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Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization
America's most famous anarchist.
214 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2002
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About the author
John Zerzan
50 books194 followersAmerican anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author.
His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of hunter gatherers as an inspiration for what a free society should look like.
Some subjects of his criticism include domestication, language, symbolic thought (such as mathematics and art) and the concept of time.
His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of hunter gatherers as an inspiration for what a free society should look like.
Some subjects of his criticism include domestication, language, symbolic thought (such as mathematics and art) and the concept of time.
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July 18, 2008
John Zerzan is an anarcho-primitivist theorist who got some notoriety when the newstainment media caught on that he was a philosophical godfather to the unabomber and to the folks who made the Pacific Northwest a difficult place to hold a world bank meeting or keep a Starbucks intact.
Zerzan’s literary form is typically the academic-styled manifesto, the short screed, and the interview—and some of these have been published as collections, one being Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization.
Primitivism, in summary, starts with the observation that people have been civilized or domesticated or what-have-you for only the last 10% or so of the time we’ve been on the planet—so civilization isn’t a necessary part of being human, just what we happen to be up to these days. Next comes a critical examination of civilization with an eye to answering the question: are we better off now, or were we better off then (hint: then). Lastly comes advocating a new organization of society that discards the pathology of civilization.
Despite Zerzan’s prominence and his years of speculating, exploring and theorizing in these areas, I’ve never much enjoyed his writings.
This book doesn’t make it any easier. First off, the publisher has (understandably) tried to take advantage of Zerzan’s notoriety—lots of play on the whole Unabomber/Seattle connection. The front cover blurb has a reviewer calling John Zerzan “the most important philosopher of our time. All the rest of us are building on his foundation.” That’s a bit of an overstatement, and makes me suspect that he’s got more of a fan base than a school of critical inquiry.
Essay #1 in the collection is “The Failure of Symbolic Thought”. Part of what makes it hard to swallow is that it is genuinely, thoroughly radical. Zerzan isn’t just an anarchist—he wants more than the dissolution of the state or of capitalism. And he’s not just a luddite—pre-industrial just isn’t “pre” enough for him. He’s even a little far out for the hard core primitivist crowd. He thinks we took a wrong turn even before civilization, before agriculture. Symbolic language itself was a fuck-up.
I’m not saying he’s wrong. It’s an intriguing hypothesis and I think it might be supportable, but it’s not intuitive or easy. More to the point, if you’re going to argue it, you’re going to need to be clear, thorough, and intellectually honest. Zerzan isn’t up to it.
I want to avoid the cheap irony of saying something like “how can Zerzan be arguing that language is so bad for us when he’s using language to make the argument” because it really is cheap and doesn’t say much—like the whole “hey, look, it’s a luddite website—snort” joke. But, there’s a kernel of truth here.
It’s not that Zerzan is using language, but the sort of language he’s using that’s the problem. His argument is that language, and symbolic representation in general (in such forms as art and ritual), are inferior ways of experiencing the world to that of direct sensory and sensual experience and that symbolic representation serves to encourage separation, dominance, pathological culture and the like.
But to make the argument, he uses sentences like: “The constant urge or quest for the transcendent testifies that the hegemony of absence is a cultural constant.” And he commits the mortal sin of using the verb “obtain” in its archaic sense of “to prevail” instead of its near-universal modern use of “to gain possession of”:
Writing like this, abstract and academic and full of ten-dollar words, is elitist—only appealing to that percentage of the literate percentage of the population who are practiced in juggling abstract concepts and archaicisms. And it’s absurd in the context of his argument, which in part is that the more abstract language becomes the more it becomes inherently fantastic, dishonest, and mentally domineering.
He’s got a term-paper-writer’s lack of confidence in just saying what he thinks, too. He’s always quoting obscure authorities, who most of the time simply appear somewhere to voice a thought that coincides with the point Zerzan is making, only to vanish again without another mention. In the 16-page essay, we’re introduced to Sloan, Morris, Freud, Debord, Shreeve, Goethe, Kant, Levinas, Sagan, Durkheim, White, Frye, Geertz, Cohen, Malinowski, Wynn, Perry, Rorty, Werner, Blake, Coan, Drummond, Thomas, Marcuse, Howes, Lévi-Strauss, Eliade, Foster, Peterson, Goodall, Mead, Hegel, Vendler, Morgan, Chomsky, Lieberman, von Glasersfeld, Hirn, Miller, Adorno, Kristeva, Knight, Cohen, Parkin, Reinach, Cassirer, Gamble, Douglas, Goodman, Ingold, Waters, Tudge, Horkheimer, McFarland, and Lomas. And most of these show up just to make a single observation, for example:
That’s the beginning and end for von Glasersfeld. He wonders what Zerzan wonders, so Zerzan quotes him. I’d be happier if Zerzan would just stick to telling us what’s going on in his wonderings, and save the quoting of outside authorities for when they’re actually doing research and uncovering facts that I might want to look up some day.
