Monday, December 28, 2009

Excerpt: Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out by Neal Stephenson

Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out
By NEAL STEPHENSON
Published: June 17, 2005

"Concentrate on the moment. Feel, don't think. Trust your instincts," says a Jedi to the young Anakin in Episode I, immediately before a pod race in which Anakin is likely to get killed. It is distinctly odd counsel coming from a member of the Jedi order, the geekiest people in the universe: they have beards and ponytails, they dress in army blankets, they are expert fighter pilots, they build their own laser swords from scratch.

And (as is made clear in the "Clone Wars" novels) the masses and the elites both claim to admire them, but actually fear and loathe them because they hate being dependent upon their powers.

Anakin wins that race by repairing his crippled racer in an ecstasy of switch-flipping that looks about as intuitive as starting up a nuclear submarine. Clearly the boy is destined to be adopted into the Jedi order, where he will develop his geek talents - not by studying calculus but by meditating a lot and learning to trust his feelings. I lap this stuff up along with millions, maybe billions, of others. Why? Because every single one of us is as dependent on science and technology - and, by extension, on the geeks who make it work - as a patient in intensive care. Yet we much prefer to think otherwise.

Scientists and technologists have the same uneasy status in our society as the Jedi in the Galactic Republic. They are scorned by the cultural left and the cultural right, and young people avoid science and math classes in hordes. The tedious particulars of keeping ourselves alive, comfortable and free are being taken offline to countries where people are happy to sweat the details, as long as we have some foreign exchange left to send their way. Nothing is more seductive than to think that we, like the Jedi, could be masters of the most advanced technologies while living simple lives: to have a geek standard of living and spend our copious leisure time vegging out.

If the "Star Wars" movies are remembered a century from now, it'll be because they are such exact parables for this state of affairs. Young people in other countries will watch them in classrooms as an answer to the question: Whatever became of that big rich country that used to buy the stuff we make? The answer: It went the way of the old Republic.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Industrial Evolution

I've found a by-product of writing a lot is the accidental coining of a new (for me) useful phrase that captures a large concept.

In zillions of dialogues I've tried to place myself on some ideological map, and having half-on half-off resonance with capitalism, anarchism, conservativism, liberalism and consumerism.

Maybe what I depend on, enable, and can heartily endorse 100 per cent is Industrial Evolution.

This means no hard coded allegiance to Wall Street capitalism or our current energy infrastructure, it allows me to have no long term allegiance to any current political/economic regime (e.g. a specific corporation, political party) or technological configuration (the oil market).

It does create a permanent blockage to my being anti-industrial, or placing capital N Nature (everything not produced by humans) as a higher or equal priority. It also places religion, mysticism, and subjectivism in boundaries.

This Industrial Evolution concept may supplant my Athena, Goddess of War and Technology religious aspiration.

Reply ( or extension of thesis ) from Seth Galbraith:

The cult of Athena followed the sun with exponential acceleration until the period between 1900 and 1950 when the light of progress finally shone on every nation, day and night, the humanistic phase of Industrial Evolution became saturated, the concept of human rights encoded in the law of the United Nations, and history came to an end, with the marginal exception of sorting out the widespread hypocrisy of dictatorship disguised as democratic, republican, socialist government.

Then the posthuman phase of Industrial Evolution began, leading to much confusion. Those who measured the success of Industrial Evolution in terms of employment (the size of the Industrial Working Class, sometimes combined with "service sector" jobs) pronounced the end of the progress.

Those who measured the success of Industrial Evolution in terms of consumption (profits, growth, productivity, GNP, GDP, trade deficits, etc.) faced the horrible stagnation of saturated demand and the looming spectre of finite resource depletion.

This left only two measures of progress that provided people with any optimistic predictions:

(A) Measuring progress by how completely we have returned to Nature: dismantling civilization, reducing of the human population to a utopian society devoted to the pursuit of one superstition or another. Various parties are advocating such societies based on the dogmas of islam, nature worship, racial supremacy, christianity, existentialism and other religions.

(B) Measuring progress by adaptability: not the sweat we put into the machine, or the tonnage of manufactured outputs, but the increasing variety and utility of the machines themselves. Technodiversity of economies modeled after the biodiversity of ecologies. This then becomes the antithesis of the return to Nature, which insists upon the reduction of economic technodiversity.

The Nature metric requires that we sacrifice all of the benefits of civilization, including our freedom and our lives, for a higher moral purpose. (Our bodies are - after all - merely dust given form via the stored energy of buried Carboniferous forests.) The Adaptability metric allows us to count the continuation of civilization as progress without requiring either expansion or contraction of the built world or human population.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

The Revolutionary Viral Darknet Software Driven Resilient Community

John Robb, the guy who introduced 4GW to me, is getting all worked up over a new substrata of his Resilient Communities, 4GW, DIY Security/Governance/Economy/Energy-Production. The new muse of his is a virus-like software darknet global badass thingy.

  1. http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2009/12/new-book-freedom.html
    ( I just ordered the book Freedom. Already read Daemon. Most important fiction I've read outside Stephenson.)
  2. http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2009/12/journal-resources-for-small-group-superempowerment.html
  3. http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2009/12/a-darknet.html
  4. http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2009/12/journal-a-quantitative-examination-of-open-source-warfare.html

    "What makes this very interesting to me is not the scientific support it provides to open source warfare, but rather that it provides me with additional clarity on how open source warfare could be instantiated in Darknet software."

  5. Finally: He is actually trying to realize this software:
    http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2009/12/thanks-and-onto-the-next-year.html

Half-thoughts I have to add:

Daemon offers a new means of revolution. Basically, a virus takes up the classical class warfare ( especially crushing rich oligarchs ). This is quite different compared to Marxist ideas of workers owning the means of production. Also, in John Robb's vision of post-centralized governance and economy, it is the Makers (aka "Creative Class") (urban farmers, fabricators, hackers, home micro-energy production, and any industrial artisans) combined with the community providing more of their own services (security, local legal regimen for drug use and taxation, etc). Would their be a clash between this Creative Class and a Badass Distributed Deamon?

I don't think so, but hope to see some words and vision statements from someone -maybe in new book Freedom, or John Robb, or someone on this thread.

Digression to Marxism and Zizek

I'm reading First As Tragedy, Then As Farce by Slavoj Zizek. He is openly and proudly a capital L Leftist and capital C Communist. I am reading him because I kept picking up his book at the bookstore, reading a passage, and seeing so much wit and intelligence. Now I'm ten or so pages into the book, still think he'd be fun to hang out with in a beer hall if at least for a vigorous argument, but sensing a giant dustbin of history for the capital C Commies. I can sum up my contempt with this: Seize the means of production and I will point out this is only 20 % of the solution. The rest is more important: Seize the means of innovation. Oh wait, more irony is embedded in this deconstruction! It is not seize, but rather Free up the means of innovation. Without innovation, production becomes that process of making things...poorly. Like the dogshit Soviet Russian factories were famous for.

Back to Zizek, I'm getting a hint he is going to deliver a solution to social justice, but leave off with what humans need more than a symbolic social catharsis in which undeserving elites are beheaded -technological innovation. I do not mean in the form of better high definition televisions or a faster SUV. I mean technological innovation manifest in food production, energy production and use, shelter, and health care. For starters. I'm referring to anything urgent and necessary.

I'm all for a revolution, but believe social justice addicts miss the forest because of the trees. Social justice, if it happens, will be as a side effect while humans innovate in realms more technical and mechanical.

Friday, December 25, 2009

The Dubliner Dialogue: A List of Issues and Ideas

On Friday December 4, 2009 a few of my friends and I gathered at the Dubliner(Seattle) to celebrate my birthday and talk politics, culture and art. Below is a condensed remainder of the questions we opened up in our meandering conversation. Note the topic headings for giving a hint of the section topic.

Radical New Individual Types

Choices humans make in who they mate is one of the great shapers of society and the bounds of what human is. Certain behaviors result in a person not being chosen for producing offspring. I know we could site an over-conservatism America was prone to in the 1950's -such as taboos in inter-racial marriage, or a "good" girls who don't date geeks or guys who smoke weed. I certainly believe we've had a cultural renaissance and technological explosion, beginning in the 1960's, due in part to society's boundaries as to what is acceptable.

I contend that the unbounding of boundaries has gotten so mature that we are no longer loosening the strictures so as to have more/better art and technology, we have entered into a phase of unboundedness that is producing, ehem...reproducing, pathologically insane scumbags, often of the needless murdering persuasion. Exhibit A (almost harmless non-murdering type): http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/19/father-and-son-sport.html.

