Why can't I find a self sufficient primitivist village in north america?

Visions of the Rewilding Renaissance Rewilding Mind & Heart
#1

Like it says, I’m a Ludite. I hate most machines. I particularly dislike the automotive industry, the food industry, the TV, and the internet (which I’m addicted to :slight_smile: ) My ongoing goal is to live closer to nature with fewer possessions. I guess I’m a rewilder too.

I just started reading about anarcho-primitivism. My take, so far, is that it promotes the same back-to-the-earth way of life that so many hippies tried and failed at, but instead of LSD or Marx for inspiration we now have the end of the world!

It’s hard to disagree about the precipitous state of the planet, and the problem of industry. However, I have some serious concerns as to the viability of Derrick Jensen’s vision.

I’d like to introduce myself by posing these concerns as questions for you better-read rewilders.

Why can’t I find a self sufficient primitivist village in north america?

How do rewilders expect to attract enough people to their cause to effect global change?

Enduring cultural groups have strong customs and values that bind the generations. How are rewilders defining themselves as a group? Is a shared faith (religion?) necessary?

Violence and industrialism go hand-in-hand. But why should violence falter in the absence of an industrial civilization? Take away the infrastructure of civilization, take away authority, take away SADAM, and you get TERRIBLE violence. Or is that different?

How are villages of primitivists going to protect themselves against raiding parties with superior communications, weapons, and numbers, and the tactics these bad-guys would posses, being experienced, organized, combatant, man hunters?

How are the villages to avoid being indoctrinated into a fiefdom, and bullied around by the knights (samurai, mob, cops, whatever)? “Anarcho” assumes there will be no hierarchy, but how are peaceful villagers to prevent men like Ghengis from rolling through? How is anarchy, without violence, supposed to be sustainable?

Finally, even if we cull the greed in all men, how can we stop the evolution of technology? Machines make life easier and increase birth rates in an unintentional cycle that will get out of hand, even in village with no more technology than a wind mill.

#2

hello luddite,

I can answer all your questions with one word: BIGFOOT!

Just kidding. I’m new to this board too, but I look forward to other folks’ answers–I have asked myself some of the same questions as I’ve explored what I believe about anarchy, (and leadership, responsibility, community, fear), rewilding, and the general soul searching about how humanity will find its way and how I can [be] make myself part of that change.

yeah, what he said. and the paperwork industry. and the one that spews out more useless plastic crap every day. trying to keep half my mind open (while gritting my teeth) to how machines and technology benefit us, at least in the present—can’t ever just see one side, [i’m a] i arrived under the stars of freaking libra–while learning to lean farther and farther away from them (except when i’m leaning closer to the computer screeen).

plus i had a humility lesson rammed down my throat when i evaded nature’s hand a la caesar in the population control department–home (wild) birth [isn’t always. . .] has some tricks up its sleeve for us humans.

i’ll end with a lovely gandhi quote (i may have written it down wrong) that rings some bells about civilization for me:

Seven Blunders (plunders?) of the World that lead to violence:
wealth without work
pleasure without conscience
knowledge without character
commerce without morality
science without humanity
worship without sacrifice
politics without principle
(fill in your own! or alter the above to describe how you see it!)

#3

Hi Luddite,

I just started reading about anarcho-primitivism. My take, so far, is that it promotes the same back-to-the-earth way of life that so many hippies tried and failed at, but instead of LSD or Marx for inspiration we now have the end of the world!

This comment doesn’t have much to do with anarcho-primitivism and back-to-the-earth living, but more to do with the hippies and the revolution of the sixties failing. So, I just want to throw it out there. I think Daniel Quinn has the best theory on why the sixties revolution failed in Beyond Civilization.

He writes: [i]Lots of songs about revolution came out during the hippie era of the 1960’s and 1970’s, but the revolution itself never materialized, because it didn’t occur to the revolutionaries that they had to come up with a revolutionary way of making a living. Their signature contribution was starting communes–a hot new idea from the same folks that gave us powdered wigs.

