Aren’t many going to die if the Technosystem is dismantled?
What if the system does not collapse?
I insist, should I get rid of my phone and go live in the mountains?
How will life be like if the technological system stops?
If you are against the technology, why do you use computers?
What opinion do you have of the left?
Technological society’s education
The search engines are monitoring you
Are you a cult, do you believe in God, or do you have a spiritual dimension?
We present this publication attempting to answer the questions that first arise around anti-technology and also with the aim of raising awareness of the subject.
We recommend you read these texts in the woods, where the fanzine and we belong.
Make as many copies as you want, send it to anyone to whom it may interest.
Anti-technology is a non-profit publication, the price, if any, can’t exceed printing costs.
Warning! We didn’t find any “native” speaker to proofread the english version.
A rabid dog doesn’t stop being dangerous simply because you change its collar, you can’t educate, tame or cure the dog’s rabies. We can look back and remember when the dog was good and friendly, but that does not solve the problem, we can look ahead and imagine how nice it will be when the dog stops having rabies. But if instead of being distracted by the past or the future we look to the crude present then the best decision is to kill the dog as soon as possible.
* * * * *
It’s not normal.
You always suspected there was something in the world that didn’t quite work, that something was wrong. Your instinct tells you but your mind is unable to fix it, is something elusive that consistently eludes any attempt of identification. Sometimes you lie to yourself telling yourself you’ve already found it, but soon see that it doesn’t explain the real root of the world’s problems. Is it a political issue? Social? Environmental? Philosophical? Genetic? Spiritual? You scanned the philosophical, sociological, political, and religious mysticism, and did not fill that void, something doesn’t fit, and you know it must be huge. The answers are half answers, the proposals don’t work and there’s still something missing, something important and fundamental, above all, a concrete explanation for what is really happening, for what doesn’t fit.
Overcrowding in large cities, the destruction and irreversible modification of nature, human life being highly controlled and regulated, factories, offices, universities, governments, banks and all that make them work are serving the Technosystem, technology and technique, they’re chained to it. Technology cuts our freedoms, destroys our nature and makes happiness impossible, it’s like the gold bag that drowns the sailor because he’s unable to let it go. Haven’t you ever felt that life was meaningless? It’s because of technology, with it there is no motivation to live a meaningful life, only an empty and robotic life. Our life is not life, it’s just a choreography driven by technological progress, a general disenchantment that weak personalities fill with addictions, sexual aberrations or the most disparate hobbies, habits and ideologies. People spend a lifetime looking for the perfect love, the perfect job, the ideal method or the ideal partner to bear the unbearable, they always seem to be about to get it, but as the donkey behind the carrot they never get it, the maximum one can aspire to today is to self deception.
It’s not exactly technology itself but the whole technological system of and technique. Our reality, our day to day, is given by the Technosystem’s needs. If we live in overcrowded cities, destroy the natural “resources” of the world, pollute the environment or have a life that is highly regulated and monitored it’s solely because the Technosistem requires it to progress further. Our life and our freedom are subject to the progress and continuity of the Technosystem, any other issues are secondary even if this goes against us. The Technosystem disables or destroys whatever it takes to continue its course, we must highlight its need to destroy freedom, animals and the environment to keep going. We can say that in our society don’t matter other consequences than the survival and expansion of the Technosystem. Think about issues like nuclear power, the protection of natural areas, indigenous rights, the right to privacy, the whaling ban or GMOs. All that is trampled upon without hesitation as soon as it obstructs the Technosystem’s progress. The example of the whales is paradigmatic because even while being in serious danger of extinction it’s still allowed to hunt them for scientific purposes. It has nothing to do with left or right, with communism, globalization or democracy is, quite simply, that the Technosystem, technology and technique have priority, and nothing else matters.
One might think that the Technosystem is really “greed” or the endless desire to get rich of some large companies and powerful people who will not stop in front of anything or anyone in order to make more money. The difference is that the desire to get rich without limit has been part of human attitude since long before the rise of the Technosystem, this attitude has undoubtedly created great pain and discomfort but this has always been proportional to the technology and technique available. Therefore in the past the plans of these big corporations and powerful people could only have the intensity that the technology and technique of the time allowed them.
At present and due to advances in technology and tecnique, corporations and organizations have expanded their influence, power and consequences to all corners of the world and have multiplied exponentially the unpleasant effects that their attitudes cause. Victims who formerly could fight or fly in front of those attitudes now have no option or if they do it has been greatly depleted primarily because the Technosystem, technology and technique always play against the individual or small community and for the large company or organization, whether public or private. Eliminating the Technosystem certainly would not eliminate completely “greed” or these endless desire to get rich, but its capacity, performance and power radio would be greatly diminished.
