Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections

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Obviously related is Kenneth Boulding's judgment that the achievements of civilization "have been paid for at a very high cost in human degradation, suffering, inequality, and dominance. For Morgan it was writing; for Engels, state power; for Childe, the rise of cities. Renfrew nominated insulation from nature as most fundamental. But domestication stands behind all these manifestations, and not just the taming of animals and plants, but also the taming of human instincts and freedoms.

Mastery, in various forms, has defined civilization and gauged human achievement. To name, to number, to time, to represent symbolic culture is that array of masteries upon which all subsequent hierarchies and confinements rest. Civilization is also separation from an original wholeness and grace. The poor thing we call our "human nature" was not our first nature; it is a pathological condition. All the consolations and compensations and prosthetics of an ever more technicized and barren world do not make up for the emptiness.

As Hilzheimer and others came to view domestications of animals as juvenilizations, so also are we made increasingly dependent and infantilized by the progress of civilization. Little wonder that myths, legends, and folklore about gardens of Eden, Golden Ages, Elysian fields, lands of Cockaigne, and other primitivist paradises are a worldwide phenomenon.

This universal longing for an aboriginal, unalienated state has also had its dark flip side, a remarkable continuity of apocalyptic beliefs and prophets of doom - two sides of the same coin of a deep unhappiness with civilization. Centuries of the persistence of Utopias in the literature and politics of the West have more recently been replaced by a strong dystopian current, as hope seems to be giving way to nightmare apprehensions. This shift began in earnest in the nineteenth century, when virtually every major figure. At the time that technology was becoming a worldwide unifying force, social scientists such as Durkheim and Masaryk noted that melancholy and suicide increased precisely with the forward movement of civilization.

In terms of the current intellectual domestication, postmodernism, despite a certain rhetoric of rebellion, is merely the latest extension of the modern civilizing process.

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For its moral cowardice as well as its zero degree of content, a horrific present is thus captured all too well. From every camp, voices counsel that there can be no turning back from the path of progress, the unfolding of still more high-tech consumerist desolation. How hollow they sound, as we consider what has been lost and what may yet, one desperately hopes, be recovered.

Before Civilization Neandertals did not paint their caves witti the images of animals. But perhaps they had no need to distill life into representations, because its essences were already revealed to their senses. The sight of a running herd was enough to inspire a surging sense of beauty. They had no drums or bone flutes, but they could listen to the booming rhythms of the wind, the earth, and each other's heartbeats, and be transported.

James Shreeve 1 his collection opens with some reflections about what it was like for our species prior to civilization. In a literary vein, the pages from Roy Walker's classic treasury of poetry, Golden Feast , remind us that from Ovid to the American Big Rock Candy Mountain folk legend, the memory or vision of an uncorrupted original wholeness persists.

In fact, Utopian anticivilization longings reach back at least as far as the earliest Greek writings. From Hesiod's Works and Days, dating from the early seventh century B. Current anthropology tells us that the pre-agricultural foraging life did not know organized violence, sexual oppression, work as an onerous or separate activity, private property, or symbolic culture. Richard Heinberg's Memories and Visions of Paradise is, by the way, an unexcelled recent exploration of this theme. Fairchild's eminent study Noble Savage introduces the innocence of native New World peoples, soon to be lost to disease and warfare, upon the arrival of early conquerors.

Rousseau, the origin of Fairchild's title, describes the felicity and freedom that once obtained. The excerpt from Thoreau is a brief but lively one: Perlman's intensity, in his superb Against His-story, Against Leviathan , leaves little doubt as to the nature-based authenticity of those not subdued by civilization, as seen in their sense of play and autonomy, for example. DeVries summarizes features of nondomesticated robustness and vitality in sharp contrast to later degeneracy in health. Sahlins' offering is an early statement of the central point of his Stone Age Economics , namely, that paleolithic peoples are truly affluent, with no artificially produced or unmet needs.

Lynn Clive objects to the sacrifice of birds to skyscrapers and jetliners, while Landau offers a personal response to all we have lost. In a marvelous meditation, Adorno describes the Utopian component of children's make-believe play. He recalls the pretamed stage of humanity in which productivity as a value is clearly refused, and exchange disregarded, as such nonutilitarian activity "rehearses the right life. The last and greatest book of the Metamorphoses is devoted to the Pythagorean philosophy, and bears that title.

In Dryden's translation this final book is the starting point of our endeavour to trace this tradition through the eighteenth century, and although the poem is a Roman achievement we may defer consideration of it. Ovid's first book deals with the grandest metamorphosis of all, the transformation from the Chaos that preceded Nature's birth to the comparative order of Caesar's time.

In that great change an empire greater than Caesar's is won and lost, a Golden Age of peace and plenty, lost to be found again by those who carry a vision of it through darkness and observe its precepts of peace and harmlessness to all that lives. This is the golden legend that has haunted the imagination of Europe's prophets, regardless of their own temperaments, habits or cultural environment.