When the money ran out and parents got fed up, the kids looked around and saw noting to do but line up for jobs at the quarries, Before long, they were dragging stones up to the same pyramids their parents and grandparents and great grandparents had been working on for centuries.

The time it’ll be different. It’d better be.[/i]

This time we’ve got a few handbooks to help us along with our revolution. We’re not going to fail this time.

It's hard to disagree about the precipitous state of the planet, and the problem of industry. However, I have some serious concerns as to the viability of Derrick Jensen's vision.

What I here Derrick Jensen saying is that he wants future generations to inherit a planet with more polar bears and salmon and tree frogs and fish and etc…than what we have now. This culture is driving roughly 200 species extinct a day. And we have to achieve that goal by using the most effective tactics possible.

Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with the viability of this vision.

Why can't I find a self sufficient primitivist village in north america?

Here might be some thoughts to consider. The first comes from Jensen’s theory the we all more or less suffer from some form of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

Quote from Jensen: [i]It would be so wonderful if we weren’t crazy and if we could actually try for some sort of soft crash. Yes, we’ll be at the Stone Age, but we could sort of throttle down and come for a soft landing where we do things smart.

That’s one of the things that’s really central to my work. Most of the individuals in our culture are crazy, and the culture as a whole is certainly crazy.

One of the theses of A Language Older Than Words is that we have an entire culture suffering from complex post-traumatic stress disorder. We’re incapable of forming relationships on both personal and social levels. If you’ve been traumatized, you come to believe that you’ve got to control your surroundings. You come to believe that all relationships are based on power, based on atomized individuals acting selfishly, as our economics would have us believe. Our culture has a fundamental death urge, and unless it’s stopped its going to kill everything on the planet.

It would be wonderful if everyone was acting reasonably. If suddenly everyone woke up, we could throttle down and realize that instead of giving money to timber companies to cut down forests, we could give money to timber companies to reforest. Sure, but it ain’t gonna happen.

I certainly fantasize about a soft landing, but I think we need to face what’s going on. We need to look at history. What happens to communities that live sustainably? They get destroyed every single time by the dominant culture.[/i]

And lastly Ran Prieur covered this a little bit on his blog:

http://ranprieur.com/archives/008.html

[i]August 23-25. In a post on Free Range Organic Human, Ted brings up a point I’ve also been thinking about:

[sub]I have been following green anarchism for a while now and I am wondering if anyone is really on track. This concept of “rewilding” – is anyone really trying to achieve it?[/sub]

Indeed, why hasn’t a single primitivist yet walked the ideology? Why hasn’t a single wilderness survival master gone full-time? Here’s an email I just got from Tim, who’s on a short tech break from Teaching Drum school:

[sub]There is enough food and materials to live out there, in certain bioregions around North America, to raise a group of families. Then all the impediments from hunting/fishing regs to limits of semi-nomadicism arise as obstacles. Here, we easily gather enough plants, roots, berries. The difficulty is enough fat. We mainly catch small fish, mice and chipmunks, frogs, insects, frog eggs. Living as a trusting flowing social human clan is the hardest part other than enough fat. I just am not sure I want to go all the way to a woods ninja forager. I see very few humans going to foraging clans right away in this generation and most folks living in permaculture communitites. We can do it, I know it, it’s just a little to very freakin painful. There are parts of civilization I really like, like this internet and manna bread, and yogurt. So I don’t get too worked up about needing to be a perfect aspiring hunter gatherer.[/sub]

I’m coming around to the idea that going primitive, like marrying a movie star or climbing Mt. Everest, is one of those things that everybody feels the desire to do, but almost nobody would actually enjoy doing. This all makes me wonder where humans are going.

Parker comments:

[sub]I think it’s necessary to learn the technical aspects of foraging just from a survival standpoint, but as far as the “being-ness” that goes along with the ideal of rewilding, it’s close to impossible to maintain without coming up against property lines and civilized institutions.[/sub]

Jason Godesky asks Where have all the savages gone? and argues that going primitive requires spiritual changes that will take longer than learning physical skills, and that “the window of opportunity is just now beginning to open.”