Instead, some of the most pivotal assertions in his account are left as simple assertions (or harmonic quotes from his stable of dropped names), and some relatively unimportant points are referenced but are hardly made more believable thereby (“the Bushmen… can see four moons of Jupiter with the unaided eye,” “telepathic communication among the Kung in Africa”).
Other eternal philosophical debating points are treated as having already been solved and concluded—“there are no non-sensory conscious states,” Zerzan informs us. I had money on the other team and didn’t think the last seconds had ticked off the clock yet.
Aside from this, part of my distaste is that I just can’t buy the whole unabomber-as-hero scenario. I tried, I’m sorry to admit. I read his manifesto and I still have some admiration for it, but, dude, the guy killed and maimed people with mail bombs. Gotta factor that in, I say.
I may be reading from biased or corrupted sources here, but it seems like that whole primitivist angle was Kaczynski’s after-the-fact justification for what he really thought was important—blowing people up.
If you’ve got to kill off secretaries, professors, pilots, and geeks to usher in the primitivist paradise, that’s a little too much blood for me. Besides, I think I’m on the hit list somewhere, so count me out.
Not Zerzan, though. When the manifesto came out, primitivists everywhere thought “woah, he’s one of us” and then scrambled to figure out whether or not this was a good thing. Most kept quiet, suspecting that Kaczynski would be an embarrassment. Some, though, came to embrace him, and none more fondly than John Zerzan.
In “Whose Unabomber?” (1995), he’s taking his first steps in that direction, but is still hedging his bets:
(That's the source of that “little Eichmanns” quip that got Ward Churchill in so much trouble later on.) By 1997 (“He Means It—Do You?”), Zerzan has stopped being wishy-washy:
Oh, I hope not. I have a hunch that the end of this long nightmare isn’t going to come about by idolizing or emulating Mr. Kaczynski. That’s the trick, you see. Figuring out—once you, too, have the insight of the true primitivist believer and understand the urgency of the situation—what to do next.
As far as I can tell, that’s another one of those open questions. And it’s not getting any less open the more Zerzan I read. The book that helps close that question will be a useful book in a way that Zerzan’s isn’t.
Zerzan’s literary form is typically the academic-styled manifesto, the short screed, and the interview—and some of these have been published as collections, one being Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization.
Primitivism, in summary, starts with the observation that people have been civilized or domesticated or what-have-you for only the last 10% or so of the time we’ve been on the planet—so civilization isn’t a necessary part of being human, just what we happen to be up to these days. Next comes a critical examination of civilization with an eye to answering the question: are we better off now, or were we better off then (hint: then). Lastly comes advocating a new organization of society that discards the pathology of civilization.
Despite Zerzan’s prominence and his years of speculating, exploring and theorizing in these areas, I’ve never much enjoyed his writings.
This book doesn’t make it any easier. First off, the publisher has (understandably) tried to take advantage of Zerzan’s notoriety—lots of play on the whole Unabomber/Seattle connection. The front cover blurb has a reviewer calling John Zerzan “the most important philosopher of our time. All the rest of us are building on his foundation.” That’s a bit of an overstatement, and makes me suspect that he’s got more of a fan base than a school of critical inquiry.
Essay #1 in the collection is “The Failure of Symbolic Thought”. Part of what makes it hard to swallow is that it is genuinely, thoroughly radical. Zerzan isn’t just an anarchist—he wants more than the dissolution of the state or of capitalism. And he’s not just a luddite—pre-industrial just isn’t “pre” enough for him. He’s even a little far out for the hard core primitivist crowd. He thinks we took a wrong turn even before civilization, before agriculture. Symbolic language itself was a fuck-up.
I’m not saying he’s wrong. It’s an intriguing hypothesis and I think it might be supportable, but it’s not intuitive or easy. More to the point, if you’re going to argue it, you’re going to need to be clear, thorough, and intellectually honest. Zerzan isn’t up to it.
I want to avoid the cheap irony of saying something like “how can Zerzan be arguing that language is so bad for us when he’s using language to make the argument” because it really is cheap and doesn’t say much—like the whole “hey, look, it’s a luddite website—snort” joke. But, there’s a kernel of truth here.
It’s not that Zerzan is using language, but the sort of language he’s using that’s the problem. His argument is that language, and symbolic representation in general (in such forms as art and ritual), are inferior ways of experiencing the world to that of direct sensory and sensual experience and that symbolic representation serves to encourage separation, dominance, pathological culture and the like.
But to make the argument, he uses sentences like: “The constant urge or quest for the transcendent testifies that the hegemony of absence is a cultural constant.” And he commits the mortal sin of using the verb “obtain” in its archaic sense of “to prevail” instead of its near-universal modern use of “to gain possession of”:
Either the non-symbolizing health that once obtained, in all its dimensions, or madness and death.
Writing like this, abstract and academic and full of ten-dollar words, is elitist—only appealing to that percentage of the literate percentage of the population who are practiced in juggling abstract concepts and archaicisms. And it’s absurd in the context of his argument, which in part is that the more abstract language becomes the more it becomes inherently fantastic, dishonest, and mentally domineering.
