Savage vs. Civilization

Being "free" from one's own society/culture is a good thing?

Gee, I thought humans were social primates like our close cousins, chimpazees and bonobos. Not solitary primates like orangs.

But maybe this Stephen Rinehart fellow knows different. Hey Steve, you want to try surviving as a solitary individual animal in the wild, go right ahead. I think we're programmed to live in a band at least, and you know what, living in a group with others means agreeing to some rules.

If our yuppie culture taught us one thing lo these past several years it's this: respectability is public enemy number one. Liberate America and boycott the use of deoderant and toilet paper. Our grandchildren will thank you.

civilizations occur in areas of the planet where agriculture is possible and has become the form of livelihood for the people there. People remain in one place and live in higher densities than in nomadic or hunting based societies. Property rights usually develop, and then fiefdoms and aristocrats arise. The Monarchs require armies with various technologies, and people develop writing and science and also various cultural skills in order to enable them to grow and trade agricultural products and live in close quarters. This is what civilization is. I don't know that I could agree that people in agricultural economies like China, europe, north america/mexico, Iraq are so much more 'civilized' than peaceful fishers who live on micronesian islands outside of civilization.

Is civilization an outworn idea? Is it even a useful term?
It may well be that civilized and civilization are concepts that are no longer acceptable having been drained of content by the history of the 20th century and the rise of the civilized man who is able to envision the winnability of an atomic war in the morning and in the afternoon play with his children, because he can compatmentalize his emotions. Freeing man from man brings us full circle into a barbarism deeper and vaster than that of the so called primitive who is checked and shamed by his public life which is in turn checked by the natural ecological limitations of the local environment.

No man is an island unto himself-each is a part of the Main.

capitalism seeks inexorably to privatize and commodify all of life. the antithesis to the rule of capital is an alive and expanding social sphere, one in which we encounter one another as full human beings, exchange ideas, reflect on the possibilites life affords, and take action accordingly. capital produces a landscape that is so stupidly boring, alienating, hectic, and at times frightening, that many, however, would agree with Rinehart's silly missive about civilization's benefits. but what people are in reality seeking to recede from is the pointlessness and hardships of "social" existence under capitalism.

several years ago I lived across the street from a vacant lot filled with vermin, trash, and human excrement. it had been like that for years, owned by a real-estate speculator waiting for the right moment to sell. my room-mates, some friends and I started cleaning the place up. we put out a sign in the neigborhood inviting people to come down for a gardening party one weekend. about 20 people showed up. we turned the soil, planted flowers. we had a picnic. people in the hood who'd never met one another got to do so. over the following weeks and months we had more of these get togethers. the level of cooperation and conviviality was amazing -- people sensed what a departure it was from normal existence. it was a break from alienation in a very real sense. in less than three months a smelly blight -- dead space to capital -- had been turned into an beautiful, utopian garden, a place where people met where they weren't expected to buy or sell anything. just exist.

suffice to say, the scum who owned the lot didn't take kindly to having his speculative investment expropriated and had the cops do what the cops do best -- enforce private property relations. on two different occasions people were arrested for gardening. a protracted struggle ensued, with petitions etc etc., but finally the scum won. he got to turn the lot back into a shit-hole.

those who say that privativism is the highest pinnacle of civilization have no social imagination.

has a name and an address, right?

it is vital freedom supply this tool of identity. being alone in thought or craft is essential to freedom of self.
society that is workable among other human needs and requirements elevates the animal existance into cerebral existance.
away from is not apart from. in every respect we are all mobile as bipedal mammals. we are all with each other still long after we have been together.

This whole deal about "man" being an island fits very well into all sorts of schemes of oppression. If we are each islands then we have no need of:
a. grocery stores
b. theaters
c. television (ewwwwwwww!)
d. public parks
e. bowling alleys
f. community organizations
g. schools

These arguments smack of the ubermensch and really frighten me. In a world of individualists who are "individual" just for the hell of it, corporate domination increases daily. Why don't you "individualists" get it? Your ideology enslaves us all.