Listening to the recent John #Zerzan interview on #IGD provoked some thoughts and questions. First, I have never heard the IGD host get that saucy with anyone before, so its fair to assume Zerzan has done something at some point to alienate typically gracious comrades. I found Zerzan’s show in 2014/2015/2016 or so, before I found IGD, and understand him vaguely as an outsider and iconoclast among anarchists, which is saying something.

Although I do not claim to be the best-read (or even a reasonably well-read) Madrone, from what I understand, #anti-civ theory is rooted in the fundamentally Rousseauian idea that the establishment of civilization was the original fall from grace, that civilization is tantamount to technology and concentration of power, and therefore to corruption and inevitable tyranny, not to mention unsustainable growth and destruction of the ecosystem. Although I have questions, I generally find the theory sympathetic.

I learned about it entirely from listening to, reading, and reading about Zerzan. So, I have to confess that, despite his quirks, I kind of like him and experienced a small allergy in listening to another person I like, the IGD host, being so offhandedly dismissive about his ideas. To be fair, Zerzan has an aloof tone of his own, and the way he stepped over the international justice campaigns featured in Crimthinc’s How to Change Everything tour in order to criticize the tour insufficiently Changing Everything was, to put it mildly, especially shitty.

Some of my questions about anti-civ theory are: How far does it go? Is society itself tantamount to civilization? Would keeping a post-civ society from reverting to civilization be its own form of tyranny? Must the fruits of civilization be discarded along with its poisons? Is medicine technology? Art? Language? As I understood anti-civ prior to the interview, the answer to all of these questions is more or less “yes.”

Zerzan stepped back from that position a bit during the interview: he seemed to argue that anti-civ argues for an expansion of skills and not that everyone should go into the woods to hunt and gather tomorrow, that it is not a silver bullet to all of our problems under present conditions. That argument sounds familiar: anti-civ’s job, like anarchism, is to critique and reframe, not solve and ‘explain everything to you.’ While valid, that argument sidesteps what I consider to be a serious question: if present circumstances take anti-civ’s utopia off the table, then what does it prescribe we do to present circumstances other than expand skills and retreat from technology? Is harm reduction reformist? Is anti-civ accelerationist? Because this is where I find my greatest concern about (what I understand to be) the theory: that anti-civ appears to value the end of civilization more than it does helping people survive and thrive the here and now. Zerzan appeared to prove the point when he stepped over chose to criticize the purity of Crimthinc’s radical branding rather than honoring the peoples movements it featured, which are actually fighting for justice here and now. To be fair, Zerzan’s argument was rooted (at least rhetorically) in being accountable to a meaningful strategy and avoiding performative posturing, which are serious considerations. But it was a red flag for me.

So, Zerzan, I suppose my question is: does anti-civ have something to add when it comes to short and/or long-term strategies for radical degrowth that include harm reduction for those most hurt by that change?

Listening to the recent John #Zerzan interview on #IGD provoked some thoughts and questions. First, I have never heard the IGD host get that saucy with anyone before, so its fair to assume Zerzan has done something at some point to alienate typically gracious comrades. I found Zerzan’s show in 2014/2015/2016 or so, before I found IGD, and understand him vaguely as an outsider and iconoclast among anarchists, which is saying something.

Although I do not claim to be the best-read (or even a reasonably well-read) Madrone, from what I understand, #anti-civ theory is rooted in the fundamentally Rousseauian idea that the establishment of civilization was the original fall from grace, that civilization is tantamount to technology and concentration of power, and therefore to corruption and inevitable tyranny, not to mention unsustainable growth and destruction of the ecosystem. Although I have questions, I generally find the theory sympathetic.

I learned about it entirely from listening to, reading, and reading about Zerzan. So, I have to confess that, despite his quirks, I kind of like him and experienced a small allergy in listening to another person I like, the IGD host, being so offhandedly dismissive about his ideas. To be fair, Zerzan has an aloof tone of his own, and the way he stepped over the international justice campaigns featured in Crimthinc’s How to Change Everything tour in order to criticize the tour insufficiently Changing Everything was, to put it mildly, especially shitty.

Some of my questions about anti-civ theory are: How far does it go? Is society itself tantamount to civilization? Would keeping a post-civ society from reverting to civilization be its own form of tyranny? Must the fruits of civilization be discarded along with its poisons? Is medicine technology? Art? Language? As I understood anti-civ prior to the interview, the answer to all of these questions is more or less “yes.”

Zerzan stepped back from that position a bit during the interview: he seemed to argue that anti-civ argues for an expansion of skills and not that everyone should go into the woods to hunt and gather tomorrow, that it is not a silver bullet to all of our problems under present conditions. That argument sounds familiar: anti-civ’s job, like anarchism, is to critique and reframe, not solve and ‘explain everything to you.’ While valid, that argument sidesteps what I consider to be a serious question: if present circumstances take anti-civ’s utopia off the table, then what does it prescribe we do to present circumstances other than expand skills and retreat from technology? Is harm reduction reformist? Is anti-civ accelerationist? Because this is where I find my greatest concern about (what I understand to be) the theory: that anti-civ appears to value the end of civilization more than it does helping people survive and thrive the here and now. Zerzan appeared to prove the point when he stepped over chose to criticize the purity of Crimthinc’s radical branding rather than honoring the peoples movements it featured, which are actually fighting for justice here and now. To be fair, Zerzan’s argument was rooted (at least rhetorically) in being accountable to a meaningful strategy and avoiding performative posturing, which are serious considerations. But it was a red flag for me.

So, Zerzan, I suppose my question is: does anti-civ have something to add when it comes to short and/or long-term strategies for radical degrowth that include harm reduction for those most hurt by that change?