In essentials it is also the story of Genesis and its history is inevitably joined with that of the first book of the Bible. Then sprang up first the golden age, which of itself maintained The truth and right of everything, unforced and unconstrained. There was no fear of punishment, there was no threatening law In brazen tables naile'd up, to keep the folk in awe. There was no man would crouch or creep to judge with cap in hand; They live'd safe without a judge in every realm and land. The lofty pine-tree was not hewn from mountains where it stood.

In seeking strange and foreign lands to rove upon the flood. Men knew none other countries yet than where themselves did keep: There was no town enclose'd yet with walls and ditches deep. No horn nor trumpet was in use, no sword nor helmet worn. The world was such that soldiers' help might easily be forborne. The fertile earth as yet was free, untouched of spade or plough. And yet it yielded of itself of every thing enow; And men themselves contented well with plain and simple food That on the earth by Nature's gift without their travail stood. Did live by raspis, hips and haws, by cornels, plums and cherries, By sloes and apples, nuts and pears, and loathsome bramble berries.

And by the acorns dropped on ground from Jove's broad tree in field. The springtime lasted all the year, and Zephyr with his mild And gentle blast did cherish things that grew of own accord. The ground unfilled all kind of fruits did plenteously afford. No muck nor tillage was bestowed on lean and barren land To make the corn of better head and ranker for to stand Then streams ran milk, then streams ran wine, and yellow honey flowed From each green tree whereon the rays of fiery Phoebus glowed. But when that unto Limbo once Saturnus being thrust.

The rule and charge of all the world was under Jove unjust. And that the silver age came in, nnore somewhat base than gold, More precious yet than freckled brass, immediately the old And ancient springtime Jove abridged and made thereof anon Four seasons: Then first of all began the air with fervent heat to swelt; Then icicles hung roping down; then, for the cold was felt, Men 'gan to shroud themselves in house; their houses were the thicks.

And bushy queaches, hollow caves, or hurdles made of sticks. Then first of all were furrows drawn, and corn was cast in ground; The simple ox with sorry sighs to heavy yoke was bound. Next after this succeeded straight the third and brazen age: More hard of nature, somewhat bent to cruel wars and rage.

But yet not wholly past all grace. Of iron is the last In no part good and tractable as former ages past; For when that of this wicked age once opened was the vein Therein all mischief rushed forth, the faith and truth were fain And honest shame to hide their heads; for whom stepped stoutly in. Craft, treason, violence, envy, pride, and wicked lust to win. The shipman hoists his sails to wind, whose names he did not know; And ships that erst in tops of hills and mountains high did grow.

Did leap and dance on uncouth waves; and men began to bound With dowls and ditches drawn in length the free and fertile ground. Which was as common as the air and light of sun before. Not only corn and other fruits, for sustenance and for store. Were now exacted of the earth, but eft they 'gan to dig And in the bowels of the earth insatiably to rig For riches couched, and hidden deep in places near to hell. The spurs and stirrers unto vice, and foes to doing well.

Then hurtful iron came abroad, then came forth yellow gold More hurtful than the iron far, then came forth battle bold That fights with both, and shakes his sword in cruel bloody hand. Men live by ravin and by stealth; the wandering guest doth stand In danger of his host; the host in danger of his guest; And fathers of their sons-in-law; yea, seldom time doth rest Between born brothers such accord and love as ought to be; The goodman seeks the goodwife's death, and his again seeks she; With grisly poison stepdames fell their husbands' sons assail; The son inquires aforehand when his father's life shall fail; All godliness lies under foot.

And Lady Astrey, last Of heavenly virtues, from this earth in slaughter drowned passed. Captured Greece, as the candid Horace says, had captured her rough conqueror. In Hesiod's Golden Age, the first beatitude is the tranquil mind which, rather than a high material standard of living, is the highest good. Freedom from toil, next celebrated, expressed man's harmonious place in the natural order, in contrast to our civilization's war on soil, animal and tree.

Long life, free from violence and disease, is as natural to the Golden Age as the abundance of fruits on which mankind is nourished there. All things are shared. All men are free. We have vestigial modern doctrines for all these qualities: At the golden touch of Hesiod's or Ovid's lines the clumsy polysyllables crack their seed cases and flower into the variegated life and colour of single vision.

The vague association that many of these ideas have retained in their attenuated modern forms is not accidental. One evening as the sun went down And the jungle fire was burning Down the track came a hobo hiking, And he said "Boys I'm not turning. I'm headed for a land that's far away. Beside the crystal fountains. So come with me, we'll all go and see The big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the big Rock Candy Mountains, There's a land that's fair and bright. Where the hand-outs grow on bushes. And you sleep out every night. Where the box cars are all empty. Where the sun shines every day. On the birds and the bees. And the cigarette trees, And the lemonade springs Where the blue-bird sings. In the big Rock Candy Mountains. In the big Rock Candy Mountains, All the cops have wooden legs. The bull-dogs all have rubber teeth And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs.

The farmer's trees are full of fruit And the barns are full of hay. And the little streanns of alcohol Come trickling down the rocks. Where the brakemen have to tip their hats, And the rail-road bulls are blind. There's the lake of stew.

