Freedom can’t really exist without there being a diverse range of lifestyles to choose from. Traditional communities were almost always unified by their forms of dress, building techniques, diets, spiritual practices and all sorts of other behavior. Within communities the rules could actually be quite strict. Their freedom really came more from having so many other groups nearby, or the space to just start one of their own if need be. For the most part, things were just fair and enjoyable enough for people to not mind the rules. The ideal that some (not all) anarchists have for creating a society of totally free individuals seems a lot less likely to succeed than just having lots of options for small, unified communities. For this chapter I want to get into some different categories for how communities can be arranged and discuss what range of options would be sustainable for each category. We’re still in the “what do we want?” part of this book. After this chapter we can get into the activism that I’m hoping will help bring these ideas into reality.
It’s important to remember that different things work best in
different areas and that, although certain things shouldn’t be tolerated, there
is no one right answer for how all people should live. Not only do local conditions always dictate
how people live to a certain extent but cultural diversity also makes us more
resilient as a species overall. Trying
to set up one universal philosophy will never work. Even disturbing behavior and beliefs that we
know for a fact are incorrect can somehow work out better for populations than
good logic sometimes. History has shown
that it’s not necessarily the smartest, strongest or most deserving who are
deemed fit. Random changes come that we
can’t anticipate and often it’s the weirdos who are rewarded. Therefore, you can’t just force people to
always play the odds. Again, this
doesn’t mean that I think everything should be tolerated but if all localities
are living sustainably then, no matter how unappealing the things they’re
sustaining might seem to sensible human beings, the world as a whole will still
be better off than it is now. Even if
some manage to get back into unsustainable behavior, having diversity helps
quarantine their negative impacts.
The main things that groups should be wary of are those that
could be early signs of imperialism.
There really should be a zero tolerance policy for groups that try to
dominate their neighbors. The only case anyone can really try to make to
justify imperialism is that we require all the diverse resources of every land
to create some super technology capable of preventing an asteroid strike or
something. And considering that in the
last century or so we’ve literally caused as much damage as the mass extinction
events that we’re supposedly trying to prevent, which happen only once every
100 million years, I think we can fairly say that this argument is bullshit. And for primitive cultures, they obviously can’t
even try to use that excuse. Imperialism
is just so clearly wrong and unjustifiable that anybody who tries it should
expect a violent retaliation. We don’t
want an arms race though. As a lot of
anti-empire writers have pointed out, when a peaceful group is attacked by a
violent group there are only three things that can really happen. They can fight, stay and become enslaved or
simply run away. All result in the
spread of a violent culture into their territory, either by letting a violent
culture in or by becoming one themselves.
Or to put it another way, those who are irresponsible and willing to
destroy their land to produce weapons and grow armies always have an unfair
advantage over those who live sustainably.
However, if many responsible groups recognize the threat that one other
group poses early enough then they can collectively intimidate that group and
get them to change. Each locality should
know what to look out for and be willing to join with others to defend against neighbors
who show signs of growing beyond what their own resources can sustain. Obviously, the world is already full of
groups who’ve grown beyond what can be sustained but this chapter is about
setting up new communities that are sustainable, that will stay sustainable and
that will keep each other sustainable.
Confronting industrial civilization and forcing it to stop destroying
the world is a whole other challenge that we can think about after this.
So for all the above reasons, variations of primitive
lifestyles are important to consider.
I’m going to be calling these “spectrums.” This concept is most often used when
discussing politics. Liberals are
left-wing, conservatives are right-wing, and going from far left to far right,
according to most analyses, the political spectrum looks something like this:
anarchist, socialist, liberal, moderate, conservative, libertarian,
totalitarian. Not everything breaks down
so easily into a left or right positon on the same line, of course. Even with politics I’m sure we’ve all met a
liberal, or even a radical, who shares some agreement with the conservative
philosophy. Again we have to simplify a
little bit. It’s almost impossible for
every member of a community to agree on what’s best in all categories. It is worth picking out the ones most
important to you and trying to find people who at least agree pretty closely
with those. These will be broken down
into two categories: spectrums dealing mainly with the general structure of the
community and spectrums dealing mainly with personal freedoms.
GENERAL
STRUCTURE SPECTRUMS:
Individual
houses equally spread apart—individual houses arranged in villages—towns of
clustered dwellings—large numbers in shared living spaces
Individualism is usually frowned
upon by simplicity advocates. Community
gets much veneration in these groups but nothing about living away from others
is inherently unsustainable. This
category really just has more to do with personal preferences. As I mentioned earlier, the more spread out
people are the less likely disease will start or spread, and the less those
people have to worry about sanitation.
In more of a longhouse type setting where hundreds of people are
basically sharing a room, hygiene needs to be given more consideration, and
therefore more rules usually have to be enforced somehow. The communal extreme, of course, has benefits
like more security, comradery, and less building materials used to house people. A lot of back-to-the-land groups have
experimented with these things already so we can learn from their
mistakes. Ecovillages, the Amish and the
Israeli Kibbutzim are good examples.
Like I already said, they tend to start off idealizing sharing. As things go on, most of them come to see
that sharing can go too far. People
generally like having some of their own things and having a place to go where
they can be alone at times. They like
having trustworthy neighbors who can watch their kids when they’re not around
but they usually still want to spend more time with their own kids than spend
their time equally with all of the community’s kids. It’s more about finding the right balance
than choosing one extreme or the other.
You can live a good distance from your neighbors while still considering
them to be your neighbors, and you can live right next to somebody you rarely
interact with. There are a lot of
options to choose from and I can’t really say that any of them are wrong.
Below are a couple images, again
following the ideal and realistic approach that I used with the earlier ones, with
ideal on top and realistic on bottom, showing communities with a more suburban
feel. Each home has its own cropland,
basically a large backyard, and the communities share grazing land. My idea is that each home would be responsible
for the upkeep of one paddock but it doesn’t have to be that way. Also, each backyard could either be broken up
into many different food forest stages (basically, each with their own full
mosaic) or each “yard” could be in a different stage of development and
neighbors could just share or trade with each other. The outside line would be a simple road, with
the houses and driveways dotted along it, and the dark green represents unused
land. Remember, communities can cluster
together. This is just to show another
alternative to the models described earlier.
Things could be arranged more like a typical town too with houses closer
together, maybe even connected, and cropland a short walk away that people work
more collectively. As long as there’s
around one acre of land within walking distance of each resident, the houses
don’t have to all be equally spread out.
There are a lot of ways that things could be laid out.
SPECIALIZATION
SPECTRUM
Everyone’s a
generalist (able to do everything for themselves)—people can do most things
themselves but require some assistance from experts and therefore many work a
trade part time—mixture of full time specialists and generalists—all full time
specialists who depend on each other’s expertise
In the modern world, specialization runs rampant. Most people live as experts of some narrow
field and become disconnected from the bigger picture. Primitivists tend to want individuals to live
more as generalists, people who are pretty good at a lot of things, rather than
great at practically nothing. Although
it’s technically possible to set up an economy where people who work as
furniture makers or house builders can survive even when nobody in the
community needs another chair or a new house, it rarely plays out that
way. Instead of just saying “well,
everybody’s satisfied with my services.
I guess I’ve done a good job and deserve to take a long vacation until
needed again” they’re likely to say “oh no!
If nobody needs anything from me, how will I justify being fed? I’d better convince people they need more
stuff and I’d better stop making such durable products that last so long if I
want to eat.”
Specialization is basically the start of business, and
business has pretty screwed up incentives, even on a small-scale. It almost always leads to increases in
resource use since people are rewarded based on how much they can produce and
how much they can get others to consume.
