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Primitivism: an Illusion with No Future

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Primitivism: an Illusion with No Future Primitivism: An Illusion with No Future Stephen Booth 2001 Contents 1. Why This Pamphlet is being Written 10 The Primitivist Alignment .......................... 10 Unabomber Manifesto ............................ 11 Under Pressure ................................ 11 Spiral of Alienation And Decline ...................... 11 Move Forwards, or Die? ........................... 12 Sour grapes? ................................. 12 2. What is Primitivism? 13 Progress .................................... 13 Doublemindedness .............................. 14 Marginalised Malcontents .......................... 15 Picking the Scabs ............................... 16 Transcendence ................................ 17 Now You See It, Now You Don’t ...................... 17 Be Like Ted .................................. 18 Icon of Sacrifice ............................... 18 Substitute Religion .............................. 19 Consequences ................................ 19 3. The Preliminary Orientation: Moderning, Postmodernism and Primi- tivism 21 The labyrinthine basement beneath the New Age Cybercafe . 21 Alienation .................................. 21 Crisis ..................................... 22 Herbert Marcuse ............................... 23 One Dimensional Man ............................ 23 Machine, Technology, Problems ...................... 24 Millennium Showdown ........................... 24 Schadenfreude ................................ 25 Duty of Care ................................. 26 A Developed World Counsel of Despair . 26 No Social Dimension ............................. 27 2 Strategy of Obscurity ............................ 27 The ‘So What’ Counter Move ........................ 28 The Straw Man Returns ........................... 29 Double Aspect ................................ 30 Ideology ................................... 30 No Air From An Alien Planet ........................ 31 Paradox .................................... 31 Bi-polarity .................................. 32 Ideology or Egology? ............................ 32 Ideological product placement ....................... 32 Modernism .................................. 33 Postmodernism ................................ 33 Primitivism .................................. 34 Raiding the Rat Maze ............................ 35 4. Zerzan, FC and Moore: Three Mandarin Primitivist Thinkers 37 Twilight of the Idols ............................. 37 John Zerzan .............................. 37 Defective Methodology ........................ 38 Derivative ............................... 38 Marcuse ................................ 39 Destructive ............................... 39 One Dimensional Zerzan ....................... 39 Hot Delicious — Cold Disgusting ................... 40 Who is the real Zerzan? ........................... 40 On Technology ............................. 41 Against the Supposed Neutrality of Technology . 42 On Literature .............................. 42 On Art ................................. 43 Speculative ............................... 44 Epimenides The Cretan Rides Again . 45 On Language .............................. 45 Veil of Symbols ............................ 46 The Fifth Bulkhead .......................... 46 The Eternal Return .......................... 47 Unabomber .................................. 47 The Road to Good Intentions Leads to the Dustbin of History . 48 Despair ................................. 49 Gloomy Despair ............................ 50 3 John Moore .................................. 51 Primitivist Spirituality ......................... 51 Defining Primitivism ......................... 52 Surrender To The Land ........................ 53 Blood and Soil? ............................ 54 Form or Content? ........................... 54 The Four Hypotheses of the Apocalypse . 54 Moore’s Postmodernism ....................... 55 Disatisfaction ............................. 55 5. Ten Principal Themes or Features of Primitivism 56 1. The rejection of civilization, industrialization and progress . 56 The system as an Entity ........................ 56 Implicit Totalitarianism ........................ 57 Progress ................................ 57 All or Nothing? ............................ 58 2. Anthropology, the ‘Primitive Affluence’ thesis . 58 Stone Age Economics ......................... 59 Three Primal Streams ......................... 59 Against the Hobbesian Myth ..................... 60 ’Profoundest night of non-being’ ................... 61 Primitive Confusion .......................... 62 3. Primitivist spirituality. Mythology, pan-psychism, and New Age beliefs 62 Taoism ................................. 