This thread of thought might provide ammo for Right Wing Christian Culture Warriors, I'm not endorsing that. I'm just saying at this point we need to prepare for more crazies in the world -the sick needless murdering kind, mainly because they are finding mates and producing offspring. Previous political/religious agendas for healing and emancipation have sited our economic excesses as points of change (e.g. Marxism, Catholicism). The addition of a needless-murdering class of humans should make for some new ideologies offering solutions. Or maybe this is a post-ideology domain of inquiry, one in which personal choice has more power than great social movements.

Islam. My honest question: Is there a good and bad kind?

First I want to promote how I think of religions. Specifically, the names and boundaries of religions. To me, if a people claim they are of a religion, they are. If a socialist agenda Catholic org says that are Christian, they are. If a group believes donating to Isreal's military and killing Catholics will be the first thing Jesus does if he returns to Earth, then they to are Christians. Same wide girth of inclusion goes for Islam, Buddhists, and Communists.

So, yeah, I assume their are cosmopolitan and tolerant Moslems. I also assume their are racist, intolerant, and country hick Moslems also. The historical record is full of examples of cosmopolitan Moslem nations -in the Kiev, in Irag, in lots of places.

I've said all the above to set-up for a specific question to my friend Brian [http://www.eye-ontheworld.blogspot.com/] , who just taught a college course on Islam and is writing a book on it. I've just heard of a division in Islam: Inclusion versus Exclusion. I need to know more about this.

My own personal stance is a support for the tolerant and cosmopolitan versions of every political/religious construct. For a globally interconnected world, exclusion seems like a poorly equipped construct.

Racism

I've pursued a narrative that has focused on black on white crime. (See this detailed entry, with personal accounts.). I want to reiterate something I said at the bar, what I see as the positive and negative directions we can go. Positive: mixed income and race neighborhoods, interracial marriage, and education/employment scenarios in which merit performance is the holy grail for respect and rewards; these are sure routes away from racism. Negative: oppressed classes sticking together and viewing all others as contemptible and worthy targets of violence, wealthy classes moving to remote or gated communities, whites fleeing to sidewalk-less suburbs -these are progenitors of misery and re-enactment of the worst scripts humans read from.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

The Homeless Technologist

We are in the midst of D2, The Second Great Depression. For the struggling people who have the means to prepare before they become homeless, here is a battle plan: put aside enough money to have an iPhone, Droid or Blackberry phone with connection fees covered for at least a year.

The Creative/Technological Class, which will own the 21st Century, can be virtual nation inhabiting every monetary strata and racial group on Earth, including being homeless.

The slum (thinking more of the types in India and South America) will be the engine room and R&D department for what works in this century. Large and wealthy institutions will be hampered by hindbound vision or communication rules ( such as polite-speak ) that limit lateral adaptation. The slum resident will be have two pressures that ignite positive change -concentrated population and poverty.

I am not pining that homelessness and poverty are cool, and something to be sought after, I'm saying slums are a place where dynamic forces are at play that push people upward. In the US we often cast being homeless, or living in the poorest neighborhoods with an eternal status -a place of absolute zero, I'm countering that with a sense of optimism and opportunity within the context of dire straits, properly equipped with the right technology and knowledge, there is reasonable hope.

And now for my out-there idea. I know this may never happen, but I think we should have a slum-to-astronaut program. Most or all astronauts must be from slums. This would break the current assumptions of class and access to privileged, hypermodern opportunities.

Philosophers and the Equality of Barbarians

Ancient philosophers designated some as barbarians, opposed equal rights of barbarians, and religious zealots ( often barbarians themselves ) fought for the equality of barbarians.

Modern or progressive philosophers support the ubiquitous spread of technology, an egalitarian enterprise, as the great equalizer. But this agenda of equality is often opposed by barbarians in privileged positions of power, who want their slaves or adorers to stay in a relative servile position. The opponent of progressive philosophy wages a war on mass consumption technology -the supply line that aids the barbarian in becoming ( often a peaceful ) equal.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Fortress or Resilient City?

In economic or social collapse, which will fair bette, or will both fair well but in different ways(?) :
  1. Underground fortress. [link]
  2. Resilient cities. [link]

I think certain cities will have the advantage of talented people, trade of diverse goods (e.g. computers and potatoes). Their downside may be criminal/terrorist class predators. For the fortress, all the opposites are in play: a shallow talent pool due to small group.

One vision of the future might tip the advantage to an underground fortress: A world where inventions and knowledge are open sourced and shared efficiently across the internet, and travel of any kind become an anomaly because of extreme expense. In this case a fortress able to secure its own food, water and electricity would have access to the "world mind".

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

The Insurgents and the Vigilantes

Maurice Clemmons and those who aided him were insurgents -nihilistic murderers believing in a narrative in which they are legitimate, and police (and the society police are protecting) are not. Their aggression against police come less than a month after a cop killer waged a war on the police with bullets and bombs (Guns, Bombs Found In Shooting Suspect's Apartment).

All the people above are African-American. Seattle is a liberal city, where the dialogue that emerges after a crime committed by a black man usually tends towards a critique of the society more than the perpetrator, with a usual wish list of better schools, community services and other government interventions, for the statistically disadvantaged. Something new has happened in public sentiment after Maurice Clemmons. No one in mainstream dialogue is crying out in regards to a history of social injustice as a contributor to the murders. It seems most are glad Clemmons is dead.

For a city of the political profile Seattle has, this unanimity is significant. I believe we've entered a new age, one that can see some as simply wrong and evil, and we proceed to eliminate them without the infinite regress of self-critique.

Then there is the woman who shot man at bus stop, and won't be charged. We may be moving into a golden age of Charles Bronson style public safety in Seattle thanks to Maurice Clemmons. The Seattle PI wrote this story (State cuts to criminal supervision 'are a tragedy waiting to happen') focused on an assumed pacifism and defenselessness on the part of daytime commuters, but what if these criminals face honest folk that put a bullet in them?

Returning to the infinite chasm of self-critique liberal dialogue has tended towards since the 1960's, where America's previous social injustice sins are referenced in the labeling of mainstream society and economy as inherently immoral, and in an eternal debt to those who might have suffered. This ethical framework manifested itself in huge government initiatives designed to right past wrongs. These government programs cost money.

2009: NOW WE ARE BROKE.

A shrinking economy will mean less jobs, locally and globally. If insurgents and criminals are mostly caused by unemployment and poverty, we can expect more waves of angry murderous criminals and insurgents than ever before.

Paradigm over: Hopefully, the era of the wealthy compassionate liberal who directs all guilt to their own economic heritage is over. The wealth is gone, and maybe there have been enough nihilistic murders that the stupider portions of the compassion is gone also.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Microsoft, Bing and Murdoch

Microsoft tries to buy the news.

All I see is a sick, dying, out-of-touch dinosaur declaring he's going to open up a can of whoop ass. I'll wait an hour, the dinosaur will have cockroaches eating its brain. The network was the computer decades ago, and Gates and Co somehow convinced the mentally weak all the power was at the desktop. Please die now.

While on the subject of Murdoch, I might as well promote my book, which specifically mentions the Rupert Murdoch archetype as a class to be eliminated in a future fictional scenario: TechnologyTexting KIDS: Subvert Primitive Ways, Invent Writing and Metal, and Delete Financiers like T Boone Pickens .

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Tea Party Patriots, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin Explained

Chapter 1: Rock and Roll Music Culture

There is an era we can call rock 'n roll, countercultural, hippy, or even liberal. It spanned from the middle-late 1950's to the middle-late 1990's. It had a form and function that integrated American black music (all of the subgroups: gospel, blues, and jazz) into a world music, illicit drug use, sexual relations beyond one partner, and a reverence for anything simultaneously visceral and non-violent ( e.g. sex, danceable music).

The main conduit/media for this era was music. For sure there was literature and academics, qualitatively equal to the giants of any other era, but music types and personalities were the means of spreading all other memes in the era. If an academic had a radical, countercultural thesis, there had better be at least one song that resonated with the academic's message. If no one in the rock/punk/alternative echoed the thesis, then the thesis wasn't even remotely relevant.

Then something happened in the mid 1990's. Disney Corporation started training up and churning out talent (e.g. Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake) and the popular music press didn't make a fuss over the distinction between this as opposed to the previous 40 year history of self-taught, populist route to music stardom (e.g. Elvis, James Brown, John Lennon, George Clinton, Sting, U2, Kurt Cobain).

The delivery system for the countercultural system of ideas -music; up and died. Or at least shapeshifted silently from its essential self to an antithetical self, rendering it a killer of memes it once was the nurturer of.

Chapter 2: Internet Culture(s)

In the mid 1990's the Internet sprang into popular culture. At first it was college students, government employees, and early adopter tech hipsters on the bandwagon. By the year 2000 grandma was on it, and later with blogspot and Facebook she had her own content on the web also.

