding real value, experimenting, and just getting people talking about local innovations. It's legit.

Copyrighted article by Cultural Survival, Inc.

I agree. However, one must emphasize that the ultimate impact of any technology depends entirely on the human element behind it.

Lisa Jackson7 said:Look, society, tech, and the natural world are always bumping heads and messing with each other—it’s constant. Sometimes tech actually helps us out, but half the time? It’s just straight-up destructive.

You can't really take Zerzan seriously—I mean, sure, they probably threw out some interesting ideas about language and symbols, but that’s about it...

"Technology driving development" is such a load of crap—it’s like an ant trying to tell the world how to run things. It's just not realistic, and honestly, it never actually works out for the community as a whole.

Now this is actually interesting... THE HONEY BEE NETWORK: VOICES FROM GRASSROOTS INNOVATORS

Most one-size-fits-all fixes being cooked up for the "green revolution" zones? They aren't going to do squat for marginalized communities living in fragile environments. There’s basically zero organizational structure out there that actually pushes scientists to work alongside people developing tech with limited reach—it just doesn't exist. If we want tech development and rollout to actually mean something for disadvantaged communities and marginalized areas, international and national research orgs need a massive overhaul. Period.

You can't trust the market, the national channels, or any of those big international networks to actually link up global knowledge hubs. It’s a joke—they fail at connecting people in a way that lets local communities and individuals actually build their own solutions for whatever they need, regardless of where they are in the States.

Look, the Honey Bee Network—even with basically zero resources or experience—just proved that this kind of transformation actually works. Their whole model is about empowering people through sustainable tech development; it’s all about boosting income and survival tools by leveraging local knowledge. They do it through documentation, adding real value, experimenting, and just getting people talking about local innovations. It's legit.

Copyrighted article by Cultural Survival, Inc.

I certainly agree that such a scenario would be catastrophic, but it remains an inescapable reality. Slavery didn't vanish because humanity suddenly reached a moral consensus that subjugating others was wrong; it vanished because slave labor ceased to be economically viable—it was replaced by the efficiency of machines.

If you take Zerzan's word for it, technology is what created the concept of slavery by fracturing our once egalitarian, primal communities. Essentially, the "fix" for returning to a sort of original utopia is simply to abandon technology altogether. Zerzan doesn't necessarily think this shift will happen on its own, though; he suggests that our technological civilization will eventually collapse under the weight of its own unsustainability. It’s a bit like how Marx viewed the inevitable downfall of capitalism.

Melissa Stewart6 said:If you take Zerzan's word for it, technology is what created the concept of slavery by fracturing our once egalitarian, primal communities. Essentially, the "fix" for returning to a sort of original utopia is simply to abandon technology altogether. Zerzan doesn't necessarily think this shift will happen on its own, though; he suggests that our technological civilization will eventually collapse under the weight of its own unsustainability. It’s a bit like how Marx viewed the inevitable downfall of capitalism.

I find myself agreeing on one point—technology certainly facilitated the rise of slavery, yet it was also the very tool that ultimately helped abolish it.

While it’s indisputable that a technological civilization might face a total collapse, the severity of that fallout depends entirely on how much of "humanity" goes down with it.

If technology regresses to a level comparable to the era of ancient slave societies, we risk resurrecting a world defined by masters and servants. If the collapse is absolute, then humanity itself may simply cease to exist as we know it.

As we have already established: there is no such thing as a human being outside the framework of civilization.

Primitivism is what exists before slavery, and honestly, even before any kind of symbolic thought. Zerzan leans into that idea of "original purity," essentially calling for a massive step backward.

Is there actually any solid ground for this kind of romanticizing primitivism? Or was this just part of that old, debunked, pseudo-religious obsession with the "noble savage" that used to be popular in Europe? If this theory is less than 50 years old, there’s zero justification for it.

From what I understand, anthropology and archaeology paint a pretty brutal picture of hunter-gatherer tribal life—honestly, it's not exactly a lifestyle I'd be jumping at.

Socially speaking.

Psychologically, I find the dismissal of severe cognitive limitations even harder to swallow—specifically regarding the lack of verbal and symbolic reasoning or long-term planning. And yet, people use modern tools to criticize the very systems they're ignoring.
Then again, maybe it makes sense coming from someone posting this nonsense; if you're operating on a significantly lower cognitive level, perhaps you can only find common ground with others in the same boat.

Has anyone actually managed to stay sane and level-headed among these clowns?

bluemason3 said:Is there actually any solid ground for this kind of romanticizing primitivism? Or was this just part of that old, debunked, pseudo-religious obsession with the "noble savage" that used to be popular in Europe? If this theory is less than 50 years old, there’s zero justification for it.

