Primitivism Discussion

[Skeptic]

I'm having a bit of a hard time with the notion of having a discussion advocating for a lifestyle which is being held on a method of communication which would be impossible if said lifestyle was actually used. It just seems... odd to me. It'd be like holding a discussion saying we ought to abandon air travel while being a long-distance flight.

Or speaking with "post-modernists" who claim "all science is a social construct and not objective reality" while at 30,000 feet. Had similar discussions... pointing out to the huge jet engine outside the window and noting that thing doesn't seem like a "social construction of one particular way of knowing" to me didn't seem to ruffle their feathers.

 

[bikerdruid]

I had the following conversation with a friend of mine whose hunband has a garden...

She: "Want another $300's worth of bean salad?"
Me: "No thanks, just a little bit of of greens. $200's worth or so."

we grow, raise and hunt all of our food.
...and our tomatoes don't cost us $4.
in fact, we sold over a ton of tomatoes and almost 2 tons of cukes last summer as well.

 

[Skeptic]

Let me know by flyingpig airmail when the technology actually reaches the point where we can all live forever, I'll maybe accept that as an argument. Meanwhile, people died, people die, people will die.

In primitive times, before modern medicine and modern agriculture, the earth's entire arabale surface could provide food for about (at most) a billion people or so. Today, the population is over six billion. So unfortunately we need to get rid of about five billion before we can all become happy, primitive farmers. Since "people die" anyway, it's no big deal, I know, but, are you willing yourself to be one of the 5,000,000,000? No fair saying "people" will die -- which means you want someone else to die. I am asking you if you are willing to die.

Now, also, in primitive times, life expectancy was, roughly, 40. And most adults lost one or two -- or more -- of their children in infancy. I know, that, since "people die" anyway, it's no big deal. But again -- no fair saying "people die", which means you want other people to die at 40 or lose their children. Are you, yourself, willing to refuse modern medicine lengthening your life? Are you, yourself, willing to have one or two of your own children die?

I'm of the opinion that we're a tad too succesful at keeping people alive.

Oh, the horrors of modern civilization.

 

[Skeptic]

we grow, raise and hunt all of our food.

Yes, but you do it professionally, with modern methods.

 

[quixotecoyote]

Yes, but you do it professionally, with modern methods.

And before you point out the wonderful handtools you got at a swap meet for ex-soviet peasant novelties, he's talking "Here's a stick. Here's a flat rock. Good luck."

 

[Skeptic]

I, too, think we are a tad too succesful at keeping people alive, as "jiggeryqua" says. Why should all these ill people with a bad quality of life, some of which were even guilty of overeating of smoking in the past, survive at great expense?

Naturally, I make an exception for my friends and relatives. My dear old grandad should be kept alive even if he used to be a smoker. My sick aunt should be given expensive medical care even if she's overweight. And that buddy of mine from first grade I still keep in touch with? Naturally his cancer should get preferable, expensive treatment.

It's only other people's friends, relatives, children and selves that can be dispensed with by a quick and cheap death so that the world would stop being "too successful" at keeping people alive.

Deal, everybody?

 

[Belz...]

When my city created a recycling program, I was eager to get on board and diligently followed the rules. It made me feel good to do what I considered my part in helping to preserve our planet.

After awhile I started to wonder whether recycling was worth all the cost, effort and added pollution.

Of course it's nice if we can turn things like plastic beverage bottles into Halloween costumes, but at what expense?

One garbage truck used to come to my house and pick up everything, now two different trucks come, which means double the harmful emissions, double the wear on the roadways, double the parts for the vehicles, etc.

I don't think that was a derail. And it connects with the threads we have currently on nuclear.

Here in Québec they are apparently going to seperate recycling into more than one category, and I expect this will at least double the number of trucks. I think they also want to fine those who throw recyclable stuff away.

Recycling metal is fine and all; recycling paper is getting less and less useful because it's degradable and trees grow back; recycling plastic is not very efficient, but keeping it for a time when petroleum might be hard to find may not be such a bad idea. But two trucks ?

Seems feeling better about yourself is more important than actual results, to us.

 

[MatildaGage]

Not sure. I remember my mom hanging stuff out when I was a kid, even though we had a dryer. Also, covenants can be changed. Talk to your neighbors.

Well our homeowner's association is essentially rudderless and can't agree on changing anything. The only time they assert themselves is if they don't like something. They ignore all things related to children--my neighbors have put illegal treehouses in, and one even put a swingset in her front yard. But put up the wrong fence for a dog, and they'll come out of the woodwork w/threats of lawsuits.

And my document says "covenance"--I always thought it was misspelled but I have been told I'm wrong. In a previous home I had a "covenant". The former sounds like a Wiccan term to me. lol

You could plant native grasses, which require little water/fertilizer, but some of them grow taller than 6", and when they do, the city sends you a letter telling you to cut your grass. In the midwest and great plains, there is something called "buffalo grass", which only grows to about 5", and only needs to be cut once or twice a year. I've always wondered why people don't plant that.