The Technosystem can be viewed as an amplifier. Greed above mentioned, destruction of nature, control and intense regulation of our lives, depending on decisions made by people who we do not know and that we can’t influence, the emergence of mental illness, etc.. are amplified exponentially by the “advances” in technology that either make destruction and control easier, or alienate us further and make us more dependent on the Technosystem. Many unhappy people try to rebel and attack the problems separately, which are many, however we believe that what must be attacked is the amplifier of these problems, i.e. the Technosystem, technology and technique, as they are the tools that make them really dangerous.
Modern agriculture, rapid transportation, telecommunications, electricity, engines, firearms, psychology, psychiatry and cheap energy among others enable the Power Elite to destroy nature and control life, not only they can do it, they need to do it more and more for the Technosystem‘s further progress.
The destruction of wild nature and the control and regulation of human life are proportional to the available technology. See for example the case of the German Democratic Republic: Under that political regime life was highly regulated and monitored by political causes, but thanks to the technology of the moment. If the STASI had disposed of modern technology (like video surveillance cameras at low cost to extend throughout the city, computer files containing all information that they wanted, movement control of the population by mobile phone, satellite images or internet to name a few) the life of the citizens of that area would have been much more regulated and controlled than it was. If the STASI did not have a video camera on every corner or in every house was because it was technically impossible, such technology was not sufficiently developed, it was too expensive and difficult to centralize. If they did not have a computer scanning all emails of the population was because people did not have email, if they had lines of guys opening all mail coming in and out of the area was because a machine capable of “reading”, scanning, saving, and searching key words in written communications didn’t exist: if there had been one they would have used it. Therefore the intensity of the control of the population in East Germany was more subject to the available technology of the moment than to the political characteristics of the area. Clearly the political will of those who ruled or the political model they followed influenced the desire of wanting to or needing to control the population, but it did not matter much how great that desire or need was since that could only be carried out it in terms of the available technology, therefore technology influenced more the control of the population than politics.
Similarly if the Spanish who went to the Americas in search of gold had had engines, the ability to build roads and bulldozers, the destruction of nature in America and of its indigenous peoples would have been exponentially greater. The destruction was equal to the available technology, if more wasn’t destroyed was because technically it couldn’t be done, not because they didn’t want to.
If the whole world opted for a political option the least controlling and destructive we would still be against the Technosystem, because at any time the political model could change and the technological tools and technology would be there to continue the destruction of nature and the control of population.
We have presented examples of nondemocratic countries. That does not mean that democracy cancels the effect of the Technosystem, technology and technique in democratic countries. Currently the UK is developing what some Brits call the rise of the “Database State” a technological and technical progress that will enable the State to centralize and store large amounts of information about people’s life by creating a profile stored in huge computer databases to which “only the government will have access.” The information can range from websites visited by the person to dialed calls, medical records, purchases made by credit card or any other data that can be processed by a computer. All that unified in a single computer file. There is no doubt that the STASI would have loved to use these advances and that the only reason they didn’t use them was because they did not exist. If we speak of democracy we can also observe that the biggest destruction of nature, something unprecedented in human history, is being carried out by organizations or governments of democratic countries and their powerful elites.
The only notable feature of democracy is that it tends to destroy nature in a brutal way preferably outside its borders, but that doesn’t mean that inside it leaves it intact, much less.
In the case of communism or right-wing dictatorships we must waste no time showing the low esteem these schools of thought have for nature, as is public domain.
If the Technosystem has not destroyed us is because it needs us. It needs the lower class to perform the more tedious tasks, the middle class to control the work of the lower class and to develop technical and skilled tasks, the upper class to control the lower and middle class in their work and the Power Elite to control the whole. Reversing the order of factors won’t alter the product, if anything, it will create a society that’s more or less efficient or more or less repressive, but we will still have the Technosystem.
Leave at Technosystem’s hands the task of solving the problems created by the same Technosystem makes no sense.
Yes, if you really care about numbers bear in mind that the more technology expands the more population will increase and with it the chances and catastrophic consequences of collapse. If the system collapses in two hundred years more people will die than if it collapsed now as population will continue to grow.
Because population will continue to rise according to the available food inevitably a time will come when our lives and especially our reproduction should be organized in a highly efficient manner. That means that the State, the Elite or whoever is in charge of the situation will decide, among many other things, if you can have children or not and how many you can have. To decide this, and to carry out its decision effectively our lives must then be highly controlled and regulated because otherwise people will circumvent these rules and measures of birth control will fail. We hold that a life as highly controlled, regulated and organized by third persons is inhumane, unnatural, and not worth living. Moreover, the irreversible estruction and modification of nature will continue to advance, which we also oppose.