He’s got a term-paper-writer’s lack of confidence in just saying what he thinks, too. He’s always quoting obscure authorities, who most of the time simply appear somewhere to voice a thought that coincides with the point Zerzan is making, only to vanish again without another mention. In the 16-page essay, we’re introduced to Sloan, Morris, Freud, Debord, Shreeve, Goethe, Kant, Levinas, Sagan, Durkheim, White, Frye, Geertz, Cohen, Malinowski, Wynn, Perry, Rorty, Werner, Blake, Coan, Drummond, Thomas, Marcuse, Howes, Lévi-Strauss, Eliade, Foster, Peterson, Goodall, Mead, Hegel, Vendler, Morgan, Chomsky, Lieberman, von Glasersfeld, Hirn, Miller, Adorno, Kristeva, Knight, Cohen, Parkin, Reinach, Cassirer, Gamble, Douglas, Goodman, Ingold, Waters, Tudge, Horkheimer, McFarland, and Lomas. And most of these show up just to make a single observation, for example:
In 1976, von Glasersfeld wondered “whether, at some future time, it will still seem so obvious that language has enhanced the survival of life on this planet.”
That’s the beginning and end for von Glasersfeld. He wonders what Zerzan wonders, so Zerzan quotes him. I’d be happier if Zerzan would just stick to telling us what’s going on in his wonderings, and save the quoting of outside authorities for when they’re actually doing research and uncovering facts that I might want to look up some day.
Instead, some of the most pivotal assertions in his account are left as simple assertions (or harmonic quotes from his stable of dropped names), and some relatively unimportant points are referenced but are hardly made more believable thereby (“the Bushmen… can see four moons of Jupiter with the unaided eye,” “telepathic communication among the Kung in Africa”).
Other eternal philosophical debating points are treated as having already been solved and concluded—“there are no non-sensory conscious states,” Zerzan informs us. I had money on the other team and didn’t think the last seconds had ticked off the clock yet.
Aside from this, part of my distaste is that I just can’t buy the whole unabomber-as-hero scenario. I tried, I’m sorry to admit. I read his manifesto and I still have some admiration for it, but, dude, the guy killed and maimed people with mail bombs. Gotta factor that in, I say.
I may be reading from biased or corrupted sources here, but it seems like that whole primitivist angle was Kaczynski’s after-the-fact justification for what he really thought was important—blowing people up.
If you’ve got to kill off secretaries, professors, pilots, and geeks to usher in the primitivist paradise, that’s a little too much blood for me. Besides, I think I’m on the hit list somewhere, so count me out.
Not Zerzan, though. When the manifesto came out, primitivists everywhere thought “woah, he’s one of us” and then scrambled to figure out whether or not this was a good thing. Most kept quiet, suspecting that Kaczynski would be an embarrassment. Some, though, came to embrace him, and none more fondly than John Zerzan.
In “Whose Unabomber?” (1995), he’s taking his first steps in that direction, but is still hedging his bets:
…the mailing of explosive devices intended for
the agents who are engineering the present
catastrophe is too random. Children, mail
carriers, and others could easily be killed.
Even if one granted the legitimacy of striking
at the high-tech horror show by terrorizing
its indespensable architects, collateral harm
is not justifiable…
The concept of justice should not be
overlooked in considering the Unabomber
phenomenon. In fact, except for his targets,
when have the many little Eichmanns who are
preparing the Brave New World ever been called
to account?… Is it unethical to try to stop
those whose contributions are bringing an
unprecedented assault on life?
(That's the source of that “little Eichmanns” quip that got Ward Churchill in so much trouble later on.) By 1997 (“He Means It—Do You?”), Zerzan has stopped being wishy-washy:
Enter the Unabomber and a new line is being
drawn. This time the bohemian schiz-fluxers,
Green yuppies, hobbyist anarcho-journalists,
condescending organizers of the poor, hip
nihilo-aesthetes and all the other
“anarchists” who thought their pretentious
pastimes would go on unchallenged indefinitely
—well, it’s time to pick which side you’re on.
It may be that here also is a Rubicon from
which there will be no turning back.
Some, no doubt, would prefer to wait for a
perfect victim. Many would like to unlearn
what they know of the invasive and
unchallenged violence generated everywhere by
the prevailing order—in order to condemn the
Unabomber’s counter-terror.
But here is the person and the challenge
before us.
Anarchists! One more effort if you would be
enemies of this long nightmare!
Oh, I hope not. I have a hunch that the end of this long nightmare isn’t going to come about by idolizing or emulating Mr. Kaczynski. That’s the trick, you see. Figuring out—once you, too, have the insight of the true primitivist believer and understand the urgency of the situation—what to do next.
As far as I can tell, that’s another one of those open questions. And it’s not getting any less open the more Zerzan I read. The book that helps close that question will be a useful book in a way that Zerzan’s isn’t.