From what I understand, anthropology and archaeology paint a pretty brutal picture of hunter-gatherer tribal life—honestly, it's not exactly a lifestyle I'd be jumping at.

Socially speaking.

Psychologically, I find the dismissal of severe cognitive limitations even harder to swallow—specifically regarding the lack of verbal and symbolic reasoning or long-term planning. And yet, people use modern tools to criticize the very systems they're ignoring.
Then again, maybe it makes sense coming from someone posting this nonsense; if you're operating on a significantly lower cognitive level, perhaps you can only find common ground with others in the same boat.

Has anyone actually managed to stay sane and level-headed among these clowns?

He keeps citing anthropologists, but honestly, it’s hard to say how much weight to give him when his bias is so incredibly obvious.

Culture is actually a relatively recent development. If you look at the timeline, cave art dates back roughly 30,000 years, yet agriculture only kicked in about 10,000 years ago. There is this massive gap between when our IQ levels first allowed for symbolic thought and when we actually started building civilizations. I suspect the missing link in that interval was a fundamental shift in how we relate to the natural world. It’s possible that during this period—to an immeasurable degree—there was a collective hesitation to exert dominance over nature. It might even be that symbolic expression didn't truly take off until the desire for power emerged, likely as an unconscious byproduct of our gradual move toward a division of labor.

There’s this common argument that you can only tame the violence of primitive societies—things like human sacrifice, cannibalism, or slavery—through the introduction of symbolic culture. But I think there's a simple way to debunk that stereotype: organized violence wasn't actually cured by culture; it was actually triggered by it. William J. Perry studied various indigenous groups throughout the Americas and noted a striking contrast between agricultural civilizations and those that remained unmanaged. He observed that while the latter might be seen as "culturally inferior" by certain standards, they lacked the horrific, organized customs found elsewhere. It seems that almost every society on Earth that moved toward a domesticated relationship with nature eventually became prone to organized violence. Meanwhile, non-agricultural societies largely avoided it altogether. Anthropologists have long looked at Native Americans on the Pacific Northwest coast as a unique case study for this rule. Even though they were primarily fishers, they eventually adopted slavery and developed a very rigid social hierarchy. However, even in their case, there was an element of domestication present, such as the use of domesticated dogs and small-scale tobacco cultivation.

bluemason3 said:Is there actually any solid ground for this kind of romanticizing primitivism? Or was this just part of that old, debunked, pseudo-religious obsession with the "noble savage" that used to be popular in Europe? If this theory is less than 50 years old, there’s zero justification for it.

From what I understand, anthropology and archaeology paint a pretty brutal picture of hunter-gatherer tribal life—honestly, it's not exactly a lifestyle I'd be jumping at.

Socially speaking.

Psychologically, I find the dismissal of severe cognitive limitations even harder to swallow—specifically regarding the lack of verbal and symbolic reasoning or long-term planning. And yet, people use modern tools to criticize the very systems they're ignoring.
Then again, maybe it makes sense coming from someone posting this nonsense; if you're operating on a significantly lower cognitive level, perhaps you can only find common ground with others in the same boat.

Has anyone actually managed to stay sane and level-headed among these clowns?

According to his own words,

"The fall from the simplicity and fullness of lived experience—from that raw, sensory moment of realization—leaves a void that can never be symbolically bridged. This void has always been masked by layers of civilizational comfort, civilized detours that never truly restore what was lost. In one sense, symbolism only represents what has been repressed, for only the repressed requires symbolization. The sheer magnitude of symbolism is a testament to how much has been buried, yet remains potentially recoverable."

For context, he's a contemporary writer, and most of his books were published in the 2000s.

Melissa Stewart6 said:He keeps citing anthropologists, but honestly, it’s hard to say how much weight to give him when his bias is so incredibly obvious.

Culture is actually a relatively recent development. If you look at the timeline, cave art dates back roughly 30,000 years, yet agriculture only kicked in about 10,000 years ago. There is this massive gap between when our IQ levels first allowed for symbolic thought and when we actually started building civilizations. I suspect the missing link in that interval was a fundamental shift in how we relate to the natural world. It’s possible that during this period—to an immeasurable degree—there was a collective hesitation to exert dominance over nature. It might even be that symbolic expression didn't truly take off until the desire for power emerged, likely as an unconscious byproduct of our gradual move toward a division of labor.