Anti-technology is not an ideology to tell anyone how to live, also it’s not meant to design an ideal world. Its sole purpose is to halt and make step back the technological system as a whole.
Do what you want but it is totally irrelevant to this discussion if you have a mobile or not. The Technosystem has instilled in us that “we can change things with our consumption habits” but that’s nothing more than a fallacy. In the same way that the world’s water problems are not going to be solved if you quit showering, the technological problem will not be solved if you personally disconnect from it. Although, obviously, disconnecting will bring you many personal benefits.
Life without the technosystem will be hard and probably brutal since we lack all tradition and culture necessary to be prepared, we’ve been modeled to depend absolutely on the technosystem, but how will life be if we let the Technosystem continue expanding indefinitely? Life without Technosystem will be marked by two obvious facts: first people will live close to nature as it will provide food, and second the amplifying tools for the destruction of nature and for the control and regulation of life will be heavily depleted.
This is the question that often many make us.
They hear or read our discourse, and then, inevitably, the question arises.
So, why do you use computers?
And they think they have hit the nail on the head.
Five reasons would suffice as an answer.
Because we want.
Because we are homeopathic.
Because it is legitimate to use any means to oppose a system that will use any means to expand and destroy you.
Because we have no option to spread our message. We are like prisoners planning the collapse of the concentration camp with the tools that are in the same camp.
Because we are hypocrites, as are the scientists who develop biotechnology “for the good of humanity” playing God, the bankers who “are concerned about keeping the economy afloat” when in fact engaged in saving their own, the politicians who speak of “ensuring the common good” when only look after their own, “pacifist governments” who sell weapons by tons or transgenic laboratories who just want to “solve world hunger” when all they are going to achieve is to modify life, generate more food, and consequently more hungry people.
But those answers do not suffice. Why? Because it’s a trick question.
Especially if made by an anarchist conscious with the struggle against exploitation and domination of some humans over others.
But in any case, it’s a trick question.
Every society has a culture that individuals internalize to greater or lesser extent depending on the degree of integration over the collective and the degree of satisfaction that daily life activities, social organization and the individual’s function contribute to its members. Ours is a mediocre society, unable to meet our needs (even the most basic) without creating us new ones in the short and long term. The only thing required is obedience, conformity, passivity, stupidity and nonviolence.
No satisfactory at all. So one day, perhaps because we’ve thought, read books or viewed films or documentaries, or because we were looking on the internet, or simply because it happens to us, we become conscious of the scam. Then we acquire knowledge about the functioning of society in which we live that makes us fight it and try to find an alternative. The culture to which we belong clashes with the culture to which we want to belong, which causes a rupture. After that break, that tear, that impossible reconciliation with the world in which we are born, we try to create a new one that makes us happy and see as essential to break down the one that has made us become so miserable and cowardly.
Our culture is useless. However, all our day to day, all our routine, our livelihood, our social life, depend on civilization in one way or another. We have some specific tools within our society, not only to spread our ideas and our message but also for everything else. If we are to change our lives we have no choice but to eliminate what destroys us, because it will never allow us to be free, and create a new culture, an alternative to the one we refuse, one that provides the resources we need to achieve our aims. Those, indeed, who have decided to break with civilization entirely, usually are only successful when they have chosen to live with another culture outside of civilization, which has provided all necessary means to satisfy their needs.
The question, which comes mainly from leftist factions (anarchist or not), is malicious and mean, because it’s not only partial and poorly argued, it’s also hypocritical.
If not, we’ll try to make it to them, reactionaries.
Are the computers the left uses product of production systems organized horizontally, without the exploitation of some by others?
Was the production process controlled from the beginning so that even the miners, factory workers, etc.., had fair working conditions?
Even “alternative” cooperatives use products that have been obtained through the exploitation of people and animals worldwide, from the destruction of ecosystems and indigenous populations. See for example the issue of coltan, a mineral essential for the production of technological products that has led to the Democratic Republic of Congo into a war since 1998, let alone what John Zerzan says “at the end someone has to get in the mine, you don’t want to do it, I don’t want to do it, then who does it?” the answer is simple, someone to whom the misery caused by the Technosystem forces him. What reasons have those who are against war or exploitation to use a technology that has devastation as a prerequisite? There is no justice or ecology or anarchy throughout this process. So, why do they work to support these companies, why do they buy at the supermarket, why do they make use of electricity, drink tap water, buy shoes, write or ultimately lack a culture and society self-sufficient that enables them to produce everything they need without exploiting others? Is this the example they want to give us? Is this to be consistent and coherent?