January 6, 2008
John Zerzan is a hero of mine- first of all, he's unapologetically cranky, in a lovable kind of way. His scholarship is a little- um- unconventional at times but he hits it on the head most of the time if you ever think civilization is- well, sick. He has a wonderful way of turning the idea of time on its ear. Read him, read him now. Or don't.
December 19, 2020
Freud said, “civilization is something which was imposed on a resisting minority which understood how to obtain possession of the means to power and coercion.” Thomas Wynn uncovered evidence of humans navigating around hundreds of miles of open water in boats 800,000 years ago. We know that people were using fire to cook 1.9 million years ago. Clive Ponting showed that every civilization injured the health of its environment. Laurens van der Post said the natives of the Kalahari Desert were “far kinder than any civilization was.” Max Weber wrote about loss of meaning and immediacy in civilization. John says there has been no evidence at all of organized violence before agriculture. “None of the cannibal or headhunting groups – and certainly not the Aztecs – were true hunter-gatherers.” John saw the long pre-state period before that as lives of anarchism and anti-authoritarianism. Instead of lives nasty, brutish and short as Hobbes said, pre-state lives were filled with “leisure, intimacy with nature, sensual wisdom, sexual equality and health”. We know this by studying present day foraging people and interpreting archaeological digs. Meanwhile, Descartes wrote that “we have to become the masters and possessors of nature.”
Today we can’t find food, grow our own food - even work on our car or build a radio set anymore. Euclid developed geometry for what? Geometry literally means land measuring. Derrick Jensen in conversation with John here says, “Not only do we have to remember or relearn how to live sustainably, but we have to figure out how to deal with those forces that right now are destroying all those who live sustainably.” In the May 1968 uprising, John says the state found itself helpless. There was a flood in Pavlov’s basement and his dogs “forgot all their training in a blink of the eye.” So, there is hope for the human race as well. Art Time: Mark Rothko was an anarchist. Barnett Newman was a utopian primitivist. Clyfford Still was also an anarchist (I love his stuff) and interested in Kropotkin’s work. Agriculture takes more organic matter out of the soil than it puts back in.
Let’s look at Star Trek. Star Trek is an anti-nature fantasy about a sterile hierarchy where no one creates trash or dirt, cleans floors or walls, changes sheets, or grows food. No one cares that nature doesn’t exist. Cracks however are appearing in our culture elsewhere: Terminator 2 shows a world being taken out by technology. When we were little, you’d hear questions like, “Why did it take so long for humans to start agriculture?” Now scholars ask, “Why did they ever do it?” Scholars are finding that humans one-million years ago were just as smart as ourselves. John is an anarchist who follows “anarcho-primitivism” which states society is pathological and humanity took a wrong turn with the development of sedentary agriculture based on hierarchy and exploiting the earth.
John says, “opposition today is anarchist or it is non-existent.” John considers himself Mr. Anarchist so here he is setting up the race with his car already in 1st position. Anarcho-syndicalists, International Socialists, Steady-Staters, effective Quakers and Mennonites, oppressed minorities, none of these people exist if they don’t already openly first self-identify as anarchist. John keeps calling all things pre-state as “prehistory” even though he knows the remarkable disservice he is doing by pretending pre-state people (and by extension, non-state people today) have no history. John likes taking pieces of activists more beloved and respected than him. On page 10 here he takes a piece of Noam, and in John’s screed called, Why Hope? In which John relentlessly attacks Chris Hedges and his once biggest fan Derrick Jensen for not defending black bloc violence. John has zero language credentials and yet has no problem taking out Noam on language with zero evidence. Noam’s crime was apparently calling human language “natural”; in opposition to Philip Lieberman’s thoughts in, “On the Origins of Language”? How could upstart Noam disagree with the ridiculously famous Philip Lieberman?
John Zerzan is to the eco-philosophy movement what Brian Jones, Syd Barrett, Peter Green, and Brian Wilson were to music: they were brilliant and influential to begin with and then went on an unexplained mental walkabout which killed their career, in John’s case, with the 2015 vanity release of “Why Hope?”
Today we can’t find food, grow our own food - even work on our car or build a radio set anymore. Euclid developed geometry for what? Geometry literally means land measuring. Derrick Jensen in conversation with John here says, “Not only do we have to remember or relearn how to live sustainably, but we have to figure out how to deal with those forces that right now are destroying all those who live sustainably.” In the May 1968 uprising, John says the state found itself helpless. There was a flood in Pavlov’s basement and his dogs “forgot all their training in a blink of the eye.” So, there is hope for the human race as well. Art Time: Mark Rothko was an anarchist. Barnett Newman was a utopian primitivist. Clyfford Still was also an anarchist (I love his stuff) and interested in Kropotkin’s work. Agriculture takes more organic matter out of the soil than it puts back in.
