layla miltsov reviewof AVATAR

[brianct]

LIKE ZERZAN..Takes an anarcho primitivist view ..manages to see what many refuse to see

Avatar: An Anarcho-Primitivist Picture of the History of the World | Layla.Miltsov.org

[Mongo]

Who gets to choose who dies if we were to go back to the Stone Age?

The maximum sustainable world population pre-agriculture was a few million people. At most. So 999 out of 1000 people, and more likely 1999 out of 2000 people, need to starve to death to allow this demented vision to happen.

No way.

There is a HUGE difference between wanting to preserve what biodiversity we have, and deliberately committing suicide as a species (and this is what this is -- if we do regress to a pre-agricultural, pre-technological state, the first real disaster that comes along, such as a big asteroid impact or a volcanic mega-eruption, could easily wipe us out).

I know that reverting to such a condition is appealing to some people, but count me out!

A better means to preserve our planet is to IMPROVE technology so that we can produce energy, etc. with far less pollution than today, to grow food in bio-reactors so that huge tracts of land can be returned to nature, and so on. Not to revert to a pre-technological state. To do so is as immoral as anything I have ever heard of -- genocide on a near-total scale.

[steven_m64]

yeah just turning back the clock and going back all the way to the beginning is just stupid and in a way lazy method to "fix" things.

it would be akin to just cutting off a leg that has become gangrenous (technology and political issues) instead of striving to fix the problems of both and balance it all.

but if human kind cant eventually learn to live in balance with technology, politics and the environment we will probably go extinct anyways and rightly so.

[brianct]

Who gets to choose who dies if we were to go back to the Stone Age?

The maximum sustainable world population pre-agriculture was a few million people. At most. So 999 out of 1000 people, and more likely 1999 out of 2000 people, need to starve to death to allow this demented vision to happen.

No way.

There is a HUGE difference between wanting to preserve what biodiversity we have, and deliberately committing suicide as a species (and this is what this is -- if we do regress to a pre-agricultural, pre-technological state, the first real disaster that comes along, such as a big asteroid impact or a volcanic mega-eruption, could easily wipe us out).

I know that reverting to such a condition is appealing to some people, but count me out!

A better means to preserve our planet is to IMPROVE technology so that we can produce energy, etc. with far less pollution than today, to grow food in bio-reactors so that huge tracts of land can be returned to nature, and so on. Not to revert to a pre-technological state. To do so is as immoral as anything I have ever heard of -- genocide on a near-total scale.

the alternative will be to continue on our merry way:u may be unaware of the environmental disaster unfolding around us...take some time out to get acquainted with it...fromn nuke poisoning of iraqs popukation by american DU munitions, to collapsing fish stocks in the ocean thru industrial overfishing...

Eywa or rather Earth will help us reduce our numbers..by making the current civilisation untenable.

oh, and any asteroid impact WOULD wipe us out.
your happy notions on the benign natur of technology are delusional.
here is a sample of a 'green' technologys dangers:
http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2009/...wind-turbines/

tech only allows us to continue our unsustainable techno habit

[Mongo]

the alternative will be to continue on our merry way:u may be unaware of the environmental disaster unfolding around us...take some time out to get acquainted with it...fromn nuke poisoning of iraqs popukation by american DU munitions, to collapsing fish stocks in the ocean thru industrial overfishing...

Eywa or rather Earth will help us reduce our numbers..by making the current civilisation untenable

You say that like it's a good thing.

Actually I am very much aware of the immense strain that is being put upon the Earth's biosphere. If things do not change, we are heading into a mass extinction equal to the very worst in geological history. Read Peter Ward's book [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Under-Green-Sky-Warming-Extinctions/dp/006113791X"]Under a Green Sky[/ame] to learn about what we are facing.

But the way to avert this is NOT to go backwards and doom the human species to eventual extinction, it is to improve technology to the point where net CO2 emissions are reduced to near zero, where food is produced in bioreactors and most of the current agricultural land is allowed to return to its pre-agricultural state, where technology is made so efficient that demand for raw materials is reduced to a fraction of current levels, where extinct species can be recreated from recovered DNA and returned to the wild, and yes, where some significant fraction of humanity is moved offworld so that if some disaster does strike Earth, human civilization can continue.

This is not some pipe dream. There is nothing in the laws of physics that makes it impossible. It is simply beyond the imagination of most people who are unwilling to admit that technology CHANGES THINGS, and that we have barely started along the road.

The way out of the mess we are in is not to abandon all technology, it is to change the socio-politico-economic systems that are currently dominant around the world to something more rational and oriented towards the long term.

[brianct]

You say that like it's a good thing.

Actually I am very much aware of the immense strain that is being put upon the Earth's biosphere. If things do not change, we are heading into a mass extinction equal to the very worst in geological history. Read Peter Ward's book Under a Green Sky to learn about what we are facing.