Still, socialists would contend that this is more from capitalism than
business per se. In my opinion, a more
socialist approach, using some sort of planned economy, would be an improvement
but like I said earlier, better isn’t necessarily good enough. Trade is usually more sustainable than using
money though, so having some specialization doesn’t automatically lead to these
social and ecological problems. There’s
a big difference between trading chestnuts for potatoes and buying all of your
food with money that you made by producing and selling something that nobody
really needs. But as long as things are
self-sufficient at the community level there are many arrangements that can
work, even though I’m not a fan of many of them.
ISOLATION
SPECTRUM
Self-sufficient
communities—some trade between communities but still capable of providing their
own necessities—network of specialist communities that depend on each other
This is pretty closely related to
the specialization spectrum but with more of a focus on the relationships
between communities. For a community to
be totally isolated it must be self-sufficient.
The more trade with neighboring communities, the more specialized your
community’s economy can be. Say one
community is located on a coast or river bank, a second is located inland in a
forest away from any substantial bodies of water, and a third is located in a
grassland. So you have specialist
fisherman/aquaculturists, forest gardeners and hunters/graziers. Clearly, if relying only on themselves, the
first eats a ton of fish, the second a ton of nuts and the third a ton of meat
or dairy. Trade can benefit all of them
without creating unnecessary businesses.
This arrangement also makes them more likely to come to each other’s aid
if one is attacked by a fourth group who wants to steal from them or take them
as slaves or something. They don’t have
to be total specialists to desire trade.
They can still be self-sufficient and feel unsatisfied with their
diets. Sufficient just means adequate after
all. In my opinion it’s a good idea to
be friends with neighboring communities but not actually dependent on them for
your bare necessities.
EQUALITY
SPECTRUM
Egalitarian—voluntary
compliance with advice of respected elders or experts—some mandatory compliance
with commands of authority—authoritarian regimentation
In my opinion, equality is something
all communities should strive for. I
can’t explicitly condemn all forms of hierarchy though. Groups of people working together can’t
always expect to come to a consensus. I
personally would prefer that hierarchy play a very limited role, like giving
respected elders, or whoever’s expected to have the most knowledge about the
subject at hand, a little more say in decisions, or allowing parents to boss
their kids around a little bit until reaching a certain age. Compared to where we are now that hardly even
seems like it should be considered “hierarchical” but according to a lot of
anarchist thinkers even these things shouldn’t be tolerated. That’s why I feel a need to mention it. It’s one of those things that’s kind of silly
to even argue about considering that if there’s no threat of force, people will
either take advice or they just won’t.
When threats of force do come along though I can agree that leaders tend
to abuse their power. The way I see it,
leaders should be seen more as spokesmen for the community than as authority
figures. My opinion aside though, having
authority figures doesn’t inevitably lead to an unsustainable society or to war
between societies, nor does the existence of a slightly privileged person or
group with more possessions or bigger houses.
At a certain point it becomes highly destructive, both socially and
ecologically, so don’t interpret this as a justification for lavish lifestyles. The world would be best off if everyone used
only what they needed. If those within
the community are willing to tolerate it though, and if they’re overall still sustainable
and not having negative impacts on nearby communities, then I’d say that other
communities shouldn’t intervene, even if they don’t consider their ways to be laudable.
SIMPLICITY
SPECTRUM
Austere
(bare necessities only)—more than enough of essentials—some luxury (jewelry,
art, decoration, games, celebrations, etc.)—taking as much as land will allow
I just mentioned that I’m not a fan
of lavish lifestyles but again, if they fit within the range of sustainability
then they don’t necessarily need to be treated as a threat. I will say that I find it disgusting to treat
the natural world this way though. It’s
like saying “it’s more important that I have fun than that you live.” The things you consume are living creatures
and habitat for living creatures. It’s
not just about another human living near you having to skip a meal when you eat
extra, or having to settle for a smaller dwelling because you used up more of
the local building materials. That said,
primitivists need to admit that even the austere cultures they emulate tended
to gorge once in a while. Sometimes it
may have even had surprising benefits, at least according to some
interpretations. Supposedly, being
wasteful at times was one more way to keep their population densities slightly
lower so that in the event that a drought comes or something there won’t be as
much fighting over resources. A lot of
primitivists are also fans of “gift economies” and gift-giving rituals. Even these can lead to competitions in
outdoing each other’s gifts, which can obviously be a problem. When thinking about wasteful behavior people
tend to forget about things like rituals, celebrations, art and sports,
focusing instead just on house sizes and the tangible objects people own. Funeral rituals and marriage customs
shouldn’t be treated as irreproachable. They
can be as wasteful as anything. And being
“in shape” or good at things, like games or an art, shouldn’t automatically be
considered commendable self-improvements.
Athletes burn a lot of calories, often doubling or tripling their daily
requirements, and therefore eat a lot more food. Besides the space to grow their extra food,
their fields and courts were once ecosystems as well, and their rackets, bats,
sticks, pads and helmets all come from someplace. Artists need a lot of practice to perfect
their craft, even with simpler disciplines like charcoal drawing, and therefore
use a lot of materials that they don’t really need to. Easter Island is the famous example, where
every tree had been cut down for what was basically a pointless hobby (some
argue that it may have actually been rats or something else that caused the
damage but the story still works as a warning).
So these things need to be questioned as well. Again, the general rule here is that if it’s
sustainable, doesn’t have negative impacts on other communities and doesn’t
cause enough discontent for those within that community for them to ask for
help, it should at least be tolerated by other communities. However, it’s reasonable to make the argument
that since we can’t accurately gauge our impacts and that natural disasters can
come along unexpectedly at any time, it’s a good idea to stay well under the
limit rather than to use exactly as much as you think nature can afford to give
you. This is why sustainable cultures don’t
view ambition the way that the modern world does. For them, once responsibilities are taken
care of, laziness is usually preferred to fanatical industriousness.
Nomadic hunter
gatherers—migratory trapper gardeners—mostly sedentary horticulturalists—totally
sedentary agriculturalists
One thing that I really want to spend some time on is what it
would look like to be a little closer to the hunter gatherer side of this
spectrum. First, just let me make it
clear that this wouldn’t be possible for everyone on the planet without both a
significant drop in human population and a significant increase in the health
of our ecosystems. I already mentioned
earlier that the more hardcore rewilders won’t be satisfied even if the
majority did convert to permaculture communes but there isn’t much chance for
anything more than a tiny portion of the population to rely on hunting and
gathering for their sustenance. In its current condition, the planet can’t even
support the hunter gatherer population it once did (approximately ten million),
certainly not 7 and a half billion amateurs.
One statistic, which I got from Frank Marlowe’s book on the Hadza, and
that I’m pretty sure he got from Robert Kelly’s work, is that the average
population density of hunter gatherer territories (in some of the healthiest
environments to still exist) is around 1 person per 1,000 acres (4 square
kilometers). For marginal environments,
like the Juwasi’s territory, I’ve seen estimates of 1 person per 10,000
acres! Compared to my estimate for
communities that produce all of their own necessities with intensive permaculture,
that’s literally 1,000 to 10,000 times the space required. Since it’s such an admirable lifestyle
though, I’d like to see some people experiment with getting as close as
possible to hunter gatherer.
About as close as we can expect for any significant portion
of the current population would be something more like “trapper gardeners”
(pretty sure I got this term from Miles Olson), which is actually how a lot of
indigenous people lived thousands of years ago anyway. Basically, band to tribe-sized groups
(somewhere between a dozen and a couple hundred) would still cultivate gardens,
and the gardens would still go through succession, steered towards forests
dominated by fruit and nut trees just like permaculture mosaics, but instead of
raising livestock and fish they’d just set up camp between productive fishing
zones and hunting areas that get only simple management (compared to
conventional farming). The most famous
example of “simple management” is burning grasses and underbrush to keep the
land attractive to grazing animals and easy to move through for hunters. Naturally, you’d also expect that, whether
intentional or not, the nearby landscape would gradually shift to tree species
more useful to humans. When cutting down
saplings for building materials or to clear paths, anyone with even the
slightest foresight will choose to let a higher percentage of trees that
produce edible nuts and fruits stay standing.