63 Feral Fault-Line ............................ 64 Grandfather Rabbit .......................... 64 Mumbo Jumbo? ............................ 65 Primal Religions ............................ 65 Totem and Taboo ........................... 66 Nascent Cult .............................. 66 4. The critique of mass society and ‘leftism’ . 67 Unabomber ............................... 67 Bob Black ................................ 67 Shibboleths ............................... 68 Patronage and Pastiche ........................ 68 Rivalry ................................. 69 5. Zero Work ................................. 69 Fully Unemployed ........................... 70 Ludic .................................. 70 Indolence ................................ 71 4 Return to Croatan ........................... 71 Workplace Stress ........................... 71 Getting Stuck In… ........................... 72 Work is a Four Letter Word ...................... 72 Sack the Lunch-Outs ......................... 73 6. Technology as an enmeshed system that enslaves . 73 A Dictatorship of Test Tubes ..................... 73 Within The Net ............................ 74 Interconnected Whole ......................... 74 Dystopia ................................ 75 Four Legs Good — Two Bad … .................... 75 Selective Use of Evidence ....................... 76 Meeting The Challenge ........................ 76 7. Hostility to Ideology, the denial that Primitivism is an Ideology . 76 A Competitive Edge in the Market-Place of Ideas . 77 An Open Door? ............................ 77 Ideological Conflict .......................... 78 More Dreary Ideology ......................... 78 Outflanking .............................. 79 Refusal of Ideology .......................... 80 Archimedian Point .......................... 80 Sign of Hope .............................. 80 8. Primitivist hostility to Postmodernism . 81 Floating, Shimmering Goal-Posts ................... 81 Abolition of the Self .......................... 82 Shipwrecked Hulk ........................... 83 Ludic .................................. 83 Essentially, the Same Destination . 84 Taking Po-mo One Stage Further ................... 84 For Sale — One Dialectical Myth ................... 84 Reason ................................. 85 Status of The Primitivist Individual . 85 The Vultures Circle .......................... 86 Deep Ecology ............................. 86 Pseudo-Radicals ............................ 87 Kulturkampf .............................. 88 9. Hostility to symbolization ........................ 88 Language Is All ............................ 89 I Can’t Get Started ........................... 89 Running on Emptiness ........................ 90 5 Consolation .............................. 90 Great Cartesian Anxiety ....................... 91 Postmodern Symptoms ........................ 91 Leap of Faith .............................. 91 Pan Psychism ............................. 92 Language merges into Style ...................... 92 Double-Coding ............................. 93 Reification ............................... 93 10. Poetry and myth ............................. 94 Origins Fallacy ............................. 94 Genealogy of Error .......................... 94 Hardcore Versus Softcore ....................... 95 Attention to Content? ......................... 95 Paradigm Lost ............................. 96 Reclaim The Spiritual ......................... 97 Bewilderness .............................. 97 Effing the Ineffable .......................... 97 Flattening the Wall .......................... 98 Lovebite ................................ 98 Postmodern .............................. 99 Not My Project ............................. 99 6. Some Legitimate and Illegitimate Criticisms of Primitivism 101 Manichean .................................. 101 Nature Good — Technology Bad . 101 False Accusations of Eco-Malthusianism . 102 Green Apocalypse .............................. 102 Bad Faith ................................... 103 Black Flag ................................... 104 Malthusian Coercion ............................. 104 Class Dogma Asserted ............................ 104 Moore Mangled ............................... 105 Misrepresentation .............................. 105 Zerzan .................................... 106 Swamp Fever ................................. 106 Watson Contra Moore ............................ 107 Jumping Off The Ship of Theseus . 107 Trashing The Raft .............................. 108 Eternal Problem ............................... 109 Jason McQuinn ................................ 109 6 The Primitivist Assault on Ethics . 110 Ought ..................................... 110 The Ego and Its Own ............................. 111 Why Would Anybody Want to Join? . 111 Cheap Shots
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