With easy self-publishing of Web 2.0 a wall of water rushed over the Earth -a torrent of micro-universes within which held endless threads of dialogue. To say there were mutations of classical ideologies, and they flourished and thrived, is an understatement. The aggregate size of these mutations quickly eclipsed the size of our own Sun.

Chapter 3: The Rise of a Counterculture, via Internet

While the Rock and Roll Music Counterculture died years ago, a new counterculture has emerged, sent to kill it. This new counterculture rallies around Guns, God, and Hating Gays. They are better at serving the violent edicts of the Old Testament rather than living like the non-violent Jesus of the New Testament. The gun toting bandit life of pre-1880's rural America, Bible in one hand, gun or whiskey in the other; that is the capstone of American greatness. A white man, drunk on whiskey, having referenced the Bible earlier in the day, shoots someone else, preferably an American Indian or black. And, basically, this new counterculture is saying that white man is a heroic icon, they want to or will do that lifestyle again.

But what are they really after? Well, its not actually running the country, they lack the attention to unemotional detail to attain or hold onto that. They want to gun down something. Ask them who they'd like to shoot/lynch, and I bet you get hundreds of answers. But the answers will all add up to one mythic entity: The Rock and Roll Music Culture circa 1955-1995.

The dead Bandits of the rural Wild West want to kill the dead Rock Stars of London, NYC, and LA .

Where did I develop a sense of this new counterculture? By happening upon it, appropriately, on the internet. Reading textual content, and then finding these photos. The craziness of the costumes indicates departure from our mainstream business or academic world. It is the new counterculture. I will cease with my wordy description and invite the reader to the photos on these sites.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Starhawk's Pantheon of Organizational Archetypes

  • Dragon - keeps the boundaries defined for the group.
  • Crows - are exploratory, finding new directions and establishing "the vision" for the group.
  • Spider - are the networkers that keep everyone communicating with each other.
  • Snakes - are the group psyhologists that look at underlying emotional processes.
  • Grace - are the people who keep tabs on the group's over all energy level, deciding when the group should expand etc.
  • Killdozers -are those who intervene when all the others fail. Killdozers never fail.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Two models of globalization by Seth Galbraith

from Seth Galbraith
to Lance Miller
date Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 8:13 AM
subject Re: Crops for food or cash

1. "The Law of Comparative Advantage" - move products from where they can be produced most efficiently to where they are most needed. This approach insists that all nations should be governed the same way - same taxes, tariffs, subsidies, copyright, trademark and patent laws etc - but only works if nations are developed differently - different levels and types of industry and agriculture, different patterns of education, social structure and wealth, different technology. This model is most darkly epitomized by the US military-industrial complex sharing steel technology only with selected allies, and the modern push for international software and gene patents.

2. Allow ideas (and people and media carrying those ideas) to move freely through your borders so that you can accumulated the best technology, and in the hope that it will be useful to other countries. This approach works even if other countries have different laws, but it allows other countries to develop similar technology and a similar pattern of living if they choose to do so. Japan after WWII was infamous for this development strategy and and modern China has a similar movement. (Notice that neither example required a high degree of political freedom or socially liberal attitudes.)

Notice the high degree of coherence:
  • individuality/autonomy/passion
  • meritocracy/creativity
  • diversity/sharing/benevolence/cooperation

The coherence is even stronger than the intuitive connection between each cluster of words. Hacker passion is very individualistic - it's the guy working on a model railroad in his basement, not the social passion of participating in a group. The hacker creativity is very meritocratic (not self-expressive) and hacker sharing is very much about cooperating benevolently with diverse strangers.

Hackers have captured the heart of this movement and pulled it forward, but it is not limited to that group. Twitter, Wikipedia and other social networking projects are bringing a lot of people into the movement through Commons-based Peer-production. But if Richard Florida is right, the Creative Class is 26% of the US population, plus a large fraction of the Service Class whose creative contribution is not always apparent in their wages.

In other words individuality, meritocracy and sharing may be fundamental values of the majority in post-industrial America, Europe and some other places. But only a small fraction of that majority is active in the movement, because the majority aren't aware of their own existence as a class, and because the interests of this class have not been articulated as a project for our society.

The same was true of the industrial working class when Marx and Engels started writing The Communist Manifesto.

But the project of the industrial working class has been completed, and that class is steadily shrinking as manufacturing becomes automated and distributed. The 21st century is Our Time if you count yourself in the Creative Class, and unlike all previous social classes, the Creative Class is the only class with the potential to include everyone who wants to participate (with the Service Class as an important complimentary pole for people with less interest or opportunity for creative work.)

Monday, October 19, 2009

Food for locals or cash crop for global market

Cotton was in high demand throughout Europe and most settlers wanted to raise cotton for big profits. But Mexico demanded that the settlers produce corn, grain and beef, dictating which crops each settler would plant and harvest.

[ Santa Anna ] also imprisoned some cotton plantation owners who refused to raise their assigned crops, which were intended to be redistributed within Mexico instead of being exported. These actions triggered outrage throughout Mexico.

-Texas Revolution.Background [wikipedia]

Records show Irish lands exported food even during the worst years of the Famine. When Ireland had experienced a famine in 1782–83, ports were closed to keep Irish-grown food in Ireland to feed the Irish. Local food prices promptly dropped. Merchants lobbied against the export ban, but government in the 1780s overrode their protests. No such export ban happened in the 1840s.

-Great Irish Famine.Food exports to England [wikipedia]

I've posted these historical records to highlight how there is nothing new in the friction of "local food supply economy" versus "lassiez-faire capitalism cash crop economy". I've left out any research on Southeastern US cash crop economics, but can speak from life experience: the traditional southern diet is so unhealthily slanted towards starches and meats cooked in grease, and simple sugary dishes because while the region was almost totally agrarian before the end of WW II, not all agrarian societies are the same. In New England the yeoman farmer could direct some or all of his production towards foodstuffs good for his family. In the south, we know the cliche, "Cotton is King". Ever try to eat cotton?

Leaping to the present and projections for an economic depression or collapse, its good to keep in mind these frictions of local food supply versus the landowner's choice to utilize the land for a distant market. Just because the USA experiences an economic collapse, other places may stay wealthy. e. g. What if a land owner near Seattle chooses to grow X crop for wealthy people in Beijing? With the threat of post peak oil, the potential for an "Ethanol is King" scenario of fuel for wealthy foreigner's cars is entirely plausible.

Things will get interesting.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Points of Superiority

For every race or culture in the world, using the point in which they integrated the innovations of Hellenistic science/philosophy and/or British Industrialism, they were a higher people after that point.

It is not that Greeks or British are great, it is that they discovered things that make any people better, and any people can integrate.

The planet would have been an evolutionary failure without something like the innovations the Greeks and British introduced.

Beyond humans, the planet has also become a higher form of evolution by mining and moving of massive amounts of minerals all over the globe. This mass alteration shows the Gaia evolved to a more complex object in the universe.

Humans would be lower without math, sciences and industry, and the planet itself would be a lower rank of planet if no species had developed to alter it at such extreme pace.

Re: criteria

Whether planet with life or culture, neither have the luxury of existing in a pleasant stasis. There is always an outside invader, predator or competitor.

It is not romantic or aesthetic goals that we can hold up as positive examples, rather it is whatever contends with assaults from the outside and survives or mutates is the higher and more positive example/specimen.

Re: slavery invalidates superiority or claim of innovation

Innovations are never invalidated by slavery or atrocities committed in war. Moralists do not have a leverage from which to invalidate innovation. In our era of sentimental moralizing this may come as a surprise, since sentimentalists thought they had a rhetorical innovation in the form of "if it was accomplished by arbitrary force it is evil" . Ironically, it is the Technologist that has a leverage for invalidating innovation. It is not the mass enslaving or genocide of humans that invalidates, it is whether the innovation is open source. An innovation is a sin and blight on this earth if it's means of production or use are kept secret, and especially, if the secret is allowed to die when its group of users die.

Millions of the world's poor and most common people reuse innovations that originated in some horrible context of slavery or mass killing. There is no regret for this. The advice of moralist luddites, to abstain from these innovations, is the course that is regrettable and evil. In sex and technology: abstinence is the greatest perversion.

Seth Galbraith email response to me

Extend an olive branch by admitting that history's winners were not inherently more moral or clever than the losers - in fact the winners were often foolish and arrogant - they were just ahead of the curve adopting the best tools available.

