John Zerzan : "Proximidad, Experiencia Directa, Flexibilidad Y Autonomía Contra La Homogeneidad Tecnológica"
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Page 1 of 2 John Zerzan : "Proximidad, experiencia directa, flexibilidad y autonomía contra la homogeneidad tecnológica" | 2010-01-16 18:22:04 El viernes 15 de enero tuvo lugar en el Ateneo de Madrid la segunda conferencia organizada por la CGT y la Fundación Salvador Seguí con motivo de los "Cien años del anarcosindicalismo". Con más gente de la que cabía sentada (gradas incluídas), el filófoso ácrata norteamericano leyó su ponencia, traducida al castellano a intervalos (se adjunta original a esta noticia), en la que expuso sus planteamientos básicos en torno a la crítica radical a la civilización humana, a su cultura homogeneizadora, y a su tecnología de disciplinamiento y servidumbre ; y apostó por una búsqueda de la comunidad, de la relación directa entre personas y con el medio, de proximidad, de ocio entre iguales, de autonomía y libertad, sin estar mediados con una tecnocultura que aisla, neurotiza y enferma a gran parte de las poblaciones humanas. Cabe destacar su particular crítica a dos de los llamados pilares del Anarquismo clásico (la eliminación del Estado y la autogestión), que provocó en buena medida el debate posterior, al considerar que si no se parte de un simplificación de la vida y de las relaciones humanas en interacción no intrusiva con el medio, la desaparición del estado y la autogestión serán siempre imposibles en los márgenes contemporáneos de la sociedad de masas, altamente dependiente de la tecnociencia. http://www.rojoynegro.info/2004/spip.php?article29149 18/01/2010 Page 2 of 2 Previamente Carlos Taibo realizó una semblaza del pensamiento de Zerzan desde la perspectiva del decrecimiento libertario y anticapitalista. Tras un rico debate, el acto de intervenciones finalizó con la palabras del Secretario General de la CGT, Jacinto Ceacero, invitando a sumar fuerzas en torno a un proyecto global y horizontal de lucha contra el capitalismo, la opresión y la injusticia en el actual contexto de crisis, reivindicando la necesidad de construir el anarcosindicalismo de nuestro tiempo. La escritora Antonina Rodríguez hizo lectura del Manifiesto de la CGT "Cien años de Anarcosindicalismo". El punto final lo puso el emotivo y preciosista violín de la compañera Idoia Noriega, que tocó para los presentes tres temas del cancionero libertario, ampliamente tarareados desde las butacas. Una especial mención de agradecimiento hay que hacer a María Perales, que estuvo en todo momento pasando del inglés al castellano y viceversa las palabra de quienes intervinieron. Fotos de José Alfonso Escrito de John Zerzan : "Anarchy or Barbarism ? The Fetish of Development" Más información sobre Zerzan en : John Zerzan y el "Futuro Primitivo" Para un crítica al anarcoprimitivismo : Carta abierta a los primitivistas (Los Amigos Texto inglés de Ludd) Zerzan http://www.rojoynegro.info/2004/spip.php?article29149 18/01/2010 1 Talk for “100 Years of Anarcho-Syndicalism in Spain” January 15, 2010 Anarchy or Barbarism? The Fetish of Development John Zerzan I am so grateful to be here, a former union organizer myself, to help celebrate a wonderful centenary. I am also sorry for my ignorance of Spanish. Anarcho-syndicalism has a glorious history indeed. One of inspiring ideals and values that have never been more important than they are now in 2010. And it is 2010 not 1910, not the 19th century either, where some anarchists seem to want to remain. Everything is moving faster and faster now, the crisis in every sphere deepening in an increasingly integrated, globalized world. A world rapidly completing the march of industrialization, homogenizing life as technology defines and deforms social existence more and more, as a consumerist postmodern culture advances, creating more isolation, cynicism, and lack of direct experience. A massified world––mass society, mass production society––means mass culture, wherein all the big cities people tend to dress the same, watch the same kind of television, consume the same uniform products. We know that mass consumption has done a lot to blunt the radical role of syndicalist unionism. Too often, on the Left as elsewhere, the overriding emphasis has boiled down to “More stuff for more people.” And we see where that emphasis––really a part of capitalism itself––has been taking us. Where’s the freedom, the authenticity, happiness, community? “On Authority” was Engels’ brief 1873 challenge to anarchists. Basically it says, “You want freedom? Step into the factory and tell me where your concept of freedom is then.” And some of us, I think a growing number of young anarchists especially, have read this—or similar remarks––as calling not for a redefinition of freedom to fit the factory, but as an indictment of the factory, of industrial life. In other words, instead of a world of more and more industry––with more and more poisoning of the planet