Response to Chris's comment from July 16th, 2014

 Note: My original response to Chris's comment wound up being too long to post as a reply, so I'm posting it as a separate entry here, starting with Chris's question.

chris July 16, 2014 at 3:06 AM

"On the other side of the drug spectrum, I've recently been going through some health problems and have relied on them to make it through in a relatively comfortable way, though if modern medicine hadn't been available I would currently be in severe pain and my quality of life would be so poor as I might even prefer death. So while realizing the underlying goals of the medicine machine, I'm at times grateful for it, and of course leaving this gap between idea and practice. What do you think personally about abandoning modern medicine?"

I've actually worked on a farm raising chickens--just a couple hundred, nowhere near the numbers on an industrial farm, but with more or less the same deformed breed of chicken that large-scale farmers raise. The chickens stayed in a barn their whole lives surrounded by other chickens that were far too numerous and therefore anonymous for any bird to form a normal social relationship with. They were too heavy to take more than a few stumbling steps before faltering. They spent so much time sitting down that their breasts were actually bare from touching the ground so much. This did make it easier to pluck them later, I confess. The environment was stressful and utterly devoid of stimulus except when I or someone else went in to catch some birds to slaughter. But here's the thing--even when their lives were so shitty (and you know chickens are smart enough to know that that life was shitty), they still panicked when I took them, and they still struggled when I cut their throats. Did they really cherish their alienated lives sitting in poop inside a crowded dirty barn that much? The birds didn't want to die. So, if you were a chicken in a chicken factory, would you be grateful for the protection that the antibiotics in your feed afforded you from the potential of infection that arises from being forcibly crowded together in a shed in the first place? It's the same power forcing you into confinement and forcing you to eat incessantly and that will eventually kill you in a potentially painful and most certainly horrifying way that gives you the antibiotics. If you take the antibiotics willingly, you are enabling your crowding, because if all the chickens refused to take the antibiotics, the crowding would not be possible. If you are grateful for the benefit of their medicine, it really is a Stockholm Syndrome situation--essentially, it's like someone breaks your legs but you only feel gratitude that they gave you a wheelchair in the end. I'm in no way trivializing pain, yours or anyone else's; all I'm trying to convey is that our gratitude for the relief that modern medicine brings becomes a weapon, a point of leverage to use against us. It's also a mistake to believe that only modern medicine can bring us actual relief from pain--I'm pretty sure the case can easily be made that the opposite is true if you consider the role of technology in general in causing suffering and disease throughout history. To believe that only modern medicine can save us from infectious disease or back pain is akin to believing that only television can alleviate boredom or only the internet can remedy isolation. I'm pretty sure that these supposed solutions are really part of the cause of the problems they claim to solve. The problem is that the connection is not immediately obvious--it's not a causal relationship that most humans will naturally grasp, not because most humans are stupid, but because the chains of cause and effect generated by technology have transcended what might constitute a human-scale reality. As I wrote before, in a techno-scale reality, all our adaptations, evolved over millions of years, begin to constantly work against us, not for us. We begin to consistently make the wrong choices without it being immediately obvious. As humans, it still feels good and right to eat lots of sugar, use disposable paper plates, drive instead of walk when it's hot outside, etc. Even littering has an evolutionary rationale. So it should be expected that everyone loves the relief that modern medicine can provide. The system exploits our human desire to not feel pain or be ill, because the novel way in which the system provides relief is difficult for a human mind conditioned to a different way of life to grasp. To most people, it's very simple: take the medicine and feel better. It's hard to comprehend that the existence of industrial medicine has only ever worsened environmental degradation and negatively impacted health in the long run. We steal from the future every time we leverage economics through technology to meet our needs in ways that ensure that the maximum number of intermediaries (=inefficiencies, waste) are involved in order to generate profit at as many junctures as possible. When the next time we look we notice that our past actions have left us poorer in the present, we are ever more motivated to steal from the future, extolling promising new technologies, digging up resources that can never be replaced. The poorer you get, the more desperate to steal you become. So, every time we rely on the system to meet our needs, whether they be medical or otherwise, we charge to a credit card that we can never pay off. Somewhere we will have to stop doing this, the question is whether we stop on our own terms and take our time, or just keep going full throttle until reality stops us for us.

