sabotabby | Even evil has standards

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Even evil has standards

Wow, check it out! Former "center-left" cyclist turned warmongering fascist Charles Johnson has turned again. Colour me skeptical (like someone pointed out on

fengi's LJ, it'll take one more terrorist attack to turn him back, but it's almost heartening to read.

I wonder if he'll apologize for his blog being a gathering place for genocidal maniacs for the last eight years.

If he's serious, though: Welcome back to the reality-based community.

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Among the various (often contradictory things) these guys believed:
- human welfare is subservient to the environment/animal rights (e.g., it's wrong to, say, kill a pig in order to do an organ transplant on a human)
- civilization is inherently oppressive and needs to be dismantled
- written language should be abolished; we should return to an oral culture
- agriculture will always result in the creation of a class system; we should return to a hunter-gatherer society
- lifesaving medical advances are unethical
- cities are unethical
- sewing machines are unethical
- "traditional," "primitive" societies had a place for blind people, people with mental illnesses, etc., so you don't need glasses or anti-depressants. You need to be a shaman.
- most of humanity (upwards of 90%) will either die off or need to be killed in order for us to live in harmony with the earth.

All of these people had wealthy parents but couch-surfed, dumpster-dived, and "wandered." I typically thought they were crypto-libertarian, genocidal scum. I've met some anti-civ types that I liked (okay, one) but it's not a political philosophy I can really get behind.

Hmmmm. It sounds like people you meet obsessed with a "cause" rather than really thinking. I agree about the pigs' organs though. I would say animals should be treated as having an equal right to life, rather than that human welfare is less important. I don't see how it can be ok to kill an animal for medical research, although of course I understand the emotinal desire to save a loved one at the expense of a thousand or so rats!
I can't help feeling it would be nice to get rid of a huge proportion of the human race, although ideally by less reproduction rather than slaughter or famine and disease! Overpopulation is definitely a huge huge problem. Because small communities are generally more likely to be self-sufficient and more caring, as well as because of lack of resources and ruining ecosystems. 90% seems unreasonably high though. I'd say ideal to halve it over a few generations, but I'm not an expert!
Crap about the "primitive" societies being nicer though. They are full of bigoted superstitious shite.
Cities are unethical the way they are now, utterly environmentally unsound, but it would be possible to use technology to make lovely green cities.
I think we need nicer civilization, not less.
Sewing machines are bloody annoying and fiddly, but not unethical.
Written language and agriculture (if done sustainably) are cool.

I think the genocidal bit is a grey area for me - I feel the urge to kill, and wish all the shit people who make this world miserable would drop dead, but alas in principle I would not want mass slaughter. Definitely need to lower population growth though. I don't think there is an answer to people being evil, so don't know what to do. I despair. I am exhausted by all the evil people I have met. I don't think education works as there are just too many evil people. Smaller communities would help. Things that encourage people to be caring and supportive of one another.

Am definitely against medical research on animals though. Hopefully with stem cell stuff it can cease to be an issue one day. I suppose there is no logical back up to my stance on that, as eating animals to survive is clearly natural, so medical research in that sense no different ethically. But I think nature has lots of very bad things in it and just because things happen naturally is no excuse to allow them. Paedophilia and rape are extremely natural, as are genocide and torture, but they are not nice.
Maybe ethics are unnatural. Dunno. Studying philosophy doesn't seem to solve these things, just gives one more awareness of the intricacies and difficulties! I think being nice is the most important thing in life, and that people really should do it more.

"Because small communities are generally more likely to be self-sufficient"

Why is self-sufficiency a good thing? Isn't a large community a combination of smaller communities that have become interdependent?

"and more caring"

Prove it. Plenty of small communities are little tyrannies. Witch trials, anyone? Feudalism was based on small agricultural communities. Peasants were even bound to a particular piece of land.

"as well as because of lack of resources and ruining ecosystems."

Not sure "small communities" mean less use of resources or less ruining of ecosystems. More people certainly means potentially more drain of resources, but how people live is probably more important than how many of them are living. Urban density living tends to have less environmental impact per capita than low density suburban living.

I agree that it is technologically possible to make lovely green cities.

