Showing posts with label permaculture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label permaculture. Show all posts

Friday, March 05, 2010

A primitivist response to Andrew Flood's question: Is primitivism realistic?

The following is a response to an article written some time back by Andrew Flood (hereafter often referred to as "the author"). The article is in circulation again on one of the social networking/bookmarking/link-sharing sites (reddit.com) which I peruse. Although this response is somewhat late, I feel it's still relevant and will remain so. I should also point out that I do not primarily identify myself as a Primitivist, but I do see much worth in the ideas of anarcho-primitivism. My response starts and continues by taking on quoted statements made in the original work by Andrew Flood: Is primitivism realistic? An anarchist reply to John Zerzan and others.


Since when was the "basic purpose" of anarchism "the creation of a free mass society?" And if that was the simplified basic purpose, why does it have to remain so? Maybe these are word games the author is playing, but a free society doesn't necessarily have to be a "mass" society and I personally could see complications arising in a mass society that was too large. This would be especially true if the mass society was constantly encroaching on bioregions and cultures that could not survive the intrusion. What does freedom really mean if your version of mass industrialism imposes itself as far and as densely populated as possible? More to do with "faith than reality" indeed.