There’s this common argument that you can only tame the violence of primitive societies—things like human sacrifice, cannibalism, or slavery—through the introduction of symbolic culture. But I think there's a simple way to debunk that stereotype: organized violence wasn't actually cured by culture; it was actually triggered by it. William J. Perry studied various indigenous groups throughout the Americas and noted a striking contrast between agricultural civilizations and those that remained unmanaged. He observed that while the latter might be seen as "culturally inferior" by certain standards, they lacked the horrific, organized customs found elsewhere. It seems that almost every society on Earth that moved toward a domesticated relationship with nature eventually became prone to organized violence. Meanwhile, non-agricultural societies largely avoided it altogether. Anthropologists have long looked at Native Americans on the Pacific Northwest coast as a unique case study for this rule. Even though they were primarily fishers, they eventually adopted slavery and developed a very rigid social hierarchy. However, even in their case, there was an element of domestication present, such as the use of domesticated dogs and small-scale tobacco cultivation.

I see two accurate, irrelevant facts, one half-truth, and a mountain of disconnected speculation, projections, and poor attempts to rationalize baseless assumptions.

This first chapter is nothing more than empty religious rambling. You could have projected any conclusion imaginable and gotten the same result. Terence McKenna would probably argue that psychedelic mushrooms triggered our creativity, while Erich von Däniken would claim they were left by aliens. It’s all pretty much on that same level of nonsense—just baseless projections of ideological fantasies.

Actually, that urge to dominate nature—to exert control over our surroundings—is one of our most fundamental human impulses. It’s easily one of the core drivers of our species. (If I recall correctly, he’s got a fear of deep water.) It’s what you see in newborns. You can't get any more natural than that.
It’s probably true for pretty much any living thing, too—from bacteria all the way up the food chain.
What a load of nonsense this guy is peddling. It's honestly unbelievable.

I’d actually prefer if someone could quantify this second point instead of just tossing out half-baked info and speculative interpretations. It would be much better to look at actual data from reports written by people who lived within Native American hunter-gatherer societies. First you had Westerners who ended up kidnapped and raised by Native Americans, and later, those researchers deep in the Amazon.The whole argument about reduced violence just doesn't hold water, especially when you look at the archaeological record.

Organized cultures definitely had their share of organized violence—ritualistic stuff, cannibalism, you name it—but that seems to be a thing of the past. When you look at bone remains from the Stone Age, the evidence of violent death is on a completely different level. It depends on where you are, usually somewhere between 20% and 50%. Even in the most violent, war-hungry, and bloodthirsty civilizations in history—societies built on slavery and conquest—you don't see this. Even modern Stone Age hunter-gatherer groups, according to most accounts, show instances of extreme violence. It seems the recurring theme is a brutal, almost "racist" divide between those inside the clan and everyone else, who are treated like little more than insignificant animals. There’s no sense of fair play. Compared to how these tribes treated outsiders, any obsession with borders would seem downright humanitarian.
Not across the board. Tribalism varies wildly depending on how many tiny micro-communities you're looking at, but more often than not, it’s a real issue. The only place I can think of is a specific region in Southeast Asia where tribes show incredible tolerance; everywhere else I've studied, things tend to get pretty nasty.

Sam Martinez9 said:I find myself agreeing on one point—technology certainly facilitated the rise of slavery, yet it was also the very tool that ultimately helped abolish it.

While it’s indisputable that a technological civilization might face a total collapse, the severity of that fallout depends entirely on how much of "humanity" goes down with it.

If technology regresses to a level comparable to the era of ancient slave societies, we risk resurrecting a world defined by masters and servants. If the collapse is absolute, then humanity itself may simply cease to exist as we know it.

As we have already established: there is no such thing as a human being outside the framework of civilization.

Actually, we haven't established that. Humans existed before civilization, and they'll exist after it.

Power tends toward more control, not less.
And technological progress gives those in power the exact tools they need to tighten that grip.

Maybe you've been sleeping through the last decade? Cameras are being installed everywhere.
Smartphones basically log every single little thing we do into a permanent database.

Melissa Stewart6 said:According to his own words,

"The fall from the simplicity and fullness of lived experience—from that raw, sensory moment of realization—leaves a void that can never be symbolically bridged. This void has always been masked by layers of civilizational comfort, civilized detours that never truly restore what was lost. In one sense, symbolism only represents what has been repressed, for only the repressed requires symbolization. The sheer magnitude of symbolism is a testament to how much has been buried, yet remains potentially recoverable."

For context, he's a contemporary writer, and most of his books were published in the 2000s.