You must justify your asserted hierarchy of higher/lower culture and higher/lower world. This is the uphill battle you can't lose if you want people to take your thesis seriously. Specifically you must show the reader that (A) s/he is materially and emotionally safer in your world and (B) this happy condition does not require great suffering in distant lands or future generations.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Distributed energy production questions answered by Seattle City Light

Hello,

I am a Fremont resident inquiring out of curiosity about Seattle City Light policy towards residents or businesses connecting their power generation to, and selling to, the Seattle City Light grid. To get a quick context of what I am exploring, please read the following:

"The reason that all these other countries are building solar-panel industries today is because most of their governments have put in place the three prerequisites for growing a renewable energy industry: 1) any business or homeowner can generate solar energy; 2) if they decide to do so, the power utility has to connect them to the grid; and 3) the utility has to buy the power for a predictable period at a price that is a no-brainer good deal for the family or business putting the solar panels on their rooftop."

- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/opinion/16friedman.html

Any information would be helpful,

-Lance Miller

Hi Lance,

Thanks for your email. City Light is proud to have about 200 solar electric systems installed in our service territory. The majority of these are residential systems, though there are about 20 systems installed on businesses, plus 24 demonstration systems on schools, parks, libraries and other public buildings.

All of these systems are eligible for net metering, which is where if your system is producing more power than you can use at any moment, you can send that energy back onto the electric grid and spin you meter backwards in the process, earning a credit for the electricity. System owners are also eligible for the WA State Renewable Energy Production Incentive which pays up to $5,000 per year for the energy produced (at $0.15 to $0.54 per kilowatt-hour generated).

We just put the finishing touches on a guide to installing solar electric systems and I've attached that here. More info can be found at www.seattle.gov/light/solar. Please let me know if you have more questions I can help answer.

Cheers,
Meg

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Meg Gluckman
Solar America City Coordinator

Seattle City Light
Conservation Division
206-684-4827

Friday, October 2, 2009

I'm an urban liberal who just can't seem to fit in with urban liberals

I'm currently a supporter of Mike McGinn for mayor of Seattle. I follow his campaign on Facebook [facebook.com/McGinnforMayor].

Lately I've had some intellectual friction with postings from McGinn. Let's start with this entry from McGinn: "Cary Moon of the People's Waterfront Coalition has written an excellent article on HAC detailing the many reasons why the deep-bore tunnel should not be constructed." >http://hugeasscity.com/2009/09/30/special-guest-post-tunnel-digest/.

I posted this response in the Facebook thread:

Read the posted article. Phrases like "vibrant urban street" and "incentives to not use cars" shouldn't be part of the discussion. This is a state highway, for throughput of relatively fast traffic in route from one point in the state to another, e.g. West Seattle to Shoreline.

A few days ago I weighed in another issue, McGinn agrees with the Mayor Nickels effort to ban guns from public property such as parks.

I don't encourage the carrying of firearms as a solution to anything, so I'm not pro-gun. But I think this ban is going to fail at the legal level, and end up costing money for the effort. I'm voting for McGinn regardless of this one issue, but feel it is playing the identity politics card for votes. McGinn doesn't need to do that, he's got many fine points.

Back to the Anti-Deep-Bore-Tunnel article. My family should be held up as the most model citizens when it comes to progressive transportation lifestyle. We walk or bike everywhere. Especially to work and for grocery shopping. We've located our residence so as to not need a car. But even as we are committed car-less, I see a certain kind of anti-car stance as a bad thing. I want to call it punitive identity politics. The Alaska Way Viaduct replacement as example, we have so-called progressives who want to sabotage the effort. They want to make something that isn't a state highway. To get to a final point of reference: I don't want to live in a city that isn't a city. A city absolutely must have some conduits of high speed intercourse with the globe. I agree that into the future we should have less or no cars, and "high speed intercourse" may all be online. I embrace that. But today, and in the next several years, we have a large constituency who need to drive, in a timely manner, from West Seattle to North Seattle, at hours when buses do not run. We have a democracy, those people should be served by city and state services. It is slightly fascist for a portion of our constituency to dictate a car-less agenda to those who rely on cars for employment and their paycheck.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

ttylr

I did not begin to use computers till the early 1990's. My first experiences where at UALR [wikipedia], using a VAX unix system and text only internet. In 1995-6, the World Wide Web exploded into wide use, and I was in a place with 24/7 access to a computer lab. My life, and the world, were changed forever.

From 1996 on, I began using a Unix command prompt for access to email, web pages, and a shell prompt [wikipedia]. I felt immediately at home on the command line. And let me add a qualifier: on an inter-networked command prompt. In the early 90's I had used DOS, and the concepts and ease of use did not flow so well. Once I got on Unix, and the shell prompt had an ubiquitous internet connected to it, then the operating system made sense. On the other hand, DOS, especially if one cannot get to the internet from the command prompt, was too useless to make sense.

I've attributed my ease of "grokking" Unix and the Internet to a very odd and rare experience as a child. In 1972 I was in fourth grade, enrolled at Wakefield Elementary School in Little Rock Arkansas [map]. I was very much into reading, I spent many summer days riding the bus downtown and hanging out at the main library. Our little elementary school library was a favorite place also. One day I noticed a book in the math section: Networked Computers. I had just seen 2001: A Space Odyssey [wikipedia] in the theater, and knew computers could control a whole spaceship, talk with humans, plot to kill, et cetera, so I checked this cool looking book out to find out how they did that. The book turned out to be WAY over my head. It was not a simple howto book for children nor even an average college student. It was an honest to goodness technical science book on the inter-networking of computers.

What was bizarre about this book's existence is the date and location. By date I mean the internet was not invented till 1967, beginning as a DARPA project at five colleges in the western USA. By 1972 networking was certainly still only for government and business. So, what was a technical book on one of the most advanced technologies in the world doing at a children's library in the working class side of an Arkansas town?

I finally made a pretty good guess a few days ago, 36 years later, on that question. My answer (which is still just a guess) is the book was donated by someone who worked at the Teletype plant, which was about one mile away. I believe some eccentric engineer wanted to blow a young person's mind by the Gestalt method of teaching -basically by overwhelming the person with an intense exposure of a concept.

...and it worked, to this day I can remember one diagram in the book of computer terminals, a line depicting networking cable connection, and their numerical addresses printed underneath. Text on the page explained the routing. Below is my own re-creation of the graphic from memory:

The Teletype plant was not solely about technology to me, I played on the construction site on the weekends when no work was being done, and us kids called the woods between the plant and 65th Street the Teletype Woods.

Website for the Little Rock Teletype Plant.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

The Decline of the English Department -the American Scholar.org

"The study of literature will then take on the profile now held, with moderate dignity, by the study of the classics, Greek and Latin."

The Decline of the English Department -the American Scholar.org

I see more good in this than bad. Of late I've realized that the superiority of Greek and Latin culture to the other cultures around them, during their Hellenistic and Pagan Empire historic phases, is not muted by American academia or pop culture. The wealth, through study of these languages and histories, is there, and those who choose to say the uncivilized of the same era were equal or superior; impoverish themselves primarily.

Let's take the basis of postmodernity as a weapon against all who adore inferiority -we are all free to pursue what we want. With that, the intellectually superior can leave others to their own pathetic devices.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Bakfiet Cargobike

Long list of articles and videos: http://bakfietscargo.blogspot.com/

Really long review by owner after 1 year of use

"The spokes and fenders are stainless steel. That coupled with the anti-rust primer under the paint makes this thing completely weather proof. Got mud on it? No problem – spray the thing down. Left it outside during a downpour? No worries, it’s weather proof. And the internal Shimano 8-speed hub along with drum brakes and a fully encased chain means no mucky transmission. No maintenance whatsoever really."

Dutch Bikes: Seattle

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Good adaptations: Americans moving to China

I anticipate Americans who do well versus those that sink to poverty, misery or powerlessness will fall into those two groups by one criteria: those who migrate and adapt and those who stay where they are. Those who stay in their hometown or home region thinking its just about minor change such as training for a new career are possibly missing the point: the place around them is going down the tubes. Those that succeed will be those who changed on ALL levels -career, location, culture.

"Mr. Perkowski, who spent almost 20 years on Wall Street before heading to China, says many Chinese companies are looking to hire native English speakers to help them navigate the American market."
-American Graduates Finding Jobs in China

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Kant's Robotic Army

"I think there are varying degrees of moral agency, ranging from amoral agents to fully autonomous moral agents. Our current robots are between these extremes, though they definitely have the potential to improve.

I think we are now starting to see robots that are capable of taking morally significant actions, and we're beginning to see the design of systems that choose these actions based on moral reasoning. In this sense, they are moral, but not really autonomous because they are not coming up with the morality themselves... or for themselves.

They are a long way from being Kantian moral agents –- like some humans –- who are asserting and engaging their moral autonomy through their moral deliberations and choices. [Philosopher Immanuel Kant's "categorical imperative" is the standard of rationality from which moral requirements are derived.]