Probably not.
So while we, the hypocrites, continue to live in this culture we will continue to make use of it, in all the cases where we find it convenient. And we will not give more explanations than those given in this answer. Because no one gives them to us.
Whatever the concept “left” may have meant in the past, when the world was forming as it is now and technological advances dazzled people so that no one could see the impact they had on life and liberty, we will focus on what we think it means today.
A lefty is all for progress. Furthermore, he encourages the State to intervene in or resolve all problems of the individual or the most important parts of his life. That is why a lefty will always be in favor of the Technosystem, technology, technique, industrialization, science and so on, although he enacts naive restrictions, ethics, and responsible uses of it.
With unions sold out, worker solidarity eradicated, a precarious present and future, seen how communist countries evolve in true dynasties and with social achievements being thrown overboard like ballast from a balloon, today, being a lefty has been relegated to something akin to following a religion with many rules regarding social behavior, organization, decision making and ways of proceeding of his followers.
Totally integrated with the Technosystem the sole purpose of leftism today is pure proselytism and its only function the cancellation of any group with the potential to change reality.
It is remarkable the watchdog role that develops with a particular interest in nobody protesting or trying to change things in ways not approved by the system. These methods such as collecting signatures, peaceful demonstrations, the piece of paper in the ballot box every X years, and above all nonviolence, have proven useless in achieving the revolutionary aims that allegedly pursue and have had the only effect of absorbing and channeling the hatred and anger that people have against the system and do it ways that do not involve any risks to it. Such practices have its ultimate expression in the “Free speech zones” set up in some events of the United States. These fenced areas, far from everything and packed with video surveillance are the spaces “reserved by the organization to protest.”
Leftist today are obsessed with everyone using non-violent methods against an extremely violent and well armed system, this amounts to a suicide, if not, ask the Jewish people whose pacifism in front of the Nazis almost completely exterminated them. As if this were not enough, leftist pacifists have created myths, like that the Vietnam War ended because the hippies sang songs in front of the White House, when in fact it ended because of the armed and violent actions of the Vietcong. Or that Gandhi achieved independence peacefully in India when in fact the British Empire, weakened after two world wars, knew that it could agree to his demands or face a popular and violent uprising. Or Martin Luther King who, like Gandhi, gave the other side to choose among its peaceful proposals of equal justice or face the wrath of twenty million blacks with a right to keep and bear automatic weapons. For those who want more information about this point we recommend reading “Pacifism as Pathology” by Ward Churchill, downloadable in pdf.
To fulfill its proselytizing purposes leftists advocate for the tyranny of political correctness and a very peculiar notion of “consensus” that has nothing to do with voting or autonomous operation, based on silencing at any price those who disagree with the precepts of their pseudo-religion.
It should be noted that in recent years due to the logical concern that many people show for environmental degradation, the left, fully aligned with the system, have wanted to make his the environmental discourse painting technological progress as “green.” For our part we want to make clear that in the anti-technology movement there is no place for them.
Does this mean that you are right wing? We are not right wing or nationalist, these two concepts are also closely linked to technological development, industrial development and progress.
“In losing his freedom, he loses his humanity. To be human is to be free, man is a being-for-freedom. “
(Pierre Clastres [1])
The concept of anarchism has been severely undermined by the continuing influence of leftists, supporters of its status as slaves, who have infected with their tyranny of political correctness all anti-authoritarian initiative. People who have taken over the bourgeois claims of the Illustration and Marxism speaking of technological progress and development of production as key points for developing a free and classless society, which is quite ironic when it has been precisely technological and scientific progress the responsible of extending domination in all areas of daily life.
To make matters worse, many hypocrites, opportunists, charlatans and lazy often call themselves “anarchists” when in fact their ideas, if any, are not even remotely similar to what we understand should belong to a healthy anarchist movement.
In this context, we might answer that we’re not. That simply by definition we are not anarchists. That although our arguments can converge with those of some branches of anarchism, the absolute priority for us is to stop the industrial technological system, regardless of other political, social or organizational issues.
But then one might ask, why is not anarchist this goal?
The anarchist, in general, aims to manage both horizontally and trough assembly a society inherently authoritarian. Pretending to be its own members who decide at each moment what should be changed or not, there is no place for promises of real structural change.