I actually tried to do that when building my current home. It was against the "covenance". Now I have something that is difficult to grow in this soil--neighbors end up piling on so many chemicals--ridiculous.

One thing I totally hate is to see my employees (a.k.a. government employees paid by my compulsory taxes) spending their days mowing little medians and curbs with expensive equipment and lots of gas. How ludicrous! Plant clover or whatever, and let it go. Or wildflowers.

Last yr our government closed parks due to finances. They "asked for input" on how to cut costs so they wouldn't have to close. I said lay off the lawnmowing people and replace the huuuuuuuge lawns with clover or wildflowers. I am not talking about places people walk on, just giant greens cleared to maintain panoramic views. There is no environmental, logistical, or financial benefit to them.

Instead they closed a few parks.

 

[gumboot]

Well the OP is an interesting idea. Personally I've never been fond of primitivism. And I'm inclined to think that anyone who is a fan of it either A) Doesn't realise how good we have it today or B) Doesn't realise how bad humans used to have it.

Actually it's probably both.

For most of our species' history life has been short, harsh, and miserable. People tend to forget this. It's a classic case of self-pity. Oh woe is us, our society is sooooo bad. It could be soooo much better.

Once upon a time there were three billy goats, and they all lived on one side of a wide flowing river. The grass on the far side of the river always looked so much greener and tastier than on their side, but the only way across was over a bridge, and a Troll lived under it...

 

[gumboot]

Also, covenants can be changed. Talk to your neighbors.

If they're Christian ask them for a New Covenant.

 

[gumboot]

Sure the blood chemistry may indeed be the same, that doesn't speak to the emotional component. Losing a child is stressful, losing a parking space is stressful- surely they aren't the same. I am simply arguing that the stress from living a primitive lifestyle may be preferable to that of modern society.

I doubt it. The sort of stressed you're likely to encounter in a primitive lifestyle are along the lines of "are we going to find food before we starve?" or "is my husband going to return from the hunt?" or "which of my two children should I feed and which should I let starve?" or "should I kill my brother now, cleanly, or let him die slowly from infection"?

There's a reason pre-modern humans didn't live very long, and it wasn't because their brief lives were so full of awesome they just couldn't handle any more.

 

[Belz...]

There's a reason pre-modern humans didn't live very long, and it wasn't because their brief lives were so full of awesome they just couldn't handle any more.

 

[Cavemonster]

I doubt it. The sort of stressed you're likely to encounter in a primitive lifestyle are along the lines of "are we going to find food before we starve?" or "is my husband going to return from the hunt?" or "which of my two children should I feed and which should I let starve?" or "should I kill my brother now, cleanly, or let him die slowly from infection"?

There's a reason pre-modern humans didn't live very long, and it wasn't because their brief lives were so full of awesome they just couldn't handle any more.

Yes, but the reason the mean average was so low was largely because of much much higher infant mortality and death during childbirth.

Having babies die all the time, and women die during childbirth is no walk in the park, but it isn't accurate to characterize that as persistent stress greater than our own.

As for

"should I kill my brother now, cleanly, or let him die slowly from infection"?

My dad died eventually from complications of cancer. Over the course of a decade and a half, that cancer and it's complications put him near death in the hospital about half a dozen times from kidney failure, complications of a brain biopsy etc.

I'm glad we got all that time with him, but if we're just talking about levels of stress on the family, we had to go through the stress of seeing him almost die again and again, instead of just once. As I said, our preference was to have that much more time with him, but I'd hardly say it is the lower stress of the two medical situations.

 

[Atwill]

At the risk of sounding holier-than-thou, I'm a bit baffled by all the hostility flung towards the OP. His idea of "Primitivism Light" may reek of "having one's cake and eating it too", since he seems to be advocating an (in my opinion) extremely unrealistic middle ground between only the very best of both worlds; however, he certainly hasn't been a huge dick about his views for the most part. Yet people keep going back to this fallacious line of reasoning regarding him not practicing what he (supposedly) preaches, even though he's merely put his views up for discussion, not cram them down anyone's throats.

Anyway, to say a few words on the actual topic, I think consistent, fundamentalist primitivism is a pretty ill-conceived, misguided ideology that, going by my personal experiences with its advocates and their arguments, appears to draw most of its philosophy from naturalistic fallacies and a naive idealization of the past, while turning a convenient blind eye to humanity's *real* history. I also think that the primitivist's definitions of "natural" and "nature" are often detached from reality. They propose a total throwback to -and subsequent, artificial stagnation in- preindustrial times as a "return to nature", even though such an unprovoked, sudden and instantaneous regression followed by total stagnation would be just about the most abnormal, unnatural thing imaginable. Self-imposed stagnation in particular goes completely against everything we understand about the human race.