The Ongoing Zombie Apocalypse, part 2

Perhaps the closest real world analog to the fictional zombie virus is rabies. Rabies is a viral disease well-known to affect mainly warm-blooded animals. Pet owners are often legally required to have their dogs and cats vaccinated against the virus, as infection can cause animals to turn vicious and usually results in the death of the infected animal. Probably the aspect of rabies that is most striking is the change in behavior of the animal that is effected through infection. A normally docile dog or cat may start acting aggressively, scratching or biting anyone who comes near it. This change in behavior is understood to be the way the virus propagates itself. Since rabies is found in high concentrations in the saliva of infected animals, the virus alters the behavior of the animal to increase the chances of it biting another host, thus spreading the infection.

What is striking here are the parallels between the mechanism of transmission of the rabies virus on the one hand and of technology on the other. When an animal is rabid, it seeks to roam and bite other hosts. It is crucial to note that the animal is unable to distinguish the motivations of the virus from its own motivations, even though from an outside perspective, behaving in an erratic, violent way does not benefit the animal in getting it food or sexual mates. The behavior, though embraced by the animal, only benefits the virus by increasing the chances of propagation. If given the chance, the virus would presumably try to infect as many hosts as possible, though the underlying motivation for this phenomenon, if there is one, is, as for all viruses, still unclear. It is a mistake to interpret the animal's new, post-infection behavior as stemming from the animal's inherent nature or personality--the disease is distinct from the diseased. Nevertheless, the animal will feel compelled to act in ways that it should otherwise understand to be self-detrimental, picking fights and risking injuries that are actually unnecessary. Likewise, technology, specifically high technology that depends on the subjugation of people, seems to only benefit itself at the expense of not only its host species but also the environment. Of course, those who are infected with the technology "virus" believe that technology, and the actions that it requires, benefits themselves--like the rabid animal, they are unable to distinguish the motivations of their infection from their own motivations, for their own motivations have been subsumed by technology, and they sacrifice and toil for technology willingly, aggressively spreading it with absolute conviction. Like rabies, once a population acquires high-technology, that population tends to spread it to surrounding populations, but it is not possible for the uninfected populations to disinfect an already-infected population. The trend is usually toward increasing infection until the virus, running out of new hosts, dies out on its own. When a population acquires technology, its behavior begins to radically change, and its priorities shift dramatically in favor of propagating technology, even at the expense of the population's own interests. Increased aggression is observable, along with a host of previously unknown symptoms like meanness, deceit, greed, and misery. When an animal becomes rabid, it is impossible to reform its aggressive behavior through any amount of incentives or punishments--the virus precludes the possibility of lucid thought, just like a zombie. A rabid animal, like a zombified neighbor, can only be put down. Leaving the animal alive out of pity risks more bites and more infections.

The question is, how accurate is this parallel between rabies and technology? If the comparison is absolute, then the prospects of ridding ourselves of the technology infection seem dire, like the third act of a zombie film. There certainly does seem to be a relentless, too-late-to-turn-back quality to the current pandemic of techno-dependence. We would just have to wait until the fire of infection runs out of kindling, annihilating most of the current biosphere. Or can we realize in time that this infection has to be quarantined as quickly as possible to protect what nature is left? Can we see the current situation for what it truly is: an ongoing zombie apocalypse, as mindless, relentless, and merciless as anything we've watched on the movie screen?

Perhaps the important thing to remember is that, just as rabies is not inevitable in an animal population, neither is technology and the negative changes in human behavior it entails destined to crop up among humans. A common argument against anarcho-primitivist ideas is that the current dominance of technological society was inevitable, predetermined by innate human curiosity--"should we somehow succeed in stamping out technology tomorrow, there will sooner or later be a group of humans somewhere that will once again pursue progress with technology". I have written previously about how diseases such as cancer are incorrectly thought of as inevitable aspects of human existence, as cancer is by no means inherent in human aging. Cancer is not inevitable, nor is rabies, and neither is technology. If a dog or cat lives its entire life without contracting rabies, it is not somehow incomplete, and it is not a lesser animal than an animal that does acquire rabies. Neither eventuality is inevitable, though either can be made more or less likely by environmental conditions. The word "inevitable" is used by the system to dispel any hopes for a way out. The word is part of the infection that is trying to overtake your mind, convince you of its rightness despite the obvious degradation happening all around us.

