Neo-Luddism
John Kinsella
ABC Unleashed
May 15, 2009
“Technology isn’t the deliverance of humanity, it is its damnation. ‘Progress’, used as a noun, becomes the linchpin of technological propaganda. Computers aren’t a tool of liberation, but of destruction — look to the power they are chewing, the materials that go into making them, the pollution engendered in their manufacture, especially of batteries for laptops, despite the propaganda of ‘greener’ models, the radiation they emit and the health risks associated with associated wireless technology are being constantly debated.
As an anarchist, I believe firmly that ‘small’ is necessary (or, as Andrew Fleming on his anarchist blog notes, ‘local’, or what I might call ‘regional’), that rights are best protected on a community level and without centralised hierarchies as delivered by the State; that rights come out of consensus (all members of a community having an equal say and all members’ agreement being necessary to making ‘change’ within the community — we might understand this within the usual dynamic as a shift in ‘policy’, but it is fundamentally different)…”
See also :
Luddism, Neo-Luddites and Dystopian Views of Technology, Martin Ryder, University of Colorado at Denver, School of Education:
“Cultural change necessarily involves resistance to change. The term Luddite has been resurrected from a previous era to describe one who distrusts or fears the inevitable changes brought about by new technology. The original Luddite revolt occurred in 1811, an action against the English Textile factories that displaced craftsmen in favor of machines. Today’s Luddites continue to raise moral and ethical arguments against the excesses of modern technology to the extent that our inventions and our technical systems have evolved to control us rather than to serve us and to the extent that such leviathans can threaten our essential humanity…”
Rebels Against The Future: The Luddites and their War on the Industrial Revolution, Kirkpatrick Sale, 1995 | The Luddites’ War on Industry, Do Or Die!, No.6, 1997 | The Luddites and the Combination Acts, MIA
“Primitivism is the pursuit of ways of life running counter to the development of technology, its alienating antecedents, and the ensemble of changes wrought by both. This site is an exploration into primitivist theory, as well as various works that contribute to an understanding of the tendency.”
Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections (Enlarged Edition), Edited By John Zerzan, Illustrations by R.L. Tubbesing, Feral House, 2004
“This new type of man… turns his interest away from life, persons, nature, ideas — in short from everything that is alive; he transforms all life into things, including himself and the manifestations of his human faculties of reasoning, seeing, hearing, tasting, loving. Sexuality becomes a technical skill; …feelings are flattened and sometimes substituted for by sentimentality; joy, the expression of intense aliveness, is replaced by “fun” or excitement; and whatever love and tenderness mankind has is directed toward machines and gadgets. The world becomes a sum of lifeless artifacts; from synthetic food to synthetic organs, the whole man becomes part of the total machinery that he controls and is simultaneously controlled by. He has no plan, no goal for life, except doing what the logic of technique determines him to do. He aspires to make robots as one of the greatest achievements of his technical mind, and some specialists assure us that the robot will hardly be distinguished from living men. This achievement will not seem so astonishing when mankind itself is hardly distinguishable from a robot.
The world of life has become a world of “no-life”; persons have becomes “non-persons”, a world of death.”
~ Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, 1974
Great, let’s return to the trees. We’ll be able to live in [harmony] with nature again with minimal evil technology.
We just need to get rid [of] a few billion excess humans first.
What have you got against trees?
1. I feel like neo-luddism is a misnomer for the primitivist movement. The way I read King Ludd and co.’s destruto-love is as protest and direct action against the loss of their livelihood and identity, not tech per se.
2. “Technology” is only our collection of tools. Screwdrivers, pencils, fishing rods and processors are all examples of human technology. The question – as with everything – is not whether a thing is morally good in itself (there being no morality intrinsic to existence), but what we do with the thing. My point is just that tech can be used for the Good, yeah? And we would be foolish to limit ourselves to tools that have never been used as means of oppression.
3. Irony is my friend. How good is having this discussion on a bloggityblog?
what felix said
No technology is value-free. There are certain modes of thinking and social relations which necessitate technology, and which are in turn created and changed by its production and application. For primitivists this began with the interventionist attitudes and domination of nature embodied in the shift to agriculture, or maybe even earlier, and all technology today is just a follow on from that sort of ‘original sin’ in the shift in thinking.
To say there is “no morality intrinsic” in a technology (which, by the way, is a term which doesn’t only encompass a “collection of tools”) at any level seems pretty naive to me.
That is not to say that technology cannot be used for both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ – it’s just that technology can never be neutral. In fact, I think that sort of understanding stems from a sort of reification of technology in industrialised societies and the technoculture.
As well as that, in the case of something as complex as a computer “processor”, it’s a bit short-sighted to just view it as an abstract object in isolation. There is an extremely multifaceted and complex process of extraction and use of natural resources (which is necessarily ecologically detrimental) and alienated labour in the process of production (and globalised system of trade etc.) which has to take place before we even get to using a computer. This entire process is by no means value-free. Computers don’t just materialise out of thin air. They are a product of a certain social system/culture and mode of production from which they cannot be divorced.
I don’t necessarily agree with all primitivist positions, but I think their critique is useful to challenge dominant understandings of the implications of technology.
BTW, Kakariki, I love your blog!
uni twat: yes, I agree that technology’s never value-free. I was clumsily trying to point out that the value in tech is the value we give it.
And yes, primitivist critiques are a great way to get your brain working. Also the steampunky post-civ goodness of tangledwilderness and crew, which is able to distinguish between technology and its uses.