Hope is more productive than despair.

Animals aren't subject to ethics because they do not have the capacity to reason and lack empathy outside of the closest members of their pack/hive/herd/whatever... Animals can't be ethical, because they are incapable of that kind of understanding.

Small communities being more caring - I dunno. Everyone tells me they hate where I live (London) because people don't know each other and so have no community and are unpleasant, and I tell them that people are just as unpleasant in their little villages with their gossip and backbiting. But it is easier for people to be more caring to their neighbours if they know them, and easier to care for smaller numbers of people - it can get difficult when there are millions of people around you all the time. Self sufficiency is good because it helps prevent rows over resources. Not that trade isn't ok too, just that self sufficiency can provide more security. Oh, I didn't mean small communities meaning less resources so much as lower population - there must be a limited number of people the world can hold, surely? I know people argue and say tis not so, but it already feels pretty uncomfortable where I live.

Lots of things that don't have capacity to reason are subject to ethics. Environmental ethics, for one. I don't think many people have the capacity for empathy outside their pack, or for reason, for that matter. Certainly not many I've met, unfortunately. Some, but not the majority. Animals certainly have the capacity for feeling and enjoyment and happiness and lots more, which are all part of the brilliance of life.

I've lived both rurally and in a city. People can be unpleasant regardless of their population density. I find that in the city, it's actually considerably easier to ignore the people I regard as unpleasant while still being involved in the lives of those people I want to be involved with.

No individual human being is self-sufficient. One of the reasons that smaller societies can so easily create and maintain taboos as well as social harmony is that being exiled from a group is the equivalent of death.

If no human being is self-sufficient, then our survival depends on negotiation over resources. Sometimes, people fight when things aren't negotiated in a way they like. However economic stratification and exploitation can occur as easily in a small community as they can a large one.

How many people can the world support? Noone knows the answer. How many people can the world support living in a certain way with certain technologies... well that we can make some good estimates about. We also have good estimates on how many people exist now, and how many people are likely to exist in say the next thirty years. I submit that current population and project population are numbers that we have little control over; however we have a much greater control over the way in which those billions will live--atleast in regards to our individual lives.

I'm sorry you feel uncomfortable with where you live now. What makes you feel uncomfortable? I know there are cities that are considerably less dense in population than London (and more ecologically destructive per capita) as well as cities that are more population dense.

We have an ethical responsibility to the environment and animals because we have the ability to reason. Animals have no ethical responsibility. The Environment has not ethical responsibility. Try arguing about your right to life with a shark or a tornado. Animals can experience pleasure... mammals all have oxytocin. The wolf, however, is not concerned about what pain a squirrel might feel.

I think you are too hard on people's capacity for empathy. I think people on average might be a lot more empathic and nicer than you are currently willing to accept them to be.

You left out opposition to symbolic thought, mediation, and art.

They all sound nice. Why would a totalitarian green anarchist object to those?

To be specific, some primitivists object to them. Mostly Zerzan, and mostly as a thought experiment, because arguably even other primates have some symbolic thought. To not have these things, we probably really couldn't even be called humans--and how one would get rid of them is never addressed.

However, the reason they object to them is for the same reason they object to (insert a technology here)--they think it's a slippery slope. The ideology holds that technology and civilization is a totality created by mediation between humanity (the animal) and it's environment. They also hold that our social relationships (statism, patriarchy, stratification, exploitation) are inherent to our material culture and in particular the existence of a surplus. They are opposed to surplus. It is with surplus that one finds time to do things other than only surviving.

You probably should ask a primitivist if you want to know more. It's an ideology I only have score for. If I thought it had a shred of a chance of implementation in even a minor way, I'd have to be hostile to it's proponents. Fortunately for everyone involved--I simply can't take them seriously. I think noone else should either.

I didn't realize there were "primitivists" for real before Sabotabby mentioned them. of course you get a lot of people dismissing environmentalists as being people who want to make everyone live in mud huts, but I didn't know there really were people who want to get rid of all technology etc. Well, I suppose there are people believing in lots of things, so of course there would be. Do they want to stop apes using tools too?

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Even evil has standards

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