The society of which we speak is not self sufficient, so it only can fulfill his prodigious consumption by looting the resources of the rest of the planet, wiping out the various indigenous peoples throughout the world and destroying many ecosystems in its path, displacing wildlife and indigenous flora and causing irreversible or quasi irreversible situations of unlikely or of very slow recover, in addition to the hopeless homogenization of what once was biological and cultural diversity. And that society will act the same way no matter the hands that seek to control it, it is a standalone machine whose logic does not follow the same laws that govern the symbiosis and the balance of those who enslaved the rest of living organisms. It is useless to try to modify it from within, since it is rotten in itself and its actions do not depend in any way, on the will of the people. Quite the contrary, it is the people (and the rest of the world’s inhabitants) who have to adapt to its operation.
The mega-machine can’t grant privileges to all: to survive it needs to bleed precise areas of the world we call “poor countries”, which ironically have a lot of resources in order to feed those residents of what we call “rich countries”, again paradoxically, because they are absolutely incapable of self-sufficiency. The mega-machine knows no equality or freedom, the division between rulers and ruled is not in any way, anecdotal or casual: it is a prerequisite for its proper functioning.
Clastres says [2] that a relationship of power is oppressive, that any divided society is inhabited by an absolute evil because the denial of freedom is something unnatural, and that being good a society in which the natural absence of division ensures the realm of freedom, a bad one is that in which divided beings allow the triumph of tyranny, because, before of social division there was necessarily, in accordance with the nature of man, a society without oppression and submission.
It tells us that primitive societies are “equal” because they ignore inequality: a man is not ‘worth’ nothing more nor less than another, there is no superior or inferior, no one can do more than another, no one holds power, the chief doesn’t rule because he doesn’t have any more power than any member of the community.
The natural part of domination is then denied by observing and living with various indigenous peoples of planet Earth that many anthropologists and ethnologists have practiced for years. Most human groups have not developed authoritarian structures, neither have separated the various areas of daily life. In them, specialized institutions independently controlling different areas of life don’t exist. The social, political and economic are part of an unbroken whole, and therefore there is no State or any organ that organizes society from outside. Our civilization, this “techno-system” is not the norm nor is the logical evolution of any human population, but quite the contrary is very exotic: of all human societies that have existed on planet Earth and that today exist, very few have developed civilization and, for the latter, only the West has developed the most effective method of annihilation ever seen.
We could answer that we are not anarchists, but maybe we are.
Because we intend to stop a lifestyle that has nothing sustainable or natural, that does not follow any basic homeostatic principle, that bypasses all the rules of the game, preventing the existence of the rest of the community of life (including all other groups humans), we may be anarchists.
By pretending to end the central axis of the worst system of domination that ever existed, and instead seek to develop forms of organization, culture and interpersonal relationships, horizontal and anti-authoritarian, based on mutual support and self-sufficiency, we may be anarchists.
Because we aim to recover the original anarchy for which all human beings are born, the one our forefathers enjoyed for over a hundred thousand years and yet many people are enjoying today, to the extent that modern society allows them, perhaps we are anarchists.
Because we do not want to take control of Babylon, but to destroy it, because we don’t want to manage a society of slaves or manage our own death, because we do not want to be part of a group of dedicated workers who daily struggle to make of the air something even more unbreathable, of water something even more poisonous, of wilderness a dream ever more distant and of freedom an unattainable impossible, surely we may be anarchists.
Many will disagree. We don’t care.
They can call it what they want. We are who we are.
No more nor less.
Most of these issues, when attacked separately, distract from the main problem, technology. The only notable exception is found in the Animal Liberation due to the peculiarities that the liberationist movement has. Given that we advocate animal liberation to its ultimate consequences, because the human being is a mammal like many, perhaps the question is whether we want all those animals that the modern world uses for their daily consumption out of their cages. The answer is yes.
We therefore support the Animal Liberation movement, whose members we feel ready and courageous people, with clear ideas and, of course, and perhaps more importantly, with courage enough to put them into practice.
However, in the Animal Liberation movement there are people with a special focus on the struggle for non-human animals, that involves a separation between us and them, them who are allowed to eat one another, like if they were some kind of mentally retarded who don’t know what they are doing, and we, the hyper-rational humans, that should question the morality of all acts we perform daily regardless of the medium in which we find ourselves.
However, being rational again, looking at different situations, we may conclude that a vegan urban or agricultural diet to feed a lot of people would probably cause greater damage to the ecosystem (and thus the animals and plants live there), that a tribe as the Sami of Scandinavia, which feed mainly on non-human animals.
Conflict, therefore, with some members of the animal liberation movement, would focus on something as simple as the food we eat daily, and less on the fact that their actions could not be attacking the system “where it hurts.”
