Zerzan doesn't believe in a "tribal" way of life, he believes in returning to a "band society" way of life and that's an important distinction because in anthropology, the tribal society and the band aixiety are defined in two very different ways...tribal has hierarchy and leaders whereas band society does not...."band" and "tribal" are not interchangeable terms
Wonderful. The one you did about Ideological Possession is exactly why I try to have Frank conversions with older people. I had one the other day with a lady who worked at the local Air Force Base in HR. She was retired and expressed a deep dissatisfaction with her part in the culture and it's political extension. She said it was debauchted and not in a way where it was like a kind of glory more in a way like why wasting freedom on this group in particular was a waste. This probably more or less how I feel. I kind of had a nervous break the other day. Started sobbing and hyperventilating, this is has never happened before and in part it's due to a kind of question of why hope? Well Philosophy and it's emergent qualities is why. Thank you for making these. It's weird I listen to a lot of Philosophy podcast and yours never seem like entertainment.
The principal reason Zerzan views hunter-gatherer societies in a different way to Rousseau is because of the vast amount of anthropological research undertaken between the two time periods. The work of Marshal Sahlins for example, which has shown conclusively that ancient men had far more leisure time than we do, lived in relative material comfort, were much much healthier than we are (psychologically and physically) and rarely (if ever) engaged in large scale warfare.
"...has shown conclusively..." is a pretty strong claim. Which would you say are Sahlins' best publications on this? Kaczynski's essay "The Truth About Primitive Life: A Critique of Anarcho-Primitivism" (in which he expresses some skepticism about Sahlins' conclusions) appealed to me since I agree with him that many seem to engage in motivated reasoning to arrive at an overly idyllic view of hunter-gatherer life. But I certainly wouldn't mind believing it if there is good justification for doing so, so I would be interested in taking a look at Sahlins' sources and argumentation.
As an Anprim, your presentation was very fair and your concerns about the "racialization" of certain Anprim ideas is definitely understandable. For the record, we tend to despise racists, we generally consider the category of 'race' to be one of the most pernicious and artificial categories imposed upon the world.
I think you and Patton’s equation of the “wild child” with lack of intelligence/intellectualism to be heavily flawed. Children, first off, are some of the most naturally intelligent people alive; to disregard all childhood behavior as fundamentally anti-intellectual, in my view, is short-sighted. Additionally, this falls into the problematic trap of considering the hunter-gatherer lifestyle as brutish, unrefined, and needing to be civilized; obviously intelligence is good, therefore a society that seemingly lacks intelligence is bad. The ability to survive independently from our modern industrial complex would require immense intelligence, planning, cooperation, and so on. Otherwise I really enjoyed your analysis of Zerzan and other primitivist scholars
I definitely agree with you about intelligence. But it's crucial to distinguish, like anarcho-primitivists often do, between 'intelligent' and 'intellectual'. Many of them think that high-level abstract and symbolic thinking is a modern ill and that modernity came about in large part because of its development, and also that much of our language has attained an increadibly high level of abstraction that puts us "phenomenologically out of touch" with the concrete reality of our surrounding world-exemplified especially by (but by no means exclusively by) scientific theories and mathematics. Children are indeed intelligent by any reasonable definition, but intellectualism-i.e., the focus on abstract, symbolic mental labor-seems to be much more of a cultural contingency transmitted through things like school and fully embodied in academics, researchers, engineers etc. It is often pointed out that primitive peoples often seem to think less in terms of abstract categories and often have extremely coarse ways of conceptualizing quantities-basically just saying things like "an x", "a couple of xs", "some xs", and "many xs". Also, saying that something requires a lot of intellectual labor doesn't necessarily mean that it requires a lot of intelligence. It just means that the work required is primarily mental, abstract reasoning. A lot of basic statistics for example, like calculating the standard deviation in a fairly large sample, requires very little intelligence but enormous amounts of intellectual labor, so that might serve as an example. So in short, intelligence and intellectualism can occur independently (neither is required for the other), and in attacking intellectualism anarcho-primitivists do not mean to discredit intelligence. Saying that children are not very intellectual just means that they are more inclined to practical hands-on activities than to abstract activities and symbolic reasoning. In this sense there is no contradiction between being intelligent and not being intellectual, so anarcho-primitivists can hold up children as ideals precisely because they exemplify intelligence as distinct from intellectualism.
Thank you. Very interesting and informative. Having abandoned the primitivist view in the 80s, I'm now-thanks to lectures like yours-beginning to consider it again. Don't see racialism as necessarily a problem. One can love one's own kind without denigrating or murdering others!
It is wrong and incorrect to say that the Gauls, Celtics, and Spaniards we're ancestors, when the planet had high radiation. Those ancestors are close to Zulu, Mongo, luo people. Prime means first societies.
4 comments in 2 years. 🤔 All fascinating theories of the human condition but not one mention of God. Without the Father nothing has meaning. Understand that why you are here in the flesh is key. Read the letter He wrote us and know all He wants is our love given from freewill. Yes, freewill is what it’s all about. Seek and you will find.
Zerzan doesn't believe in a "tribal" way of life, he believes in returning to a "band society" way of life and that's an important distinction because in anthropology, the tribal society and the band aixiety are defined in two very different ways...tribal has hierarchy and leaders whereas band society does not...."band" and "tribal" are not interchangeable terms
Wonderful. The one you did about Ideological Possession is exactly why I try to have Frank conversions with older people. I had one the other day with a lady who worked at the local Air Force Base in HR. She was retired and expressed a deep dissatisfaction with her part in the culture and it's political extension. She said it was debauchted and not in a way where it was like a kind of glory more in a way like why wasting freedom on this group in particular was a waste. This probably more or less how I feel.
