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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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Chomskyist OP wrote (edited )

The root of all primitivist thought is a literal worship of the planet humans evolved on -- a sort of Gaianistic theology that assigns original sin to sentient thought and locates perfection in the evolutionary past before this sin came about.

This is at odds with reality in a large number of ways (the least of which being that non-human animals are very capable of sentient thought, and the assertion that they are not indicates the same sort of Christian hierarchical dualism that primitivists claim to oppose).

As such, supporting primitivism means supporting this world-view. This world-view sometimes makes the same terminal statements as a sane worldview, but for entirely different reasons.

For example, both myself and a primitivist might say "Pollution is bad," but while I would say that because it kills people (humans and non-humans), a primitivist would say that because it kills plants or, more poignantly, destabilizes a "natural order" that they want to preserve.

Nothing in primitivism has ever convinced me that the primitivist utopia is not an entirely empty planet, such as Mars (which is now sullied by the human infection, but consider Mars circa 1800). On Mars, the balance of life and nature is perfect. No cities have ever been built, no mass-extinctions have ever taken place.

There are some key questions that we can ask primitivists to expose this worldview;

  • If a life-form originating in an environment relatively untouched by humans (the Mariana trench, or the deep Antarctic, or some other environment) was discovered to be multiplying rapidly and converting the planet's atmosphere to something toxic to all existing life, would it be ethical to try to eradicate this life-form to protect all existing life?

I suspect that primitivists will always answer no to this question, since:

  • using technology is associated with the original sin of intelligence, and

  • since such a world-ending lifeform is "organic", it's thus part of the natural (or divine) plan and it's right for everyone to die.

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mms4wyfu wrote

The root of all primitivist thought is a literal worship of the planet humans evolved on -- a sort of Gaianistic theology that assigns original sin to sentient thought and locates perfection in the evolutionary past before this sin came about.

That's the catch with aggressive boundary-drawing--you've defined primitivism so narrowly that it sounds like you're fine with the vast majority of people whose anarchist views are informed by primitivism.

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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Emeryael wrote

Oh look, a close-to-accurate statement. We aren't so anthropocentric as to claim that pollution only kills humans, it kills humans and plants.

To go with this, the prims are also smart enough to know that if you poison an ecosystem, wiping out all plant and animal life, it will kill humans as well, because it turns out we're part of said ecosystem and to pretend like we're not, act like somehow we're separate from the world and as such, can poison it and face no consequences, is an incredibly dumb, toxic idea.

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