If you have to remove some pine trees from a stand of several species
and you recognize that one of them produces edible nuts, then most of the ones
you cut down will belong to the other species.
So these “semi-wild” areas, although not actually cultivated, will end
up with higher proportions of trees like hickory, beech, pine nut, low-tannin
acorns and sugar maples than forests that lack human influence. Only in the modern world do humans choose to
surround themselves mostly with useless varieties. In my opinion, a reasonable population
density sustained this way could be around 1 person for every 10 acres, so a
pretty good compromise.
Below is a diagram of what a typical trapper gardener
community would look like. Notice that
the food forests are laid out more organically as people can be a little more
selective about what land is worth using.
The brown blobs around the dwellings just represent cleared land but
those clearings could also be used for growing vegetables or something. And the river could also be a lake shoreline
or sea coast.
I also need to mention why “trapper” instead of hunter. Basically, the stereotype image of the wild
human sniffing the air as he crawls through the mud with spear in hand isn’t
really how most groups got the bulk of their meat. This type of hunting was used but not as
effectively as setting traps in most cases.
It’s much more efficient to lure animals towards snares, pitfalls and
ambushes. Fish weirs were common in
rivers and lakes to harvest them by the basketful. And obviously when growing nuts and
vegetables, a lot of rabbits and squirrels will come to you. Anyone with ten acres of land could probably
catch an adequate supply of meat just with snares and other traps around their
crops. Reading one of Gene Logsdon’s
books on pasture farming not too long ago, I remember him saying that the wild
species that most farmers consider to be pests are often comparably as
productive as their domesticated livestock, and that’s without them doing any
work. So yeah, pretty stupid living
arrangement we’ve got here. Instead of
putting tremendous effort into eradicating all but a few marketable species, we
could just eat the squirrels, woodchucks, snakes, frogs and grasshoppers. Getting people back into lower population
densities and self-sufficient lifestyles would allow us to make use of the
things that nature produces on its own and let us cut back on the amount of
pointless chores that people are doing.
I don’t buy into the idea that a lot of anarcho-primitivists
have about sedentarism itself being inherently unsustainable. Being able to migrate seasonally for
different food sources or to just totally relocate every few years is worth
considering though.
Quick plunge
into primitivism (immediate ban of all non-democratic technics)—fast transition
(allowing use of industrial civilization’s artifacts)—slow transition (reliance
on some industry to continue)
This was brought up a little already when talking about retrofitting existing suburbs. Even if people agree that primitivism is the best way to go, they won’t agree on how long it should take to get there. Most want to just be ready for “the crash” when suddenly they have to take care of their needs locally. But I have to bring up the statistic about fossil fuel reserves again: it’s at least claimed that there’s 5 times more fuel available than what scientists say we can afford to burn. That means waiting for something to force us to change will probably be too late. We’ve already produced so much crap that industry can be phased out quickly and we’d still be surrounded with tools, replacement parts, containers and functional machines for centuries. And while I consider earthships and similar improvements on modern buildings to be too lavish, I wouldn’t be against building one in each community so that people who live in huts and other truly simple dwellings can still take some hot showers, wash clothes, and even check their email during the early stages of transition. Being able to do a quick image search for yarrow to make sure what you just collected isn’t poison hemlock, or being able to check planting and harvesting schedules would obviously be helpful for a while. Having something closer to a typical American home for visitors to stay in could be helpful as well. One shared earthship per dozen or so families is practically nothing compared to what’s wasted on buildings now.
The “quick plunge” extreme would
look more like one of those Naked and Afraid type shows where people suffer and
fail miserably. The “infrastructure”
just isn’t in place and most of us, even those truly interested, have no idea
what we’re doing. We need to be
realistic. However, what I’ve seen from
the eco-village movement, where people grow 10% of their own vegetables, power
their TVs with solar panels and drive their electric cars to “green” office jobs
every day, I consider to be way too slow of a transition model, if it’s even
going anywhere at all. They often act as
if the way they’re living actually is the sustainable endpoint already. We need to challenge ourselves a little more
than that. At the same time though, as much
as I disagree with the bomb-shelter-survivalist approach, where they just
stockpile the fruits of industrial civilization rather than try to produce
anything themselves, there always is the chance that, as scary as the thought
may be, these people are the ones who end up being the sole survivors of a
nuclear attack or something. Remember,
evolution doesn’t always reward the best ideas.
We can’t just force everyone to do the same thing, no matter how sure we
are that our plans are the most logical.
TREATMENT OF
ANIMALS SPECTRUM
Totally
leave animals alone—keeping of pets—some hunting and trapping—livestock raised
humanely, mostly for milk, eggs and wool—livestock raised intensively for meat
and draft labor.
This is one of those touchy subjects
that keeps aspiring primitivists arguing amongst themselves more than should be
necessary. People who prefer to eat
vegetarian diets shouldn’t automatically judge those who eat meat every
day. In colder climates that’s the only
possibility for getting all your nutrients.
The Inuit used to eat meat almost exclusively. And as much as compassionate hunters may
prefer to make quick kills of smaller-brained creatures who at least appear not
to experience pain the way “higher” lifeforms do, what option do they really
have in that environment? I don’t think
any environmentally-minded person likes to see whales struggle for hours
against harpoons and slowly hacked up before finally succumbing. It depends how you look at it though. Whale hunters can feed hundreds for a long
time by taking only one life. If you eat
grasshoppers, you’re killing hundreds just to feed yourself for a day. Anyone who gets their nourishment from flesh
has some tough choices to make but compared to the other extreme, veganism, I
don’t know of any preindustrial cultures that managed to survive that way. I don’t think that I consider it as dangerous
for your health as the Paleo crowd claims though. Not everybody will respond the same to every
diet. Some are lactose-intolerant,
others don’t handle carbs well. There
are people who would die if forced to replace most of the grains they eat with
nuts. We have different ancestry and
genes do make a difference here, as do medical conditions. Having tried veganism myself a while ago, I
just decided that it wasn’t best for me.
I lose weight very easily and have to use every trick in the book to
hold on to any muscle mass. Others try
it and seem to do fine with it. There’s
some debate that veganism might depend on more land per person though when all
inputs are accounted for, so it’s really difficult to calculate accurately
which is best. As long as people are
able to produce what they need locally with responsible land management techniques,
they should all have the right to put into their bodies whatever they want as
far as I’m concerned.
I personally would prefer a lifestyle closer to the Native
American approach that I described in the cultivation spectrum, where they basically
maintained rotational food forest gardens while just managing hunting and
fishing areas rather than actually going through all the extra hassle, and
questionable ethics, of ruling every aspect of animals' lives. The closer we go to the hunter-gatherer side
of the spectrum the smaller the population I'd expect to be supportable, and
that is part of the puzzle. I’d like to
think that people will just voluntarily decide to have less kids and that the
population will slowly go down to a more reasonable size over the next century
or two but so far I haven’t seen any reason to actually expect that.
I already talked a good amount about grazing in the previous
chapter but not much on fish. For the
most part, aquaculture isn't as well developed, at least in temperate regions,
as a lot of books and videos might lead people to believe. Without intense management it requires a lot
more space than most realize.
Aquaculture isn’t usually about self-maintaining ecosystems that will
last essentially forever as long as they're not overharvested. Many actually recommend draining the ponds
empty every few years and starting over.
It seems to me like restoring the health of nearby rivers and lakes should
be a bigger priority. Again, most Native
American groups seemed to have it right.
