Derrick Jensen began his two volume ecological call to
arms, Endgame, by listing twenty
premises. His first premise is that civilization, especially industrial
civilization, is not sustainable. Premise seven is that the longer we wait to
do something about our situation, the worse things will be. In a direct way, the
impetus for this blog is predicated on these two premises, with the important
caveat that industrial civilization is merely a symptom; the real problem is
the asymmetric distribution of power and the intentional shaping of social
relations that underwrites all civilization, industrial or otherwise.
In addition, the posts here are based around five major assumptions:
Assumption 1: All creatures, humans
included, are better off living in ways that are congruent with their evolved
predispositions.
Assumption 2: There is a dramatic
mismatch between our evolutionary preparation as a species and life in
post-industrial civilization. Humans possess physical and psychological needs,
emotional tendencies, and behavioral predilections that reflect our evolutionary
past as social primates, and more proximally as hunter-gatherers. The
lifestyles we are forced to adopt to accommodate the demands of the
technological order of modern global civilization are so far removed from our
evolutionary preparation that many of our authentic human needs are not being
met, or are being met in increasingly deficient ways.
Assumption 3: Individual
autonomy—the freedom to engage in self-regulation—is an authentic human need
that is not being adequately met due to the mismatch between our evolved
predilections for egalitarian society and the oppressive requirements of the
technological order of modern civilization.
Assumption 4: The technological
order of civilization is an artificial construction. As a mode of social
organization, civilization does not reflect an emergent property of the human
animal. It is an artifact of history, and not an inevitable manifestation of
the cognitive or social development of the human species.
Assumption 5: The technological order of civilization
includes technologies specifically directed at the manipulation and control of
human behavior. As such, modern civilization is becoming increasingly corrosive
of individual freedom and autonomy.
If it is not obvious from the title of this blog, my
primary purpose here is a subversive one. But the target of my subversion is
not a person, a political party, or an ideology. The target is the technological
order of civilization.
Complex technology, and the artificial authority
relations it entails, is at the root of all of our most pressing problems. It
is important to note that I am not a Luddite—at least I am not fundamentally
anti-technology. I am not motivated by fear of “technology out of control.” Nor
am I motivated by fear of the dangers of specific technologies (e.g., nuclear
energy) or concern about the direction that specific kinds of technological
development are taking (e.g., nanotechnology, genetic engineering).
The dangers
are real; as is our complete lack of control. But I am not here to heap scorn
upon mass society or promote any anti-tech conspiracy theories. I am not
anti-technology per se, I am anti-authority. Autonomy-annihilating
distributions of artificial power and authority are my primary concern. It just
so happens to be that technology is the medium through which authority
operates. And our reflexive reactions tend only to make things worse: the
reflexive response to any problem with technology is to create more technology,
to sacrifice even more of our freedom to feed the machine.
To have any chance
of escape from the oppressive grip of the technological order, we have to first
understand what technology really is and how it works—or at the very least
understand that more of what is killing us is not a cure. And then, just maybe,
we can start to direct our attention to Jensen’s premise number seven, and get
on with the business of dismantling civilization and rediscovering our
humanity.