I kind of had a nervous break the other day. Started sobbing and hyperventilating, this is has never happened before and in part it's due to a kind of question of why hope? Well Philosophy and it's emergent qualities is why.
Thank you for making these. It's weird I listen to a lot of Philosophy podcast and yours never seem like entertainment.
Glad someone has pointed out the distinction, here (otherwise, I would've had to :P )
like a band of merry men and women
@@sawtoothiandi ha I'm so many ways
@@matthewtrevino525 to what podcast are u referring pls? I don't see any such video or podcast anywhere
The principal reason Zerzan views hunter-gatherer societies in a different way to Rousseau is because of the vast amount of anthropological research undertaken between the two time periods. The work of Marshal Sahlins for example, which has shown conclusively that ancient men had far more leisure time than we do, lived in relative material comfort, were much much healthier than we are (psychologically and physically) and rarely (if ever) engaged in large scale warfare.
"...has shown conclusively..." is a pretty strong claim. Which would you say are Sahlins' best publications on this? Kaczynski's essay "The Truth About Primitive Life: A Critique of Anarcho-Primitivism" (in which he expresses some skepticism about Sahlins' conclusions) appealed to me since I agree with him that many seem to engage in motivated reasoning to arrive at an overly idyllic view of hunter-gatherer life. But I certainly wouldn't mind believing it if there is good justification for doing so, so I would be interested in taking a look at Sahlins' sources and argumentation.
As an Anprim, your presentation was very fair and your concerns about the "racialization" of certain Anprim ideas is definitely understandable. For the record, we tend to despise racists, we generally consider the category of 'race' to be one of the most pernicious and artificial categories imposed upon the world.
I think you and Patton’s equation of the “wild child” with lack of intelligence/intellectualism to be heavily flawed. Children, first off, are some of the most naturally intelligent people alive; to disregard all childhood behavior as fundamentally anti-intellectual, in my view, is short-sighted. Additionally, this falls into the problematic trap of considering the hunter-gatherer lifestyle as brutish, unrefined, and needing to be civilized; obviously intelligence is good, therefore a society that seemingly lacks intelligence is bad. The ability to survive independently from our modern industrial complex would require immense intelligence, planning, cooperation, and so on. Otherwise I really enjoyed your analysis of Zerzan and other primitivist scholars
I definitely agree with you about intelligence. But it's crucial to distinguish, like anarcho-primitivists often do, between 'intelligent' and 'intellectual'. Many of them think that high-level abstract and symbolic thinking is a modern ill and that modernity came about in large part because of its development, and also that much of our language has attained an increadibly high level of abstraction that puts us "phenomenologically out of touch" with the concrete reality of our surrounding world-exemplified especially by (but by no means exclusively by) scientific theories and mathematics. Children are indeed intelligent by any reasonable definition, but intellectualism-i.e., the focus on abstract, symbolic mental labor-seems to be much more of a cultural contingency transmitted through things like school and fully embodied in academics, researchers, engineers etc.
It is often pointed out that primitive peoples often seem to think less in terms of abstract categories and often have extremely coarse ways of conceptualizing quantities-basically just saying things like "an x", "a couple of xs", "some xs", and "many xs".
Also, saying that something requires a lot of intellectual labor doesn't necessarily mean that it requires a lot of intelligence. It just means that the work required is primarily mental, abstract reasoning. A lot of basic statistics for example, like calculating the standard deviation in a fairly large sample, requires very little intelligence but enormous amounts of intellectual labor, so that might serve as an example.
So in short, intelligence and intellectualism can occur independently (neither is required for the other), and in attacking intellectualism anarcho-primitivists do not mean to discredit intelligence. Saying that children are not very intellectual just means that they are more inclined to practical hands-on activities than to abstract activities and symbolic reasoning. In this sense there is no contradiction between being intelligent and not being intellectual, so anarcho-primitivists can hold up children as ideals precisely because they exemplify intelligence as distinct from intellectualism.
Whenever someone tries to lay out the rules for an ideal society, I kind of cringe. A society can never be designed with predictable results.
Thank you. Very interesting and informative. Having abandoned the primitivist view in the 80s, I'm now-thanks to lectures like yours-beginning to consider it again. Don't see racialism as necessarily a problem. One can love one's own kind without denigrating or murdering others!
>Explore breaking down conditioning.
>Re-eroticize our lives.
>Sabotage, pranks, festivals, bacchanalia...
*Is college an Anarcho-Primitive society?*
It is wrong and incorrect to say that the Gauls, Celtics, and Spaniards we're ancestors, when the planet had high radiation. Those ancestors are close to Zulu, Mongo, luo people. Prime means first societies.
Normative much? Wish you had talked more about Anaroo-primitivism instead of your own reaction and emotions.
4 comments in 2 years. 🤔
All fascinating theories of the human condition but not one mention of God. Without the Father nothing has meaning. Understand that why you are here in the flesh is key. Read the letter He wrote us and know all He wants is our love given from freewill. Yes, freewill is what it’s all about. Seek and you will find.
Can you demonstrate that there is such a thing as "freewill?"
@@ksan1648
Is there not?
God is not mentioned because Anarchists are not stupid - for the most part.
But all religious people are. Fact.
@@TheOneAndOnlyZeno Dont mix God and Religion. They are not synonymous. You dont have to accept religion to accept god.
@@skrieni So Deism? Another pathetic bunch of religious losers - ever bigger losers that have literally zero excuses to be so stupid.