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And of whisky too. The Caribs are represented as a virtuous and mild people, beautiful, and with a certain natural intelligence, living together in nakedness and innocence, sharing their property in common. But though Columbus is enthusiastic about the Indians, he does not compare them with the Europeans. For such a comparison a stimulus was soon provided by the brutality of the Spaniards. By , when Las Casas' book appeared, Spanish goldlust had made oppressed slaves of the free and amiable beings described by Columbus.

They are also a very delicate and tender folk, of slender build, and cannot stand much work, and often die of whatever sicknesses they have; so that even our own princes and lords, cared for with all conveniences, luxuries and delights, are not more delicate than these people who possess little, and who do not desire many worldly goods; nor are they proud, ambitious, or covetous. They have a very clear and lively understanding, being docile and able to receive all good doctrine, quite fitted to understand our holy Catholic faith, and to be instructed in good and virtuous habits, having less hindrances in the way of doing this than any other people in the world.

Certainly these people would be the happiest in the world if only they knew God. He knows the Indians, and loves them as a father loves his children. He does not claim perfection for them, but he recognizes them as perfectible. He does not assert their superiority to the Spaniards, but his indignation against his countrymen contains the germs of such an assertion. English views of savage life tend to be less highly colored and enthusiastic than those of the Spanish and French.

But though it seems probable that the Noble Savage is chiefly a product of Latin minds. Professor Chinard slightly underestimates the extent to which English explorers gave support to the cult of the Indian. This celebrated voyage was begun in The narrator reports that the savages - here natives of Brazil - go stark naked, but he does not philosophize upon this observation. The "naturals" seem to be a civil and gentle folk: The savage king and his people crown Drake with flowers, "with one consent and with great reverence, joyfully singing a song.

Strenuous efforts were being made to "boom" Virginia as a field of colonization. These gentlemen find the natives fearless and trustful. They are "a handsome and goodly people, and in their behavior as mannerly and civil as any in Europe.

When men began to think of the American Indian in terms of traditional literary formulas, they were well on the way toward the formation of the Noble Savage idea. Avery influential account was doubtless Raleigh's Discourse of the large, rich and beautiful Empire of Guiana. The portions of this account which are of interest to us deal with various tribes along the Orinoco Rivera region which is the habitat of the Noble Savage at his noblest and most savage. Raleigh's opinion of the natives is consistently favorable. Of one tribe he says, "These Tivitivas are a very goodly people and very valiant, and have the most manly speech and most deliberate that ever I heard, of what nation soever.

Of a Cacique's wife he writes: She was of good stature, with blacke eyes, fat of body, of an excellent countenance, her hair almost as long as herself, tied up againe in prettie knots. I have seene a lady in England as like to her, as but for the colour, I would have sworne might have been the same. The following is a portion of an account of an interview with a venerable chief: He answered with a great sigh as a man which had inward feeling of the losse of his countrie and libertie, especially for that his eldest son was slain in a battell on that side of the mountains, whom he most entirely loved that hee remembered in his father's lifetime, etc.

After hee had answered thus farre he desired leave to depart, saying that he had farre to goe, that he was olde, and weake, and was every day called for by death, which was also his owne phrase. This Topiawari is helde for the prowdest and wisest of all the Orenoqueponi, and soe he behaved himselfe towards mee in all his answers at my returne, as I marvelled to find a man of that gravitie and judgement, and of soe good discourse, that had no heipe of learning nor breede.

Quite plainly, the savage has become literary material; his type is becoming fixed; he already begins to collect the accretions of tradition. Just as he is, Topiawari is ready to step into an exotic tale. He is the prototype of Chactas and Chingachgook. The effect on English writers of such accounts as those we have been examining is shown in Michael Drayton's poem. To the Virginian Voyage: To get the pearl and gold. And ours to hold Virginia, Earth's only paradise. And the fruitful'st soil. All greater than you wish. Here we see that fusion of contemporary observation with old tradition on which the Noble Savage idea depends.

Discourse on the Origins of Inequality Man, whatever Country you may come from, whatever your opinions may be, listen: Everything that comes from Nature will be true; there will be nothing false except what I have involuntarily put in of my own. The times of which I am going to speak are very far off: It is, so to speak, the life of your species that I am going to describe to you according to the qualities you received, which your education and habits have been able to corrupt but have not been able to destroy.

There is, I feel, an age at which the individual man would want to stop: Discontented with your present state for reasons that foretell even greater discontents for your unhappy Posterity, perhaps you would want to be able to go backward in time. This sentiment must be the Eulogy of your first ancestors, the criticism of your contemporaries, and the dread of those who will have the unhappiness to live after you.

Stripping this Being, so constituted, of all the supernatural gifts he could have received and of all the artificial faculties he could only have acquired by long progress considering him, in a word, as he must have come from the hands of Nature I see an animal less strong than some, less agile than others, but ail things considered, the most advantageously organized of all.

I see him satisfying his hunger under an oak, quenching his thirst at the first Stream, finding his bed at the foot of the same tree that furnished his meal; and therewith his needs are satisfied. The Earth, abandoned to its natural fertility and covered by immense forests never mutilated by the Axe, offers at every step Storehouses and shelters to animals of all species. Men, dispersed among the animals, observe and imitate their industry, and thereby develop in themselves the instinct of the Beasts; with the advantage that whereas each species has only its own proper instinct, man perhaps having none that belongs to him appropriates them all to himself, feeds himself equally well with most of the diverse foods which the other animals share, and consequently finds his subsistence more easily than any of them can.