Let’s look at Star Trek. Star Trek is an anti-nature fantasy about a sterile hierarchy where no one creates trash or dirt, cleans floors or walls, changes sheets, or grows food. No one cares that nature doesn’t exist. Cracks however are appearing in our culture elsewhere: Terminator 2 shows a world being taken out by technology. When we were little, you’d hear questions like, “Why did it take so long for humans to start agriculture?” Now scholars ask, “Why did they ever do it?” Scholars are finding that humans one-million years ago were just as smart as ourselves. John is an anarchist who follows “anarcho-primitivism” which states society is pathological and humanity took a wrong turn with the development of sedentary agriculture based on hierarchy and exploiting the earth.
John says, “opposition today is anarchist or it is non-existent.” John considers himself Mr. Anarchist so here he is setting up the race with his car already in 1st position. Anarcho-syndicalists, International Socialists, Steady-Staters, effective Quakers and Mennonites, oppressed minorities, none of these people exist if they don’t already openly first self-identify as anarchist. John keeps calling all things pre-state as “prehistory” even though he knows the remarkable disservice he is doing by pretending pre-state people (and by extension, non-state people today) have no history. John likes taking pieces of activists more beloved and respected than him. On page 10 here he takes a piece of Noam, and in John’s screed called, Why Hope? In which John relentlessly attacks Chris Hedges and his once biggest fan Derrick Jensen for not defending black bloc violence. John has zero language credentials and yet has no problem taking out Noam on language with zero evidence. Noam’s crime was apparently calling human language “natural”; in opposition to Philip Lieberman’s thoughts in, “On the Origins of Language”? How could upstart Noam disagree with the ridiculously famous Philip Lieberman?
John Zerzan is to the eco-philosophy movement what Brian Jones, Syd Barrett, Peter Green, and Brian Wilson were to music: they were brilliant and influential to begin with and then went on an unexplained mental walkabout which killed their career, in John’s case, with the 2015 vanity release of “Why Hope?”
November 21, 2008
Another wonderful eye-opener that may change your entire worldview. Zerzan argues that mankind lived happily for nearly a couple of million years without "technology," "agriculture," and "civilization," and makes a strong point that almost every human technological advance (beyond primitive tools) has served to fracture society, create disparity, increase alienation and lead to a less fulfilling life. He's not even a fan of language! Very interesting.
May 22, 2007
great, now i'm on the watch list. read it if you can find it, tonto.
Read
September 4, 2021dehumanizing, self-undermining, fraught with sloppy sentences and bad ideas. 'I won't take time here to go into the evidence and the arguments...' pretty much sums it up.
the myopic idiocies peddled by zerzan never cease to irritate.
the myopic idiocies peddled by zerzan never cease to irritate.
September 29, 2017
As a critique and analytical tool, anarcho-primitivism is certainly very interesting. Or should I have used anti-civ? Because I'm still not entirely sure what exactly is the supposed to be the real difference; maybe practice? The difference between post-civ and anti-civ is much clearer, the former not wholly rejecting technology, and figuring out ways of how to use it best post-collapse.
Nevertheless, as a prescriptive and essentialist ideology -which many primmies take it as despite Zerzan's opposition to even referring to it as an ideology-, ''a resounding no'' to anarcho-primitivism (to quote one of Zerzan's most well-known replies to whether domestication ever did us any good).
Presently it's difficult for me to determine if Zerzan was being selective in relation to the anthropological representations of pre-domesticated peoples, whose lives have been generally harmonious and healthy, contrary to popular belief; but they've been propped up as examples of what I guess Zerzan thinks we could go back to, albeit obviously not *exactly* like that. And herein lies the problem: the sinister vagueness of which Zerzan has been accused of is never really resolved. What he envisions as an-prim society, for lack of a better term, can't merely be a''return''; this would mean the effacing of the entire planet and constructing a new world. It seems that this irony escapes him when he starts bemoaning nihilism and postmodernism, which, to him, might as well be used interchangeably. Murray Bookchin deals with the anthropological roots of an-prim (and apparently takes a jab at Zerzan) in Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism, so I suppose if anyone's particularly interested in that and not all that satisfied with Zerzan's name-dropping, it must surely be of some interest.
The most valuable insights have to do with a critique and history of the reification of life, as a consequence of symbolization, naturally starting with the concept of time. In that respect, Time and Its Discontents is arguably the best essay in this book.
There's discontents & discontentment with things and 'thingified' others, such as Star Trek, postmodernism (predictably), et alia, and it shouldn't come as a surprise that Zerzan's deeply concerned with alienation which permeates particularly the most 'civilized' of cultures. The book's generally insightful and thought-provoking. It's only a shame it doesn't seem to be taken very seriously in anarchist circles (and elsewhere! especially), because of a tendency to be maximalist that can plainly be seen in Zerzan himself. I don't know. It opened new avenues of perspective for me.
Personally, the question(s) anarcho-primitivism asks remain more interesting than any plan or idea for the future, which seem to involve a kind of fantastic reversibility of time (all the while wanting to do away with what has become reified time), of human collective consciousness. Was civilization a horrible mistake?
