Anti-Civilization

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Men are wicked, yes. But man is good.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Anti-Civilization is a diverse set of theories, beliefs and critiques describing civilization, being opposed to it.

Many anti-civilization writers and activists consider different things to be the beginning of civilization, but they mostly agree in what they oppose.

According to John Zerzan, anarcho-primitivist writer, domestication is domination of animals and plants by humans, claiming that it's the source of civilization. The claim that civilization started when humans started to settle down, dividing labor, is also popular among anti-civilizationists. They often believe that shift from hunter-gatherer lifestyle into settled agrarian lifestyle started coercion and stratification.

Anti-Civilizationists consider the state to be coercive institution that was created for controlling the population. Most of them blame agriculture, settling and related to it populational growth for creation of the state. First officially documented state, Mesopotamia, was created when humans invented irrigation - technology that hydrated fields to make more and better crops. This kind of mass production not only domesticated nature, but also humans, and led to creation of first oppressive state institution. Keeping production thriving needed bureaucracy to make it effective. First money was created to exchange goods. Primal faiths and spirituality of people was used to subjugate them, and class of priests emerged. WIP

They say that capitalism commodified main things necessary to survive, like food, water, clothing and shelter, simultaneously claiming that in more primitive society these things would not be a commodity to buy from companies, but something that naturally belongs to all Earth's inhabitants. Money is seen as artificial mediation of natural exchange between individuals and groups, and leading to wealth accumulation that finally leads to irreversible stratification of society.

As Alfredo Bonanno said, changing the mode of production merely changes the mode of exploitation. Anti-civilizationists took this literally, and consider every mode of industrialized production to be ultimately oppressive. They claim that socialism doesn't really differ from capitalism; even if wage labor disappears, institutions of capital still are present in society: banks, military, police, laws, courts, shops, factories, technologized farming, etc.

Some communists claim that patriarchy, family and gender roles were first class division. Some anti-civs took this analysis and say that civilization led to division between men and women.

Margaret Killjoy claims that primitive societies also had gender inequalities, like men hunting and women gathering, or men fighting with other tribes and women taking care of children. Gender roles emerged in primitive societies before civilization, but also we can overcome them in post-civilized society.

Ted Kaczynski claimed that the industrial revolution was a disaster for the human race. Industry is seen as damaging both natural ecosystems and human health. Growing cities "consuming" natural environments, cutting forests for building of factories and farms, omnipresent microplastics, mass production of polluted food, among many, many others. WIP

They say that agriculture started the first beginning of oppression, coercion, alienation and stratification of society. When humans started to settle down and domesticate animals and plants, it arose above nature and put itself in the role of a "householder" but also exploiter of nature and planet. WIP

Many anti-civilizationists consider technology and mass produced material possessions to be enslaving the human race and nature. WIP.

It's important to mention that not all anti-civilization writers oppose symbolic thought, like language, mathematics, art and measurements.

Radical primitivists like John Zerzan claim that language, maths, art and time measurements detaches us from reality, and creates an abstract illusion.

In Post-Civilization texts author was open to use of symbolic thought, considering it to be a positive product of progress.

Wolfi Landstreicher said, that mass produced entertainment, like pop music, Hollywood movies and video games are another tool of control, that kills creativity.

Post-Civilization theory opposes civilization, but in a different way than Anarcho-Primitivism does. They consider civilization to be a settled life in urban and rural areas, division of labor and social hierarchy. They oppose all approaches to culture and organizational structures of the modern world, laws and social norms imposed by civilization. They also believe that civilization is unsustainable, and attempts to save it are undesirable.

Post-civilization theory also opposes primitivism. They don't reject technology like Anprims do, but only inappropriate use of technology. Anprims reject agriculture in every form; post-civ rejects only industrial monoculture, in favor of permaculture. Anprims reject science; post-civ reject blind obedience to it.

They consider primitivists to look only backwards, without seeing flaws of prehistoric society. They consider primitivism to be impossible to realize, because leaving billions of humans in forests to hunt and gather, when cities exist is just impossible. They also consider tribalism to be conservative - family structure, gender roles, etc.

Post-Civilizationists want to take what's best and reject what's worst in elements of the past. It includes physical elements of civilization and prehistory, like tools, technologies, but not only. They also advocate for doing the same thing with culture; taking the best parts of old societies and removing the worst ones.

Kaczynskism is a philosophy developed by Theodore John Kaczynski, a former mathematician turned anti-technology activist. In his manifesto, Kaczynski argues that modern technology destabilizes society, causes psychological suffering, and renders life unfulfilling. He claims that technological advances drive people toward "surrogate activities"—artificial pursuits like entertainment, politics, and science, instead of fulfilling needs. Predicting that future technological progress will reshape humans to serve social systems, he advocates for a return to primitivist lifestyles. While his ideas overlap with anarcho-primitivism, he rejected its specific viewpoints.