The savage man's body being the only implement he knows, he employs it for various uses of which, through lack of training, our bodies are incapable; our industry deprives us of the strength and agility that necessity obliges him to acquire. If he had an axe, would his wrist break such strong branches? If he had a sling, would he throw a stone so hard?

If he had a ladder, would he climb a tree so nimbly? If he had a Horse, would he run so fast? Give Civilized man time to assemble all his machines around him and there can be no doubt that he will easily overcome Savage man. But if you want to see an even more unequal fight, put them, naked and disarmed, face to face, and you will soon recognize the advantage of constantly having all of one's strength at one's disposal, of always being ready for any event, and of always carrying oneself, so to speak, entirely with one.

Hobbes claims that man is naturally intrepid and seeks only to attack and fight. An illustrious Philosopher thinks, on the contrary, and Cumberland and Pufendorf also affirm, that nothing is so timid as man in the state of Nature, and that he is always trembling and ready to flee at the slightest noise he hears, at the slightest movement he perceives. That may be so with respect to objects he does not know; and I do not doubt that he is frightened by all the new Spectacles that present themselves to him every time he can neither discern the Physical good and evil to be expected nor compare his strength with the dangers he must run: But Savage man, living dispersed among the animals and early finding himself in a position to measure himself against them, soon makes the comparison; and sensing that he surpasses them in skill more than they surpass him in strength, he learns not to fear them any more.

Pit a bear or a wolf against a Savage who is robust, agile, courageous, as they all are, armed with stones and a good stick, and you will see that the danger will be reciprocal at the very least, and that after several similar experiences wild Beasts, which do not like to attack each other, will hardly attack man willingly, having found him to be just as wild as they. With regard to animals that actually have more strength than man has skill, he is in the position of the other weaker species, which nevertheless subsist.

But man has the advantage that, no less adept at running than they and finding almost certain refuge in trees, he always has the option of accepting or leaving the encounter and the choice 15 of flight or combat. Let us add that it does not appear that any animal naturally makes war upon man except in case of self-defense or extreme hunger, or gives evidence of those violent antipathies toward him that seem to announce that one species is destined by Nature to serve as food for the other.

These are, without doubt, the reasons why Negroes and Savages trouble themselves so little about the wild beasts they may encounter in the woods. In this respect the Caribs of Venezuela, among others, live in the most profound security and without the slightest inconvenience. Although they go nearly naked, says Francois Correal, they nevertheless expose themselves boldly in the woods armed only with bow and arrow, but no one has ever heard that any of them were devoured by beasts. Other more formidable enemies, against which man does not have the same means of defense, are natural infirmities: I even observe on the subject of Infancy that the Mother, since she carries her child with her everywhere, can nourish it with more facility than the females of several animals, which are forced to come and go incessantly with great fatigue, in one direction to seek their food and in the other to suckle or nourish their young.

It is true that if the woman should die, the child greatly risks dying with her; but this danger is common to a hundred other species, whose young are for a long time unable to go and seek their nourishment themselves. And if Infancy is longer among us, so also is life; everything remains approximately equal in this respect, although there are, concerning the duration of the first age and the number of young, other rules which are not within my Subject.

Among the Aged, who act and perspire little, the need for food diminishes with the faculty of providing for it; and since Savage life keeps gout and rheumatism away from them and since old age is, of all ills, the one that human assistance can least relieve, they finally die without it being perceived that they cease to be, and almost without perceiving it themselves. With regard to illnesses, I shall not repeat the vain and false declamations against Medicine made by most People in good health; rather, I shall ask whether there is any solid observation from which one might conclude that in Countries where this art is most neglected, the average life of man is shorter than in those where it is cultivated with the greatest care.

And how could that be, if we give ourselves more ills than Medicine can furnish Remedies? The extreme inequality in our way of life: If she destined us to be healthy, I almost dare affirm that the state of reflection is a state contrary to Nature and that the man who meditates is a depraved animal. When one thinks of the good constitution of Savages, at least of those whom we have not ruined with our strong liquors; when one learns that they know almost no illnesses except wounds and old age, one is strongly inclined to believe that the history of human illnesses could easily be written by following that of civil Societies.

This at least is the opinion of Plato, who judges, from certain Remedies used or approved by Podalirius and Machaon at the siege of Troy, that various illnesses that should have been caused by those remedies were not yet known at that time among men; and Paracelsus reports that the diet, so necessary today, was invented only by Hippocrates. With so few sources of illness, man in the state of Nature hardly has need of remedies, still less of Doctors.

In this respect the human species is not in any worse condition than all the others; and it is easy to learn from Hunters whether in their chases they find many sick animals. They find many that have received extensive but very well healed wounds, that have had bones and even limbs broken and set again with no other Surgeon than time, no other regimen than their ordinary life, and that are no less perfectly cured for not having been tormented with incisions, poisoned with Drugs, or weakened with fasting.