We believe that the idea that eating other animals is a crime is relative and depends on the conditions under which these animals have lived their lives. In a context free of the Technosystem, self-sufficient and integrated into the environment, the use of animals for food as far as may be necessary would involve little or no power over other animal species, and therefore, there wouldn’t be necessary to question the “goodness” or “evil” inherent in these everyday acts, as the tools that amplify the authoritarian power of man over nature would have been abolished in all its forms.
Without talking about our own diet (since there is no common denominator between those who write these lines), we could say that we don’t stand for the vegan diet for reasons explained below:
— Industrial society requires the destruction of ecosystems, exploitation of different resources (human or animal) of slavery, land use (and therefore, the fauna and flora) of the annihilation and irreversible change of wildlife to obtain the necessary means with which to satisfy its needs. What needs? In essence the same as every human society. Modern society can’t, as reality evidences, supply its own needs in a differently way than it does, and while it tries futilely it destroys any possibility of society, both future and present.
— In this context there are only three ways of being vegan:
As a current consumer: shopping at supermarkets and specialty stores.
As a freegan: recycling (or “dumpster diving”) and resisting any product not vegan (although its consumption does not imply any collaboration with the production process of this product)
As a gardener: growing food in the countryside or in the city.
— The first option supports the same system that tortures and kills animals (human or not). The products come from monocultures worldwide, for which it has been necessary the destruction of large tracts of wilderness, the displacement of indigenous populations, pollution, industrialization, cheap energy, large transport, machinery ... This involves not only the torture and killing of domestic animals raised for that purpose, but the genocide of the last free individuals and ethnocide (cultural genocide): natives of America, Africa, Asia... An example maybe inappropriate would be soybeans (since currently there are vegans who are opposed to the consumption of soy), which involves not only growing deforestation of a large number of hectares in the Amazon but also the progress of GM technology, besides the consequences on the ground: the land becomes infertile, there are also consequences on the ecosystem: unpredictable reaction of genetic modification. The vegan, therefore, wouldn’t be fighting in this case in no way against the system: simply he’d be altering the way he supports it.
— The second option is reasonably useful in an urban context, as the vegan does not consume and therefore does not support the system and is not involved in the production-consumption process. The freegan could in any case, recycle any type of food without supporting the food industry, but the freegan vegan opposes it. It might seem respectable. However, the ethics that lies behind this thinking are highly questionable:
Virtually all self-sufficient indigenous societies existing now practice some form of consumption of animals depending on the ecosystem and on the society in particular. Consumption of meat / fish can vary from 10–20% (the Bushmen in Africa surveyed by Richard Lee gave great importance to the collection of mongo-mongo, Brazils’ Nawe Enawene conduct fisheries, farming and gathering, and do not eat meat, the Yanomami of the Amazon reviewed by Jacques Lizot and of whom we can find lots references in the works of Pierre Clastres and Marvin Harris, grow bananas in their nomadic gardens, hunt and gather, ...) to 90% (Inuit). This allows them to continue their way of life. The ethics of these practices are unquestionable: they behave like the human animals they are and do not abuse any resource, don’t hunt or fish or harvest or cultivate more than they need. If they choose to cultivate only, that would require them to flatten large amounts of land to satisfy its people and they’d be disregarding all other sources of food, while domesticating the wild.
Whoever is opposed to the way these people relate to their environment and favors to educate them to change their practices is an authoritarian who has not understood that a culture can only survive by changing what’s wrong in it through the self emancipative action of its own members, in addition to advocating a form of economy incompatible with wilderness that assigns a central role to cultivation, which is the least ecological way of obtaining a livelihood that humans possess.
As a horticulturist:
in the city, although becoming self sufficient in the urban environment is quite difficult, if given this opportunity, this’d be a useful tool against the logic of production and consumption of modern society.
on land located at (or near) the wilderness:
A vegan non-industrial production combined with the gathering of wild foods, based on personal effort and entirely separate from the Technosystem seems a very respectable choice to us, but probably can only be applied to some types of soil and climate. But we insist that by “responsible consumption” one doesn’t knock down the giant or change anything in an effective way, responsible consumption is a scam well defended by the left to try to defuse the wishes of many individuals who are seriously thinking about activism.
Moreover to practice only one kind of economy forsaking all others establishes a clear separation between man and nature, moreover if you use products, seeds and machinery from the techno-industrial system. In this case the alleged ethics that would govern this diet and type of production would be in contradiction with itself as it would be leaning and depending on the Technosystem and, therefore, in general, promoting animal suffering.
Taking into account all previously said, a vegan diet does not seem necessary to contribute to animal liberation, while the total and absolute dismantling of modern society appears as the only objectively useful way towards obtaining liberation (both human and non-human).
