WALTER EDMUND BOND (37096013)

4/15/2013 10:03:10 AM

Back To The Primitive

Civilization is complex. It invades our social interactions, biases our desires and separates us from the natural world.  Industrial civilization and high technology exacerbate the divisions and deep separations still further.  Industry, consumption, and production are the bane of the environment, the destroyer of forests, the reason for untold neurosis and fosters the same mind frame of disassociation that allowed Nazis to run death camps by day and be family men at night (or allows animal researchers to vivisect animals to death and then go home and pet their cat).

Of course, the irony of contradiction is not wasted on me.  For, as I assert that civilization is the destroyer of lives, polluter of the Earth and divider of labor.  I am typing these words on a computer, in a building, with glasses on my face, noting the time on my wrist watch and speaking in an advanced dialect of a civilized language.  Does this make such critiques invalid?  I don’t think so.

All too often we are taught to internalize all that is destructive in this world.  It is not my fault that I must use the tools of civilization to dismantle civilization.  And this is no more contradictory than the abolitionists of yesteryear that utilized roads built by slavery to pipeline those same liberated blacks to freedom.  Or the fact that many animal rights ‘activists’ and environmentalists will fly across the country or planet, not to save an animal or tree but to network with other humans at conventions and talk about animals and trees in the abstract.

When it comes to anti-civilization theory the first line of offense is always something to do with the fact that we all partake in civilization therefore to stand against it is hypocritical. This is true but overly simplistic.  More to the point, most everything that we do in our separated, segregated and compartmentalized societies has an air of hypocrisy to it because civilization is schizophrenic.  Again this is not the individuals fault.

The second line of offense is usually that it is completely impractical if not impossible to collapse technological society in the present, so it is absurd and a waste of time to try.  This of course is apathy in the extreme and can be applied to anything that appears insurmountable or may take a lot of self sacrifice and hard work.  For instance, since millions and millions of people are going to drive, you can’t stop big oil, so it’s just dumb to protest it, right?  Or since billions of people eat animals and they’re not going to stop it’s futile to promote or adhere to veganism?

Apathy at its best leads to compromised welfarism and band aid solutions which in the final analysis will always end up consumer modified, repackaged and sold back to us.  And at worst it leads to an infectious inaction that poisons radicalism.

The last line of offense goes something like:  Only a pathologically deranged maniac would want to raze the cities and all technology to the ground!  I must admit that because of its dramatic appeal this one is my favorite.  Since we are concerned with the source of all oppressions and not only their various manifestations we must be lunatics.  Or more accurately, because we don’t worship and value production and property over life and earth we must be violent maniacs!  A leap of logic that industrial producers and technocratic scumbags have duped the people, both capitalist and communist (and sometimes vegan or anarchist) into believing.

I emphatically and unequivocally state for the record that brick and steel, mortar and foam, concrete and wires do not equal the inherent worth of flesh and bone, mountain and stream or air and earth! Violence is what technology does to sentient life like an animal in a trap or an atomic bomb to civilians. Violence happens to the living, destruction happens to buildings and machinery. not vice versa.

Thus, many of us are beginning to see that in order to truly liberate animals, the earth, or each other we need to start combating the source of oppression.  Which in the immediate is technologically advanced civilization.  Fighting single issue oppressions is like stomping out brush fires, for every one that we stomp out, water down or put out.  Several more are being set.  Many times the same fire we thought we put out rekindles.  We fight the fur industry in one country and it pops up in another.  The moment we stop fighting an environmental issue all the lobbying and work gets rescinded with the changing of the political guard on election day.  Take your pick: imperialism, LGBTQ issues, racism, feminism, vivisection or veganism.

The more we focus and fight the more we drain our energies while the apparatus of oppression and the machines hum on.  That’s not to say that the single issue cause is invalid.  We all must place our energies and activity where our heart is.  And for many of us the single issue is of personal and emotional significance .  As an example, after building slaughterhouses for a living as a young man I was forever horrified and shaken out of apathy and inactivity.  For me helping animals and fighting on their behalf is definitional to who I am.  And fighting the oppressions we and others face in the here and now is hugely important to those on whose behalf we struggle.  However, for all the single issue causes that are fighting for liberation and a leaderless society to truly coalesce under the umbrella of total liberation it only makes since to recognize our common oppressor. The inferno that is the source of every brush fire, the totality, civilization.

It’s very easy to forget or be completely blind to the heinous devastation and domination that occurs to create and maintain civilizations. Unfortunately the abuses, subjugation and profound violence is hydra headed and all too real. In the Americas, millions upon millions of native lives were decimated, murdered in the most brutal ways and later addicted to alcohol and shoved on to reservations.  This occurred to make way for the plunder of the earth, the destruction of forests, the murder of the buffalo the rise of animal byproduct industries and the domestic slavery of the land for mass farming know as agriculture.  The first modern cities were built from the forced labor of slavery and out of the blood and bones of the earth and animal nations.  Layers and layers of overt domination are the foundation of the society we see all around us.  White over black, men over women, humans over animals, industry over earth, rich over poor, and the educated over the ignorant.