Ted suggests that we have resistance to civilization relative to originally-wild people: “We are dissatisfied with civilization, not merely oblivious and innocent of it.” And now I wonder: if we have this resistance, is the best place for us a full-on primitive society, or something more complex?

Scott comments:

[sub]Our species is here because we are adapted to meeting new challenges through novel means. The next step in becoming ourselves is not in becoming “wild in the ways of the Elders.” It’s an entirely new kind of wild.[/sub]

Maybe. I think we need to do what makes us feel wild and free, even if our ancestors didn’t do it. Between ecological changes, surviving artifacts of civilization, and possible changes in human nature, our world will be different from theirs. Humans are the ultimate weedy species, and we will survive by acting like weeds, adapting, using what we’ve got. Maybe our descendants will be wildflowers in a field, but we are dandelions growing through pavement.[/i]

Good Luck!

Curt

#4

Welcome, Luddite - great questions, ill try and respond to a couple as well.
“How are villages of primitivists going to protect themselves against raiding parties with superior communications, weapons, and numbers,…”
Godesky wrote a good argument about this (he has acutally answered all of these questions at length)- forget what the article was, but basically, raiding groups will need energy in order to go around stealing from people - there will not be oil and agriculture to supply excesses of energy any longer, so all anyone is going to be able to do after the collapse will be find drinking water and food, and not waste energy trying to steal these things from others. Primitive villages will not have enormous stockpiles of grain to steal, they will have very little to steal in fact.
“Why can’t I find a self sufficient primitivist village in north america?”
Civilization has a habit of destroying all other cultures. Any group of autonomous, indigenous people is a threat to civilization and will be coerced or eradicated. This may be one of the contributing factors to why the communes of the 60’s and 70’s failed. Everywhere is controlled by the civilized, it is illegal to hunt, gather, garden, or live any place on this earth w/ out paying some government for that privalege.
That said - i think that most of us get inspiriation from the fact that this culture has not and can not control / diminish everything.
the fact that there are cracks in the sidewalk, and they are about to get ALOT wider!

#5

Hey, surfing green anarchy sites for awhile, first some what active forum came across. Have doubts about the reality of it unless there is a civ collapse. Anyway hello. Also curious if anyone has read any ‘books of gor’ by john norman? long series with big anti civ bent.

#6

Hi. Thanks for the warm welcome. I’ve enjoyed all the replies to my questions and I’m finding it hard not to delve into discussion on all the interesting things that have been brought up. I’ll save these thoughts for other sections of the forum!

[quote=“Miles, post:4, topic:272”]Godesky wrote a good argument about this (he has acutally answered all of these questions at length)- forget what the article was, but basically, raiding groups will need energy in order to go around stealing from people - there will not be oil and agriculture to supply excesses of energy any longer, so all anyone is going to be able to do after the collapse will be find drinking water and food, and not waste energy trying to steal these things from others. Primitive villages will not have enormous stockpiles of grain to steal, they will have very little to steal in fact.
[/quote]
Miles, this one thing I can’t resist commenting on. I don’t buy this Godesky argument. Most indigenous americans practiced raiding, on foot, until they got horses. If the crash were catastrophic in nature there may be a lag before strong raiding groups formed, but this is something, I have learned from history, that men will practice if given the chance. This is why walled cities, the first civilizations formed, to protect the assets of sedentary agriculturists from marauding packs of men. The anasazi indians didn’t build their houses into sides of cliffs for the view, they did it because it’s dangerous to live in the open.

#7

I think Godesky’s point goes more to the worry of rewilded humans finding themselves attacked by civilized military groups. You seem to mix perspectives, unless I understand you wrong, Luddite. Your comment on Miles’s comment proves Godesky’s point: the rewilders won’t have anything worth stealing. We won’t be the ones in walled cities or in cliff fortresses. The civies that refuse to feralize will. And they’ll likely die there or go feral, just like the Anasazi.

I think we will start seeing opportunities for feral villages open up, once the oil starts running out. In A Pirate’s Life for Me II: Opening the Map, Godesky talks about how you can’t find a place to hide from the civies right now, but once they don’t have the energy (oil) to patrol the farther reaches (holes in the map), rewilders will have the chance to hide in those holes.