The Ongoing Zombie Apocalypse, part 1

Since at least George Romero's 1968 Night of the Living Dead, which redefined the concept of the zombie mythos to what most Americans know today, the theme of a "zombie apocalypse", in which an ever-growing horde of mindless walking corpses who spread their contagion by feeding on the helpless human population inexorably overrun the neighborhood, city, country, and even world, has remained extraordinarily popular in the mainstream imagination. This sub-genre of horror film provides a particularly rich, if mostly unrecognized, commentary on mass society. For example, recent genre offerings have tended to focus on the spread of a zombie contagion in largely urban areas, where the infection spreads quickly and easily. The dwindling number of survivors increasingly have nowhere to run as the zombies seem to be everywhere. Zombie apocalypse stories continually reprise several notable themes: fear of pandemic contagion (sometimes originating in shady bio-engineering research), ineffectual governments, survivalism, breakdown in social order, and so on. However, it is the ability of the zombie movie to tap into the deep-seated but largely unconscious tension inherent in living within mass society and particularly in the ambivalent confines of the modern urban landscape that represents the genre's greatest subversive potential.

Like other primates, humans have evolved over several million years to spend virtually all their time together with their tribe or band. I think it is fairly obvious that a lone human being, no matter how fit, has little hope of surviving alone in a wild environment. Band society, characterized by cooperation and sharing, enabled humans to live, and live well, for millions of years. Simply from a pragmatic viewpoint, in-group betrayals such as murder, lying, stealing, and so on would have been intrinsically discouraged (though not inconceivable) due to the inherent lack of "hiding places" in such an intimate social environment--in other words, there would have been no wall of anonymity behind which to escape after committing a transgression in a small group of people wherein each member depends on the support of the others, not merely for survival, but company, entertainment, affection, a sense of belonging, and the psychological benefits thence derived. Additionally, I'm hard-pressed to think of very many things in a nomadic band society that could actually be stolen or lied about. In any case, the consequences of unacceptable behavior are immediate and obvious in a closed band society, even if the punishment is simply being ostracized or ignored. Strangers, by contrast, offer none of the aforementioned benefits to a group and would indeed be able to get away with just about any act of deceit or aggression as long as they were able to escape before they were caught. The consequences of harmful behavior virtually disappear once the offending stranger escapes--if the stranger escapes. However, without the presence of other members of one's band, one becomes vulnerable, and there is virtually nothing stopping a stranger from harming you.

Past a certain age, children stop acquiring language at their peak rate--apparently, nature did not deem it worthwhile to prepare us for the possibility of traveling abroad and having to acquire a new language at 25 years of age. At the genetic level, we are all ill-disposed to mass society and engaging with unfamiliar factors. Around the same age that they stop learning language efficiently, children also tend to become wary of strangers. This is not to say that children don't become braver and more willing to explore their surroundings away from the protection of adults, but this wariness of encountering strangers, especially unexpectedly, never disappears, even despite our modern liberal enthusiasm for embracing globalization and reveling in the melting pots that are supposed to be our cities. How can one tell if a stranger means us well or harm? What if the supposedly peaceful inhabitants of our cities turn out to be malevolent? They already surround us, potential threats literally occupying all the space above (skyscrapers), below (subway system), and around us. Through lack of choice, we have adapted to these novel environments, but only imperfectly, as the anxiety and alarm that the fundamental distrust we feel toward the strangers occupying our surroundings evokes must constantly be suppressed in order to function in a city. Unable to affect our own situations, like chickens in our crowded, putrid, windowless sheds, we routinely ignore the motley assortment of passengers sharing our bus or train car. We expect rudeness and perhaps even a degree of danger in some parts of our cities as a given. Some individuals seem unable to cope well enough to function in this environment, and we may term these people agoraphobic, anxious, neurotic, paranoid, or delusional. Still, even those deemed "normal" in the city seem unable to function unless they cloister themselves away from the madness that threatens to encroach from all sides, whether they lock their eyes onto the screens of their smartphones and deafen their ears with streaming music through their ear buds to get through their daily commute without having to interact with unfamiliar people or withdraw into a sudoku puzzle or the day's New York Times at a coffee shop full of obnoxious patrons who, despite your best efforts to isolate yourself, may yet succeed in destroying your solitude through various means, such as the indefensible assault on your nostrils from an obnoxious perfume or a too-loud couple conversing just above your head. Zombie films may be interpreted as a distillation of these suppressed anxieties writ large on the silver screen, like a nightmare derived from our habitually-suppressed stress about strangers in our environment that we can safely (because it's "just a movie") experience consciously but whose source from within our own psyches still remains mostly obscure to the waking mind. Nevertheless, if something of the recurring motif of zombie ascendancy did not resonate deeply with people, we would be hard-pressed to account for the genre's immense popularity.