Finally, however useful well-administered medicine may be among us, it is still certain that if a sick Savage abandoned to himself has nothing to hope for except from Nature, in return he has nothing to fear except from his illness, which often renders his situation preferable to ours. Nature treats all the aninnals abandoned to its care with a partiality that seems to show how jealous it is of this right. The Horse, the Cat, the Bull, even the Ass, are mostly taller, and all have a more robust constitution, more vigor, more strength and courage in the forest than in our houses.

They lose half of these advantages in becoming Domesticated, and it might be said that all our cares to treat and feed these animals well end only in their degeneration. It is the same even for man. In becoming sociable and a Slave he becomes weak, fearful, servile; and his soft and effeminate way of life completes the enervation of both his strength and his courage.

Let us add that between Savage and Domesticated conditions the difference from man to man must be still greater than that from beast to beast; for animal and man having been treated equally by Nature, all the commodities of which man gives himself more than the animals he tames are so many particular causes that make him degenerate more noticeably.

The example of Savages, who have almost all been found at this point, seems to confirm that the human Race was made to remain in it, the state of Nature, always; that this state is the veritable youth of the World; and that all subsequent progress has been in appearance so many steps toward the perfection of the individual, and in fact toward the decrepitude of the species.

As long as men were content with their rustic huts, as long as they were limited to sewing their clothing of skins with thorn or fish bones, adorning themselves with feathers and shells, painting their bodies with various colors, perfecting or embellishing their bows and arrows, carving with sharp stones a few fishing Canoes or a few crude Musical instruments; in a word, as long as they applied themselves only to tasks that a single person could do and to arts that did not require the cooperation of several hands, they lived free, healthy, good, and happy insofar as they could be according to their Nature, and they continued to enjoy among themselves the sweetness of independent intercourse.

But from the moment one man needed the help of another, as soon as they observed that it was useful for a single person to have provisions for two, equality disappeared, property was introduced, labor became necessary; and vast forests were changed into smiling Fields which had to be watered with the sweat of men, and in which slavery and misery were soon seen to germinate and grow with the crops. Metallurgy and agriculture were the two arts whose invention produced this great revolution.

For the Poet it is gold and silver, but for the Philosopher it is iron and wheat which have Civilized men and ruined the human Race. Some of our northern Indians eat raw the marrow of the Arctic reindeer, as well as various other parts, including the summits of the antlers, as long as they are soft. And herein, perchance, they have stolen a march on the cooks of Paris. They get what usually goes to feed the fire.

This is probably better than stall-fed beef and slaughter-house pork to make a man of. Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization can endure, as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured raw. There are some intervals which border the strain of the wood thrush, to which I would migrate, wild lands where no settler has squatted; to which, methinks, I am already acclimated. The African hunter Gumming tells us that the skin of the eland, as well as that of most other antelopes just killed, emits the most delicious perfume of trees and grass. I would have every man so much like a wild antelope, so much a part and parcel of nature, that his very person should thus sweetly advertise our senses of his presence, and remind us of those parts of nature which he most haunts.

I feel no disposition to be satirical, when the trapper's coat emits the odor of musquash even; it is a sweeter scent to me than that which commonly exhales from the merchant's or the scholar's garments. When I go into their wardrobes and handle their vestments, I am reminded of no grassy plains and flowery meads which they have frequented, but of dusty merchants' exchanges and libraries rather.

A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a mana denizen of the woods. The pale white man! How near to good is what is fair! So I would say How near to good is what is wild! Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward incessantly and never rested from his iabors, who grew fast and made infinite demands on life, would always find himself in a new country or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive forest-trees.

Against His-story, Against Leviatiian! These managers are broadcasting their news too soon. The varied beings haven't all been exterminated yet. You, reader, have only to mingle with them, or just watch them from a distance, to see that their waking lives are filled with dances, games and feasts. Even the hunt, the stalking and feigning and leaping, is not what we call Work, but what we call Fun. The only beings who work are the inmates of Gulag's islands, the zeks.

The zeks' ancestors did less work than a corporation owner. They didn't know what work was. They lived in a condition J. Rousseau called "the state of nature. It grates on the nerves of those who, in R. Vaneigem's words, carry cadavers in their mouths. It makes the armor visible. Say "the state of nature" and you'll see the cadavers peer out.

Insist that "freedom" and "the state of nature" are synonyms, and the cadavers will try to bite you. The tame, the domesticated, try to monopolize the word freedom; they'd like to apply it to their own condition. They apply the word "wild" to the free. But it is another public secret that the tame, the domesticated, occasionally become wild but are never free so long as they remain in their pens. Even the common dictionary keeps this secret only half hidden.

It begins by saying that free means citizen! But then it says, "Free: Birds are free until people cage them. The Biosphere, Mother Earth herself, is free when she moistens herself, when she sprawls in the sun and lets her skin erupt with varicolored hair teeming with crawlers and fliers. She is not determined by anything beyond her own nature or being until another sphere of equal magnitude crashes into her, or until a cadaverous beast cuts into her skin and rends her bowels.