This kind of nonsense is only tolerable coming from some teenager who just watched The Matrix for the first time, thinks they’ve reached enlightenment, and now spends all day philosophizing about the meaninglessness of philosophy and the concept of "evil concepts."

Anyone over the age of 14 peddling these hollow, unfalsifiable ideas deserves a reality check rather than an actual debate.

By the way, he's a contemporary writer, and most of his books were published back in the early 2000s.

So, in this case, it's clearly just another fool being cited here. What a shocker. 🐔

Melissa Stewart6 said:Primitivism is what exists before slavery, and honestly, even before any kind of symbolic thought. Zerzan leans into that idea of "original purity," essentially calling for a massive step backward.

I understand that perspective, but strictly speaking, there wasn't even a "human" before symbolic thought. Before symbolism, you have chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas—though I believe it’s been proven that they possess their own forms of symbolic cognition as well.

Melissa Stewart6 said:He keeps citing anthropologists, but honestly, it’s hard to say how much weight to give him when his bias is so incredibly obvious.

Culture is actually a relatively recent development. If you look at the timeline, cave art dates back roughly 30,000 years, yet agriculture only kicked in about 10,000 years ago. There is this massive gap between when our IQ levels first allowed for symbolic thought and when we actually started building civilizations. I suspect the missing link in that interval was a fundamental shift in how we relate to the natural world. It’s possible that during this period—to an immeasurable degree—there was a collective hesitation to exert dominance over nature. It might even be that symbolic expression didn't truly take off until the desire for power emerged, likely as an unconscious byproduct of our gradual move toward a division of labor.

There’s this common argument that you can only tame the violence of primitive societies—things like human sacrifice, cannibalism, or slavery—through the introduction of symbolic culture. But I think there's a simple way to debunk that stereotype: organized violence wasn't actually cured by culture; it was actually triggered by it. William J. Perry studied various indigenous groups throughout the Americas and noted a striking contrast between agricultural civilizations and those that remained unmanaged. He observed that while the latter might be seen as "culturally inferior" by certain standards, they lacked the horrific, organized customs found elsewhere. It seems that almost every society on Earth that moved toward a domesticated relationship with nature eventually became prone to organized violence. Meanwhile, non-agricultural societies largely avoided it altogether. Anthropologists have long looked at Native Americans on the Pacific Northwest coast as a unique case study for this rule. Even though they were primarily fishers, they eventually adopted slavery and developed a very rigid social hierarchy. However, even in their case, there was an element of domestication present, such as the use of domesticated dogs and small-scale tobacco cultivation.

Yes, that is accurate. It remains a massive mystery without a definitive answer. Modern humans (*Homo sapiens*) have existed for perhaps 100,000 years, yet for a full 70,000 or even 90,000 of those years, we weren't reading, writing, or behaving in the ways modern civilization dictates.

What caused this? The brain clearly isn't the culprit, as that individual possessed the exact same biological hardware we do today.

Harar suggests he has found the answer in population density. Humans can only truly realize their intellectual potential through interaction with large numbers of others via the exchange of ideas and goods.

So, what prerequisite would be necessary for civilization to vanish? The human population would need to drop significantly, leaving only isolated communities with little to no contact with others. We see remnants of this today in the depths of the Amazon or on remote islands in the Pacific Ocean.

But what kind of life would that entail? Well, there would be no philosophers, no science, no reading books... in short, we would have to surrender a great deal.

Life would be reduced to mere survival: scavenging food and maintaining basic hygiene.

Nowadays, however, we actually have the luxury of choice. If you find wandering through shopping malls to be mindless, you have an alternative—head into the woods, forage for mushrooms, or spend time by a river or the coast. If you think watching American sitcoms is trivial, that's fine too; instead, read philosophy, buy a microscope to study bacteria, get a telescope to observe birds, or buy a small plot of land to grow carrots and parsley.

bluemason3 said:This kind of nonsense is only tolerable coming from some teenager who just watched The Matrix for the first time, thinks they’ve reached enlightenment, and now spends all day philosophizing about the meaninglessness of philosophy and the concept of "evil concepts."

Anyone over the age of 14 peddling these hollow, unfalsifiable ideas deserves a reality check rather than an actual debate.

By the way, he's a contemporary writer, and most of his books were published back in the early 2000s.

So, in this case, it's clearly just another fool being cited here. What a shocker. 🐔

He’s not exactly a teenager—he’s 76.

Melissa Stewart6 said:He’s not exactly a teenager—he’s 76.

I just hope he can use dementia as an excuse.

If he's fully lucid, then he's just being an idiot.

