Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

ziq OP wrote (edited )

titles

added

without enough detail to make the reader have something concrete to work with

wouldn't that make it even longer through? it's already longer than i'd like

I think it would be preferable to call green anarchism it a lifeway rather than a lifestyle

i've never used that word before but i'll trust your instinct and change it

I don’t usually say that anti-civ has the same foundations and principles as AP, because AP is more of a positive project/program than anti-civ which I understand as primarily a set of critiques. Or have APs moved away from having political programs?

the primitivist primer seems to make clear that it's a critique and not a program and moore heavily bases that text on perlman's initial text. do you have quotes that contradict that?

I would say Kaczynski is an influence on green anarchists, even though we find him later in the section when you talk about non-anarchists who have made problems for green anarchy.

i guess i can add a line saying some anti-civs are influenced by him since when he was the anonymous unabomber at least one of his notes claimed he was an anarchist (even though i don't think he knew what anarchy was at that point in his life)

edit: "While it’s true some anti-civ anarchists have been influenced by a select few of his better ideas, that’s not enough to weigh us down with all his bad ones."

I would add extractivism to the list here “These interrelated philosophies together form a strong critique of”, since for me it’s possibly the most compelling way to frame anticiv arguments.

ok will add

You say that light greens’ “attempts to appropriate the green label from anti-civs have no real desire to address the devastating consequences […]” It would be useful to add something that demonstrates that, because readers aren’t working with much that is concrete at this stage. Similarly, concrete examples of how they are managery and programmistic would be helpful when you bring them up.

ugh, that's something that would add a whole new chapter. i'll try to think of a way to do that in just a few words

Some people reading will not know that “Individuals Tending Towards the Wild” is the same as ITS.

fixed

5

ziq OP wrote (edited )

Green anarchy embodies an unapologetic critique of all forms of authority. “Solar-punk”, “social ecology”, “post-scarcity anarchism” and related attempts to appropriate the green label from anti-civs have no real desire to address the devastating consequences of the debilitating industrial system that rules us. Their wistful notions that “green technology” such as solar cells, undefined “clean energy”, modular computing, 3D printers and electric vehicles will solve this unprecedented crisis are incredibly shortsighted.

They fail to understand just how destructive and polluting those technologies are to extract from the earth, manufacture and transport. They always fail to address the mountains of toxic waste that’s produced during these processes and dumped in some third world peasant’s backyard. All these high-tech goods require global supply chains, extractivism, imperialism and laborer-exploitation because they’re made up of rare minerals and other resources that can only be sourced in certain parts of the world.

The manufacturing processes for microchips and silicon are so advanced that they require centralized mega-factories that cost an absolute fortune to set up and run, which is why there are only 2 or 3 companies in the world with the required infrastructure.

The microchip manufacturing process involves hundreds of steps and depends on advanced robots pushing tiny particles around massive fabrication facilities. The “clean rooms” inside these facilities require tightly controlled conditions with zero contamination from dust, humidity, heat or dirt. If one tiny impurity enters the system, an entire batch will be ruined, costing a fortune and months of wasted preparation. You’re not going to have local neighborhood microchip factories like these solarpunks seem to imagine.

Reading an incredibly shallow and uninformed text like The Solarpunk Manifesto is an exercise in frustration for anyone who has thought seriously about all the consequences of mass-production and what it takes to maintain an industrial city. It reads like a child’s proposal for saving the world. Look at some of these points:

Solarpunk provides a valuable new perspective, a paradigm and a vocabulary through which to describe one possible future. Instead of embracing retrofuturism, solarpunk looks completely to the future. Not an alternative future, but a possible future.

Solarpunk recognizes the historical influence politics and science fiction have had on each other.

Solarpunk recognizes science fiction as not just entertainment but as a form of activism.

The visual aesthetics of Solarpunk are open and evolving. As it stands, it is a mash-up of the following: 1800s age-of-sail/frontier living (but with more bicycles). Creative reuse of existing infrastructure (sometimes post-apocalyptic, sometimes present-weird). Appropriate technology. Art Nouveau. Hayao Miyazaki. Jugaad-style innovation from the non-Western world. High-tech backends with simple, elegant outputs.

In Solarpunk we’ve pulled back just in time to stop the slow destruction of our planet. We’ve learned to use science wisely, for the betterment of our life conditions as part of our planet.

It’s just silly. A style guide for drawing pretty art and writing fiction with a certain aesthetic. It’s a fun and creative pastime, sure, but it doesn’t engage in any real way with the ongoing global ecocide beyond proposing “green tech” and even more ridiculously, “sustainable civilization”.

The more “serious” philosophies like Bookchin’s social ecology and post-scarcity anarchism essentially make the same naive assumptions and proposals as solar-punk, but use bigger words to do it, while also repeatedly tarnishing anti-civs for not having faith in futurist science, technological progress, democracy and workerism.

5

lettuceLeafer wrote

In fairness the more reasonable solar punk plan is just to get really good and reusing microchips. Still silly but that seems to be the solution to high tech

3

ziq OP wrote

any society that depends on microchips is never going to stop being alienated and so is never going to stop demanding mass industry

unless it's like the walking dead and most of the people are dead so there are no factories and scavenging is the only way to survive

2

lettuceLeafer wrote

Like I said it's sikky idea but idk at least they understand that anarchists prob can't make microchips. Which isn't much.

Tho in fairness most of these solarpunk types are populists so it's just a furthering of their democratic naivete

3

ziq OP wrote

at least they understand that anarchists prob can't make microchips

idk about that. i think they're just imagining the world at large, 8+ billion people just voluntarily decide to close down all the factories and adopt a solarpunk civilization to preserve the ecosphere. not that people wouldn't be able to make chips because of a lack of specialization and resource accumulation, but that they'd make the collective decision to stop.

2

Tequila_Wolf wrote

I think there's a bit of repetition you do that you might be able to exchange for doing the thing once with more detail. If I can I'll point some out later.

the primitivist primer seems to make clear that it's a critique and not a program and moore heavily bases that text on perlman's initial text. do you have quotes that contradict that?

for me people like Zerzan are more representative of AP and though it's been a while since I've engaged him I'm left with the distinct impression he had a very positive project for returning to his idea/model of hunter-gatherer society. Unforutnately that's all I can say, it was almost a decade a go I last engaged this stuff outside of Bellamy's taking a shit on it in Corrosive Consciousness. That might be an interesting thing for you to engage because Bellamy does make stark distinctions between AP and his egoist/insurrectionary anti-civ thing, iirc.

5

NeoliberalismKills wrote

I tend to agree with you, Tequila. I think primitivism started as purely a critique and Tucker and Zerzan have turned it into a program relatively recently. In one of Tucker's podcasts (don't remember which episode) he mentions he (maybe Zerzan too) thinks the work of critique is done and it's time to start saying what needs to be done. Part of the reason I use anti-civ rather than primitivist myself. But I'd be glad to hear arguments that say otherwise.

6

ziq OP wrote

eh that's not worth completely rewriting the essay to accommodate stuff said by someone on a podcast

4

ziq OP wrote

Read Corrosive Consciousness part 1 and it's making the argument that anprim isn't critical enough, that it takes certain things for granted and romanticises other things. It hasn't really made the argument that anprim is a program, just that it should go further in its critique (towards nihilism).

5