WILD

I used to regard the Anarcho-Primitivist movement with good-natured amusement.

The mental picture of John Zerzan bounding across the Serengeti plains wearing nothing but a loincloth and his TV-sized glasses would be a spectacle if ever there was one.

I've sometimes toyed with the idea of sending Chellis Glendinning an e- get well card.

My basic attitude toward them was: If you wanna bungle in the jungle, well, that's all right with me - so long as you don't encroach on my hi-tech Anarcho-Communist utopia, which is the *only* setting in which I can attain my much-coveted two-hour work day; I might even go camping with you when I'm on vacation. And besides, if you do try to encroach, we won't have any trouble deflecting your boomerangs and spears. As for poison darts, we Anarchists have become immune to them after so many years of diatribe.

Then this weekend I read what they have to say in earnest. I'm still reeling from it, having been shaken, not stirred. While I am not at all sure that I agree with their conclusions as to how to solve the problems, no one has plumbed their depths more profoundly or articulated them more trenchantly.

I mentioned the Serengeti plains tongue-in-cheek above. Now, no longer in a flippant frame of mind; I recall reading many years ago that children in various cultures when asked to draw what paradise looks like draw savannas.

The closely-related schools of Anarcho-Primitivists go far, far beyond the critique of other Anarchists. They don't critique societies, or given societies or societal structures. They critique civilization itself. Before reading them, I thought my criticism of society was radical. I now realize that in assuming that society, any form of society, should be held intact, albeit reformed; I was being just that - a reformist. They make a very convincing argument for the position that the problems we experience in our various societies are endemic in civilization itself - any civilization.

Although I have read and considered how language forces us into a symbolic representation of reality and tisked tisked eating packaged bread and meat treated with chemicals that keep it red sold in plastic wrappings so that I don't have to deal with the mess of hunting, I've read E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" and have often experienced myself progressively weakening and my body and faculties atrophying in response to living in an advanced technological society; I never really, I mean really, gorked just how deep it goes.

I never realized that living in a technological world has caused me to live in my head, in a virtual reality. I never realized that the occasional feelings of unreality that I experienced, especially as a teenager, are not the result of some pathology in my mind or neural circuitry, by the response to very real alienation from reality. I don't touch anything directly, most especially my truest, most natural self.

I suddenly realized that I don't know myself at all. Who would I be, what would reality look like if I retained the ability to discern one monkey face from another, an ability I possessed when I was six months old, inter alia?

Who would I be and what would my relationship to my food be if I ate with my hands?

Who would I be if I did not consult with the washing machine oracle, the water faucet oracle, the electric switch oracle to supply my needs and wants?

Who would I be if I could still connect with my feral fury? What would happen if I were to respond appropriately, i.e., tooth and claw and all adrenaline rage unmitigated to the threat of impending destruction that the governments threaten me and everyone I love with? Why does that not come naturally to me? Why can't I reach that in the event that I don't react normally and naturally? Why can't I access that? Why can't you? Why are we not even able to override the programming manually if we have to? Why have we become so abstracted from reality that we regard our very existence as something that we can be philosophical about and discuss rationally?

I'll provide a link to an article that is a very perfunctory treatment of the concerns and aims of Anarcho-Primitivism, but I do not wish to impose more than a 12-page introduction upon you. It is intended to be a primer: http://tinyurl.com/2abxkv

I'll also provide a link to the homepage of Dr. Steve Best, philosopher, writer and activist: http://www.drstevebest.org/index.htm. He's one of the foremost spokespersons and champions of this movement. It is interesting that he has been banned from UK. Maybe some of you in UK can better understand why he has than I can.

I am left with the wholly unsettling feeling that I've accessed the files in my consciousness that, which when I try to delete them, tell me that they cannot be deleted as they are integral to the functioning of my OS.

What would happen, who would I be if I did manage to delete them? Should I?

Everything that I took for granted now seems odd, unwanted, intervening and, most of all inescapable. I realize that everything I do is by way of a technological mediator and most of my activities are for the sake of and in order to procure more of this artifice. Tomorrow, for instance I plan to go for an outing with my husband. The outing is built around my main purpose for having to get out to another town – we, as subscribers to five megabits of internet connection are entitled to a free router from the phone company. We also need a new phone cord, as the insulation on the one we have is cracked, exposing the wires. I am suddenly exquisitely aware of how much of my activity is centered on technology – virtually all of it. I am completely in its thrall and dependent upon it. It not only determines most of my behavior, it determines most of who I am.

It suddenly feels very odd having to consult with the computer oracle in order to reach out you. Would that I could tap directly into your consciousness and emotions in order to impress upon you the moment of what I understood and engage your empathy with me so that you would experience it to. But that is precisely what we have been obviated from being able to do by all of the mediating and intermediary layers of not only societal norms which have tamed us, but also centuries of technology that shield us from one another - as well as us from our natural selves.