We might be able to design robotic soldiers that could be more ethical than human soldiers. "

- Can "Terminators" Actually be our Salvation?
A Conversation with Peter Asaro.




Categorical Imperative(s) @ Wikipedia:

  1. "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

  2. "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end."

  3. "Therefore, every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends."

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Criteria for Good/Bad Software

Evangelism and advocacy by techies for what is good software has been ill defined over the years. I believe I have the criteria statement:

The network is the computer, and software is bad if it gets in the way of user access to the network-as-computer, and good if it enables, and only augments with unquestionable enhancement, user access to network-as-computer.

"The network is the computer" has been a reality for a long time. Microsoft has been the main block to that reality. Our language for advocacy was to tout "open source". I think "open source" misses the point just as asking if someone is a monk to determine if they are religious. Yes, Irish monks once saved western civilization just as GNU software saved computers, but the good guys list is much longer and inclusive than that.

Cisco, IBM, Sun, Linux, Apache, Mozilla, Apple and Google have all been operating in ways that allowed the torrent of functionality coming from a global-network-computer. There is a mixed bag of proprietary, capitalism, and non-profit open source in that good guy list. The important distinction is just like all the stuff in a functional mechanic's toolbox: the tools are not designed by their manufacturer to undermine one another. The Sears screwdriver is not designed to f*ck up the functionality of the Snap-on wrench. We do not ask Sears to give away their tools, and Sears wants to make as much money as possible, but their tools do not destroy other tools and ultimately the mechanic's effectiveness.

Microsoft does disable other tools, and suppresses the torrent of functionality coming in from the network-as-computer. If the legend is true that Bill Gates was slow to realize the relevance of the internet while at the same time setting an agenda for his software products, that in of itself indicates my contention. The network was the computer at the moment Bill Gates had no appreciation of it, which means Microsoft wasn't working on the only computer that mattered -the global computer. They continued to curse customers with a lone Personal Computer.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Having Fun Through Post-Apocalyptic Collapse

Resilience is the ability to have fun in interesting times without getting killed.

Use it or lose it:

Exploiting a property is more important than a theoretical right to it. Resilient communities are full of people who can do things: plant flowers, teach karate, bake cookies, fix cars, shoot guns.

Don't be a tool:

Exploitation grows out of control during unstable times. Criminal exploitation becomes violent atrocity, Even profit or interest collected in a way that seems initially fair can become criminal exploitation. A resilient economy does not simply trade people's lives for money.

A hero ain't nothin' but a sandwich:

A resilient community is linked by people with common interests. It has it's cliques and elites like any other human community. However we intentionally associate with people who are different from us. Different physically. Different socially. Most importantly: we asscociate with people who disagree with us. Utopian communities established by ideologically pure vanguards are not resilient.

-excerpt from email thread written by Seth Galbraith

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Make the Makers Make Better Things

While a lot of left leaning progressives focus on carte blanche equality of distribution and replacing any square foot of industrialism with nature -I'm a leftist progressive who believes an ever optimized ubiquitous technology is the only thing making the universe a better place.

The point of technology is not to make as much money for a group of stockholders as possible ( 1980's to present Republicans ), make it meaningful and free to the poorest poor ( 3rd world fetishists ), or make big explosives to defend the regime ( Iran, N. Korea, Soviets, etc ). What should be the criteria?

Technology should make humans as functional as possible.

The above is philosophical. Now I'm moving on to an odd case study, and hope my friends/readers can come up with better supporting stories.

The US military Jeep was developed in a strange way. See this Wikipedia account. One thing the Wikipedia account leaves out is Bantam submitted the design and prototype that won the first round of qualification, but the Army knew it lacked in some respects. Get this: THE US GOV SHARED THE DESIGN DOCUMENTS WITH THE COMPETITORS, NOT SECRETIVELY BUT OPENLY.

I contend that intellectual property rights over-protect the investor, rather than technological advancement. In the case of the Jeep, government pressured private companies to produce the vehicle the soldiers wanted, not what the vendor marketing and lobbyists force-fed soldiers. Ironically, Jeep went on to become a marketing dream, an international survey determined it was the most widely known vehicle type in the world. This case points to the plausibility of corporate protection of critique and improvement of its inventions as counter-productive, that we would have better and more popular products if there was stronger pressure to get the technology right or improved, rather than sit passively and hope a company gets it right.

Monday, July 6, 2009

What is Anarcho-Primitivism?



Anarcho-Primitivism

I. Introduction

Anarcho-primitivists comprise a subculture and political movement that, generally, advocates hunting and gathering as the ideal human subsistence method (from the point of view of sustainable resource use) and the band as the ideal human social structure (for its features of egalitarianism). While the goal may seem improbable, a primitivist would contend that more modest goals are either undesirable or unachievable within the system. The past 10,000 years have after all been largely a history of “solutions” to the problems of an agricultural society. This critique of “civilization” inherently rejects less radical ideals and claims to go uniquely to the heart of all social discontent. It is multi-faceted, drawing on several traditions of thought. These include the nineteenth century social speculators, anthropology of hunter-gatherers, situationism, anarchism, radical (deep) ecology, and anti-technological philosophy. The potential problem of implementation is largely solved by a growing consensus that an end to “economic growth” is fast approaching, making revolutionary change inevitable. The direction of that change is the focus of anarcho-primitivist interest.
Anarcho-primitivism is subtly influencing society in several ways. The Unabomber’s “manifesto” enunciated many of the central tenets of anarcho-primitivism (e.g. rejection of liberalism and industrialism). Primitivists were among the protesters participating in window-smashing, spray-painting, and other vandalism at the Seattle WTO protests in December 1999. They are probably among those elusive “eco-terrorists” who carry out property destruction in the name of the Earth Liberation Front. The popular novel Fight Club (1996), which became a feature film, portrayed a group of alienated young men who reject consumerist culture and attempt to bring it to an end through massive sabotage. While anarcho-primitivism may not seem worthy of much thought or attention because it falls far outside the mainstream of political discourse, it ought not to be dismissed. It merits substantial attention solely on the basis of its harmonious integration of several historically disparate lines of thought.

II. Aims

The prefix “anarcho” signifies the anarchist rejection of the state in favor of small-scale political structures. Additionally, as primitivist icon John Zerzan (2002:67-68) explains, “I would say Anarchism is the attempt to eradicate all forms of domination.” So a key distinction must be made between anarcho-primitivists and anarchists generally because, “[f]or example, some Anarchists don't see the technological imperative as a category of domination.”
In the most general terms, they reject “civilization” in favor of “wildness.” More specifically, they call for the abandonment or destruction of industrial (and possibly agricultural) technology in favor of subsistence that is not based on the industrial “forces of production”—hence, the adoption of the “primitive” label. This means that primitivists reject even forms of production based on collective management and ownership because any production exceeding immediate subsistence needs is seen as incompatible with long-term sustainability. Derrick Jensen (2000:143) explains:
Make no mistake, our economic system can do no other than destroy everything it encounters. That’s what happens when you convert living beings to cash. That conversion, from living trees to lumber, schools of cod to fish sticks, and onward to numbers on a ledger, is the central process of our economic system.

III. Influences and Precedents

a. Anarcho-primitivism’s internal coherence lies in its complementary and self-reinforcing synthesis of several previous modes of thought. The oldest and most pervasive of these is the romantic idea of the noble savage. This idea, popularized in the eighteenth century by Rousseau (2001), has persisted ever since (recall the Iron Eyes Cody anti-litter advertising campaign). This romanticism was adopted by the nineteenth century transcendentalists like Emerson, Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller (Pearce 146-150). However, these early radical thinkers, while admiring of the “primitives” and favoring social change, did not seek to emulate their societies: “The fact is,” Thoreau wrote, “the history of the white man is a history of improvement, that of the red man a history of fixed habits of stagnation.” (Pearce 1965:149). The white man’s “history of improvement” was the focus of another group of speculators, including Comte, Tylor, Powell, Morgan, and Spencer, who advocated unilineal cultural evolution (Bettinger 1991:1-29). The most prominent of these was Morgan who outlined the progression from savagery to barbarism to civilization. These stages were defined by increasing technological progress (originating with stone-age hunter-gatherers) resulting in a corresponding decrease in reliance on nature and the increasing opportunity for managerial and artistic pursuits (Bettinger 1991:4), but only for an elite class. Although Morgan’s categories of society roughly correspond to some of those still in use today, the idea of unilineal evolution is of no more than historical interest to anthropologists today, who no longer endorse sweeping generalizations without significant supporting evidence.

