[.ca] Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization (ISBN 092291575X)

Walking the Talk:
What a wonderful book! After reading it, I had so many question, I felt the need to talk with author in person. After tracking down his number, I gave him a call (noting how odd it was to be talking with an "anarcho-primitivist" on the phone), and we set up a meeting for the following week. Before I knew it, I was down in Eugene, OR, walking through the infamous Whitaker district - well known for it's vagrants and black-block anarchists - searching for Zerzan's co-op. He greated me at the door, and invited me into the small frontroom/study. It was filled to the brim with old ragtag books and zines, but otherwise well-kept and austere. After talking for an hour about anarchism, ecology, history, technology, society, permaculture, natural farming and ecovillages, we then went to a local coffee house to chat some more. What struck me about Zerzan was his humility, patience, kindness, and penchent for critical thought. I mentioned my suprise that he had a telephone, and he agreed, in an ideal world he would not need a telephone. But, he said, he does not have a computer, watch, or any of the other things that weight us down and distract us more than they help us. And, he reminded me, a certain degree of compromise must be made for those who wish to stay inside civil society and reform it. Sure, he could pack up and go live in a commune, but how would that help? The global economy would still spin out of control, and people would continue to live in ways that destroy the planet. Aside from the phone, which keeps him connected to the larger movement as well as curious people like me, Zerzan purposefully chooses to live like as "primitive" (a word he esteems, although it is now used merely in the pejorative) as possible. In fact, for reasons outlined in his book, he prefers it. I highly recommend reading RUNNING ON EMPTINESS even if you are an avowed progressive or technophile - if only for the sake of balance. As Zerzan shows in the book, progress is not a unilinear process of self-refinement. It has also alienated us and, as with the case of people like me, made us sick. For those who have already begun to notice that civilization is not all roses, this book is absolutely essential. There is perhaps no better perspective on this subject. Zerzan will enrich and deepen whatever nascent criticisms you already have. A must read.

The System Creaks -- Will It Topple?:
As we continue down the numbing path of modern "civilization," the anarcho-primitivist critique becomes more obviously true. As I made my way through Zerzan's essays, a radical split emerged in my consciousness. On the one hand, we're enmeshed in day-to-day struggles and anxieties, the all-consuming attention required just to scrape by and maintain some sense of sanity (and this in one of the more affluent societies on the planet). But Zerzan's stance is like a slap in the face. I began to see just how ridiculous and dehumanizing the entire modern system is. This dissonance between civilization's maximum-seriousness demands and our personal awareness that it's all a huge sham is essentially the substance of alienation, a theme which most liberals have abandoned, but which Zerzan always keeps central. Alienation is still the most explosive analytical tool for confronting our current situation. Anarcho-primitivism may not have the most useful prescriptive program, but its descriptive power is unparalleled. The anarcho-primitvist goal is certainly utopian, but that is a good thing. Without utopian goals, we can have no transcendent position from which to challenge the present order. The intermediate mechanisms of change, through which we must work toward the utopian anarcho-primitivist future, should be the true program of liberalism. The left has condemned itself to irrelevancy by ignoring its utopian strand in favor of technical tinkering. We must recover our utopian roots in order to bear anarcho-primitivist fruit.

What's next?:
Zerzan does not compromise, and his research and philosophy hit hard. This book is a collection of essays dismantling everything we might think as 'civilized'. Although at times depressing, because of the scope of our enslavement to technology and destruction -which he brilliantly shows to be irremediably linked-, and the debunking of everything we might have thought 'cool', or even acceptable -the critique of Star Trek is so on the money-, he presents a possible to our sealed fate. Perhaps THE philosopher of the already grim 21st century.