Also, I see Google claims the oldest cave paintings aren't 30,000 years old, but actually 64,000—and they weren't even Sapiens doing the painting, but Neanderthals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Maltravieso

It’s a fair question, though: why are there so many of these drawings scattered across Europe?

I’ll take a shot at guessing, and I could be totally off base here, but maybe it comes down to colder climates. Even if physical remains last a long time, nothing stays forever. Today's deserts used to be forests, and vice versa, and paint on walls eventually fades. So, it makes sense to assume that as we look further back in time, our chances of finding anything diminish—not because they didn't exist, but because they're gone. Another factor might just be that archaeology is most developed in certain parts of Europe, so people there were simply more likely to notice, study, and preserve them.
In any case, in Europe, the history goes back only as far as when Sapiens arrived.
P.S. I'm reading now that pigments found in African caves could be 160,000 years old and might be remnants of paintings, along with worked shells that could have been ornaments. But we can't be sure. There's just too little evidence and too little information.

Writing is a different beast entirely, but I think Sam Martinez9 might have a point here. The first instances of writing we know of (Egypt, Mesopotamia, etc.) that have been deciphered show a very high level of pragmatic, administrative focus. It suggests that bookkeeping probably came first, with religious texts following much later.
A primitive community doesn't really need ledgers to track grain levels in silos or the number of stone blocks issued to build someone's ego-driven monument.

Melissa Stewart6 said:He keeps citing anthropologists, but honestly, it’s hard to say how much weight to give him when his bias is so incredibly obvious.

Culture is actually a relatively recent development. If you look at the timeline, cave art dates back roughly 30,000 years, yet agriculture only kicked in about 10,000 years ago. There is this massive gap between when our IQ levels first allowed for symbolic thought and when we actually started building civilizations. I suspect the missing link in that interval was a fundamental shift in how we relate to the natural world. It’s possible that during this period—to an immeasurable degree—there was a collective hesitation to exert dominance over nature. It might even be that symbolic expression didn't truly take off until the desire for power emerged, likely as an unconscious byproduct of our gradual move toward a division of labor.

There’s this common argument that you can only tame the violence of primitive societies—things like human sacrifice, cannibalism, or slavery—through the introduction of symbolic culture. But I think there's a simple way to debunk that stereotype: organized violence wasn't actually cured by culture; it was actually triggered by it. William J. Perry studied various indigenous groups throughout the Americas and noted a striking contrast between agricultural civilizations and those that remained unmanaged. He observed that while the latter might be seen as "culturally inferior" by certain standards, they lacked the horrific, organized customs found elsewhere. It seems that almost every society on Earth that moved toward a domesticated relationship with nature eventually became prone to organized violence. Meanwhile, non-agricultural societies largely avoided it altogether. Anthropologists have long looked at Native Americans on the Pacific Northwest coast as a unique case study for this rule. Even though they were primarily fishers, they eventually adopted slavery and developed a very rigid social hierarchy. However, even in their case, there was an element of domestication present, such as the use of domesticated dogs and small-scale tobacco cultivation.

Actually, I just looked up this one too: https://www.britannica.com/biography/W-J-Perry

The guy was just a product of his era—a time when anthropological fantasies ran wild because we lacked solid archaeological data. We can probably forgive him for spouting nonsense, considering nobody knew any better back then.

But the people quoting him today? Not so much.

Melissa Stewart6 said:Primitivism is what exists before slavery, and honestly, even before any kind of symbolic thought. Zerzan leans into that idea of "original purity," essentially calling for a massive step backward.

There are actually people living completely outside of civilization even today.

It’s just a certain type of person who never fell into the trap of modern society.

Honestly, we aren't any better off than they are.

Those folks wouldn't survive in our world, and frankly, we wouldn't last a day out there either.

.

Since we are discussing the concept of civilization, it is worth noting that Margaret Mead (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Mead) argued that true civilization didn't actually begin with the discovery of fire, the invention of pottery, or even the wheel. Instead, she believed it began with healing. She pointed to the mending of a broken bone as the definitive turning point. In the animal kingdom—and certainly among humans—a broken leg is often a death sentence, as an individual becomes unable to forage for food or escape a hungry predator. Human beings realized that maintaining health and physical integrity was paramount; to heal a fracture, one must set the bone, immobilize the limb, and provide dedicated care for the patient. This process requires specialized knowledge, significant effort, willpower, and time.

If you wish to act with civility and uphold our shared humanity, then lend a hand to those in need.

True civilization existed long before the arrival of the local grocer or a bottle of Vileda.

It just works better with the judges, honestly. There’s no way you can pull it off with the jury. 🧐