I generally don’t feel as optimistic as Jason Godesky, though. I try to. But I fear the mentality of civilization. I hope that the map opens up enough in my lifetime for me to start living the way I want to.

#8

Primitivists, in most parts of the country, could not exist as nomads. You need to settle down to raise a family. That’s why you are waiting for the map to open up right? I think you would be victimized. I imagine primitives being raped, plundered, and killed for sport.
Rix. What are winters like where you’re from? I’m pretty scrappy, but it’s necessary for me to spend all summer putting food and wood bye for the winter.
Primitivists in my area would need stockpiles, unless they intend to steal their food from the neighbors :). Hence raiding.

Warmer climates are different though. I’m always thinking of the way things would be in my neck of the woods…

#9
I'm always thinking of the way things would be in my neck of the woods...

That’s the best place to start. I think indigenous life has always been tied to location. Read David Abram’s The Spell of the Sensuous for a really good look at how time and space are tied together in the animist mindset.

As for nomadism, I think that will be determined bioregionally. I live in the land that the Osage used to occupy in the Ozark “mountains”. They wintered here and went west in the warmer months to hunt bison on the plains (they were related to the other Sioux tribes of the plains) and then came back to the Ozarks in the colder months to enjoy the pumpkins and squash and other fruits they had planted before they went west.

it's necessary for me to spend all summer putting food and wood bye for the winter

What are you expecting to put up? You probably will spend all summer doing it, but not nearly as much time as we spend at our 9-5 jobs now. And I don’t think the term “stockpile” applies quite as well as the word “cahce”. I don’t expect to need a grainary. I expect to have a few hidden place where I can stash dried food.

Even if you don’t have enough dried meat and fat to last the entire winter, that doesn’t mean you have to starve to death. The other animals may be getting slim as the winter progresses, but that doesn’t knock them off the game list entirely. Some forageables you wouldn’t even necessarily bother with until winter, like tubers (jerusalem artichoke) and rhizomes (cattails). The feral land doesn’t die after the harvest moon the way the grain fields do. There will still be life out there to be eaten.

You need to settle down to raise a family.

I think indigenous history disproves this statement. In fact, it may even get easier to move about when you have more folks helping you do it.

But you’re right about the opening of the map and victimization. I don’t expect to be raided for food so much as harassed for not doing things in a civilized manner. People tend to fear what they don’t understand, and for the past 10,000 years, the culture of civilization has been destroying the human memory of how to live with the land. If you start trying to live differently, you will be victimized.

Personally, I hope that by knowing how to find food in unexpected places (wild animals, wild plants) that will probably thrive more as the civ stops its sprawl, I will be able to make more friends and find more minds opening up to ways to live beyond what they have known.

#10

I’ve read some neat things about the Osage.

I don’t have a 9-5 job. I’m currently spending all my time gardening, fishing, hunting, and foraging. I currently live in a house that was long since paid for, I pay taxes with money I make on the side. I’m not to the point where I don’t buy groceries but my staple foods come from the forest. I don’t pay any bills-
I dry beans, smoke meat and fish, burry apples, carrots, and tubers. I can leeks, berries, and cucumbers. I collect fire wood. I run a big trap line and a sugar bush. Bees and dogs are the only animals I keep.
The winter is tough. I can only cover a fraction of the ground that I do in the summer. The snow bogs you down and turns foraging into exploratory excavation. Winter is a time to hold up and hunt deer, bear, and moose. Summer is a mad rush to capitalize on all the shoots, greens, shroom flushes, fish runs, berries, migrations, ect. Everything is timing. It would take several lifetimes to perfect ones summer routine.
Around here a person might not starve to death if the didn’t prepare for the winter, but they would be quite unhealthy and miserable and would look something like a holocaust survivor by spring.

You folks that live in New Mexico and Georgia have no excuse. You could walk out the door any day of the year and begin you life as a feral. :slight_smile: I’m jealous.

#11

Luddite, thanks for your description of your year of hunting and gathering. I feel encouraged to know that you can do so much in a bioregion where you seem to feel limited by the weather.