Today it’s worse than it ever was before.  Mechanization has quickened the pace of industry  and the rape of the planet to fuel its raw products.  Animals die faster and in greater numbers than ever before because of factory disassembly and heavy machinery, not to mention genetic modification and unnatural breeding.  Pedophiles are able to proliferate and produce child pornography anonymously and distribute it to millions of sick freaks with the click of a button.  No ecosystem, mountain, ocean or species is truly off limits when it comes to the machinations of big business.  Alienation and depression are pandemic and we grow decrepit and diseased well before we should.  The medical industry has become master at fixing aliments that were once unheard of in primitive societies and our twisted and neurotic lives drag on.

All the while we have become collectively brilliant at keeping the oppressions we support hidden and out of site.  As is the case with child labor in third world countries to make cheap shoes and clothes. Slaughterhouses in the middle of nowhere, millions of people locked away in prisons.  All unseen, unheard of, and of no concern to today’s mass consumers.  Bread and circus prevail in high definition in ways that make ancient Rome look like a vaudeville play in comparison.  Out of sight, truly does equal out of mind, for most of us.

The push in ethics, activist and anarchist circles is to use technology and all these products of oppression to uplift us out of the quagmire of hierarchy and domination.  There is some irrational belief that things are getting better, when in reality only the appearances and cover ups are getting better.  This linear notion that on the other side of all the environmental devastation and social inadequacy which technology is responsible for, we are on the verge of a techno-utopian breakthrough is not only an unfounded mirage it is also pure bullshit!

Functionality exists, as does cause and effect and there is no escaping this.  An equitable and fair society will not come out of white supremacy, imperialism, and religious fascism which largely accounts for the foundations of contemporary history, no matter how many people are pathologically patriotic.  The minions can bandy creed words like ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ as much as they want but it will not change the functionality of oppression.  To put the same premise in a more down to earth way. It’s ridiculous to think that a person in a physically abusive relationship is going to change their partner into a compassionate and considerate confidant. No, the dysfunction is not going to turn into function. On the contrary it is bound to get worse despite the wishes or fantasies of the abused. In such a situation the abused is often (or should be) counseled to get out of the abusive relationship and then take a look at their habits, ideas and beliefs about relationships.

Politics, including classical and red anarchist politics, seem stuck on the idea that it is the organizing of society that is the fly in the ointment.  Taking this neutral stance toward industry and technology or in many instances showering the two with praise is more a Marxist and capitalist trick, so as to reap the rewards of production and labor.  Green anarchy should not be reeled into this politicized and industrial green washing.  Anarchy is about dissolving authority and hierarchy and opposing them in all hands.  Not rearranging the wording of a situation while leaving all the components for oppression intact (another Marxian tactic). It’s time for an anarchy that is more than radical leftism or simply busy scrutinizing each others’ lifestyles and single issue causes.  It’s time for a return to the living anarchy that existed for thousands and thousands of human generations.  An anarchy that exists in animals and ecosystems to this day.  An anarchy where millions of free communities live and interact with an astonishing amount of civility, chivalry and adaptability.  It’s time to go back to the primitive.

Far from being a utopianist ideal, anarcho-primitivism worked for humans and our relationships with the earth since the dawn of our species.  It is an easily observable fact that before technology, society, the work week, or the alienation of our current day malaise we knew how to live,we knew how to play, we knew how to eat and we knew how to thrive.  Without police stations, churches, interstate commerce or monetary greed.  Just like all other creatures we knew what to do and not to do because we were connected to the earth, instead of at war with her.

The before mentioned illusion of ‘advancement’ one day bringing us into a era of enlightenment and plenty, if believed, only takes us further away from the reality that as biological entities, (that is to say as part and parcel of the earth under our feet.) our only way to personal enrichment, peace and prosperity (as much as we will ever realistically be able to attain) is to live once again as ‘part of’ instead of ‘apart from’ the biosphere.

If we want to see the end of billions and billions of animals murdered, then we should want to see the end of the slaughterhouses that kill them, the gross technologies that breed them, and the science of genetic modification that degrades them for mass consumption. You cannot stop their murders and also leave the means of their murders perfectly intact. If we are truly against war than we should opposes the science, chemistry and mechanization that make wars machines and bombs possible and evermore heinous and widespread with each new innovation.  If we are against any form of oppression we should also be against the technologies that amplify them.  Because none of these issues is happening in a vacuum or without incredible mechanical aid.

We are heading back to the primitive in either direction we go on our imaginary line of progress.  The only question will be will we arrive there through earth-centeredness and a radical destruction of the entire edifice of civilization? Or will it be because of technological mishap, environmental destruction and the over population of a consumer society gone mad?

For Liberation,

Walter

 

Walter Bond is in prison until the year 2021 and cannot use Facebook or the internet.  This page was set up to support him.

Walter Bond is in need of donations to enable him to buy vegan items from the prison commissary.  For more info on sending funds to him in prison, please visit this page on the support site: https://supportwalter.org/SW/index.php/donate/  

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Walter Bond

37096-013

USP Marion CMU

PO Box 1000

Marion IL 62959