Luddites of the World Unite!:
At a time when I've been regarding anarchy as a mere euphemism for impotence, John Zerzan's Running on Emptiness has come across my desk. One of the more articulate of marginalized writers on the counterculture scene today, Zerzan encourages us to embrace the present, our connectedness to the earth and to nature itself. He suggests that we wean our hyper-dependence on technology to do this for starters. While Zerzan fluently cites examples of our current plight of apathy/ alienation via a kind of incendiary deftness that has earned him the 'most important philosopher of our time' kind of lavish praise from Derrick Jensen, I'm still not completely won over when it comes to abandoning my computer and making a dash to nature like some 21st Century Schizoid Rousseau. However, I enjoy the challenge John poses of soberly looking at whatever banal assumptions I may make about how convenient and carefree technology has made my life. The more insidious effects of PCs, the Internet, cell phones, even call waiting on our consciousness, on our potentials for deeper sentience, can really only be gauged by someone like Zerzan, who has resolutely resisted the all too powerful seductions and promises of the digital age. Such freedom from technological spell casting is evident in Zerzan's obvious command of philosophy, the depth and breadth of his research and in his ability to breathe vitality into such stolid behemoths as dialectical State apologist Kant, the 'Crypto-Aryan' Heidegger, the Frankfurt Schoolboys Adorno, Walter Benjamin and others. More important than his obvious pansophical exuberance is the author's honest ease which is very rare in a world currently colonized by morbid intellectuals. I suggest reading the New York Review of Books if you need to be reminded of just how moribund the (com)postmodern intelligentsia have become, fingering their well worn copies of Lyotard, Derrida, Baudrillard and other not so Free Radicals who only serve to accelerate the breakdown of what remains of our culture, offering nothing redeeming in return whatsoever other than their perpetually cynical excrescences. Zerzan doesn't hesitate to take on such Sacred Cows of the left as Noam Chomsky, challenging the MIT professor's views on the origins of language making capabilities in humans as being crassly reductionistic and dehumanizing. He also confronts Hakim 'King of the Anarchists' Bey and aptly dissects the Temporary Autonomous Zone mystique the author surrounds himself with and entrances his many vulnerable, if not gullible readers with. (see the writings of Luther Blisset for further elaboration on this.) Running on Emptiness is the perfect negentropic unguent to the various pathologies at large, helping us ground out rather than abandon our intellectual, philosophical and cultural heritage in a way that may very well facilitate our connection with nature instead of creating further detachment from it. It is in this regard that I may reassess my views on anarchy's implicate impotence and hope that something viably intelligent comes from that wayward camp, at least enough for me to join their cause. Zerzan makes such a possibility more and more likely.

"We must be outsiders.":
Anarcho-primitivist philosopher John Zerzan's book "Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization" is a collection of essays written between the years 1992-2001. While the essays cover a wide range of subjects--from the personal "So...How Did You Become an Anarchist?" the cultural critique "Why I Hate Star Trek" and the militant "He Means It--Do You?" the essays essentially cover the same idea--civilization is rotten. Zerzan argues that civilization "took a wrong turn with the advent of animal domestication and sedentary agriculture." These events, according to Zerzan, led to the exploitation of the planet, "hierarchal social structures" and the "ideological control of the many by the few." Zerzan argues we've been going downhill ever since, and "seeks to merge anarchist socio-political analysis with radical deep-green environmental thought" while advocating moving forward to a "future primitive" world. As I passed through a particularly rotten part of town yesterday, I watched people on filthy, rubbish covered streets, pushing their shopping carts, while mini-skirted, drug-ravaged prostitutes hawked their wares at passing motorists. Zerzan's words came back to me, and I found myself mulling over his arguments. And he is right on many issues here. Civilization is rotten, but when it comes to what we should do about it, I admit that I part ways with anarcho-primitivism. There's a great deal to be said for a cessation of global warming, and living with less in a simpler society with no division of labour etc. But I have to think that civilization and technology have brought some positive results. A future primitive state would certainly solve a lot of problems but other problems would be created in its wake. For example, humans now live a lot longer than our ancient ancestors, and a future primitive culture would mean a total lack of medicine--other than 'natural' cures. Zerzan argues that cancer was "unknown before civilization" but it's impossible to know that--there may have been less cancer, but we can't assume there was NO cancer. The modern diet, along with contaminants and pollutants are no doubt partly responsible for the epidemic proportions of cancer in today's society. But there's absolutely no guarantee that cancer would disappear in a future primitive culture, and it doesn't take a great deal of imagination to realize that in a future-primitive society, deaths would occur for fairly simple routine problems due to untreated appendicitis, for example, or c-sections without anesthesia. Zerzan's essay "So...How Did You Become an Anarchist?" is one of the highlights of the book. It's intensely personal and details Zerzan's gradual philosophical development towards green anarchy. The essays "He Means It--Do You?" and "Who Is Chomsky?" draw a line between anarcho-primitivism and traditional anarchy while condemning the latter. Other essays cover Zerzan's anti technology position, his relationship with Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, and his beliefs regarding time keeping and memory. There's a direct connection between anarcho-primitivism and Situationist ideas, and Zerzan's book offers the prescriptive theory that the original Situationists never really discovered. "Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization" gets five stars for making me think--and while most of that thinking was to decide what I did and didn't agree with, the book was well worth reading. There are lessons to be learned from these essays, and while I can't see myself in a future primitive culture, who knows what lies ahead for our planet. If politicians insist on using their arsenals of nuclear weapons, humans may well find themselves living in a primitive state--not by choice--but thanks to the stupidity of those in power--displacedhuman