Recommended especially to rabid techies for whom technology is somehow neutral, and anyone else who's willing to have their cage rattled a bit.
Nevertheless, as a prescriptive and essentialist ideology -which many primmies take it as despite Zerzan's opposition to even referring to it as an ideology-, ''a resounding no'' to anarcho-primitivism (to quote one of Zerzan's most well-known replies to whether domestication ever did us any good).
Presently it's difficult for me to determine if Zerzan was being selective in relation to the anthropological representations of pre-domesticated peoples, whose lives have been generally harmonious and healthy, contrary to popular belief; but they've been propped up as examples of what I guess Zerzan thinks we could go back to, albeit obviously not *exactly* like that. And herein lies the problem: the sinister vagueness of which Zerzan has been accused of is never really resolved. What he envisions as an-prim society, for lack of a better term, can't merely be a''return''; this would mean the effacing of the entire planet and constructing a new world. It seems that this irony escapes him when he starts bemoaning nihilism and postmodernism, which, to him, might as well be used interchangeably. Murray Bookchin deals with the anthropological roots of an-prim (and apparently takes a jab at Zerzan) in Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism, so I suppose if anyone's particularly interested in that and not all that satisfied with Zerzan's name-dropping, it must surely be of some interest.
The most valuable insights have to do with a critique and history of the reification of life, as a consequence of symbolization, naturally starting with the concept of time. In that respect, Time and Its Discontents is arguably the best essay in this book.
There's discontents & discontentment with things and 'thingified' others, such as Star Trek, postmodernism (predictably), et alia, and it shouldn't come as a surprise that Zerzan's deeply concerned with alienation which permeates particularly the most 'civilized' of cultures. The book's generally insightful and thought-provoking. It's only a shame it doesn't seem to be taken very seriously in anarchist circles (and elsewhere! especially), because of a tendency to be maximalist that can plainly be seen in Zerzan himself. I don't know. It opened new avenues of perspective for me.
Personally, the question(s) anarcho-primitivism asks remain more interesting than any plan or idea for the future, which seem to involve a kind of fantastic reversibility of time (all the while wanting to do away with what has become reified time), of human collective consciousness. Was civilization a horrible mistake?
Recommended especially to rabid techies for whom technology is somehow neutral, and anyone else who's willing to have their cage rattled a bit.
March 16, 2024
El libro es una colección de ensayos, conferencias y entrevistas dadas por uno de los personajes más interesantes que ha dado la intelectualidad anarquista estadounidense. Su visión crítica del agotamiento del sistema simbólico, cuyo mayor exponente es el capitalismo tardío, está atravesado de planteamientos ecologistas, de reivindicación de género y derechos civiles y la lucha contra los dos grandes pilares que, según él, nos llevaron a esta inmensa crisis: el sistema simbólico de representación (el lenguaje y sus ramificaciones) y el tiempo como concepto, como parte del problema.
El libro es fascinante y Zerzan escribe de una forma amena y atrapante. Tal vez el concepto se agota un poco por ser una compilación y en algún momento sentí que estaba leyendo por segunda o tercera vez el mismo concepto con diferentes palabras. Pero está bien, más si nos ubicamos en la distancia de tiempo que hubo en la escritura de cada no de estos textos y, que además, todos pertenecen a su período de producción que va de 1992 a 2001, previo al atentado a las Torres Gemelas.
¿Qué rescato de este libro? Que comparte fuertes conceptos con las teorías de Mark Fisher y Franco "Bifo" Berardi. Además, estos textos fueron escritos cuando se estaba conformando el grupo aceleracionsta y Zerzan, por haber nacido en Salem en 1943, es un precursor directo. Su experiencia de vida de primera fuente, de haber sido parte, testigo y víctima indirecta del fracaso del hippismo le da a su testimonio una relevancia capital. A esto hay que sumarle algunas notas de color muy interesantes, como que por ejemplo trabó amistad con Unabomber.
La lectura de este tipo de libros se vuelve cada vez más urgente para rever qué ocurrió en el camino para llegar a este desastre de individualismo, enfermedades mentales y de otro tipo que antes no existían (¿Cuándo se popularizó el stress, el cáncer y el Prozac?), consumismo vacío y el fin de las relaciones por la captación de la psiquis por redes sociales y estímulos breves.
Ojalá, quien quiera que lea estas palabras, busque e interiorice su cabeza con los pensamientos de Zerzan. Es necesario.
El libro es fascinante y Zerzan escribe de una forma amena y atrapante. Tal vez el concepto se agota un poco por ser una compilación y en algún momento sentí que estaba leyendo por segunda o tercera vez el mismo concepto con diferentes palabras. Pero está bien, más si nos ubicamos en la distancia de tiempo que hubo en la escritura de cada no de estos textos y, que además, todos pertenecen a su período de producción que va de 1992 a 2001, previo al atentado a las Torres Gemelas.
