Absolutely not. You can tell me in your own words.
It’s like this:
Agriculture replaces hunting and gathering. Civilization grows.
Human population grows to the point where humans are completely dependent on ag and can never go back.
Civilization gives birth to the state.
Humans need more land for ag, so the state conquers more land for ag via violence.
More ag = more population growth.
More population growth + state = more lands needed for ag.
Old ag lands can no longer grow food. More lands needed and more conquest by the state.
More ag increases the population.
All lands are taken over by states. Ag is bottoming out, so states subsidize more technology like GMO, chemical fertilizer, pesticides.
Industrial ag ends up killing the lands and causes the human population to double within a few generatiions.
All evidence shows that a civ collapse is in the near future. There’s no way this cycle can keep going w/o a massive crash and die-off. What happens when ALL the land is no longer good for ag?
Well, if your hypothesis is true that all the land will be ruined, then your hunter-gather method of survival will be pointless because in this Armageddon scenario of yours, one of two things will occur: 1) there will be no land to sustain even the most primal of eco-systems, which means no food for you to hunt or gather, which means starvation, which means very imminent death…or…2) What little land is untouched will be quickly usurped via the state or civ resulting in scenario 1. Either way, you, sir, are fucked. What all this means is that, IF you are right, no kind of preparation even matters because total annihilation of the Earth is inevitable anyway.
Why do you think i plan on homesteading acres and acres of land up in NH for me to gather my food supply on?
Let me know how well that homesteading thing goes for you. I’m sure you’ll be real successful at that endeavor, given how much of a push-over the state has been the past 100+ years regarding homesteading of the oceans or any other land for that matter. Im sure they’ll be especially generous when their land is made worthless for ag and they need what little fertile land they can get to sustain their ag-schemes you have so thoroughly warned us about. There’s no way they’ll just take it from you by force. Nah, they never use force to get what they want. They’ll just ask you nicely, and then if you say “No” they will just leave you alone, im sure.
Wake up, man. Your idea doesn’t even sound great, much less realistic. At least Marx had an idea that, superficially, sounded nice. You’re dropping one serious sinister ball on this forum when you start preaching a return to the stone age on an internet discussion board filled with people who’s most cherished ideal is that of the technological progression of society through means of the division of labor, especially when absent the state. To be honest, living as I do now, existing and functioning inside and despite the state, is still preferable to your ideal of running around naked, hoping that I might stumble upon a bush of berries (that won’t poison me) before I am hunted and eaten by some wild animal. How much are you willing to give up to avoid civ in some form? Are you going to live alone? If you form a tribe, even a completely decentralized one, or even a mere hunting team, you have established some semblance of a civ, have you not? I appreciate the passion you’ve shown for this idea, day after tireless day, all in the face of unending scrutiny and truly viscous ridicule from the many members of this forum who have taken time out of their day just to tell you what fool you are. You have shown some serious (perhaps even stubborn) loyalty to your ideals, and I salute you for that, if for nothing else. But, most importantly, I think JJ put it best many months ago when he asked you over and over, “Why are you here?” If you really do believe what you are telling us, then put your money where your mouth is and go all in. If you KNOW you are right, then you can’t afford to spend another second writing on this forum. GO OUT and prove us wrong. I’ll even wish you good luck, just not here.
+1 The Texas Trigger
One way of gauging the extent of “harmonious” development of all of the individual’s powers in the absence of specialization is to consider what actually happened during primitive or preindustrial eras. And, indeed, many socialists and other opponents of the Industrial Revolution exalt the primitive and preindustrial periods as a golden age of harmony, community, and social belonging?a peaceful and happy society destroyed by the development of individualism, the Industrial Revolution, and the market economy. In their exaltation of the primitive and the preindustrial, the socialists were perfectly anticipated by the reactionaries of the Romantic movement, those men who longed to roll back the tide of progress, individualism, and industry, and return to the supposed golden age of the preindustrial era. The New Left, in particular, also emphasizes a condemnation of technology and the division of labor, as well as a desire to “return to the earth” and an exaltation of the commune and the “tribe.” As John W. Aldridge perceptively points out, the current New Left virtually constitutes a generational tribe that exhibits all the characteristics of a uniform and interchangeable herd, with little or no individuality among its members.
…
If we consider the supposed happiness of primitive man, we must also consider that his life was, in the famous phrase of Hobbes, “nasty, brutish, and short.” There were few medical aids against disease; there were none against famine, for in a world cut off from interregional markets and barely above subsistence any check to the local food supply will decimate the population. Fulfilling the dreams of Romantics, the primitive tribe is a passive creature of its given environment and has no means for acting to overcome and transform it. Hence, when the local food supply within an area is depleted, the “happy-go-lucky” tribe dies en masse.
Furthermore, we must realize that the primitive faces a world which he cannot understand, since he has not engaged in much of a rational, scientific inquiry into its workings. We know what a thunderstorm is, and therefore take rational measures against it; but the savage does not know, and therefore surmises that the God of Thunder is displeased with him and must be propitiated with sacrifices and votive offerings. Since the savage has only a limited concept of a world knit together by natural law (a concept which employs reason and science), he believes that the world is governed by a host of capricious spirits and demons, each of which can only be propitiated by ritual or magic, and by a priest-craft of witch doctors who specialize in their propitiation. [33] The renaissance of astrology and similar mystic creeds on the New Left marks a reversion to such primitive forms of magic. So fearful is the savage, so bound is he by irrational taboo and by the custom of his tribe, that he cannot develop his individuality.
Rothbard didn’t know what he was talking about here. Primitive man was WAY happier, healthier and better-off then civilized man. All disease we have comes from civilization in some way or another. Why are H/Gs today hardly ever sick when our civ is ridden w/ diseases of all sorts?
And where does Rothbard get the idea that H/Gs lives were short?
How exactly would you know this?
From studies researching men from 30k years ago. Duh.
studies = civ
So, there were scientists, 30K years ago, researching them?
Yeah, there were. JJ posted a picture of one right above your post.
Zerzan is totally wrong on a lot of things too (namely that private property or markets dont exist w/o civ) but he is right about why civilization is causing human extinction.
Zerzan is wrong when he says private property was an outcome of civilization. He’s not an economist so I give him some slack on that, but if he had more of a basic understanding of things he’d know that private property exists inherently, as do markets.
Markets do not exist without civilization.
Markets do not exist without civilization.
All voluntary transactions are part of the market. Markets exist inherently.
I’m no longer sure what you mean by the word ‘civilization’. Do you define it as ‘anything that happens after we start planting our food instead of foraging’?