Rather than maintain fish hatcheries, most just found ways to encourage
fish coming in from the ocean to lay eggs where they could be easily found and
collected so they could be "planted" in new locations. They also had ways of maintaining beaches to
boost clam production. And obviously,
even with no “cultivation” the nearby fisheries were much more productive just
from having less pollution and gentler methods of harvesting. There are examples of highly productive
aquaculture that mimics nature pretty well, like Veta La Palma in Spain, but
for the most part aquaculture done in any sustainable fashion likely won’t be
as productive as food forestry and grazing, at least in temperate regions. The tropics have a longer history with it.
Even with humane husbandry there are ethical concerns, like
choosing who breeds with who, making animals dumbed down and bored as hell,
castrating males and separating males from females, manipulating the
relationships between mothers and calves to get more milk, denying birds the
ability to fly, etc. I mean, it
basically is slavery, especially for draft animals and horses that are treated
like personal vehicles. Maybe you can
make the argument that, since they’re simpler creatures than human beings, they
don’t experience humiliation and resentment the way human slaves do. You can say that they lack the foresight and
reasoning abilities to desire anything better.
A freed cow will still just spend its days eating grass after all. Perhaps you can even make the argument that
the extra protection we give them from predators makes up for the drawbacks
enough for the relationship to be considered symbiotic. That’s kind of pushing it though. When you watch wild animals, they do have
social lives and do seem to appreciate some adventure. Even at its best, domestication clearly does
rob animals of something (and at its worst can be absolutely horrific). Considering where we are though, it does seem
necessary to keep domesticated animals, at least for now. As Allan Savory points out, a lot of the
damaged land of the world, what he terms “brittle,” can only heal with
intensive planned grazing. If left alone,
that land won’t get enough animal impact to return to healthy grassland on any
time scale that matters to us and will only continue to degrade.
In most areas there are restoration methods that don’t use
animals though. I’ve seen how much
change can occur just from laying out rows of rocks on contour or digging depressions
by hand that can be planted with trees to slowly spread forests into
desertified land. But with how fast and
easy animals make restoration, it seems worth it to me. Besides “brittle” areas, they also make
agricultural land more fertile and productive, especially when grazing under
tree canopies where most plant crops can’t grow or on pastures planted to rest
annual cropland. And obviously, the more
food options we give ourselves, the more resilient we are.
I don’t see any reason why there can’t be vegan experiments
though. I personally don’t think
veganism is the best way to go but whether we agree with them or not, vegans
are among us. I don’t see why they can’t
be accommodated, as long as they don’t try breaking the livestock out or waging
a bloody crusade against omnivores. As
long as each side respects the other’s wishes I don’t see why this issue should
keep aspiring primitivists too divided to work together. Some communities could be reserved for the
more zealous animal rights people where they totally forgo grazing,
aquaculture, hunting and fishing. Those
would actually be much easier communities to design for. They just need to incorporate as many plant
sources of complete protein as they can, like soy, quinoa, and combinations of
certain grains with certain beans, as well as plant sources of omega 3 fats,
like hemp, flax, butternuts, walnuts, seaberries, purslane and, for those in
the tropics, things like avocados. They
also need to consider plant sources of clothing fiber, like cotton and, again,
hemp and flax. They’d probably want longer cycles between clearing land too since
the only manure they’ll have for fertilizer is their own, which can work. The more mature you let the forest get, the
more wild animals will find their way in, shit in it, die and decompose there,
etc. They’d also likely want to set up
shop in warm, non-brittle regions. Other
than that, they have a lot less to worry about compared to the communities that
have to integrate crops with domesticated animals. The biggest challenge that I can think of is
controlling nut-eating and herbivorous animal “pests” without killing
them. Simply tolerating their presence
will likely result in needing even more land per person. When the time comes that we’re all trying to
live self-sufficiently again, I think most vegans are going to start noticing
some drawbacks to their philosophy.
However, their ideals may also motivate them to invent new husbandry
techniques that the rest of us can learn from. I’d hope that the vegan crowd would just help
encourage the others to keep looking for ways to make things more humane rather
than cause any debilitating hostility.
The position of pets and animals raised mostly for milk, eggs
and wool on the spectrum is debatable. Since
milk requires calves or lambs to be born every year, and since most of those
offspring would just be a hindrance to us after their first year if we didn’t
eat them, raising animals for milk might not actually be more humane than
raising them for meat. With eggs and wool,
even if it still makes sense to eat those animals, you can say it’s more humane
since they can live longer lives than they would if maximum meat production was
the goal. With milk, it actually
encourages people to slaughter a lot of young animals to keep the herd at a
stable size. Lifespans might not
necessarily be the best way to decide what’s most humane though. I personally consider hunting to be more
favorable to animal well-being than forcing them to live long lives of
enslavement. There’s also a big
difference between sheep dogs who, as Joel Salatin would probably say, get to
express their “dogness” every day and chihuahuas who are just used as
cuddle-slaves, basically bred to be living teddy bears. There are a lot of conflicting opinions on
this subject and a wide range of them are at least respectable.
SPIRITUALITY
SPECTRUM
Atheist (no
thought given to spirituality at all)—fables and myths—dogma
As much as I dislike organized religion, if it was somehow
wiped out it would eventually be replaced by new superstitions. In fact, those who expect science to prevail
over faith would likely be horrified if they could see a century into the
future. The scientific method may survive
but many discoveries and breakthroughs will be lost and forgotten in the
post-oil age. And I’m not too worried
about it. Knowledge of black holes, the
structure of atoms and quantum physics can all be lost to oblivion for all I
care. The scientific community has been
on its own religious crusade, commonly called “progress,” to figure out how
everything works in an attempt to prove all religions wrong. Although business interests and a lust for
power play a role in that process as well, the competition with religion is a
major reason why science turned into a cult of its own. This has had consequences at least as
destructive as those of superstition.
Frankly, both sides promote arrogance.
They say “I know everything and can therefore control the world as I
wish.” The most well balanced cultures
are those who allow some mysteries to remain unexplained. Mystery is the magic of the world, and
besides being interesting, it promotes humility. The humble know their place and don’t try to
transcend it. They use stories for
inspiration without dogma. Understanding
this, what ideas would benefit the future if they were perpetuated through
something resembling a religion?
I’ve thought for a while that if the afterlife scenario
expressed as most likely was reincarnation we’d see more responsible
behavior. Rather than separate the
paradise or punishment from this world, followers could expect to return to a
heaven or hell that they’d spent their lives contributing to. It is pretty amazing that so many people who
help destroy the planet for future generations can believe they’ll go to heaven
when they die because they showed up on time for work every day or spent an
hour at church every week. That’s the
turn spirituality has taken though. Besides
that view of the afterlife, are there commandments that would prevent mistakes
from being made? Religions have always had some good messages, even when the
overall effect was destructive. If we
were to pick out the good messages and leave out the bad ones, religion would
teach things like “With every deliberation, always consider the impact on the
future generations. Respect all living
things by imagining yourself in their position and imagining how they’d wish to
be treated. Fit with the landscape
around you, and never require trade for your survival. Accept no claims on faith alone. Protect diversity. Give back from where you take. Don’t allow power to accumulate in few
hands.”
I’m sure others who are more interested in a serious effort
to overhaul their religions can come up with more ideas. I’ve spent some time doing research on “green
religions” and “greening” existing religions, like Christianity. In my opinion the dominant imperial faiths of
the world have so many bad incentives interwoven with their good messages that
we’re better off just abandoning them entirely.