¿Qué rescato de este libro? Que comparte fuertes conceptos con las teorías de Mark Fisher y Franco "Bifo" Berardi. Además, estos textos fueron escritos cuando se estaba conformando el grupo aceleracionsta y Zerzan, por haber nacido en Salem en 1943, es un precursor directo. Su experiencia de vida de primera fuente, de haber sido parte, testigo y víctima indirecta del fracaso del hippismo le da a su testimonio una relevancia capital. A esto hay que sumarle algunas notas de color muy interesantes, como que por ejemplo trabó amistad con Unabomber.
La lectura de este tipo de libros se vuelve cada vez más urgente para rever qué ocurrió en el camino para llegar a este desastre de individualismo, enfermedades mentales y de otro tipo que antes no existían (¿Cuándo se popularizó el stress, el cáncer y el Prozac?), consumismo vacío y el fin de las relaciones por la captación de la psiquis por redes sociales y estímulos breves.
Ojalá, quien quiera que lea estas palabras, busque e interiorice su cabeza con los pensamientos de Zerzan. Es necesario.
June 30, 2019
This is a very well written book of essays (magazine pieces, interviews, etc.) by anarchist John Zerzan. Somewhat dated in its cultural/pop references (it only goes up till 2001), it nevertheless manages to communicate his central message. The Agricultural Revolution was really bad for us. Forget the mass production of food, and the formation of cities and countryside, it really was, Zerzan argues, a destructive influence on society. Oh, and technology is bad too. Its not that technology is bad per say, but it too has become a destructive influence on humanity and the larger society. He has a section on the Unabomber, whom he praises for his anti-technology, anti-civilization message, but denounces his violence towards others. However, he is not against violence towards things, graffitti, breaking windows, etc is ok if you're managing to get out your message. (---its not really that simplistic, sooo go read the book!) Anyway, it is a really enlightening book of writings that will open your eyes to our civilization, and all that it entails. I really recommend this book, even if, especially if you do not subscribe to its leanings/teachings. Enjoy!
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March 3, 2023'The hollowing out of the substance and texture of daily existence is being completed, a process intimately related to the near impossibility of experiencing the world with rhout technological mediation.'
May 13, 2014
Failing to finish the Introduction and two opening chapters (anti-time, really?), I felt I was running on less than empty. I certainly wasn't relating to the book's subtitle of The Pathology of Civilization, which is what I thought I would be getting.
Then a transcript of a speech against technology came along and I could hear Zerzan's authentic voice, minus the knowing and name-dropping. It was readable. And so I gleaned one jaw-dropping thought: the gap between machines and humans is shrinking, but not because machines are becoming more human...
Another skippable "composed" piece precedes the author in an easier conversation with Derrick Jensen. Zerzan draws an interesting parallel of the events then (1998) with those leading up to World War I. States were disintegrating and resorted to the well worn fallback of an external war to keep their cohesion. Zerzan claims that we wouldn't stand for that now. Well, 2001 and Bush's war on terror has proved him wrong.
Still, he also points out in the same piece that we need a return to something like the Zeitgeist of the 60s if we're to create something other than the deathly system we now inhabit, i.e. the one for war is the ultimate answer. That matches my thesis that the 60s were indeed the Golden Age. It's been all downhill since then. If we could get that back, this time we really won't trust anyone over the age of 30!
Pathology does finally rate an explicit mention: from the myriad physical diseases associated with domestication and agriculture; through industrial afflictions like cancer; to mental disorders. Zerzan mentions ADD. I could add ME ("it's not a disease" - Ricky Gervais), depression and alcoholism. Industrial medicine tries to treat them but when the heart and body are screaming one thing and the mind denies it, we have dis-ease.
And what is the one thing? That this civilisation is shit. It's sickening and murderous. We all know it deep down. Just a shame that the book couldn't put it in simpler language.
Then a transcript of a speech against technology came along and I could hear Zerzan's authentic voice, minus the knowing and name-dropping. It was readable. And so I gleaned one jaw-dropping thought: the gap between machines and humans is shrinking, but not because machines are becoming more human...
Another skippable "composed" piece precedes the author in an easier conversation with Derrick Jensen. Zerzan draws an interesting parallel of the events then (1998) with those leading up to World War I. States were disintegrating and resorted to the well worn fallback of an external war to keep their cohesion. Zerzan claims that we wouldn't stand for that now. Well, 2001 and Bush's war on terror has proved him wrong.
Still, he also points out in the same piece that we need a return to something like the Zeitgeist of the 60s if we're to create something other than the deathly system we now inhabit, i.e. the one for war is the ultimate answer. That matches my thesis that the 60s were indeed the Golden Age. It's been all downhill since then. If we could get that back, this time we really won't trust anyone over the age of 30!
Pathology does finally rate an explicit mention: from the myriad physical diseases associated with domestication and agriculture; through industrial afflictions like cancer; to mental disorders. Zerzan mentions ADD. I could add ME ("it's not a disease" - Ricky Gervais), depression and alcoholism. Industrial medicine tries to treat them but when the heart and body are screaming one thing and the mind denies it, we have dis-ease.