Zerzanism is an ecophilosophy of American anarchist John Zerzan. Zerzan is broadly associated with the philosophies of anarcho-primitivism, green anarchism, anti-civilisation, post-left anarchy, neo-luddism, and the critique of technology.

Anti-Civ lives in a distant forest in a house made of stones, clay, wood and straw. Half of the time, he is hunting, gathering, fishing or gardening, second half he chills while sitting near to a river or in a forest, could be reading a book, painting a picture, drinking self-made alcohol, dancing and singing, or meditating. Generally is very peaceful, but has a collection of weapons to defend himself from the government.

Has bipolar personality, one time he is idealizing a society without civilization living close to nature, and other time he is whining about society and the very human nature and has no hope for anything.

• Kaczynskism - The Industrial Revolution and it's consequences...
• Deep Ecology - Earth is like an organism, civilization is like a cancer.
• Transcendentalism - Find your peace in simplicity, nature, art and spirituality.
• Taoism - Embrace simple life in solitude, close to nature, recognize your inner wisdom and balance.
• Cynicism - Life in accordance with nature, even if takes its place in most unnatural settings.
• Animism and Shamanism - Natural spirituality untouched by the forces of civilization.
• Individualist Anarchism - Voluntary, nonviolent and self-organizing. Perfection.
• Deleuzoguattarianism - Nomadology? Deterritorialization? Body without organs? Don't hide, just say you desire to tear down civilization and want to return to primordial state of absolute freedom and peace we once lived in.
• Irrationalism - Disable all of this useless chaos emerging off your mind, find stillness in nature and your heart begins to talk.
• Cyclism - Seasons shift, wheels of time turn, and that's beautiful.
• Vitalism - The raw breath of life cannot be confined, and traps of civilization are what exhaust it and create sickness.
• Empiricism - Life is to be experienced, not analyzed.
• Variabilism - Nature is change and fluidity, and trying to put it into a box is to kill oneself and all things around.
• Asceticism - The meaning doesn't lie in convenience, security and pleasure.
• Pluralism - Trees, bugs, birds, cattle, humans, dogs, mushrooms, microbes, rocks, rivers, flowers, fish... all different, all interconnected and in eternal harmony.
• Epicureanism - Ah, yes, plain bread and water produces the highest pleasure. Also, living a simple live outside the city and abstaining from political life? Based.

• Post-Left Anarchism - You claim you oppose civilization, but many of you seem to be urbanite hipsters addicted to social media, drugs and ultraprocessed junk food.
• Nihilism - You may hate modern way of living, but your frustration is just an effect of it. But your despair can be projected against impacts of civilization, so we are generally on positive terms.
• Pragmatism - Simple lifestyle requires practical thinking and practical action. But radical pragmatism rejects values, which are crucial for healthy society, not this abomination we live in.
• Anti-Natalism - Current population couldn't survive the potential collapse, but family and children are gifts from Nature.
• Kropotkinism - "Cooperation is a law of civilization"? No, civilization is competition and war, while the "law of the jungle" is peace and harmony. Mutual aid as a concept is alright though.
• Bakuninism - Talk about freedom and autonomy, yet fall into positivistic narratives of radical atheism and materialism. Disconnection from the spirit is an open path to slavery.
• Rousseauism - Yes, civilization and institutions are naturally abusive, man is born free but civilization chains him, but your attempt to create direct democratic state, "resembling the state of nature" is pure idiocy - you either give yourself to the power of the state, or destroy it completely.
• Stirnerism - Your distrust and hatred towards institutions is of course valuable, but isn't "self-interest" another narrative for how civilized society should look like?
• Nietzscheanism - Same about "ubermensch". Without civilized methods of identity, this concept would be useless.
• Communitarianism - Life in small communities is natural for human beings, but you don't recognize it, you seem to build another narrative for civilization, so ultimately these civilized narratives kill both individuality and community.
• Romanticism - I get your idealization of so called noble savage, but you may embody this idea, not just write poetry while drinking wine with aristocrats.
• Existentialism - You seek freedom, yet all of your existential angst would be meaningless if you left cities, industrial work and politics. The meaning is not just to invent, it is to discover in your heart.
• Hedonism - Nature gave us the ability of feeling pleasure and joy, and we should take it how it is. Just don't fall into addiction, and most importantly, don't call your dopamine leash "freedom".