Trees, fish and insects are free as they grow from seed to maturity, each realizing its own potential, its wish until the insect's freedom is curtailed by the bird's. The eaten insect has made a gift of its freedom to the bird's freedom. The bird, in its turn, drops and manures the seed of the insect's favorite plant, enhancing the freedom of the insect's heirs. The state of nature is a community of freedoms. Such was the environment of the first human communities, and such it remained for thousands of generations.

Modern anthropologists who carry Gulag in their brains reduce such human communities to the motions that look most like work, and give the name Gatherers to people who pick and sometimes store their favorite foods. A bank clerk would call such communities Savings Banks!

Against Civilization

The zeks on a coffee plantation in Guatemala are Gatherers, and the anthropologist is a Savings Bank. Their free ancestors had more important things to do. Kung people miraculously survived as a community of free human beings into our own exterminating age. Leakey observed them in their lush African forest homeland.

They cultivated nothing except themselves. They made themselves what they wished to be. They were not determined by anything beyond their own being - not by alarm clocks, not by debts, not by orders from superiors. They feasted and celebrated and played, full-time, except when they slept. They shared everything with their communities: Great personal satisfaction, deep inner joy, came from the sharing. In today's world, wolves still experience the joys that come from sharing. Maybe that's why governments pay bounties to the killers of wolves.

Diamond observed other free human beings who survived into our age, also in Africa. He could see that they did no work, but he couldn't quite bring himself to say it in English. Instead, he said they made no distinction between work and play. Does Diamond mean that the activity of the free people can be seen as work one moment, as play another, depending on how the anthropologist feels? Does he mean they didn't know if their activity was work or play? If the IKung visited our offices and factories, they might think we're playing. Why else would we be there? I think Diamond meant to say something more profound.

Atime-and-motion engineer watching a bear near a berry patch would not know when to punch his clock. Does the bear start working when he walks to the berry patch, when he picks the berry, when he opens his jaws? If the engineer has half a brain he might say the bear makes no distinction between work and play. If the engineer has an imagination he might say that the bear experiences joy from the moment the berries turn deep red, and that none of the bear's motions are work.

Leakey and others suggest that the general progenitors of human beings, our earliest grandmothers, originated in lush African forests, somewhere near the homeland of the IKung. The conservative majority, profoundly satisfied with nature's unstinting generosity, happy in their accomplishments, at peace with themselves and the world, had no reason to leave their home. A restless minority went wandering. Perhaps they followed their dreams.

Perhaps their favorite pond dried up. Perhaps their favorite animals wandered away. These people were very fond of animals; they knew the animals as cousins. The wanderers are said to have walked to every woodland, plain and lakeshore of Eurasia. They walked or floated to almost every island. They walked across the land bridge near the northern land of ice to the southernmost tip of the double continent which would be called America. The wanderers went to hot lands and cold, to lands with much rain and lands with little. Perhaps some felt nostalgia for the warm home they left.

Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections

If so, the presence of their favorite animals, their cousins, compensated for their loss. We can still see the homage some of them gave to these animals on cave walls of Altamira, on rocks in Abrigo del Sol in the Amazon Valley. Some of the women learned from birds and winds to scatter seeds. Some of the men learned from wolves and eagles to hunt.

But none of them overworked. And everyone knows it. The armored Christians who later "discovered" these communities knew that these people did no work, and this knowledge grated on Christian nerves, it rankled, it caused cadavers to peep out. The Christians spoke of women who did "lurid dances" in their fields instead of confining themselves to chores; they said hun-ters did a lot of devilish "hocus pocus" before actually drawing the bowstring.

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These Christians, early time-and-motion engineers, couldn't tell when play ended and work began. Long familiar with the chores of zeks, the Christians were repelled by the lurid and devilish heathen who pretended that the Curse of Labor had not fallen on them. The Christians put a quick end to the "hocus pocus" and the dances, and saw to it that none could fail to distinguish work from play.

Our ancestors I'll borrow Turner's term and call them the Possessed had more important things to do than to struggle to survive. They loved nature and nature reciprocated their love. Pierre Clastres' La societe centre I'etat insists that the struggle for subsistence is not verifiable among any of the Possessed; it is verifiable among the Dispossessed in the pits and on the margins of progressive industrialization. Leslie White, after a sweeping review of reports from distant places and ages, a view of "Primitive culture as a whole," concludes that "there's enough to eat for a richness of life rare among the 'civilized.

I would use the word Primitive to refer to myself and my contemporaries, with our progressive poverty of life. Primitive Man and His Food The defective state of modern man has had its effects upon medicine and the very study of disease. Hooton, the distinguished physical anthropologist of Harvard, has remarked that "it is a very myopic medical science which works backward from the morgue rather than forward from tJie cradle. The reasons have been somewhat of necessity, it is to be admitted, for one can scarcely study health when the adequate controls are not present.

In civilization one studies civilized people, and the frequency of the forms of degeneration which are found then determine what we consider normal and abnormal. As a result, conditions which generally form no part of undomesticated animal life are regarded as normal and necessary for the human species. So long has disease been studied that the physician often has little concept as to what health actually is. We live in a world of pathology, deformity and virtual physical monstrosity, which has so colored our thinking that we cannot visualize the nature of health and the conditions necessary for its presence.