At the same time though, I do understand how rare it is for “new”
cultures to start from scratch. It’s a
lot more work and much more challenging to attract converts by inventing
something totally foreign. Whatever
people decide to do, I highly recommend that communities not allow their adults
to take their stories literally. Lying
to kids for a while before telling them the truth at a certain age is one thing
but every adult should know what the purpose of the teachings is and be open
to changing them when they’re not having the desired effect. I used to wonder if religious zealotry became
so destructive because someone’s parents died before telling them that they
were the ones eating the Oreos and putting the presents under the tree every
year. Now it seems obvious to me that
the manipulation was intentional. The
leaders never really believed what they were saying, so it’s probably not too
dangerous to lie to your kids a little bit.
I can’t say that I’m a fan of that approach personally but it might work
out better for some parents than being totally honest.
CONFORMITY
SPECTRUM
Mixed
faiths—one faith shared by most but others tolerated—only one faith tolerated
In the modern world, most countries
tolerate having people of mixed faiths.
It’s one of the things that a lot of Americans claim their country is
about after all. Even now though,
communities within these huge countries tend to still be a majority of one
faith or another, mostly the same race and political affiliation too, like
Israel on a smaller scale. At that size
I don’t really see a problem with that.
People of similar opinions and lifestyles always feel more comfortable
around each other. When you scale up to
even the size of a small state though, like Israel, the majority start to reinforce
each other’s biases and they come to believe that anyone different from them is
crazy. Then persecution gets out of
control.
A lot of small-scale ecovillage
projects intentionally try to recruit as diverse a population as possible. Then, despite the personal growth they may
experience from learning about other cultures, they just end up with a bunch of
people who don’t really work that well together and have their celebrations and
things separately. A little diversity
can always be helpful when trying to come up with ideas and problem solving but
it’s one of those things that can be over-idealized, just like the sharing
ideals brought up in the community spectrum discussion. You see this with permaculturists a lot too,
where they’ll try to fit 100 species of plants into their tenth of an acre
backyard when they’d probably be better off growing about a dozen things that
grow well together and trading with their neighbors who each grow a different
dozen species. I think the focus should
be more on the diversity of communities than the diversity within each
one. Even if members think similarly,
they’ll still be able to pick up on mistakes they’re making by comparing
themselves to their neighboring communities.
I’m not saying that we need to
keep ourselves racially segregated or anything like that, just that if people
are more comfortable around their own “kind”, whatever that may mean to them, there’s
nothing wrong with that. Even denying
new members who aren’t of the same faith should be allowed on a
small-scale. Keeping the “purity” of
their lifestyles, however they want to live, should be a right. It can get pretty ugly when denying membership
based on things like race, attractiveness or strength but again, I think
neighborhood-sized groups of people should have that right. It’s not until one community becomes a
physical threat to another that I think they should be treated like one.
If at this point in human history, with all the science clearly
showing how wrong or irrational certain beliefs are, people still don’t agree
on things, they’re not going to agree more about them in the future. If anything we’re going to see more
irrational thoughts about different cultures.
In the past you could at least make the case that, since they’d lived so
separately for so long, different races carried different diseases that made
strangers inherently dangerous. Now that
pretty much every disease is already everywhere, I think it’s a lot harder to make
that case, but people will still try.
Attempts at genocide would obviously fit in the “shouldn’t be tolerated”
category but when groups simply choose to keep their distance we’re probably
better off just letting them.
One more thing that should be
pointed out is that when looking at all the different back-to-the-land
experiments that have taken place in the last couple hundred years, the
hippies, anarchist communes, ecovillages, “cults”, the Amish, Israel’s
Kibbutzim, and others, you notice that the ones that lasted longest were
usually united by some sort of religion.
For some reason atheist projects have just had much lower success
rates. This doesn’t mean that you must
be religious to be a primitivist but it is worth keeping in mind. Maybe just celebrating holidays like
Christmas and Easter with more emphasis on the original astronomical ideas (the
solstices and equinoxes), going back to using psychedelic drugs as sacraments
and using “church” as a time to discuss ecology and what’s going on in the
community could make the unifying characteristics of religion more tolerable to
atheists. It’s worth considering at
least.
REPRODUCTION
SPECTRUM
Free love—several
consistent partners—one partner for everybody—only those deemed fit may
breed—only alphas mate
Sex is probably the main reason we
should never expect humans to act totally rational. Human beings, as well as most other creatures
on this planet, have one main instinct from which all other instincts branch
off. This is the desire to
reproduce. We behave as we do because
our ancestors had to find mates and produce healthy children in a healthy
environment where they were able to grow up to do the same. This is why we see mothers risk their lives
to save their babies from danger, why we feel so much jealousy and pain when
rejected by someone and why less attractive individuals tend to have the most
ambition to stand out from the crowd by doing something special, basically
trying to trick anyone they can into having sex with them. Techno-utopianists often try to make the case
that we can do away with scarcity and that then, since people will have no good
reason to fight over anything, people won’t fight anymore. However, the woman or man that you’re most
infatuated with, whether they have a twin or not, will always be the only authentic
one. Even if you want to consider things
like cloning, surgically redesigning facial features or inserting different
memories into different minds, this will never stop people from fighting over
partners. Even if there was an exact
copy of the person you want, you would still come up with some irrational
justification for preferring one over the other.
The simple living crowd tends to
follow some myths about human nature too.
Free love is the stereotype for hippie eco-communes, seeing commitment
as a form of oppressive ownership. At
least at first they see it that way. Free
love is another one of those idealizations that rarely plays out in the real
world as people imagine it will, mainly because it’s based more on romanticized
fantasies about pre-civilized life than it is on reality. Being a little more open to promiscuity can
have some benefits though. In a lot of
traditional cultures, multiple spouses are encouraged when there’s more women
than men or vice versa. This is one of
many methods that people have devised to help prevent fighting over
partners.
Technically, every option that I’ve
listed on this spectrum can be sustained and won’t guarantee conflict with
other communities. I’d imagine that the
more oppressive options towards the right would raise the likelihood of
conflict though, especially within the community. There are only a couple ways to keep people
from trying to have sex. Either you can
threaten them or you can try to convince them that their abstinence is somehow for
the greater good, and we’ve already seen how badly that can go. The best example of that is the early 20th
century pseudo-scientific movement called eugenics, which was based mainly on
misinterpretations of Darwin’s theories.
The basic idea behind eugenics was to improve the human race through
selective breeding, as well as inbreeding.
It had a major influence on psychotic zealots such as Adolf Hitler and
the results were disastrous. It should
have been obvious to anyone that actually understood Darwin’s theories that
this racist approach was wrong, considering that those theories had nothing to
do with ideas of timeless superiority or genetic hierarchy. His theories should have encouraged an
appreciation for diversity due to the fact that changes are random and that
there’s therefore no guarantee that what is considered fit for survival today
will still be fit tomorrow. The truth is
that no race is, was, or ever will be “superior” to any other.
As bad as eugenics was though, is it
really wrong to say that not everybody should reproduce? We’re attracted to certain people and
disgusted by others for a reason. The
characteristics we associate with beauty are indicators of health and
fertility. They’re also a sign of how well
someone fits with their environment (what “fitness” really means). A lot of the things we’re taught are just overcompensations
for our hatred of Nazi policies, things like “it’s what’s on the inside that
counts.” Sure, personality matters too,
and certainly intelligence does, but I think it’s our responsibility to be a
little shallow. This doesn’t mean that
only women who look like swimsuit models or men who look like body builders
should breed. Those images are pushed on
us more to get us to buy things than because of how well they represent human
health. Men need their protein shakes
and gym equipment. Women need their
makeup, jewelry, designer shoes, and SlimFast.
There’s no reason for us to be THAT shallow.