• Conservatism - You cry about traditional values disappearing, yet you seem to support technological and economical progress. You should see that technology and capitalism are things that make your traditions disappearing. Also, "Western Christian civilization" isn't really "traditional", it just has narratives based on supernatural lies called religion, rather than "progress", "reason" and "wealth".
• Marxism - On one hand you wish to completely eradicate wage labor and class society, on other hand you did support ind*stry, to the point of opposing luddites, and you gave foundation to tyrannical industrial oligarchy called ironically "communism" in the east. The class society is an effect of mass production, you can't reconcile both, no matter how much dialectical bullshit you take from Hegel.
• Hobbesianism - The state of nature was the greatest era of mankind. We will blind your leviathan, then cut it's head off and tear out its heart.
• Lockeanism - You are not better, the law IS tyranny and the resistance against it is ALWAYS justified, as long as both absolutists like Hobbes and liberal cretins like you walk on this earth.
• Hegelianism - Through observations, I could say that history progresses towards the worst. Again, your worship of reason led to absolutely nowhere, except breeding tyrannical pieces of bullshit such as marxism and fascism.
• Individualism and Collectivism - Idiotic distinction, of course formed by civilization worshipping intellectuals, without basis in organic working of societies.
• Dogmatism - Six thousands years of misery and programming, to the point your very mind became an inescapable prison.
• Mechanism - Psychopathic narrative aimed at slaughtering of nature, truth, life, feeling and the soul.
• Dualism - A thought that broke generations.
• Scientism - Science is a tool of domination, on matter and on spirit.
• Confucianism - You destroyed the East, by making caste systems, feudalism and patriarchy something "virtuous". Taoists wrecked your ass.
• Platonism - And you did the same with the West, your "perfect republic" advantages fictional "reason" and imaginary "courage" above actual life and actual experience. Diogenes could bring more chickens to annoy you.
• Aristotelianism - And you expanded it further, disposing the man above of spirituality, leaving only dull materialism.
• Catholicism - The epitome of civilizational religion, without redeemable qualities.
• Islam - As above, but even more brutal.
• Augustinianism - You even made up a god which resembles tyrannical leader and organized afterlife as some Orwellian absolutist dictatorship.
• Scholasticism - Neither faith in what totalitarian imperialist institution serves to you, nor reason which distances us from the real world into bullshit, but lived experience of both the material and the spiritual is what matters really.
• Transhumanism - A demon in... not even human but steel form.
• Feminism - Civilization caused the problem of gender inequality, so you try to solve it in the frames of civilization. How ironic.
• Masculinism - Yet even dumber than this girl above. Your patriarchy is paramount to civilization, and your "incel" problems shows how civilization destroys healthy human relations and identity. Leave porn and touch grass, once.
• Cartesianism - Animals have soul and are our friends, but I cannot say the same thing about idiots like you.
• Renaissance Humanism - You put human in the center of earth, you left the way for mankind domination over earth through dystopian anthropocentric narrative.
• Enlightenment - "Freedom" in civilization is just an empty word, even emptier than your spiritless rationalism.
• Positivism - Replace state-managed superstitions called religions by corporate-managed propaganda called science. It is the only thing you achieved.
• Utilitarianism - Morality and ethics isn't something you can measure through "scientific" means.
• Analytic Philosophy - Life cannot be measured, experience cannot be measured and freedom cannot be measured. You will not kill creativity in human life.
• Post-Modernism - This chaos you embrace is just a consequence of civilization. Civilized humanoids don't know the truth because they are lost in the labyrinth of useless information and stimulation... and you are proud of it!

• 
  Post-Civilization
• 
  Anti-Civilizationism

• The Critique of Civilization by Ran Prieur
• Against His-story, Against Leviathan by Fredy Perlman
• Barbaric Thoughts by Wolfi Landstreicher
• Civilization Will Stunt Your Growth by Ian Erik Smith
• Dark Virtue: Daoism and the Rejection of Civilization by Ramon Elani
• Free From Civilization by Enrico Manicardi

Ephemeral Riftism

• The Peaceful, Oft-Misunderstood Anarchist, Atheist, Misanthrope, and Nihilist by Paul McNelis
• We Need to Reclaim Our Humanity – How Modern Humans Are No Longer Human by Paul McNelis
• Civilization is Cancer (I Was Right All Along) by Paul McNelis
• ERIC – The Ephemeral Rift Industrial Complex by Paul McNelis
• Modern Humans are Displaced Hunter Gatherers by Paul McNelis
• Human Society is the Deadliest Terrorist Organization by Paul McNelis
• It’s Time to Limit How Much of Everything Humans Can Consume by Paul McNelis
• On the Value of Life: How the Livestock Holocaust is Far Worse Than the Totality of Humanity’s Wars by Paul McNelis
• The Cretaceous–Paleogene Extinction Event Meteor – A Blessing or a Curse? by Paul McNelis
• The Myth of Community and How It Doesn’t Exist by Paul McNelis
• The Myth of the Adult and Why There is No Such Thing by Paul McNelis
• Open Letter to Those Battling Against Being Raised Religious by Paul McNelis
• Why the Right to Vote is a Fucking Joke by Paul McNelis