As for OP's middle ground proposal: I think your value judgments are a bit too subjective to serve as a basis for a proper, universally acceptable utopia. For example, I highly disagree with this idea that "primitivist stress" is preferable to its modern equivalent. I rather come home from a stressful day at work, only to be pestered by annoying telemarketers, loud TV ads and an inbox full of spam, than to spend almost every waking hour worrying about food and shelter, always busy fulfilling only my most basic needs.

In short, I take "life" over "survival".

 

[MatildaGage]

Yet people keep going back to this fallacious line of reasoning regarding him not practicing what he (supposedly) preaches, even though he's merely put his views up for discussion, not cram them down anyone's throats.

Fair enough.

I believe I was (wrongly) projecting my past experiences with other "primitivists" onto the OP.

 

[Belz...]

At the risk of sounding holier-than-thou, I'm a bit baffled by all the hostility flung towards the OP. His idea of "Primitivism Light" may reek of "having one's cake and eating it too", since he seems to be advocating an (in my opinion) extremely unrealistic middle ground between only the very best of both worlds; however, he certainly hasn't been a huge dick about his views for the most part. Yet people keep going back to this fallacious line of reasoning regarding him not practicing what he (supposedly) preaches, even though he's merely put his views up for discussion, not cram them down anyone's throats.

Perhaps you missed that this is a critical thinking forum. Pointing out fallacious reasoning is pretty much our whole purpose, here.

 

[EGarrett]

At the risk of sounding holier-than-thou, I'm a bit baffled by all the hostility flung towards the OP. His idea of "Primitivism Light" may reek of "having one's cake and eating it too", since he seems to be advocating an (in my opinion) extremely unrealistic middle ground between only the very best of both worlds;

What is the best of the "primitivist" world? What is desirable about going back to the primitive lifestyle?

Yet people keep going back to this fallacious line of reasoning regarding him not practicing what he (supposedly) preaches, even though he's merely put his views up for discussion, not cram them down anyone's throats.

If you put your views up for discussion, and your views are irrational or contradictory, people are going to point that out. What did you expect them to say?

 

[Atwill]

Perhaps you missed that this is a critical thinking forum. Pointing out fallacious reasoning is pretty much our whole purpose, here.

Kind of a strange thing to say, considering that this is precisely what I was doing when I pointed out the fallaciousness of the recurring appeal to hypocrisy. Whether the OP is being a hypocrite or not is completely irrelevant to the (in)validity of his primitivist ideas. If I told you that smoking crack can have severe negative side effects and may lead to intense addiction, then harping on the fact that I'm a crackhead myself wouldn't invalidate this point.

In any case, it was just an observation that left me a bit confused, since I honestly didn't pick up anything all that provocative from the OP's posts.

My dad died eventually from complications of cancer. Over the course of a decade and a half, that cancer and it's complications put him near death in the hospital about half a dozen times from kidney failure, complications of a brain biopsy etc.

I'm glad we got all that time with him, but if we're just talking about levels of stress on the family, we had to go through the stress of seeing him almost die again and again, instead of just once. As I said, our preference was to have that much more time with him, but I'd hardly say it is the lower stress of the two medical situations.

That's understandable, but in the context of this discussion, I would argue that the alternative really would cause you even more grief and stress. Just picture a primitivist world where people would pass away more abruptly (and maybe more peacefully) due to lack of sophisticated modern medicine. This all by itself may cause you less stress, but it would come with the huge price of having to live with the *constant* fear of losing a loved one to some trivial nonsense like an infected wound. Not to mention the suffering by the chronically ill. People who suffer from (nowadays mostly treatable) conditions like epilepsy would have their quality of life *radically* reduced in a primitivist world.

This may actually be my biggest personal gripe with fundamentalist primitivism. No matter how needlessly excessive our medical drug consumption may be these days and how hypochondriacal we may have become, the pros of modern medicine still outweigh the cons by far.

 

[Atwill]

What is the best of the "primitivist" world? What is desirable about going back to the primitive lifestyle?

Well, there would be advantages to a simple hunter/gatherer life, but I cannot think of any that wouldn't also come with an enormous disadvantage, which is why I consider the OP's cherry-picked utopia to be completely unrealistic. One advantage would be less pollution, for example, but again, this implies less machinery, less produce, less food and shelter, and ultimately a lot less people.

If you put your views up for discussion, and your views are irrational or contradictory, people are going to point that out. What did you expect them to say?

As I said in my previous post, the rational validity of one's views is not based on one's ability/willingness to actually comply with them. "Hypocrisy" is a critique of the OP, not of his views.

 

[Skeptic]

Having babies die all the time, and women die during childbirth is no walk in the park, but it isn't accurate to characterize that as persistent stress greater than our own.

Somehow, I think watching your infant children die as you are helpless to help them seems to me somewhat more stressful than, say, the cable being out again or the guy at work getting that promotion you were promised.

As Stephan J. Gould noted, for this reason alone, he would rather be (if forced to choose) the last of the dead-end loser working drones today, than Henry VIII, Ceaser, or Napoleon in the past.