There’s also no reason to think
that any race should actually be excluded from any region. Obviously there are genuine differences
between races, making us better adapted to different conditions. Those with dark skin are more sun-proof. Those with lighter skin can synthesize more
vitamin D in cloudier climates. People
living at high altitudes for generations tend to develop larger lungs for
breathing the thin air. In cold
climates, people develop stubbier limbs, which gives them a better surface area
to volume ratio for keeping warm. The
diets of our ancestors have changed our bodies as well, allowing some adults to
digest milk better than others or to handle high-carbohydrate diets or larger
amounts of sugar. Tolerance for alcohol
and other drugs varies too. However, we’re
a species that can get away with some shortcomings in our designs. We wear clothing, make our own fires and
figure out which local plants can provide ingredients for sun lotions. Even when it comes to diseases that different
races are more susceptible to than others, we create medicines and figure out
ways of preventing these diseases. It’s
true that certain people are more likely to do better in certain conditions but
using that as an excuse to forcefully segregate the races would just cause more
harm than good. Besides the anger and
violence that it would cause, our resilience comes from our adaptability, and
diversity is a big part of that.
Remember, the perfect location for your genes today may not be so
perfect tomorrow.
Sexual attraction is the only
eugenics program that people should need.
I definitely wouldn’t advocate enforcing laws about it or anything. There’s too much to consider for any group of
scientists to honestly say that they know exactly who should and shouldn’t
breed. With a lot of diseases, you can
make the argument that the problem has more to do with certain people having a
lower tolerance for artificial toxins than others. So if we can stop producing those toxins, and
clean up the pollution that’s already around us, then people with those
susceptible genes might be just as healthy as everyone else in the future. At the same time, the argument can also be
made that many of these toxins are so persistent that things might not improve
enough within one generation for their kids to have any better chances of being
healthier. If someone’s genes are
totally unfit for their environment today, whether for natural or artificial
reasons, then that may still be the case many generations later. You can go on and on with this kind of
reasoning. Therefore, deciding who is
fit enough is always going to be subjective.
Ultimately, people just have to decide for themselves. We’re never going to achieve perfection, and
it’s not like it would be such a horrible atrocity for humans of the future to
have some character anyway. The goal
isn’t to create some sort of super race like the Nazis wanted to, just to keep
people educated about the consequences their kids could face if they decide to
ignore their instincts. I know that it
isn’t exactly politically correct to say that ugly people shouldn’t have kids
but being someone born with a body that has no potential to ever be healthy no
matter what I do, and with parents who should have known better but decided to
follow Christian tradition instead, I have some strong feelings about it. It’s especially irritating when people ask ME
when I’m going to start having kids.
What a disgusting thing to do that would be.
Just look at domesticated animals to
see how much selective breeding policies can change our bodies. Cows that literally need humans to milk them,
chickens that are too stupid to put up a fight when someone snatches their
eggs. The eugenics movement also led to
the creation of many of the worthless dog breeds that we have as pets
today. It’s completely selfish and has
left us with pets who suffer from terrible genetic diseases, all for the sake
of looking “cute.” Some of them, such as
pugs, can’t even give birth without human intervention, making them unable to reproduce
without us. This says a lot about where
our own evolution could be headed.
It almost seems like there’s an
intention to make us all attracted to the weakest, least intelligent and least
fertile. Like I said above, it appears to
benefit capitalism. By convincing young
girls that there’s a way they’re supposed to look, they come to believe that
they can make themselves look like models whether their body types even have
the potential for it or not. As a
result, they’re constantly giving in to new fads in fashion and diet and
spending a tremendous amount of their money on cosmetics, clothes, exercise
videos, plastic surgery and all sorts of other junk. With so many women growing up to believe that
it’s impossible to give birth without modern medical procedures, that belief is
starting to become reality. Since more
and more babies are being born with the aid of surgery, like domesticated
animals, we really are becoming dependent on it. Considering that modern medicine isn’t
sustainable, that’s a serious problem, possibly even worse than our dependence
on vaccines.
If we can condemn other things that
are known to increase the risk of birth defects, like smoking or drinking while
pregnant, why is it so taboo to condemn breeding with people who have obvious genetic
disorders? Compare it to
inbreeding. Even though we think it’s
weird and gross, the only reason that so many diverse cultures around the world
have come to similar conclusions about inbreeding is because they realized that
it raised the likelihood of their offspring being born with deformities. Having kids with your first cousin is
estimated to increase the risk by only 3 or 4%.
If we condemn that then why are practices that are much more likely to
cause defects just ignored? Why is this something
that we can’t talk about? It’s not like
I’m suggesting that ugly people should be killed, or even denied the right to
have relationships. I am one of those
people after all. I just think it’s
something that we should be more honest about.
Ignoring this issue is about as unfair to future generations as polluting
the planet’s drinkable water with contaminants that will remain there for
thousands of years. It's not something that we should allow to be overlooked.
There is a lot more that could be
said on this subject. Is it okay to
arrange marriages? Should there be an
exact pattern followed, like everyone marries their second cousins or cross
cousins or something? These types of
arrangements, although incestuous by our culture's standards, used to be very common. I don’t think many people in the modern
world would like to see a resurgence of them.
However people decide to handle this, this is one of the things everyone
in any particular community should probably agree on if they want to remain a
functioning community.
GENDER ROLES
SPECTRUM
Sexes share
roles equally (or follow their preferences)—separate gender roles
encouraged—some gender roles enforced—strict separation of roles
A high proportion of primitivists identify
themselves as feminists so this is one of the categories they tend to argue the
most about. A lot of primitivist
feminists will point out that they consider the typical feminist goals, like
giving women equal opportunities in office jobs or the military, to be kind of
a waste of time since they don’t want things like office jobs and the military
to even exist. The more typical
feminists then contend that as long as we still depend on paychecks these are
struggles worth continuing. I can
sympathize with both sides. My focus
here though is just on what gender roles, if there are any, could look like in
primitivist communities.
Radical feminists contend that
there’s no such thing as gender, an idea that’s incensed transgender activists
and triggered some of the most incoherent and annoying arguments that I’ve ever
listened to in my life. The transgender
issue is worth talking about for a second because of this fuss. There are certain things about transgenderism
that I think should be criticized. The
use of artificial hormones, support for plastic surgery and, not in all cases
but often, stereotyping what it is to be a woman or a man are all
problems. I’m sorry but this
materialistic love for shopping and jewelry and shit isn’t something I’m going
to support no matter how persecuted you are.
Radicals and progressives let people get away with murder as long
they’re part of a marginalized group that gets picked on by Republicans. I also don’t think they should consider it a
hate crime when denied access to bathrooms of the opposite biological sex. The bathroom issue is complicated and people
have blown the “threat” of transwomen to biological women way out of proportion
but women still have the right to demarcate dick-free zones for
themselves. You can’t infringe on the
rights of others and call it a hate crime when they complain about it. Since businesses obviously don’t want to
create new facilities to accommodate such a small minority, it definitely sucks
to be ridiculed or attacked no matter which door you choose to walk through, so
I do sympathize. That said though, since
I am advocating a world where there’s not really any need for public bathrooms
I probably shouldn’t bother stirring up any more controversy. I just felt like I should say something about
it considering that so many advocates of primitivism have been getting labeled
“anti-trans.” Let me state explicitly, I
do not hate men who choose to live as women or vice versa. Your clothing preferences and sexual
orientations are not what bother me.