and more and more wage slavery––a world that undoes the cancerous growth of industry itself. The novelist Bruce Sterling reports that now the very concept of the future is endangered. Everything is changing, but there is no future. Or perhaps more accurately, no one wants the future that’s on offer, the one that’s rapidly arriving. The one that does seem pretty universal. And who doesn’t feel this on a deep level? Who is left that doesn’t know that things can’t go on this way? The central theme of modernity is that, especially through the application of science and technology, humankind advances toward a perfected state. The modernizing trajectory is one of constant improvement. All the problems are solved. Well, something has gone horribly wrong! There are terrible costs to every single so-called solution that mass society has produced. 2 A new vision is urged upon us. After the miserable failure of the Copenhagen climate summit, after the disillusionment with Obama, with reality speaking so loudly that matters will only worsen without a basic change of direction, we anarchists need to re- examine so much that we have assumed or taken for granted. Here we are in the techno-culture, with technology racing along and providing some strange phenomena. • Video listing words added and words deleted from latest edition of Oxford University’s dictionary for school children • Late April story about how animal genetics may give us “the essence of bovinity”––the essence of cowness. What mad scientist stuff…from the U.S. • Late May: researchers in Germany have exchanged a mouse gene with that of a human vocalization gene and have thus changed the sound of the mouse’s squeaks! • Elderly woman in Japanese nursing home, in coffin-shaped device. It is a washing machine. No human touch is needed to bathe her. • In an American magazine fairly recently, a story about “cyber grieving” or “online mourning.” It is allegedly much better than being present, able to hug or comfort someone in person. More convenient, less intrusive. Where is all this taking us? Here we are in the onrushing techno-culture, which is remaking, redefining life. Some don’t seem to mind; some of us hate it. Also onrushing is, obviously, the destruction of the physical environment––collapsing ecosystems, species extinctions, acidification of oceans, melting of the polar caps and glaciers (e.g. Himalayas), extreme weather. And, coming on strong, is a decomposition or immiseration of social life and personal life. So inner nature, as well as outer nature, is under siege: stress, depression, anxiety… In the U.S. tens of millions need drugs to sleep, drugs to have sex, drugs to pay attention —all of which are addictive. The techno-culture is bleak and bereft, lacking in meaning, lacking in texture, lacking in value, in many, many ways. Direct experience is leaving us. What are some claims of technology, by the way? • High tech options empower us? It’s clear we are disempowered by them. • Technology connects? We are isolated, we have fewer friends. More single person households. Facebook “friends”!? • Technology gives richness and variety? Homogenizing, most standardized culture in all of history. (Paperless/save the forests!!?) But we hear the argument that it’s all in how technology is used. People on the Left and the Right manage to insist that technology is neutral, just a tool! It’s not political at all…Well, I offered a few grisly examples that suggest otherwise. Technology is never neutral, always political, the incarnation of society. 3 Technology is the physical embodiment of society, any society at any time. In the technology, one reads the priorities and values that are dominant in society. Today’s technical systems express qualities of efficiency, distancing, a certain coldness, inflexibility, reliance on experts. Something human comes through, but that is being redefined by a more and more technological environment. Community? Virtual community. There are no communal values when actual community has eroded to almost nothing. To make clear contrasts: simple tools express qualities of closeness, flexibility, autonomy, especially when anyone could make the tools. There is little or no reliance on experts or technicians. Another part of the NON neutrality of technology is its source. Where does it come from? Devices look all clean and shiny, as if they floated down from the sky––but of course they rest––all of it rests––on INDUSTRIALIZATION. More and more it is a world of factories, e.g. China and India; their massive industrialization drives the consequent massive pollution and rise in global overheating, obviously. [Began with Europe in 19th century—allude to that] But certainly every country has the right to industrialize, no? I recall seeing a forum on public TV in which Henry Kissinger was being relentlessly criticized for the U.S. Green Revolution in Asia, which drove so many off the land and poisoned so much soil to achieve mass, industrial agriculture.