b. It was not until the 1960s that the negative stereotype of “savagery” was challenged. In 1966, the first international conference on hunting and gathering societies (entitled “Man the Hunter”) was held in Chicago (Bettinger 1991:48). The significance of this conference was to overturn the longstanding assumption that hunter-gatherers’ lives were “nasty, brutish and short,” in the enduring words of Thomas Hobbes. Marshall Sahlins famously made the case in his paper, "Notes on the Original Affluent Society," which consolidated brand new ethnographic research from Africa and Australia. He concluded that hunter-gatherers (of the most mobile sort) could be characterized as affluent on the basis that their few and simple wants were easily met. He called this economy the “Zen way” (1972:29). Although significant problems with his source data are recognized now, his essay is still commonly assigned in introductory anthropology courses because of a lingering sense that he “had a point” (Bird-David 1992:26). Since Man the Hunter, there has been no shift in the scholarly literature back toward the negative stereotypes of hunter-gatherers. (A shift away from stereotypes in general is an obvious trend, however.) Richard Lee, a co-organizer of the 1966 conference, still publishes work propounding the study of the “primitive communism” phenomenon (Lee 1995). Participants in this revolution of hunter-gatherer studies certainly were and are aware of the romantic stereotype of the noble savage, and, if only unconsciously, they had brought it up-to-date with modern scholarship, giving it significant credibility. This primitivist trend attracted many to the study of hunter gatherers, and certainly formed a foundation for the appearance of anarcho-primitivism in the ensuing decades.

c. In a novel critique of modern society that we would now recognize as postmodernism, Guy Debord expressed in The Society of the Spectacle (1995) the vacuity of life within industrial society in terms of “the spectacle”—his term for symbolic representation run amok. In Thesis 1 he says, “All that once was directly lived has become mere representation.” (1995:12). Debord was part of a revolutionary French art movement of the 1960s, Situationism, which rejected the substitution of representation for direct experience. Like previous art movements had done, Situationsists sought to bridge the divide between art and everyday life. Primitivist Kevin Tucker (2003) makes clear that, in the decades since Debord presented his critique, the dominance of his “spectacle” has grown exponentially with the development of audio-video recording technology and the internet as mediums of communication (“medium” is a key word here, suggesting “mediate”) that replaces the direct interaction of individuals. As in the early primitivism of the Transcendentalists, Debord’s situationism implied a desire for social change, a desire that he makes explicit in a preface to a recent edition (1995:10). The above quotation of Thesis 1 also illustrates Debord’s primitivism. In lamenting the loss of a perceived past in which direct experience was universal, he paved the way for anarcho-primitivism, which would paint a clearer picture of that implicit alternative. Debord and his contemporaries were aware of political movements that had historically exhibited similar critical attitudes to social and political norms (“Situationism” 2002). Among these was anarchism.

d. Anarchism, also called libertarian socialism, has a long and complicated history beginning in Europe approximately 200 years ago “in the climate of reason” that simultaneously gave rise to libertarian and authoritarian socialism (Bose 1967:77,379). At the end of the nineteenth century, it was taking hold in the US and Europe among organized laborers. It was at this time that the stereotype of the bomb-throwing anarchist was born, fueled by events such as the Haymarket Affair (Bose 1967:253,392). However this stereotype does injustice to the idealistic motives of anarchists as explicated by its numerous philosophical proponents. The chaos they are so frequently accused of desiring is arguably the antithesis of their true motives: the widespread (socially accepted and internalized) disorder of war, oppression, greed, hunger, depression that stalks hierarchical societies is the object of anarchists’ assault. As Howard Zinn (1997:644) explains,
It is these conditions that anarchists have wanted to end: to bring a kind of order to the world for the first time. We have never listened to them carefully, except through the hearing aids supplied by the guardians of disorder—the national government leaders, whether capitalist or socialist.
The ultimate aim of anarchists is hardly different than that of other idealists throughout history. But anarchists’ optimism—their faith in the ability of human beings to voluntarily cooperate with each other—sets them clearly apart from all the others, who unfailingly require some authoritarian class for the maintenance of “order.”
It was perhaps a lapse in this long-standing faith, stemming from the lost optimism of the 1960s, that led some anarchists in search of a historical basis for their convictions—a search that led back to the origins of the first states—that is, to the beginning of “civilization” itself. These primitivist themes began to appear in anarchist publications in the 1980s, and they explicitly referenced the 1960s anthropology of hunter-gatherers (e.g. Sahlins 1972); the egalitarian band structure seemed to exemplify the anarchist solution to social disorder. The environmental movement also flourished into the 1970s, and this is reflected in the anarchist-leaning fiction of Edward Abbey.

e. Abbey’s 1975 novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang (1976), centered on a small group of radical, mostly young individuals dedicated to sabotaging the infrastructure that allowed for the taming of the “wilderness” of the American west. They are sympathetically portrayed as the underdogs in a country where political power is held by no-good despoilers of nature. The uncompromising sentiment for “eco-defense” (a novel concept itself) expressed by Abbey reflected a radical environmental ethic that was totally new and would become known as “deep ecology.” This ethic is summed-up well by its recognized founder, Arne Næss: “The flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth has intrinsic value. The value of non-human life forms is independent of the usefulness these may have for narrow human purposes.” (1999) It was in this context of Abbey’s advocacy of “monkey wrenching” and Næss’s eco-philosophy that the name “Earth First!” was given in 1989 to a new movement dedicated to defending the natural world by any means necessary (“About Earth First!” n.d.; “Earth First” 2005).
Derrick Jensen (2000:188) expresses “the central question” that environmental activists face: “What are sane and appropriate responses to insanely destructive behavior?” He continues, “So often environmentalists…are capable of plainly describing the problems…, yet when faced with the emotionally daunting task of fashioning a response…, we generally suffer a failure of nerve and imagination.” Earth First! reflected the first attempt to overcome this failure of nerve, but the challenge drove others to take more extreme measures. The large-scale property destruction (glorified in Edward Abbey’s novels) of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) was one response to the ineffective “reformist” measures taken by many activists. The first actions claimed by the ELF occurred during the 1990s in the UK and US. Examples include the 1998 arson of the Vail Mountain ski resort, the 2003 arson of a San Diego condominium construction site, and multiple examples of vandalism at car dealerships, particularly of sport utility vehicles (“Earth Liberation Front” 2005).
The radical environmental movement was compatible with primitivist ideas, as the popular portrayal of Indians as ecologists demonstrates. “Primitive” people, especially mobile hunter-gatherers, are directly dependent on the land for their subsistence and, presumably, have a more “ecocentric” worldview than is possible in modern industrial society. There has been some dispute over this point in recent years from scholars who seem “intent on demonstrating that it is ‘human nature’ to be environmentally destructive” (Hunn 2002). Eugene Hunn attempts to put the debate into perspective concluding, “by the excellent condition of the continent when the first Europeans arrived,” that Native Americans had done something right. He continues,
That the continent was not ‘pristine wilderness’ is undeniable, since it had long been home to millions of Indian peoples. That Indian peoples had cared well for this land, had conserved its biodiversity, is also undeniable. To dispute the reality of ‘The Ecological Indian’…is to blind us to the damage done since, in the name of progress and of profit.
Thus, environmental problems came to be seen as a symptom of the far larger problem of “civilization,” which has demonstrated unconcern for any limits to “growth” to the detriment of the natural world. One individual responding to some of the same concerns with a more anti-technological focus was Theodore Kaczynski, widely known as “the Unabomber.”

f. A 34,000-word paper entitled “Industrial Society and Its Future” was published in September 1995 by the Washington Post. The Post was complying with an anonymous offer from the “Unabomber” to stop his 17-year bombing campaign in exchange for the publication of his revolutionary treatise. Sixteen mailed bombs were sent by Kaczynski, resulting in the deaths of three and injuring 23 more (Goldberg 1996). The “manifesto,” as the media called it, decries the ever-increasing dominance of technology within modern society. It calls for a revolution, not against political structures, but against “the economic and technological basis of the present society” (Kaczynski 2003:3). This tendency to aggressively challenge technological innovation can be traced back to early eighteenth-century England when advances in textile manufacturing technology threatened to make obsolete centuries of tradition. These detractors of technology, popularly called Luddites, from 1811 to 1812 sabotaged this new machinery creating an uproar in English society (Sale 1995a). Their name derives from the mythological figure, Ned Ludd, whose name served as a pseudonym in their letters of threat of and explanation for their vandalism (Sale 1995a:77-78).
Modern philosophers including Jacques Ellul, Lewis Mumford, and Chellis Glendinning—so-called neo-Luddites (Sale 1995a:237-240)—continue to promote the skepticism toward “progress” that has surely existed as long as technological innovation itself. The difference between neo-Luddites and their predecessors is that, in the nineteenth century, new technologies were only a social threat, whereas today technology threatens the biological systems that form the basis of human existence (Sale 1995a:266-267). Kaczynski’s text is very clearly informed by neo-Luddite thought, although he does not cite the influence of any previous thinkers within it (Sale 1995b:305). Elsewhere he has said, “Technology, above all else, is responsible for the current condition of the world and will control its future development.” The ideology of the Luddites and their modern counterparts provides a crucial pillar of anarcho-primitivism.