Do you do all the work you described by yourself, or do you have family/friends helping you in the endeavors?

(BTW: Once I get some time, I’ll try to separate out the sub-thread of your conversation to make it its own thread. I think this discussion has too much merit to be lost in such a general thread.)

#12

My family has helped with some construction projects but as far as the work I described goes I’m very much alone. Young people seem uncomfortable working outdoors at the pace I do. And the old timers who used to live the way I do think I’m a fool for choosing such a lifestyle.
I have friends over for dinner and spirits on a weekly basis, and there are guys I hunt with, but I don’t expect I’ll ever have a rewilding partner. The outdoors people here, even the native americans, have a very Man vs Nature view that I don’t agree with.

#13

tsuchi akurei , thanks for the welcome.

Luddite you just described the type of life I aspire to. On another forum I’m on, I know a trapper in Idaho thats taught at Rabbitstick. He is also a long line trapper. He overcomes the problem of snow travel by using a dog team and sled. Not sure if that would work in your area, but it might be worth consideration.

WildRix, I also think this deserve a thread of its own. Luddite shares many of the same questions I have.

#14

Here it is:
http://anthropik.com/2006/08/where-have-all-the-savages-gone/

It’s worth reading, imho.

From my perspective, going from wage slave to full-fledged hunter-gatherer is currently full of non-technical difficulties (as mentioned in Brent’s article and Jason’s article above). So, even you had the technical skills mastered, and you had a some sort of community physically with you (all onboard and at the same or similar skill level), you’d still be running into a brick wall half the time.

And, as Luddite’s already implied, trying to go it alone is pretty rough.

Obviously, no guarantees can be offered, but my family is planning on developing a permaculture food forest with a mix of wild and semi-wild plants in with a few domesticated ones. Hopefully, we’ll be able to drop to a minimum level of cultivation and a maximum level of hunting/foraging in 10-15 years.

/shrug

We’ll see. It may turn out that my crystal ball needs cleaning! :wink:

#15
How do rewilders expect to attract enough people to their cause to effect global change?

The most affective method is just talking, sharing and spreading ideas and hope for the future. Spreading an idea that there is another way to live that is sustainable.

Enduring cultural groups have strong customs and values that bind the generations. How are rewilders defining themselves as a group? Is a shared faith (religion?) necessary?

we are united by our vision, our vision of a sustainable way of life that mimics that of indigineous peoples. We are united by ideas in deep ecology. We are united because we are anti-civilization, and with that hold opposite social ‘genes’ (memes). For example, people of this civilization (takers) believe that Civilzation is man’s ultimate achievement, and it can never be surpassed. Rewilders/anarcho-primitivists believe the complete opposite. Takers also believe that this world was made for man. and that he may do whatever he pleases with the land. We believe the opposite. This is what unites us.

why should violence falter in the absence of an industrial civilization?

Before civilization man was tribal, they lived on an economy based on support instead of products as in an industrialized society. What that means is that in a tribe, the economy is support, you give total support to your tribe, and you get total support back. This is why violence within the tribal societies is very low. To be violent or to do crime will hurt your tribe, and in turn hurt you. also, a person doing this behavior will find himself shunned from the tribe. violence and crime in a society doesn’t last because it doesn’t work for the tribe. the world hasn’t seen such violence, murder, war and genocide since the dawn of civilization. i should ask you: Why should violence remain in the absence of an industrial civilization? to understand this question it really requires an understanding of tribal dynamics, how tribal societies worked, in a braud sense.

Take away the infrastructure of civilization, take away authority, take away SADAM, and you get TERRIBLE violence. Or is that different?

Authority? Law? has never stopped the crimes and violence it has set out to. in fact, it just flat out doesn’t work. every year crime and violence goes up, and every year they make tougher laws and put more cops on the street, and every year just like the year before that and the year before that crime and violence rise.

How are villages of primitivists going to protect themselves against raiding parties with superior communications, weapons, and numbers, and the tactics these bad-guys would posses, being experienced, organized, combatant, man hunters?