The question should then logically arise: If perfect physical specimens could here be found, the study could be constructive and progressive, giving suggestions, perhaps, as to the conditions which permitted or induced a state of physical excellence to exist. We might then find out what man is like, biologically speaking, when he does not need a doctor, which might also indicate what he should be like when the doctor has finished with him.

Fortunately the idea has not been entirely neglected. Primitive races were carefully observed and described by many early voyagers and explorers who found them in their most simple and natural state. Primitive life has also very carefully been observed and studied with the object of understanding social, moral or religious conditions, in which, however, incidental observations were made too with respect to the physical condition of the people, and the living habits which might affect that condition. Others, in modern life, have studied the savages with the specific object of determining their physical state of health, and the mode of living which is associated therewith.

The results of such work have been very significant, but regarding medicine and nutrition in actual practice, they have been almost entirely neglected. The common view that primitive man is generally short lived and subject to many diseases is often held by physician as well as layman, and the general lack of sanitation, modern treatment, surgery and drugs in the primitive world is thought to prevent maintenance of health at a high physical level.

For the average nutritionist it is quite natural to feel that any race not having access to the wide variety of foods which modern agriculture and transportation now permit could not be in good health. These assumptions have helped to determine existing therapeutic methods, and they have largely prevented serious consideration that might be based upon factual data. But the facts are known, and these comprise a very interesting and important story. They indicate that, when living under near-isolated conditions, apart from civilization and without access to the foods of civilization, primitive man lives in much better physical condition than does the usual member of civilized society.

When his own nutrition is adequate and complete, as it often is, he maintains complete immunity to dental caries. His teeth are white and sparkling, with neither brushing nor cleansing agents used, and the dental arch is broad, with the teeth formed in perfect alignment. The facial and body development is also good. The face is finely formed, well-set and broad. The body is free from deformity and proportioned as beauty and symmetry would indicate desirable. The respective members of the racial group reproduce in homogeneity from one generation to the next.

There are few deviations from the standard anthropological prototype. One individual resembles the other in facial form, looking much like sisters or brothers, with the chief differences in appearance being in size. Reproductive efficiency is such as to permit parturition with no difficulty and little or no pain. There are no prenatal deformities. Resistance to infectious disease is high, few individuals being sick, and these usually rapidly recovering. The degenerative diseases are rare, even in advanced life, some of them being completely unknown and unheard of by the primitive.

Mental complaints are equally rare, and the state of happiness and contentment is one scarcely known by civilized man. These are the characteristics of the finest and most healthful primitive races, who live under the most ideal climatic and nutritional conditions. Primitive races less favored by environment are less successful in meeting weakness and disease, but even the poorest of these have better teeth and skeletal development than civilized man, and they usually present other physical advantages as well. The experience of primitive man has therefore been one of great importance.

We note that people living today, under the culture and environment of the Stone Age, have not only equalled but far surpassed civilized man in strength, physical development and immunity to disease. The mere existence of this fact poses an important question to modern medicine and should arouse serious thought and consideration.

Of equal significance is the fact that the good health of the primitive has been possible only under conditions of relative isolation. As soon as his contact with civilization is sufficient to alter his dietary habits, he succumbs to disease very readily and loses all of the unique immunity of the past. The teeth decay; facial form ceases to be uniform; deformities become common; reproductive efficiency is lowered; mental deficiency develops; and the duration of life is sharply lowered. It would hence appear that the nutritional habits of primitive man are responsible for his state of health.

So long as the native foods remain in use, there are no important physical changes, and the bacterial scourges are absent, even though a complete lack of sanitation would indicate that pathogenic bacteria might be present. With a displacement of native foods for those of modern commerce the situation changes completely, and the finest sanitation that the white man can provide, together with the best in medical services, is of no avail in preventing the epidemics which take thousands of lives.

Among scientists who have studied at first hand both the physical condition and food of many primitive races, the close relationship between the two has been clearly recognized. Almost totally committed to the argument that life was hard in the Paleolithic, our textbooks compete to convey a sense of impending doom, leaving the student to wonder not only how hunters managed to make a living, but whether, after all, this was living?

The specter of starvation stalks the stalker in these pages. His technical incompetence is said to enjoin continuous work just to survive, leaving him without respite from the food quest and without the leisure to "build culture. And in treatises on economic development, he is condemned to play the role of bad example, the so-called "subsistence economy.

Perhaps then we should phrase the necessary revisions in the most shocking terms possible: By common understanding an affluent society is one in which all the people's wants are easily satisfied; and though we are pleased to consider this happy condition the unique achievement of industrial civilization, a better case can be made for hunters and gatherers, even many of the marginal ones spared to ethnography.

For wants are "easily satisfied," either by producing much or desiring little, and there are, accordingly, two possible roads to affluence. The Galbraithean course makes assumptions peculiarly appropriate to market economies, that man's wants are great, not to say infinite, whereas his means are limited, although improvable. Thus the gap between means and ends can eventually be narrowed by industrial productivity, at least to the extent that "urgent" goods became abundant.

But there is also a Zen solution to scarcity and affluence, beginning from premises opposite from our own, that human material ends are few and fi-nite and technical means unchanging but on the whole adequate. Adopting the Zen strategy, a people can enjoy an unparalleled material plenty, though perhaps only a low standard of living.