But the way to avert this is NOT to go backwards and doom the human species to eventual extinction, it is to improve technology to the point where net CO2 emissions are reduced to near zero, where food is produced in bioreactors and most of the current agricultural land is allowed to return to its pre-agricultural state, where technology is made so efficient that demand for raw materials is reduced to a fraction of current levels, where extinct species can be recreated from recovered DNA and returned to the wild, and yes, where some significant fraction of humanity is moved offworld so that if some disaster does strike Earth, human civilization can continue.

This is not some pipe dream. There is nothing in the laws of physics that makes it impossible. It is simply beyond the imagination of most people who are unwilling to admit that technology CHANGES THINGS, and that we have barely started along the road.

the current obsession with the idea that technology will save the day wil only prolong the problem, and delay real and effective change/
whats really frightening, is we have just started along this road...200 years of industrialisation...and things look grim..each new development takes us further down the road to armageddon.

Check out your local land fill, at the incrdible waste we generate...how do u propse to slow that? any tech band aid will not remove this obsession with consumerism, which drives our pollution crisis.

[Mongo]

I will just state that I disagree with your fundamental tenets, and leave it at that. I will never convince you to believe otherwise than your current opinions, and vice versa.

There are others who are reading this thread, though. I have hope that they are smart enough not to be taken in by the anarcho-primativist claptrap seen in the article linked to in the OP. It is half-right. It is indeed correct about the immense problems facing us that are a result of our current level of technology and industry (and especially our current political/economic systems). It is utterly wrong, though, about the way to solve them.

I repeat: going backwards into some pre-technological state will doom almost everyone on Earth to slow death by starvation. This is not acceptable to me. Since the current level of technology is clearly not sufficient to solve these problems (and earlier levels are even worse), the only potential solution is to one, improve technology to the point that it CAN solve the problems, and two, massively change the economic/political system to one where repairing and sustaining the Earth's biosphere is of fundamental concern and activity.

[brianct]

im fully aware of the power of habit and addiction, but on a practical level, in 2 to 3 centuries, metal resources wil be gone...oil will be gone, so no plastics.
so people like u will be left with reusing metal and plastic waste to build their machines.

or as einstein said:
'"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." '

try to think in an entirely different way,you can start by weening your self off the machine as solution habit.

[Mongo]

Why do you imagine that we will still be needing plastics in 200 years? There are already numerous potential replacements out there, many of them in potentially much greater quantities.

As for metals -- don't make me laugh. There are stupendous untapped resources out there, such as titanium (which makes up 0.63% of the Earth's crust, a huge amount) which has only very recently had an economic extraction process developed (the FCC Cambridge process in titanium's case), which is projected to allow for pure titanium at roughly the cost of steel, but far stronger and lighter, and in effectively unlimited quantities. The process is also very low-pollution, by the way.

And that is just on Earth. A single small asteroid, within the capture capabilities of several decades from now, could provide enough nickel (for example) to supply the current rate of world consumption for centuries.

I see a massive failure of imagination in your ideas about what is possible in the future.

[Prometheus]

Worship of technology is the problem, abuse of technology is the problem, outdated and wasteful technology is the problem...technology itself is not the problem. Any technology, whether that be firestick farming, slash and burn agriculture or a nuclear reactor, can be used in unsustainable ways. There's plenty of evidence for that. If we want to survive as a species on this planet, we have to have technology. Unfortunately, we are not like the Na'vi and don't have a planet like Pandora. We cannot sustain ourselves in merely hunter gatherer styles of existence.

People seem to have a romantic notion of what it's like to live entirely off the land. You should try it sometime. It's not only hard, it's also fraught with dangers you can't even imagine. 90% of the people on this forum, or in the community wouldn't last more than a few days to a few weeks if they had to survive on their whits in nature.

The main reason why hunter gatherer societies seem to be so in balance with their ways of life is not because of a connection to their spirituality, which many did and still do have. The reason is simple...mortality. Most either died before they even reached late childhood or were killed later on by disease or injury. That's what kept populations in check. The fact that they had a strong spiritual connection only allowed them to see the futility in trying to increase a population in the face of scarce resources, so they limited births.

If you would like to see humanity go back to this style of existence, who are you going to choose to do so?? Which group of people?? What entire populations would you see become extinct all for some "idyllic existence" of a few?? You can't turn back the clock and it's not going to happen, no matter how much you might like it to.

It's like I've said a number of times on this forum, our problem is our society, not the technology. Technology is nothing more than a tool and it can be used or abused. Some technologies are wasteful and polluting yet others are not. What we have to do, technology wise, is to develop ideas and systems which help us keep our environment safe, stop polluting it and such. Our biggest problem, though, is our society and the mindset it keeps. That's what needs to be changed the most, and is the most urgently needed change. Rampant consumerism, a devil may care attitude to the environment, a total disrespect and contempt for our fellow man...it's these things which need to change. Change those, and everything else which ails us will be much easier to overcome.

Wanting to go back to the Stone Age will not solve anything. As a matter of fact, it will only make things a whole lot worse.