I wrote the following the day after I wrote the above:

What I realized hit me so profoundly that I have had difficulty speaking for the past couple of days. It filtered down into my consciousness at least down to the level of speech. It disoriented me completely as I groped to find who I am when I am not flicking a switch or turning on a faucet.

I realized that if so much of our world is contrivance and device, if those disposable commodities that are intended to be used up, become obsolete and disposed of are myriad and all-pervasive, then it is no wonder that most people are nothing more than accommodation to contrivance and device and that the cold artifice of it has pervaded their very being. There can be no expecting people in a post-industrial society to be real - because they can't. They have been pre-empted by their machines.

My daughter called me and I had trouble speaking to her. I found it difficult to speak in general and the feeling was exacerbated by having to speak to her through the medium of technology.

Neither could I chat with friends on line. I simply wasn't able to bring myself to relate to people through the computer, although I did post. Yet, having a private conversation via technology was impossible for me.

Once, when I was, oh, sixteen I think; I took acid. I remember looking at a record player and it looked like nothing but artifice.
I remember watching the technology and thinking: "It's bullshit. It's fake."

*Everything* looks that way to me now. Everything. And this "trip" has now gone on for two days.

This is as close to a psychotic break as I've ever come and yet I know that it's probably the first time I've touched sanity since I was a baby.

My husband said that the very same thing happened to him. He mentioned feeling this way yesterday and then again today - total disruption, a complete calling our consciousness and everything we called real and every day into question - a disruption that leaves room for restructuring.
This is being a radical. Everything before was cosmetic reformism.

This is today's continuation:

Before going to bed last night I thought: "Without myriad technology, life would be uninteresting. What would my consciousness be able to busy itself with except the basics of survival?"

Early this morning I forced myself to shower, it was a very strange experience – the water from the shower head, the perfumed liquid soaps, shampoos, deodorant, body lotion – all of it was so strange, so unnatural.

I made myself go out. The sight of the traffic was peculiar too and I found it hard to look at people.

I went to town and found that I could not longer breathe semi-autonomically. I had to think about every breath. If I didn't breathe consciously, purposefully, I began to asphyxiate. I thought: "This has gone far enough. Is this the end of how far down the disruption will go? What if it is not? What is the step after not being able to breathe without being conscious of it?"

I was becoming exhausted and more than a bit frightened. Then I saw a garden. In it were trees. I was drawn to the trees. I was drawn to their life. I reached out and touched a young palm tree. Never had I seen a tree, really seen one. I noticed every leaf, every speckle on the leaves. I noticed the sun reflecting from some of the leaves. I looked at the trunk of the tree. I saw more detail than ever I had seen in my life. It was endless and I realized that the tree was continuously changing. I thought: There is more to this one tree than there is to all of the synthetic world put together. This tree is endless. It is infinite. I could spend a lifetime observing this tree and still not begin to know it." Then I realized I was breathing normally again.

I went over to a small evergreen tree. I could see the texture of every leaf-like growth. I noticed the differences in the acorns that were on the tree. I never noticed detail like that. Never that I can recall. Perhaps I did as a baby, but I do not remember that. The more I looked, the more there was to see and the more I saw the more I was taught how to see by the tree.

I went over to a patch of grass in a park and took off my shoes. I walked through the grass though it was only about 10 degrees outside. I felt the cold, but it was not my enemy. It was not something I had to defend myself from. I sat down in the grass and looked at it. I wondered how many blades of grass there are in the world – how many there have been and will be.

I watched yet another tree as I sat in the grass. The leaves were all sorts of colors and I watched them undulating in the wind. I remembered Richard May's comment about susurrations of tautologies and I realized there are no tautologies in susurration. There cannot be. Every undulation of every leaf is a world in and of itself. It never was before and will never be again and the leaves do not return to the same place unchanged.

I realized that in having disengaged and de-identified with technology my consciousness had returned to its natural state. I was no longer adapting my consciousness to the constriction of technology. It was accommodating itself now to nature, thus it was expanding without limit.

I had received my answer as to what my consciousness would be like, who I would be if I was divested of the stultifications of technology, if I was not accommodating myself to the synthetic, the devised, the expendable, the disposable. I could see that nature was being created continuously. I could see.

I felt very human, not at all animal, though I did connect with something like feral fury when I realized that there were those who would destroy nature. I was filled with a deep-abiding sense of protectiveness of it and that protectiveness included self-preservation, as I was part of nature. My own existence did not seem more or less important than that of the trees I had observed. What is more or less of infinity?

I experienced time differently too looking at that first tree. I realized that had I had all the time in the world, I could not fathom the depths of that continuously evolving tree or even see all its morphological detail and that it was a privilege to see something of it and see its endlessness. The amount I was able to see and the time allotted to me to see it was irrelevant. What is a fraction of infinity?

As I walked on I was able to call my husband on my cell phone, though I had remained, and probably will remain, in a natural state of consciousness. It is enough to break through the barrier once.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com