Derrick Jensen Interview Part 4 - On Population, Collapse and Genocide

Here's part four of our conversation with Derrick Jensen, in which he discusses the controversial topics of population and collapse, rebutting criticisms that the implementation of an un-civilised world would culminate in human genocide. Enjoy and share!

Wildflowers: A Bouquet of Theses (1998)

John Landau: What I desire is a return to the profundity of experience. I want a society where everyday activity, however mundane, is centred around how incredibly profound everything is. I want that profundity to become so immense that any mediations between us and it become totally unnecessary: we are in the marvel. When I am in that awe, words are irrelevant, I don't really care if you call my experience "God" or not. All I know is it is the greatest pleasure possible: to hug a tree, to jump up and down at a beautiful sunset, to climb a magnificent hill, to take awe in what surrounds us. I am a hedonist, and I will have these pleasures; neither the religionist nor the atheist shall lock them away from me!

Primal peoples were in touch with this profoundness, and organised their life around it. Religion is a decadent second-hand relic of this original, authentic mode of experiencing, that attempts to blackmail by linking social control and morality with profound experiencings. Primal peoples sought to avoid whatever distracted from this profundity as much as possible. Obsessiveness of any sort could distract from the wholistic goodness of the environment.

Why are we here? To experience profoundly.

Our task, therefore, is

Primitivism and the post-civilisation world

Adam: While we refer to this blog as advancing a 'primitivist' critique of civilisation, you may rightly wonder what is implied by such a stance. Primitivism is a term is not without ambiguity or dissent from various quarters of the anti-civ movement, some of whom deliberately refrain from using it as a term of self-description. Much of the discussion on this topic is perhaps hair-splitting, an example of Florynce Kennedy's so-called Horizontal Hostility in the face of a much greater evil, but serious points have also been raised that demand attention and considered response. It would be vacuous and intellectually bankrupt to aspire to a post-civilisation society, as well as discussing tactics for bringing about the downfall of civilisation, without making clear our aspirations as to the makeup of a new society superseding it.

Firstly, it's important to distinguish Primitivism as an artistic movement from Primitivism as a social movement. The former arose as a strand of post-Enlightenment Western ignorance which ostensibly viewed non-civilised peoples as existing in a more 'natural' condition, capable of stimulating aesthetic works that reached out to a bygone era truly reflective of our humanity. Indeed, stimulating is an unfortunate—if apt—term to use in the context, given that this culture (like much of the individualistic liberal movement of which it was a part) was driven largely by male yearning for sexual freedom and inhibition, a freedom not extended to the women whom it could exploit as a resource for pleasure.^[1] The supposed natural state for which Artistic Primitivism yearns is one characterised by male sexual proclivity - hence the exoticism of the (primarily male) art which it inspired - and sweeping generalisations as to the structure of non-civilised societies, which are seen as homogeneous and devoid of cultural nuances.

It is crucial that, as social-movement primitivists, we identify and rebuke in the strongest terms this line of thought; it is inimical to the worldview espoused by this blog and by those of a similar ideology who seek to establish an egalitarian society, free from the trappings of patriarchy and racism. Yet 'racist' is precisely how Derrick Jensen has described primitivism.^[2] Such aspersion is in part a result of the above historical confusion, but also arises due to our deep-seated cultural mentality of continual (technology-driven) improvement. If something is primitive, it resembles an ancestral state. But this fact alone tells us nothing about the ancestral state. With the conceit of human hindsight we readily assume any prior condition to be inferior or rudimentary, an interpretation fitting in neatly with the narrative that characterises Humanity's 'ascent' from supposed lower species. Exactly the same principle is then applied to members of the human species itself, in which pre-agricultural societies and technologies are seen as less advanced and hence second-rate. Unfortunately, in declaring themselves separate from the social primitivist movement, some well-meaning critics are unwittingly buying into fallacies brought about by the very cultural ethos which they decry.

In its most important aspects, the society advocated by radical anti-civilisation theorists and activists embodies the perspectives and lifestyles of preceding cultures. Deep Ecology and the recent Deep Green Resistance movement imply an appreciation of nature as having an intrinsic value apart from its worth specifically to human beings. From this results a true respect for other species and for the natural world, incomparable to anything green capitalism has to offer and directly akin to the outlook of primitive societies, particularly those pre-dating the neolithic revolution, whose relationship to the world was not defined by domination and control, but by a profound sense of reverence and awe. To do damage to the world was to do damage to oneself; each object was possessed of a magnificence that demanded moral status.^[3] The sustainability of such cultures was inherent in this fundamental insight. As John Zerzan eloquently puts it,

Wild or tame, weeds or crops speak of that duality that cripples the soul of our being, ushering in, relatively quickly, the despotism, war and impoverishment of high civilization over the great length of that earlier oneness with nature.^[4]

Artistic Primitivism and related philosophies such as Romanticism tend to carry the patronising assumption that primitive societies can be crudely pigeonholed as representing either a noble savage or violent clod mode of existence (the latter infamously typified by Hobbes' claim that the natural life of humans was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"). What we now know is that the quality and longevity of human life significantly decreased with the advent of agriculture. Agricultural society consists of less leisure time, more infectious diseases, and widespread sexual inequality.^[5] Social primitivism takes on board these findings and seeks to restore the equity and joie de vivre sorely lacking in the contemporary civilised world.

Though this blog, and the social primitivist movement in general, advocates a return to prior ideals and values, such a society would certainly not be incapable of deviating from any particular past human state. Our consciousness, and with it our technological processes, may evolve in a natural progression. Zerzan writes that “technology has never been neutral, like some discreet tool detachable from its context. It always partakes of and expresses the basic values of the social system in which it is embedded.” It is in this spirit that primitivists can confidently assert the will and the need to return to a previous existence of oneness with nature and with each other, whilst still embracing the ingenuity and thirst for knowledge that make us human. To create a future worth living in, we must learn from the past.

[1] See, for example, French painter Paul Gaugin, considered among the most influential of Artistic Primitivists. Gaugin retreated to Tahiti under the auspices of searching for a simpler lifestyle and there, while producing his idealised works, he extended the concept of sexual freedom to adolescent girls whom he claimed as mistresses.

[2] http://zoeblunt.wordpress.com/2011/03/20/uncivilized/

[3] This is the outlook prescribed in animism and revived in some non-dualistic forms of neopaganism which deny the separation of spirit and matter.

[4] http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/John_Zerzan__Agriculture.html

[5] For a good broad-spectrum analysis, see Jared Diamond's essay 'The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race': http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html

Genetic Engineering & Primitivism

Tom: If there’s one controversial issue which is obsessed over, probably to a disproportionate extent, by most environmental activists it’s that of genetic engineering. It’s also a logical place to explore from an anti-civilisation perspective as it involves so many important facets of the primitivist critique – domestication, agriculture, nature, hunger, population, and many others.

There’s a high level of misunderstanding at play on the part of environmental activists in focussing so feverishly and fervently on this one topic. I won’t attempt to debunk all the myths surrounding GE here as others have done a great job of that elsewhere[1]. However, to sample a few:

-          In getting irate over the potentially “catastrophic and unknown consequences” of tampering with crops at the genetic level, activists completely ignore conventional plant breeding techniques such as mutagenesis which are perfectly allowable under organic standards. This, in essence, involves provoking many random genetic mutations through the use of carcinogenic chemicals or radiation, and seeing if anything useful comes out of it, a process inherently less predictable than many techniques involved in GE/transgenics.

-           Terminator technology is not a commercially available trait and may never