Raiding parties with superior communications, weapons, numbers and advanced tactics?
i’d be woundering what these highly advanced peoples would gain by raiding primitivists . they surely woudln’t be raiding us for our stone tools and hides. our women maybe?

How is anarchy, without violence, supposed to be sustainable?

We know its sustainable because humans have been living in this way for 200,000 years. The tribal life looking at it from a taker point of view is anarchy, but their is order in the tribe, there is a leader. but the tribe is egalitarian not heirarchical. Authority and law is not needed much in the tribal society because of the way their society works. Each member is equally important to the next and each one is responsible for the well-being of the tribe. Along with an economy based on giving and getting support. order in the tribe is sustained. to do bad (crime/violence) would hurt your tribe which would be hurting you because you require the tribe to live. order is maintained very well in this way.

Finally, even if we cull the greed in all men, how can we stop the evolution of technology? Machines make life easier and increase birth rates in an unintentional cycle that will get out of hand, even in village with no more technology than a wind mill.

the growth of technology very much so has to do with the economy of civilization. that is its based on products. make products > get products >make products. this is what drives the increase in technology. However, the tribal society is not based on products.
tribal societies have technology, but only what they need to get the job done. there is not need to improve the spear or bow and arrow because it does what its supposed to very well. and unlike in civilization there is no incentive ($) to make something new/better/different. it just has to work and thats it. technology is NOT the problem. and having a windmill isn’t going to make more humans. :wink:

#16

I am going to be brutally honest with you Luddite and this will undoubtedly anger many…

All primitivists I have ever met only defend the ideology but refuse to live it, infact not only will you find no primitivists in America living the lifestyle but they seem to not exist anywhere else either.

The only primitivists you will find living the lifestyle is the few thousand small isolated tribes still living in different parts of the world.

#17

I have yet much to learn, but I realize that you cannot learn everything without getting out. I think people might think that they could learn skill by skill and then go and live primitively. I think it has to be a mix, you learn a few essential skills, processes, and then go out and learn by doing, learn by failure, learn by trying, learn what you didn’t intend to learn, learn more than what you thought at first, learn what you didn’t expect to, didn’t think about, and maybe you will learn what you set out to learn.

My problem is finding like minded people around here (Puget sound), but I also don’t have some of the essential skills (imo), nevertheless, I plan for the latest being 2012.

#18

[quote=“TheJoker, post:16, topic:272”]I am going to be brutally honest with you Luddite and this will undoubtedly anger many…

All primitivists I have ever met only defend the ideology but refuse to live it, infact not only will you find no primitivists in America living the lifestyle but they seem to not exist anywhere else either.

The only primitivists you will find living the lifestyle is the few thousand small isolated tribes still living in different parts of the world.[/quote]

Thats funny because I know some and you can too if you get off the internet and start traveling and talking to folks at the big gatherings. Just because they might not have a myspace page or a blog doesn’t mean they don’t exist so maybe you shouldn’t talk badly about people you have never met.

#19

[quote=“scavenger, post:18, topic:272”][quote author=TheJoker link=topic=279.msg3465#msg3465 date=1186849249]
I am going to be brutally honest with you Luddite and this will undoubtedly anger many…

All primitivists I have ever met only defend the ideology but refuse to live it, infact not only will you find no primitivists in America living the lifestyle but they seem to not exist anywhere else either.

The only primitivists you will find living the lifestyle is the few thousand small isolated tribes still living in different parts of the world.
[/quote]

Thats funny because I know some and you can too if you get off the internet and start traveling and talking to folks at the big gatherings. Just because they might not have a myspace page or a blog doesn’t mean they don’t exist so maybe you shouldn’t talk badly about people you have never met.[/quote]

I am basically saying that I have never met anyone of that persuasion yet but I haven’t denied that there are things outside of my own expiriences that do exist. :wink:

If the opportunity was to present itself I would like to meet such people myself. Until now no opportunity has presented itself to me yet.

#20

No, this is what you said:

[quote=“TheJoker, post:16, topic:272”]I am going to be brutally honest

not only will you find no primitivists in America living the lifestyle but they seem to not exist anywhere else either.[/quote]

and it is definitely not true.