While animal liberation groups (following or not a strict vegan diet) do not contribute to the dismantling of modern society per se, by releasing some quantities of animals in certain specific times they do damage certain sectors of the industrial system and its actions contain a high symbolic value in addition to inspiring many people and serving for the evolution and learning of the activists themselves.
Therefore, we will support them as long as their actions do not pose a risk to wilderness: for example allowing alien species to displace native species, releasing liberated animals into ecosystems that are not their own.
The liberation of Earth, the building self-reliant communities, the destruction of civilization and animal liberation as a whole, is long, costly, ambitious and essential. Although critics such as that in Ted Kaczynski’s “Hit where it hurts” are of considerable importance for understanding the current state of things, in some cases could encourage individuals to be confronted by the dilemma of either doing something decisive or doing nothing, to what many may respond by doing nothing.
Small actions against the system are not only important insofar as they contribute to the destruction of the system but also to the extent they contribute to the formation of free individuals, prepared, aware of their capabilities and limitations, courageous and capable of fighting for what they claim.
Because of all that, long life to the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front.
The system is effective in adapting people and the formation of thought. At an early age we are subjected to its rules as it takes advantage of the complete dependence of whom still can’t help himself. We are proposed a life of “luxury”, “comfort” and fleeting pleasures, without asking much in return ... only our freedom. There is no reason not to deliver it, since it is worthless. “Freedom is an ambiguous concept, complex and subjective” That said, there is no intention to preserve it and fight for it. Few are able to define freedom without jeopardizing their lifestyle, while for most it is impossible to explain what they never knew.
It is interesting to analyze the mechanisms the technological system uses for its preservation. Education has always been a means by which a society legitimizes and reproduces the prevailing social model, «the Sumerian “schools”, had the function of teaching writing to those who’d form the ruling class of society» [3]. All social structures and systems need to be replicated to maintain benefits for a class or the elite. Thus, the education provided by the State does not intend for people to criticize the state, but to accept, respect and defend it. Education under a democratic government reproduces its values, just like under a dictatorship it spread its ideology. But there is nothing original in these ideas. Criticism of the educational system, its methods and purposes is extensive and varied. However, the different educational streams do not criticize technology, not do they propose emancipation from technological society, but from the liberal and capitalist economic model. Behaviorism, emerging from Evolutionary vision [4], was strongly opposed by nascent constructivism from Historical Materialism [5]. The first raised the banner of social reproduction, and the second punished the values and methods of the existing order. The Marxist concept of education, proposes a change in ideology and critical thinking in relation to liberalism. Why don’t they criticize the technological system? Simple: because people must be educated to adapt to technological society, the model that prevails in everyday life.
The libertarian pedagogy is the closest thing to the formation of free and independent thought. Importantly, the educator should be aware that freedom of thought is not built by imposing ideas but by motivating its creation and personal development. Where is freedom of action in a person being influenced and manipulated by imposed ideas? Also variety in choices does not represent freedom but its conditioning. No one could ever say that an anarchist professor makes freer people than a Marxist professor. If both transmit and impose their ideology then contribute equally to the training of slaves.
The educational system requires adaptation to technological civilization. Practical works written by hand belong to the past, now they are required to be made in computers. When contemplating the search of information it’s usually appealed to the Internet and technological graphic media. Similarly, the materials used to study are products of the technological system: rules, pens, backpacks, sheets, notebooks, etc. Furthermore, the formation of cities requires the use of transportation (in most cases) to reach the place of study. So if a person wants an education has to be an active participant in technological society and submit to its model.
The natural character of exclusion that technology adopts is also manifested in schools: the lack of access to information due to lack of computer knowledge and the inability to work “neat and consistently with modernity,” displace those non willing or able to adapt to the technological system. “Computer skills” are exclusive of any work that society deems as worthy, so an educated and trained person must be handled within the parameters of current technology. Hence the imperative of the system that people be formed in the mold of slavery is essential for progress.
Education, in a technological language, can be interpreted as the programming of people to insert them into an artificial world, away forever from the real world (nature), attempting to eliminate all forms of emancipation from the technological system. The results are clear: a youngster average age of 18 knows how to use a computer, a car, buying groceries at a supermarket and cook them, respect rules and social norms, and be useful to the system through any job. However he is not able to obtain food from nature, or build a shelter and obtain water, in short, he is not able to survive outside the technological system. Although the current pedagogical trends are considered critical to the system, and emancipative from the same, they are just one of many means to divert attention to continue producing slaves. Freedom is not acceptable to the techno-industrial system.