The radical feminist view is basically
that gender is an artificial hierarchy, that it shouldn’t exist, and as long as
it does exist can’t really be a personal choice. They use the word patriarchy a lot but I try
to just avoid it myself. When people
hear “patriarchy” they assume it means rule by men, and similarly that “matriarchy”
means rule by women. I think that’s
probably how the words were originally used but most radicals use matriarchy more
to describe egalitarian societies and patriarchy to describe oppressive
ones. You can pretty clearly see why
there’s so many confused interpretations of their ideas. The terminology creates the impression that
women are all perfect saints and men are inherently bloodthirsty rapists. This isn’t what they’re trying to say, at
least usually, but since these words create so much unnecessary confusion I like
to just stay away from them as much as possible. Although men are in most positions of power,
the vast majority of men are victims of the system too. It’s more an issue of one class dominating
the others than it is an issue of males dominating females, at least today in
the western world. There are still major
women’s rights issues but considering that studies of women’s happiness
compared to men’s often find that they’re the ones who are happier, I don’t
think patriarchy is the best word to use and it really just pisses off a lot of
people who might otherwise be willing to listen.
So with that out of the way, are
there gender roles in primitivist communities?
It was almost universal in traditional cultures to have some separate
roles between the sexes. Usually the men
did the bulk of the hunting and fishing, and the women did practically
everything else. Women did most of the
gathering, providing at least as many calories as the men in most cases, did
most of the child-rearing, and even most of the house building. There was an enormous range of diversity
though. There were patriarchies and matriarchies
(in the original sense of the words as well as in the egalitarian/hierarchical
sense, although the feminist version of human pre-history is considered a joke by
most serious anthropologists), groups where both sexes did everything together,
groups where the sexes hardly ever saw each other and, supposedly, there may
have even been some groups where the women did most of the fighting. Humans have tried just about everything at
some point. Most groups, however,
regarded both sexes as equally important but separated their chores. It makes sense. We are built differently and our brains
aren’t wired the same. Men by nature are
more muscular and aggressive, women more nurturing and better at delicate or
refined crafts. Both usually just seem to
agree on these roles without any sort of bullying or coercion. In the event that a girl would rather hunt or
something, I’d imagine that it would be rare enough to not throw the structure
of daily life for everyone else into much disarray.
In the case that some weird religious belief develops in a
group that encourages women to handle the riskier roles of hunting and fighting
off intruders while encouraging men to do most of the pottery and childcare
though, it’s kind of hard to imagine this benefitting them. The fact that babies grow in women’s bodies
makes it more important for them to avoid injuries. Meanwhile, even the most badly beat up man
can father healthy children no problem.
This is also likely part of the reason why it’s more common for women to
be attracted to older partners than it is for men. Women’s bodies need to grow, carry, birth and
feed babies. Men’s bodies just need to be
capable of ejaculating. It’s not even
necessarily vital for fathers to be good providers for the family if they’re
part of a larger group. Also, women are
likely to have more trouble hauling carcasses back to camp and would have to
take time off from hunting while pregnant, breastfeeding and probably even
during menstruation. This means that
groups who rely only on female hunters would have less active hunters on any
given day, and each one would only be capable of carrying back a fraction of
what male hunters would be able to. I
know women have been held back in a lot of ways but you can’t always just
assume that different roles are the result of the strong exploiting the
weak. When behavior is so universal
among such diverse cultures there usually are pretty good reasons for it.
EDUCATION
SPECTRUM
Kids run
free—kids are mostly free but are encouraged to participate in organized study
a small amount of time—kids are mostly free but forced to participate in
organized study a small amount of the time—organized study takes up a large
amount of time—strict regimentation
Parents who try to raise their kids
differently than most other kids in the area usually end up being hated by
their kids. The kids get made fun of for
how they dress in school, have trouble making friends and at about the time in
their life when all they can think about is sex they decide they need to
totally reject the ways of their parents, if they hadn’t already. The parents themselves are likely ridiculed
by other parents who can’t believe anyone would subject their own kids to such
a humiliating existence. No matter how
well-intentioned or intelligent the parents are, they’re likely to fail at
raising a different type of human being.
To escape the peer pressure it really is best to be in a community with
similarly-minded parents and similarly-raised kids. Even badly designed curriculums and regimens
are likely to have better results in this scenario than an intelligent plan
that ruins a kid’s social life.
Most primitivists are more likely to use the “learn by doing”
approach, letting kids spend a lot of time playing, as well as simply observing
and participating in their parents’ daily activities. I don’t see much reason why there’d even be
an official building designated as some kind of little person training
facility. I know people have come to see
schooling as a necessity but what are these kids really learning? None of them remember the history lessons
when they’re older, or the math formulas, the layers beneath the earth’s crust,
or much of anything really. What sticks
is the routine of showing up someplace at the same time every day, mindlessly
following orders, putting up with boredom, doing repetitive tasks, letting out
their farts inconspicuously and pretending to be busy with something when an
authority figure walks by. If we want
our kids to continue our way of life then that’s what they should get used
to. Doing that playfully or strictly is
the only question, and only small groups of people will ever be able to agree
with each other on that.
PROHIBITION
SPECTRUM
Drug use
encouraged—drugs allowed—drugs allowed on certain occasions—drugs
discouraged—drugs strictly forbidden
I don’t know how anyone can even
pretend to believe that prohibition is about protecting kids at this
point. I mean, the drug war has
essentially just given violent criminals the seeds to plant their own money
trees. This obviously isn’t reducing
crime or making society safer. Drugs
aren’t some new problem that suddenly sprung up out of nowhere and threatened
to destroy society. It’s the laws that did
that. Drug use has been common for
thousands of years. All over the world,
mind-altering substances were used as religious sacraments, or just for fun. There’s psychedelic mushrooms, like amanita
muscaria in colder regions and psilocybe cubensis in warmer regions, ayahuasca in
the Amazon, coca in the Andes, salvia divinorum in Mexico, peyote cactus and
dried secretions from the glands of certain toads in the American southwest,
betel nut in the eastern tropics, cannabis, morning glory seeds and alcohol of
some variety pretty much everywhere else.
Most cultures saw no reason to deny anyone the right to experience
hallucinations. The experience was
usually seen as beneficial. Psychedelic
drugs help us see things with fresh eyes.
Without them we become so used to our surroundings that we miss the
obvious. We make too many assumptions
about things, thinking we know all there is to know about everything around us
when we’re really only glancing at them.
Things are “just the way it is” and whatever we’re used to is fine with
us. Temporarily seeing the world in a
different light can have truly profound effects on our understandings, allowing
us to see things as if for the first time again and notice problems that we
otherwise wouldn’t realize are problems.
It can help us imagine new possibilities that we’d otherwise never
consider.
The fact that these things can help
us notice problems is part of the reason current leaders of the world want them
to stay prohibited. Many protesters of
the Vietnam War were cannabis users, which gave Nixon a reason to intensify
restrictions on it. Of course, there are
other reasons why the modern world has taken a different view on drugs than the
traditional world. Cannabis is an
extremely useful and easy to grow plant that anyone can produce themselves. Remember, supporters of economic growth don’t
want self-reliance. If you can make your
own anti-depressant, anti-nausea drug, sleep inducer, or cancer treatment (both
cannabis oil and juice from the young leaves have been shown to shrink tumors),
then less money is spent on pharmaceuticals.
It’s even been alleged that a major contributor to alcohol prohibition
could have been John D. Rockefeller because he was afraid Henry Ford would
design his cars to run on ethanol, making the world less dependent on his oil
company. It wouldn’t surprise me. This is just what the growth imperative
does. Businesses fight against anything
that could cut their profits, like efficiency improvements. If doctors cured and prevented disease then
they’d put themselves out of business.
If prisons rehabilitated, cops made the streets safer and the military
brought peace to the world then they’d all take an enormous pay cut. The incentives are all backwards. In a world where people can be self-reliant,
their opinions on drugs, and a lot of other things, will change
dramatically. If primitivist communities
do choose to keep drugs out of their territory though, they can have that
right. Just don’t expect other
communities to make the same decision.
