The American anarchist, primitivist philosopher, and author John Zerzan critiques agriculture-based civilization as inherently oppressive and advocates drawing upon the life of hunter-gatherers as an inspiration for what free society should look like. Subjects of his criticism include domestication, language, symbolic thought, and the concept of time. This book includes sixteen essays ranging from the beginning of civilization to today's general crisis. Zerzan provides a critical perspective about civilization. A People's History of Civilization includes chapters about: Patriarchy; The City an... View More...
As our society is stricken with repeated technological disasters, and the apocalyptic problems that go with them, the "neo-primitivist" essays of John Zerzan are more relevant than ever. View More...
These three essays were written about a dozen years apart, from the mid-'80s to 2017. I've been intrigued by the subject and so have returned to try again. I think that it is with time-that is, our consciousness of this so-elusive object-that we first enter into a symbolic field or dimension. Our lives thus begin an estrangement that grows and grows. Time and alienation are two words that are the measure of each other. Time becomes a thing, standing pitilessly over us. Taken together maybe these pieces are strands toward solving the puzzle of time. In my view the topic is best understood histo... View More...
The crisis deepens. Everyday life is plundered as much as the physical environment. Our predicament points us towards a solution. The voluntary abandonment of the industrial mode of existence in not self-renunciation, but a healing return. View More...
These are dark and darkening times, challenging us to look deeper to grasp the roots and dynamics of the looming civilizational crisis. Chronic illness of the planet calls for radically new thinking if there is to be any hope of renewal. When We Are Human offers thought at a necessary and primal level.All previous civilizations have failed, and now there's just one global civilization, which is starkly, grandly failing. To deny or avoid this fact is to remain in the sphere of the superficial, the irrelevant. The physical environment is reaching the catastrophe stage as the seas warm, rise, aci... View More...
These are dark and darkening times, challenging us to look deeper to grasp the roots and dynamics of the looming civilizational crisis. Chronic illness of the planet calls for radically new thinking if there is to be any hope of renewal. When We Are Human offers thought at a necessary and primal level. All previous civilizations have failed, and now there's just one global civilization, which is starkly, grandly failing. To deny or avoid this fact is to remain in the sphere of the superficial, the irrelevant. The physical environment is reaching the catastrophe stage as the seas warm, rise, ac... View More...