g. A final pillar supporting the primitivist ethos demonstrates the unsustainability of industrial society. This body of work refutes those arguments that claim science will provide the solutions necessary to sustain current First World living standards in the face of massive resource degradation and depletion. It also provides anarcho-primitivists a safe, simple answer to the challenge, “How are you going to get there?” The 1972 book, Limits to Growth (LTG), was the first systematic assessment of the sustainability of modern society. More than a decade of environmentalism still had not popularly integrated ubiquitous environmental problems into a coherent message for public consumption. Earlier works like Erlich’s The Population Bomb and Carson’s Silent Spring had focused on specific bite-sized issues. LTG offered a satisfying, yet disturbing complete picture. It was the product of a research project commissioned by the Club of Rome, an international, informal group of “businessmen, statesmen, and scientists” (Meadows, et. al. 2004:ix) who wanted an assessment of the sustainability of the overall course of human society. The final report predicted that unless widespread measures were taken to reduce consumption and pollution sufficiently early, human society would overshoot global carrying capacity and ultimately face a collapse, defined as “an uncontrolled decline in both population and human welfare” (Meadows, et. al. 2004:xi). The research group reached this conclusion through the use of a computer model which was able to factor in multiple variables and the interaction between them. LTG was the first attempt to present the environmental crisis as a whole and show that it required a systematic response (Kassiola 1990:17).
Resource shortages have become a serious concern in recent years among limits-to-growth theorists. By far, the most popular and far-reaching of the theories of resource depletion concerns petroleum. “Peak oil” refers to the point at which total oil extraction (in a particular oil-field, a region, or the planet) reaches its highest point along the slope of a bell curve. From that moment on, supply begins to drop while demand persists. This phenomenon has been observed for decades, but the global economy has been able to sufficiently redistribute oil to regions where the supply has long been exhausted (e.g. Texas). The consequences of the global peak of oil extraction are only recently being considered: when global supply is unable to meet global demand, oil’s market value will begin rising ever-faster. Anything and everything that depends on oil (try imagining some aspect of out society that does not) will become increasingly expensive, and eventually industrial society will grind to a halt. It must be added, few if any of the scholars who promote limits-to-growth critiques are excited about the end of “civilization” they foresee (most hope to avert it), but, for an anarcho-primitivist, their scenarios provide a near-panacea.
The seven influences outlined above are by no means universally recognized among all anarcho-primitivists, but they are clearly visible throughout the available “anti-civilization” literature. The key writers, including John Zerzan, Derrick Jensen, and Daniel Quinn, all come from different backgrounds—the labor movement, the environmental movement, or entirely non-political—but they each synthesize elements of the above influences and add their own unique contributions.

IV. Synthesis

John Zerzan (1994,2002) adds the most academic voice to the chorus. While his writing style is the least accessible, his critique is by far the deepest. He seeks the root of all domination, and this path leads him deeper into prehistory than even the origins of agriculture. Art, language, number, time, and even symbolic thought have been subjects of Zerzan’s interrogation. For him, each of those serves to mediate humans from the direct experience of the world that Guy Debord elegized. Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael (1995), is undoubtedly the most widely read book questioning the basis of civilization. It is a novel that revolves around a Socratic-style dialogue in which the reader learns how civilization came to be and what humanity has forgotten as a result. Derrick Jensen provides a uniquely psychological analysis of modern civilization, drawing on the work of R. D. Laing and Erich Fromm. He uses his own experience of child abuse to show how the same types of relationships are manifested on a larger scale throughout society (2000). He also assesses the psychology of hate groups in terms of its relationship the dominant culture (2002).
All of these individuals agree that civilization was a mistake that has had disastrous consequences for human and non-human life, and it will continue to wreak havoc until people decide to stop it or until it collapses under it own weight. After one of these events occurs, the planet will finally be able to begin recovering from 10,000 years of human domestication.
Picture yourself planting radishes and seed potatoes on the fifteenth green of a forgotten golf course. You'll hunt elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center, and dig clams next to the skeleton of the Space Needle leaning at a forty-five degree angle. We'll paint the skyscrapers with huge totem faces and goblin tikis, and every evening what's left of mankind will retreat to empty zoos and lock itself in cages as protection against the bears and big cats and wolves that pace and watch us from outside the cage bars at night....
[Y]ou'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life, and you'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower.... [T]he air will be so clean you'll see tiny figures pounding corn and laying strips of venison to dry in the empty car pool lane of an abandoned superhighway stretching eight-lanes-wide and August-hot for a thousand miles. (Palaniuk 1996:124-125)
The above quotation from the popular novel Fight Club is a vivid description (some might say caricature) of a world in which industrial civilization has been survived by the kinds of small-scale societies to which anarcho-primitivists aspire. There are two modes of thought on how people can affect this outcome. The first, advocated by Daniel Quinn (2000), is that it can only be accomplished through the dissemination of a new “vision” through society, which will inevitably result in the radical transformation of civilization necessary to end the destruction of the natural world. Quinn feels that without first “changing minds” all other efforts will be fruitless. However, this strategy has been criticized for a lack of urgency. Derrick Jensen (2000:182) conveys this urgency well:
Many perceive the pain of denuded forests and extirpated salmon directly in their bodies: part of their personal identities includes their habitat—their human and nonhuman surroundings. Thus they are not working to save something out there, but responding in defense of their own lives. This is not dissimilar to the protection of one’s family: why does a mother grizzly bear charge a train to protect her cubs, and why does a mother human fiercely fight to defend her own?”
The more common response among primitivists reflects this urgency and calls for direct action that will bring an end to the destruction wrought by industrial technology as quickly as possible.
A legitimate objection to destruction of the infrastructure of industrial society is that it would inevitably lead to the deaths of millions. Aside from the high probability that such a scenario will eventually occur, if current trends continue, without any help from saboteurs (Meadows, et. al. 2004) and that the sooner that catastrophe occurs the less “disastrous the results…will be” (Kaczynski 2003:3), an anarcho-primitivist would argue that such objections exhibit naïveté about the reality of technological progress.
You can't get rid of the "bad" parts of technology and retain only the "good" parts. Take modern medicine, for example. Progress in medical science depends on progress in chemistry, physics, biology, computer science and other fields. Advanced medical treatments require expensive, high-tech equipment that can be made available only by a technologically progressive, economically rich society. Clearly you can't have much progress in medicine without the whole technological system and everything that goes with it. (Kaczynski 2003:121)
The increasing incidence of cancer is probably the most ironic consequence of this “progress.” In terms of the human health that modern medicine ostensibly improves, the cancer epidemic provides a striking wake-up call to advocates of medical technology. It generally agreed that cancer is a disease caused primarily by the lifestyle of Western Civilization (Moss n.d.; Ransom 2002). All the same, life expectancy has increased in the last 100 years (“Life Expectancy” n.d.; Stobbe 2005). This begs the question of which is more important, quantity or quality of life.
The consequences of modern technology are certainly far greater for nonhumans, as they are not its intended beneficiaries. The present global rate of extinction is estimated between 100 and 1000 times the (normal) background rate (Levin and Levin 2002). As a result of large-scale logging, less than two percent of U.S. forests were more than 200 years old in 1997 (“U.S. Forestland” n.d.). Every introductory environmental science textbook describes in detail the seemingly endless atrocities perpetrated against the natural world. Fisheries are being harvested at rates far in excess of the maxim sustainable yield. The same chemicals responsible for the human cancer epidemic transform diverse productive land and water habitats into barren waste dumps.
Anarcho-primitivism seeks a return to a wild life free from the culture that seems to be doing its best to destroy the planet, a life that humanity successfully realized for nearly all of our time on this planet (Rosman and Rubel 2004:181). What this entails in the modern context is a small scale society that is independent from the global industrial economy, but said society would also not be restricted by the modern constraints of property and imaginary borders. It would be self-sufficient, subsisting successfully on the local land as well as any scraps which civilization (or what is left of it) provides. It would lack the desire to control or subdue the life forms upon which it depended. But most importantly, such a community would have a visceral sense of and relationship to a physical place.