TREATMENT OF
ELDERLY SPECTRUM
Elderly
revered—elderly given some extra support—elderly get no help and die when
unable to take care of themselves—elderly killed at certain age by custom
The next couple spectrums are
probably the best examples of how horrible behavior can still be
sustainable. I’d imagine that any groups
towards the right of this spectrum would be at serious risk of intervention
from neighboring groups. Such approaches
have been used though. Primitivists
usually had, and some still have, more appreciation for their elders than the
modern world does. There are some good
reasons for this. By comparison, our
elders don’t really have much wisdom to offer us. They make up the bulk of Fox News viewers,
consistently vote against the interests of future generations and, with all the
toxins eating away at our brains these days, most people over 50 aren’t capable
of much critical thinking. It didn’t
used to be this way. Generally, the
older you were the more useful advice you could offer. You’d seen it all, and since the world
changed much more slowly before the industrial revolution, the lessons learned
decades earlier were still relevant. And
instead of moving off to some secluded retirement home, they lived close enough
to help out with babysitting and things.
Unless an unusually severe drought came along or something, the slight
increase in work that the younger adults had to do to keep them fed was almost
always worth it to them. Even in
desperate times, I’d expect the old to be as likely to choose sacrificing
themselves as the young to demand that of them.
Opponents of primitivism usually
point to life expectancy statistics as one of their first objections. When you look into the main reason for the
drop among primitivists though, it’s actually from a higher rate of the very
young dying. The majority of those who
make it past childhood were expected to make it to their sixties. Maybe another quarter of those would live
past 80. Infant mortality, the inability
to produce vaccines and the crudeness of surgical procedures are probably the
most deserving of concerns amongst opponents.
However, even simple precautions that we now have a better understanding
of, like washing hands before delivering a baby, can make a huge difference. Communicable diseases are less threatening
with low population densities and localized lifestyles. Bones and teeth tended to be stronger than
ours are today due to their diets and active lifestyles, so although not a fun
experience to go through when it happens, broken bones and dental problems
would likely not be as common as most assume.
Most cavities come from carbohydrates and sugar, which are much more
prevalent in modern diets, and a good portion of bone breaks come from activities
primitivists wouldn’t be doing, like driving cars and playing extreme sports. Plus, to get this back on the original
subject, many people being kept alive longer by modern medicine are spending
that time doing little more than dying.
So even ignoring the negative impacts of the medical industry from the
increased resource consumption, it’s arguable whether or not the longer lives brought
on by modern medicine are truly benefitting those who are getting more years.
TREATMENT OF
DISABLED SPECTRUM
Weak cared
for—weak allowed to stay if they can pull their own weight—weak sacrificed
As horrible as it may sound, helping
the weakest and least genetically immune to surrounding micro-organisms
survive, allowing the least fertile to successfully reproduce and letting the
dumbest get away with their stupid behavior are all dubious improvements. You can’t just look at things like life
expectancy, or even levels of happiness, and decide that modernity is best for
us. Ignoring the bigger picture is
totally irresponsible. Again, I’m not an
advocate of eugenics. We just need to be
honest about these things. One
contributor to the high infant mortality rates among hunter gatherers is
mothers choosing not to keep their babies.
It was common to breastfeed for 2-4 years as a way of spacing out
pregnancies. In the event that a woman
gave birth to a new baby while still breastfeeding another, she had to make a
difficult choice. If the older child
isn’t capable of living without her milk she may decide that she has to abandon
or kill the newborn in order to keep the other alive. A woman who gives birth to twins or triplets
would usually expect to only be able to care for one of them and also have to
choose which one to raise. The same goes
for birth defects. If the baby doesn’t
look capable of surviving in this world then she was likely to decide that the
best thing to do is put it out of its misery. I know it’s almost unimaginable to the average
American woman these days to have to make such a decision but this is just part
of the harsh reality that we need to accept if we want to be truly sustainable.
Being someone who’s had health
issues my whole life, I’ve probably thought about things like this more than
the average person has. I often wonder
if I’d have been better off dying younger or if I’d be better off just giving
up on my life now. Sometimes I wonder if
my consciousness would have experienced the life of a different body had this
one not been created. Thinking about
things like this can really eat away at me some days. This has definitely not been an enjoyable
existence. I’d like to think that, with
good decision-making, the number of people who have to go through things like
what I’ve had to will be limited. That’s
why I think it’s so important for people to start considering these ideas.
When someone older gets sick or injured and is incapable of
contributing to their society, meaning unable to produce as much as they use, people
will usually decide to work a little harder for that person’s benefit. It’s usually only during tough times that
people start considering things like sacrifice or abandonment. For those with deformities who can keep
working about as well as anybody else, I wouldn’t expect many to be shunned
simply based on things like how weird their appearance or sound of their voice
may be. Even people who’ve lost limbs
have been supported by others in primitive societies. If people are willing to physically carry a
full grown human being on their backs from time to time, it shows that they
could afford to be generous. Any group
of people who only have themselves to depend on will have difficult choices to
make from time to time but like I said, primitivism shouldn’t imply
suffering. Most anthropologists agree
that hunter gatherer and horticultural societies actually had a lot more
leisure time than we do. This made it
possible for them to take care of their less fortunate members.
POPULATION
CONTROL SPECTRUM
Cycles of thoughtless
growth and crash—some considerations taken when the problem becomes
obvious—some considerations and discussion at all times—strict monitoring of
population size
Respecting your land’s carrying
capacity is one of the main keys to sustainability. This can be a little more complicated than
simply monitoring numbers of human beings though. Clearly, small amounts of people are capable
of causing more damage than larger numbers in the same place. If the 320 million Americans in this country were
replaced by the 1.25 billion inhabitants of India, who on average each use 30
times less resources, and assuming their lifestyles stay about the same, America
would actually see its environmental impact go down to about 13% of where it is
now even though the population would have increased nearly 4 times. We could complicate the argument a little
more by pointing out that the way resources are used can make one person’s
heavy use less destructive than someone else’s light use, like badly farming a
piece of land and causing it to degrade despite getting little food from it
compared to getting tons of food while making a landscape more lush than it was
before. But as a general rule, the more
you’re taking from a landscape the more damage you’re causing, and the more
people living on it the more they’re going to take.
Our
brains didn’t evolve with much concern for limiting reproduction. We evolved on a planet that takes as much life
as it gives. Droughts, floods, disease,
conflict with other humans and dangerous predators all basically did the
population control for us. As we devised
ways of making our landscapes more resilient to wet and dry spells (with
swales, terraces, channels and other simple earthworks), found ways of
preventing and treating illness, invented weapons that could keep dangerous
animals at a distance, and networked different groups of people with each
other, it became necessary for us to actually think about population size. There are the common stereotypes about
primitive methods, like human sacrifice and war, but they did have, and
therefore today can still have, more peaceful approaches as well. There are plants known to act as
abortifacients, like Queen Anne’s lace and cohosh (a plant called silphium was
so widely used for the purpose in ancient Rome that they’re thought to have
caused its extinction). Women can
monitor their cycles and only have intercourse during the least fertile
days. Men can pull out. Least popular would probably be abstinence
but that is an option. Religious taboos
that discourage sex do tend to drive people kind of crazy but again, that
option is there. Longer breastfeeding,
which I mentioned in the previous spectrum, will likely be common, as well as
long discussions with teenagers about being responsible. I’ve even heard of people making condoms out
of animal intestines, but I can’t say that I’d actually recommend that. Anal sex might have some extra risks when
people live without modern soaps but there’s still oral sex, handjobs, dry
humping… there should be enough options to keep people relatively
satisfied. The idea obviously is to
focus more on preventing pregnancies than on killing people who are already
alive. High-tech modern medicine is more
reliable and consistent but we can still do a pretty good job without it. We’re going to have to if we want to be
sustainable.
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