That I think describes the hunters. The traditional dismal view of the hunter's fix is pre-anthropological. It goes back to the time Adam Smith was writing, and maybe to a time before anyone was writing. But anthropology, especially evolutionary anthropology, found it congenial, even necessary theoretically, to adopt the same tone of reproach.

Archeologists and ethnologists had become Neolithic revolutionaries, and in their enthusiasm for the revolution found serious shortcomings in the Old Stone Age Regime. Shutting ourselves off from that core connection and instead turning towards the business of systemic ecosystem damage for the business of resource profit or population expansion.

Later sections of the book dealing with more present day issues: Probably the most chilling piece provided in the edition I read was a selection of one the letters written by Ted Kzynzski aka "The Unabomber". For those who are unfamiliar with who he was prior to becoming infamous, Kazynski was a brilliant mathematician, I was one of the top minds in the US. But he went so far into the numbers that when he came out on the otherside that's the only way he viewed humanity. Conversly when he saw what humanity was doing to the planet it horrified him and he unplugged and went to live in aseries of cabins and finally a tent, all while making and sending bombs.

What was so scary about the piece of his that printed, was that most of it has already come pass, or is happening right now. I know you live in odd times when you're reading a letter from the unabomber and you realize you are nodding you're head with what he wrote back in In the final Analysis, while I am an anarchist, am patently not anti-civ. In fact I would challenge the defenition of the term civilization. Anarcho-primitivism is not the answer. But neither is our present course. Against Civilization is good food for thought here in As we listen to the fracking drills, and watch the great Pacific plastic mass slowly grow.

Feb 10, Enrico Ferla rated it did not like it. The quality of things ceases to be their essence and becomes the accidental appearence of their value. But as she grows, she discovers that her mother is a separate entity with her own priorities and limits. This creates a gap between Self and Other in the consciousness of the child, who tries to fill this deepening rift with transitional objects initially, perhaps a teddy bear; later, additions and beliefs that serve to fill the psychic gap and thus provide a sense of security.

It is the powerful human need for transitional objects that drives individuals in their search for property and power, and that generates bureaucracies and technologies as people pool their efforts. Qualities like cynicism, relativism, and superficiality are part of this, but the postmodern gloss on society goes even further in its efforts to deflect opposition to civilized social existence. View all 4 comments. Nov 27, rated it it was ok Shelves: Like, given the popularity of the arguments: Also was Lord of the Salmon himself really a necessary inclusion?

Aug 17, Laurin marked it as to-read. I read this while sitting on a mountain in the middle of the Linville Gorge wilderness.

I'll just say that if you're wondering what the whole "anti-civ" thing is about, this books is an excellent way to get your feet wet and get a little bit of exposure to a lot of the people who are writing about deep ecology and anti-civ. It's a collection of short essays and excerpts of essays or longer works centered around the topic of civilization more accurately, critiques against civilization.

IT is di I read this while sitting on a mountain in the middle of the Linville Gorge wilderness. A pretty quick read and very informative. Apr 14, Dylan rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: A short and diverse compilation of excerpted writing from the Greeks to the present that comes from the anti-civilization and primitivist currents that, the editor argues, have rightly opposed "progress" since the origins of civilization.

I found it to be a powerful and uncommon illustration of the potential depth of a critique of domestication and an exploration of wildness in all domains of human being. Nov 26, sh'dynasty rated it it was ok Shelves: One of the essays in this book was amazing. I think it was called The Pit. It was only an excerpt, though. The complete piece, even more amazing, is called HERE: Sep 11, Ryan Mishap rated it liked it Shelves: Excellent collection about just what the title says.

Essays by Derrick Jensen and a host of other authors, some anarchists and others not. Good introduction to anti-civ thought because many of the essays are more emotional and personal rather than dry and academic. Nov 19, Roger rated it really liked it. The most striking parts of this book are the selections that come from the 18th and 19th Centuries. Reading them, but for the Author and Date, one could believe that these critiques were directed at 21st Century Western society. Feb 09, Brendan rated it it was amazing. An expertly curated collection of thoughts against civilization.

I thoroughly appreciate the inclusion of texts both old and new, and the cohesive picture they paint of the pathology of civilization. Jan 23, Peter rated it did not like it. While primitivist philosophy may be interesting, this "collection" is not worth your time. A waste of time and money.

Apr 16, Christy added it Shelves: Decided not to be a volunteer content provider for Amazon anymore. I rated and reviewed this book on LibraryThing: Sep 08, Ashitaka rated it it was amazing. After reading this book, I am convinced that our so-called civilized world is destructive. Aaron rated it it was amazing Jul 25, Muhammad Yusuf Effendi rated it liked it May 16, JW rated it liked it May 02, Rhys rated it liked it Mar 26, Fons Jena rated it really liked it Oct 29, Jeffrey Bumiller rated it it was amazing Mar 07, Mike rated it it was amazing Jun 17, Richard rated it really liked it Nov 05, Ezra Simorangkir rated it it was amazing Sep 11, Tyler Jackson rated it it was amazing Jun 18,

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