V. Prospects

Much of the anarcho-primitivist community is restricted to the pages of anarchist magazines and websites. This is community in a very loose, virtual sense, but in the modern context this form of “community” is almost surely a prerequisite of any new zeitgeist. These are real individuals writing, reading, and thinking about anarcho-primitivism across the world, and their common interest connects them. This “community” is only significant insofar as it has the potential to lead to face-to-face interaction, however.
There are some signs of actual emerging communities which advocate and apply (to an extent) the principles of an anarcho-primitivist philosophy. The first large-scale secular movement that exhibited some “primitivist” themes was the outbreak of communes during the late 1960s (Houriet 1971). The hippie subculture idolized the Native American cultures of the southwest like the Pueblo, Hopi, and Zuni (1971:198). Synonymously called the “back to the land” movement, these intentional communities emphasized that the land was true basis for the economy (1971:153, 181). The hippies advanced few of the philosophical and none of the empirical arguments that have become available in the last 35 years as justification for a non-civilized life, and their communities have all but disintegrated. In the early 1980s, the various threads of primitivism began to cohere into the independent worldview outlined above.
Today there are a few groups of people who actively seek out community that approximates (as closely as is feasible) an anarcho-primitivist alternative. Most loosely connected to anarcho-primitivism are so-called primitive skills gatherings, at which attendees camp in an undeveloped area and learn a few skills of self-sufficient survival including bow and arrow making, friction fire-starting, edible wild plant identification, animal tracking, and shelter construction (“Primitive Skills” n.d.). For some, the interest in these meetings may be more hobby-oriented than ideological, but the skills they teach would be of definite use where the necessities of life are not provided by a global industrial economy.
Wildroots is the name of a self-described “radical homestead” in North Carolina. One resident participated in a brief interview (Anon. 2005) providing the following information. It began with only two individuals and the population has since doubled. Two are from the “upper middle class,” one from the “middle class, and the other from the “working class.” Visitors are welcome and typically stay for a few weeks in the spring and summer. “There aren't really rules, except that if anyone new wanted to live there long-term and build a dwelling, the four of us would all have to agree on that.” There are also no “economic limits to ‘membership’.” The group lives on 30-acres of lush land which is owned outright. All of the members have spent time at larger intentional communities, and one member has lived at one.
“We are pretty heavily influenced by many of the same ideas even if we haven’t all read the same books. Many of us are into Chellis Glendinning and Derrick Jensen.” Clearly, Wildroots is philosophically rooted in anarcho-primitivism. The resident said that Wildroots was not the only attempt at a primitive community and cited two examples in Washington state (“the Institute for Applied Piracy and the Feral Farm”).
It should be clear, by now, that there is a reasonably solid canon of anarcho-primitivist philosophy available, which provides the seeds for what could potentially blossom into a movement. Several periodicals (Green Anarchy, Species Traitor, Green Anarchist, Fifth Estate, Live Wild or Die, The Final Days, Green Journal, Disorderly Conduct, Cracks in the Empire, Do or Die, and Quick!) are dedicated to anarcho-primitivist theory, and the most widely circulated American anarchist magazine, Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, frequently features primitivist viewpoints (Zerzan 2002:3). The Federal Bureau of Investigation apparently sees the potential of a radical environmental movement, since it has deemed eco-terrorism the number one domestic terrorist threat. The small communities currently in existence may represent the budding of this movement or they may not. In either case, the arguments in favor of anarcho-primitivism should be evaluated openly by mainstream society because, if its claims are valid, their implications are immediate and uncommonly far-reaching.


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Thursday, July 2, 2009

Eco-terrorists versus Into-the-Wild-ers versus Me

I'm reviewing and researching anarcho-primitivism for my new book, going over anarcho-primitivist material looking for things to frame my side of the debate.

Derrick Jensen's Terrorist Army

Derrick Jensen is one of the most powerful voices in American eco-terrorism. These videos show the relationship engine. First is this one which shows how charismatic Jensen is: Youtube: Derrick Jensen on Identification. Consequent to his charismatic and sloppy reasoning are the legions of sympathizers who operate as sleeper cells reconfiguring the Jensen memes into their own art and life mission: Youtube: Quote from Derrick Jensen's Endgame Vol II, page 662.

What is an Anarcho-Primitivist?

I found, copied and archived a definition of Anarcho-Primitivism here [Warning: Long Read]. The only new information in this for me was Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle (click to specific citation). So this is why so many at Evergreen were anti-internet -according to this meme all things done through mediation are illegitimate or at least of lesser value. Makes me angry just thinking about the masses at Evergreen who proudly stated they didn't know how to use a computer or refused to rely in internet communication. They even fought successfully to keep cell phone towers from being built so cell signals could work at the campus. Oh well, the anger is good, my hater-style book needs more of my brain cycles in that mode.

Living in Collapse

My big surprise today was finding the first anti-civilization piece I've ever respected. Living in Collapse by Jason Godesky [Warning: Long Read]. I lived amongst hundreds or plausibly thousands of eco-terrorist resonators while going to Evergreen State College, and I promise none I ever met were this academic. But I should stress this piece is not eco-terrorist. I did find it by a link from an eco-terrorist blog, but the gist of Living in Collapse involves no active violence to bring down civilization.

My questions and counters to Living in Collapse

Like Living in Collapse, I do believe the world is some sort of state of collapse. I am more in the John Robb school of Collapse. I diverge strongly from Living in Collapse by believing industrialized and informational civilization will become stronger, rather die like in the Living in Collapse vision. Still, the Living in Collapse gives me pause, and ultimately the only disagreements may be a simply a clash of what lifestyle Jason Godesky wants ( to live in nature without civilization ) as opposed to my sentimental preference for an electrical and computer-enhanced, literate human race dominating at least this solar system.

I find one assertion by Godesky hard to believe, that the great empires succeeded one another due to depleted soils, and that civilization is about to completely end due to all soil being depleted. Key paragraph from Living in Collapse:

There are distinct differences between our situation and that of the Roman Empire, however. While the Romans did face some problems of soil depletion and erosion, these were not acute crises that brought down the empire. Rather, the Roman Empire largely choked on its own complexity. More importantly, the Roman Empire, and all previous civilizations, were part of a general trend of escalating complexity. Each civilization in the past left fertile soils, mineral deposits, and other resources that future civilizations would need. The trend of Western civilization was a constant move west, to find soils not yet destroyed by agriculture—Persia and its attempts to conquer Greece; the Greek city-states and their Italian colonies; the Roman Empire stretching into Germany, France, Britain and Spain; the medieval kingdoms of Germany, France, Britain and Spain, and their eventual colonies in the New World; the United States after its revolution and the doctrine of “Manifest Destiny” pushing into the west; and finally, the Green Revolution once we ran out of new frontiers to coqnuer and to cultivate. Each one left less for the successive civilization, but while Rome fell, Teotihuacan, China, and even Byzantium could continue on uninterrupted, while soils and mineral resources untouched by past civilizations remained on the frontier. With the exploitation of fossil fuels and the emergence of a globalized peer polity, that trend has reached its inevitable conclusion. There are no more fertile soils that have not been exhausted; there are no more fossil fuel or mineral resources in economic quantities and close enough to the surface to mine without an industrial infrastructure; there is no corner of the globe where complexity can continue uninterrupted when global complexity collapses. From the long view, it is clear that civilization is a momentary blip in human history, an anomoly born from a very specific constellation of geographic and climatological factors.

With all due respect to the writer Jason Godesky, I doubt his fundamental assertion: I do not believe the soils are depleted. But hey, if I'm wrong, and the bedrock of all our problems is in this depleted minerals issue, then here is goal number one for civilization: mine the solar system. Divert money and effort that would have been spent on sustainability and equitable distribution of depleting resources, and put it into a race to colonize outer space.

Nature and Social Justice: 0
Space Travel and Mining: 1
Go Team!

There is a concluding vision in Living in Collapse -their are emerging gaps of opportunity in civilization, places such as the Appalachians, where people can drop out of civilization. Early adopters of the total civ collapse, you might say. The author seems hopeful that humans will start seizing this way of life as cracks open up in the great slow collapse.

I offer two subtext tangents from this Into-the-Wild ism. One is the author is pointing at The Big Complexity of human achievement, and saying it is eroding and their are cracks in it that provide opportunity. What if its not the whole Big Complexity that is collapsing, but merely parts of it. What the means of production, wealth, etc are being adjusted radically but The Big Complexity comes out stronger. My contention: what if The Big Complexity is going through much needed network hygiene (killing off under-performing nodes, making new connections, making new/better protocols)?

My second subtext tangent is to return to eco-terrorists. The writer of Living in Collapse offers something I disagree with, but god bless him, at least he offers a peaceful solution -where opportunity emerges, march yourself out of civilization and make your way in the wild. For this to work there needs to be a slow, several generation collapse. The eco-terrorist want overnight carnage type of collapse. In that scenario few to almost none will be prepared to make it a go in the wild. The eco-terrorist are actually pursuing the end of humans as much as they are pursuing the end of civilization. What a sick people.