The love of technological civilization is printed in the unconscious of people, reaching extremes in which phrases like “let’s talk like civilized people” that echo in educational institutions quite naturally. In this sense, children who do not respect the rules are “savages” some “rude” to be punished heavily to transform them into “good citizens”. Human domestication runs from birth to death. As trees are tied to a stick to grow straight, man suffers physical domination, cultural and mental so he is formed identical to the stereotype image of the slave the system so badly needs. Never mind then if he is a respected lawyer, a distinguished writer, an ambitious businessman, a renowned politician, or a simple worker. The essential thing is to respect the technological system, that he is unable to live outside it and never forget the benefits of evolution.
Civilization could transmit a highly revolutionary thought against the economic and social order. Could even encourage criticism and destruction of capitalism, encouraging class consciousness, but it could not allow them to question the foundations that give it life. More exactly the technological engine can’t be questioned. “The dominant force is technology, understood not as this or that particular machine, or this or that branch of the techniques, but as an organized and interdependent whole that is imposed through the modernization of everyday life, from politics, economics, and bureaucratic administration, to media, advertising, fast food, transport and tourism.”[6]
It would be illogical to ask the system to undermine itself, nor expect that education ceases to be used as an ideological apparatus. The reproduction and consequently technological expansion, demand the learning of techniques and the domestication of people to sustain the model. Is no longer novel to say that the technological system grows by itself, nor that its way to do it are the people in a situation of complete slavery.
The net is seen by most as a set of computers, cables, connections and links lacking malice. The main argument is that the net provides access to a vast amount of information and communication to people who otherwise would have ignored this information and remained isolated from each other. Also there is the fact of immediacy and no cost.
If there is one lesson about capitalism we should have learned by now is that everything has a price. Google or Microsoft haven’t spent millions in supercomputers, engineers and technology centers so you can enjoy, search for information or send emails for free. The world does not work that way. A net, be it tiled by spider or by a group of computer scientists, has always one single purpose: to pass unnoticed to capture its prey.
Write an email to someone from Gmail telling him about flowers and when he gets it Google will have inserted and advertisement about flowers at the foot of the message. How do they know? It’s easy, they scanned the message. The same goes for attachments or files stored online, your browser history, and obviously with the searches you do in search engines, everything is associated with your profile. This is not a secret, all search engines have publicly acknowledged it as a way to provide better search results. Google says its aim is to get to know you so much that a Friday afternoon you will type in your browser the question “What do I do this weekend?” And Google will be able to give you an answer.
For discussing the access to large amounts of information part we would like to invite people to think about the latest educational trends to substitute books by computers. Without going into a debate about the terrible effects on the ability of understanding that such foolishness will lead in young students and to avoid extending too much on the subject we will comment only what follows: it is extraordinarily difficult to scrutinize the world in search of each copy, for example of history, and change or remove content that you do not consider desirable. In contrast, if all content is in digital form this task becomes much easier and more efficient, one only needs to have access to the files that everyone downloads and edit or delete them (that is precisely what Winston Smith -the main character of the novel 1984- does, although he does it in analog, because not even George Orwell was able to conceive such a degree of control). Furthermore, this progress has the incentive of allowing Google, the government or anyone else to know what you are reading or have read.
Finally there is the issue of everything having no economic cost. That today all these services are free of cost does not necessarily mean they will stay like that forever. One might assume that when they are become totally indispensable and unavoidable the major suppliers will discuss whether is worth it or not to give for free something that without any doubt they will pay you for. Or do you believe that shareholders’ meetings are in for charity?
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We are currently looking for historical data on different ways in which major social changes have occurred in past societies (i.e. revolutions, riots, popular uprisings and so on.) and revolutionary movements (whether they have achieved their objectives or not). If you know about (or want to research about) this subjects you can collaborate by extracting and synthesizing ideas on those subjects and sending us this information along with the sources. Also you can propagate the ideas of this or similar publications.
Is there no other practical way to radically change our society or to knock down the Technosystem? Yes indeed, if you have any ideas send us a message or put them into practice yourself, you don’t need anyone to tell you what to do, you rule your own life, do what you think that should be done.
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[1] Freedom, misfortune, Unmentionable. Research in political anthropology. Pierre Clastres. Editorial Gedisa, 1980–2001. 121.
[2] Ibid. Pp. 121–123.
[3] The invention of writing marked a new instrument of domination and its uniqueness was in the hands of dominant social sector.
[4] Line of thought that comes from Darwin’s theories. It considers man as a being condemned to evolution, thus defining the different stages of human evolution and justifying their social structures and historical times as inevitable.
[5] Line of thought that criticizes Evolutionism. Argues that the structures and historical processes can be explained through the relationship of men with the means of production.
[6] John Paul Russo. Las humanidades en la sociedad tecnológica.