Political Crossfire Forums

1) If you sympathize with primitivism, then you haven't lived in the wilderness. I have. Chopping firewood, shoveling snow, and fixing electrical, plumbing, and roofing problems is not fun. Hunting and fishing are alright, but I doubt many leftists would sympathize with eating meat.

2) Celebrities who "live to work" instead of "working to live" are some of the wealthiest people around, and socially alienate everyone through pop culture.

Yay for self-publishing on the internet!

Daktoria pretty much had it nailed, either this is self denyingly (and thus a failed meta-joke) facetious. Or the author is so far into his ivory tower he has no idea that subsistence living which is required of his proposals is actually, less than fun.

I imagine he's one of these types who watches fight club over and over.

There's no basis for either of those two statements because that article is not advocating primitivism nor does it have anything to do with recreating "Fight Club". More red herrings.

It's about abolishing wage slavery and establishing a rational, utilitarian society in which all individuals, not just a few, get to "live to work" doing things they find fulfilling and have the access to society's wealth necessary to lead self-actualized, productive lives.

Ok then, where does the food for 7 Billion people come from? Remember many living in densely populated urban centres that we've know since the Romans are a bitch to keep fed.

Are Robot slaves involved at some point?

More post-scarcity utopian dreams. Yes, wouldn't it be great if everyone had access to everything and technology liberated us all to be our true leisurely selves!!! We'll get right on that, I'm sure.

I actually happen to agree that a great deal of our stress and mental issues as a species come from overworking ourselves and keeping ourselves in these artificial environments all day long. I do think the author is being extremely hyperbolic when he attributes ALL human misery to work.........that's clearly not the case, but I'd go out on a limb and say we'd probably be a lot happier if we worked a lot less, and lived more in the moment instead of chasing material wants. I don't think that conclusion is specific to any economic paradigm (or lack thereof). It's probably just a basic truth of being overgrown primates with brains that are too big. Most capitalist "slaves", as you so humbly love to call them, probably agree that their carnival cruise vacations aren't cutting it, lol. But as others have pointed out, this ridiculous fantasy that pre-(or post-)modern lifestyles offer some unique surplus of free time to play is completely bunk, and should be easily transparent to any thinking person. Whether you want to call it primitivism or not, the fact of the matter is that we ARE talking about a sustenance lifestyle, and sustenance lifestyles of any stripe offer considerably less leisure time than the social contract we have now. Play all you want, but eventually you still have to eat. You still have to build and maintain shelter from the elements. Even in some hypothetical future techno-dreamworld where we still have all the creature comforts of modern civilization (and more, presumably), and yet no longer have to work to "afford" them...........it doesn't magically mean we don't have to build and maintain that technology. The author tries to escape this gaping plothole by word-f*cking his own definition of "work" as being something you do for the benefit of others (what you call wage slavery), but most sane people would call that work nonetheless. Bottom line, you're still going to have to spend the vast majority of your time working. Our modern conception of agricultural civilization has given us more free time than our noble savage ancestors, not less, and that's not opinion. People are still living sustenance lifestyles in places all over the world, from Alaska to Africa, and while it may have it's own set of worthwhile benefits to the mind and body, it damn sure isn't a playful existence. It's long, hard work.

Hey look, have fun with these swiss-cheese thought experiments. But until you can first explain how we get from the real world to a post-scarcity utopia, you're basically just one of those underwear gnomes from South Park who have no step 2. And if you really do have a step 2 to put forth, then you, my friend, are a genius of world-changing proportions who probably shouldn't be wasting much time posting it in the philosophy section of political crossfire dot com, lol.

Gotta start somewhere.

You had me by underwear gnomes.