And what is the one thing? That this civilisation is shit. It's sickening and murderous. We all know it deep down. Just a shame that the book couldn't put it in simpler language.
December 6, 2007
This guy is fucking crazy! He is about as radical as they come and was friends with the unabomber. He only has an M.A. from some state college, but I love the unapologetic unflinching way that he writes, the way he throws ideas at you would put most Ph.D's to shame. Zerzan is very well read.
Zerzan was raised in a bohemian family, and he believes that technology has disfigured the earth. As an environmentalist myself I favor incremental change but this guy wants to return to the woods!
Read this if you want to read some really radical anarcho-primitivist theory, but please take it with a grain of salt.
Zerzan was raised in a bohemian family, and he believes that technology has disfigured the earth. As an environmentalist myself I favor incremental change but this guy wants to return to the woods!
Read this if you want to read some really radical anarcho-primitivist theory, but please take it with a grain of salt.
October 20, 2008
A great title to this collection of John's writings expanding upon his critiques of civilization, technology, symbolic thought, and post-modernism. While some essays snipe--Who Is Chomsky? and Why I Hate Star Trek for example--others are wonderful. Age of Grief examines our culture as one in mourning. "Postscript to a Future Primitive" shows some of his optimism. All around, well worthwhile, providing thought provoking ideas.
The academic writing style--with multiple quotes and re-phrasing of philosophers and other writer soemtimes in the same sentence--makes for slightly difficult reading.
The academic writing style--with multiple quotes and re-phrasing of philosophers and other writer soemtimes in the same sentence--makes for slightly difficult reading.
November 16, 2007
A nice idea, but nothing new is offered here. You also get the uneasy feeling that there is no love for humanity here. Having said that, i do believe that the rise of agriculture may very well have been a giant mistake. Don't read the essay on Star Trek cause it's just stupid.
Most interesting aspect: thought process behind the author's move from hippy to situationist to punk and finally primitive anarchist.
I can say, however, beware of deep ecology. It's a small step towards advocating genocide. Read this with a great deal of suspicion.
Most interesting aspect: thought process behind the author's move from hippy to situationist to punk and finally primitive anarchist.
I can say, however, beware of deep ecology. It's a small step towards advocating genocide. Read this with a great deal of suspicion.
March 4, 2008
Very interesting collection of Zerzan's essays on different aspect of contemporary Anarchist thinking. A really interesting essay especially re Abstract Expressionism' afiliations with Anarchism, with lot of excerpts of writings by the painters. A completely refreshing examination of the works and thinking of the artists, outside the massive structure that now encases them, built over a fifty year period.
August 18, 2008
Zerzan is exhausting--his books are the most densely annotated I have ever encountered--and I think one must necessarily take his arguments with a shaker of kosher salt, but the spirit of his dissent and his dreams for an impossible future are as inspiring as anything I have ever found-- his unwillingness to compromise is hard to shake off.
July 25, 2011
Despite disappearing into occasional rhetorical black holes, the guts of this anthology are right on.
Of some significance to people not explicitly aligned with (or opposed to) AP: an amusing (dubious) anecdote where Zerzan essentially lays the blame for the evaporation of a militarized anti-Vietnam contingent on Ken Kesey and a harmonica.
Of some significance to people not explicitly aligned with (or opposed to) AP: an amusing (dubious) anecdote where Zerzan essentially lays the blame for the evaporation of a militarized anti-Vietnam contingent on Ken Kesey and a harmonica.
August 4, 2012
i mostly agree with him (especially on "the unabomber"). but a few essays were, shall we say, a slog. which is interesting as he (rightly) criticizes the pomo guys (derrida, hakim bey, et al) for poor writing. as he should.
i found his autobiographical piece (the longest in the book), the most interesting.
a very interesting and provocative thinker.
i found his autobiographical piece (the longest in the book), the most interesting.
a very interesting and provocative thinker.
November 9, 2012
The brooding, grotesque and narcissistic ramblings of Zerzan keep my attention in the same way that the songs of Christian Death might, or how I might stare at length at some BFA student's installation of bloody dildo mobiles or American Flag diapers. I "get it", I think. I nod my head. I might even laugh. But ultimately I feel exhausted and miserable afterwards.
December 11, 2021
Re-read, 12/2021: These essays are just as engaging and thought-provoking the second time around.
A fantastic collection of Zerzan's writing, running the gamut from the scholarly and highly academic to the personal and entertaining. The ideas presented here are serious food for thought about the problems of covilization, and their possible solutions.
A fantastic collection of Zerzan's writing, running the gamut from the scholarly and highly academic to the personal and entertaining. The ideas presented here are serious food for thought about the problems of covilization, and their possible solutions.
Currently reading
February 5, 2010This is the most radical book I've ever gotten into. I've had some understanding of the downside of literacy for some time. Zerzan goes much further showing the evils of agriculture, mathematics, civilization, and and symbolic thought itself.
February 16, 2011
Unbalanced philosopher talks talk.
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