I feel like most of what I write, if not all of it, is some form of attack on what is generally known as civilisation. The irony here – which even commenters on Youtube are able to see – is that to criticise civilisation I use the tools of civilisation, such as the computer, the printed word and so on. Let's assume for a moment that what I desire is the end of civilisation, and also assume that my wish can come true – if it does, then that also means everything I have ever written, and really everything I have done so far in my life, must be jettisoned with the civilisation of which it was a part. I don't mind that idea as much as I might, but it does make me feel like what I'm doing at the moment is essentially empty and pointless, since, for instance, in writing books and making entries on my blog, I am part of what I hate, and what I believe is unsustainable and MUST END. I have occasionally toyed with the idea of only working in the oral medium, as a story-teller or poet, but have to admit that this idea has not got any further than the idea stage.
It's not just the media I use that are part of civilisation, though. My stories rest upon a whole tradition of literature that is part of the history of civilisation, and are full of references and concerns that will mean nothing when civilisation comes to an end. I rely on people who are part of what I hate to be able to read and understand these things in order to give my life meaning. That sentence may be shortened to, "I rely on what I hate to give my life meaning." And that is the hollow heart of my existence.
Last night I watched another episode – I think it may be the final one – of Bruce Parry's programme, Tribe. In this episode, he was spending four weeks with the Penan, a hunter-gatherer people who live on the island of Borneo. I almost always find these programmes about pre-industrial societies (many of them pre-agricultural), deeply moving. If I ask myself why, the answer is very simple. These people are human. We are not. We have lost our humanity. We lost it a long time ago. Perhaps that seems like a simplification. Nonetheless, that is how I feel. If I am almost constantly consumed by incredible rage and hatred, and sunk in depression, it's because I live in a society where everything that is important (including human beings themselves) has become invisible. In every programme I have seen, Bruce Parry is welcomed into the tribe he is visiting, given of all the tribe possess and treated almost – often completely – like a family member. This is called community. We don't have that anymore. I certainly don't feel a part of my own society in the way that these people make Bruce a part of theirs. This makes me unspeakably angry. To me, civilisation means violence, exploitation, deception, greed and spiritual bankruptcy.
During the programme last night, it emerged that the entire way of life of the Penan is under threat because of the logging industry, which is destroying the primary forest which is the Penan's home. The areas of forest that have been decimated are largely being replaced by palm oil crops, which do not support the kind of complex eco-system of the forest, which hardly support anything at all, apparently. The palm oil is used in products such as soap, shampoo and biscuits for the rich, civilised countries of the world. To me, the contrast was marked. The Penan welcomed Parry from the civilised world, let him live with them, fed him, and so on. The civilised world, on the other hand, has given the Penan nothing, but only taken and destroyed.
I truly hope that this will be one case in which evil does not prevail, as it seems to all too often. I am writing this largely to play my small part in making the cause of the Penan known.
As to what we should do about 'civilisation', I don't really know. I have a few random thoughts on the subject, such as, er… kill Jeremy Clarkson. Hmmm. Well, let me try to be a little more sober about this. First of all, there are too many people in the world, WITHOUT A DOUBT. Having children is NOT A RIGHT, it is a privilege. Secondly, although I am a person who, to use a dismissive psychobabble phrase 'has a lot of anger', I suppose I should say that I would not like my own anger immediately associated with and ascribed to the Penan. When Bruce Parry asked them at the end of the programme what it was they most wanted, one of them spoke of how the Penan were in no way against progress, but what they wanted was real progress. The first thing he gave as an example of real progress was land rights.
This brings up the question of what real progress is, of course, and, I suppose, no matter what my own desires might be, we're not going to magically return to some pre-industrial, pre-agricultural world. The only thing I can think of at the moment is that we simply have to rediscover what is important in life, regain our lost humanity, and let that guide us. Some things are not so important. If there are sacrifices to be made, then the likes of biscuits and shampoo should be among the first things to go.
Culture simply “is.” The idea of there being a ladder where culture moves forward and improves is an idea that anthropologists gave up about 1900. And that also means that earlier hunter-gatherer cultures such as the Penan are not necessarily better either. So first, you can skip the idea of “real progress” — backward progress would not necessarily be progress either, even if it were posssible. Civilization, that is what we have seen to a great extent all over the world since c. 5000 BCE, is not necessarily the best way to organize human activity and culture, that’s for sure. In fact civilization has a lot of problems, that is to say it breeds a lot of problems. One of those problems is the loss of connection that you speak of. But that doesn’t mean that the loss of connection is terminal, or that an individual human cannot seak out and find their own connections. In fact, we do this all the time. You do it through your writing and blogging. We use our own tools, just as the Penan do. So maybe it would help to think of it in that way, Quentin.Regards — I extend my hand. That’s a connection.
Hello Edward. Thank you.In a bit of a hurry, but I’ll write more later.
If we must give up biscuits, can’t we at least keep the chocolate ones?Sorry, can’t help myself š
Justin Isis writes:
I like that you said this:”That sentence may be shortened to, “I rely on what I hate to give my life meaning.”I think my life revolves around not so much trying to stay alive or reproduce or live communally as it does trying to ‘attain’ abstractions such as success or respect or love or being able to join a particular group. I just realized that at least 50% of everything I usually say in real life is intended as ‘ironic’ or ‘sarcastic’. But I can’t even really explain what ‘irony’ is. I realize that I can’t get any of these things to really mean anything. That is what Western civilization feels like for me; it is like an attempt to distance perception from everything; the mind or soul is something that exists outside of time, space, and matter; something that views/comments on existence; it is the same principle where God is outside of time and space and abstracted from existence. It’s like when a cell forms a membrane and tries to separate itself from everything around it; it is saying ‘this is an individual entity separate from everything else’; the idea of making distinctions and divisions. This is also, I think, why we live in little boxes and wear clothes and try to protect ourselves from everything else with fictional concepts like ‘husband’ and ‘law’ and ‘dignity.’
Justin Isis writes:
I like that you said this:”That sentence may be shortened to, “I rely on what I hate to give my life meaning.”I think my life revolves around not so much trying to stay alive or reproduce or live communally as it does trying to ‘attain’ abstractions such as success or respect or love or being able to join a particular group. I just realized that at least 50% of everything I usually say in real life is intended as ‘ironic’ or ‘sarcastic’. But I can’t even really explain what ‘irony’ is. I realize that I can’t get any of these things to really mean anything. That is what Western civilization feels like for me; it is like an attempt to distance perception from everything; the mind or soul is something that exists outside of time, space, and matter; something that views/comments on existence; it is the same principle where God is outside of time and space and abstracted from existence. It’s like when a cell forms a membrane and tries to separate itself from everything around it; it is saying ‘this is an individual entity separate from everything else’; the idea of making distinctions and divisions. This is also, I think, why we live in little boxes and wear clothes and try to protect ourselves from everything else with fictional concepts like ‘husband’ and ‘law’ and ‘dignity.’
Justin Isis writes:
I like that you said this:”That sentence may be shortened to, “I rely on what I hate to give my life meaning.”I think my life revolves around not so much trying to stay alive or reproduce or live communally as it does trying to ‘attain’ abstractions such as success or respect or love or being able to join a particular group. I just realized that at least 50% of everything I usually say in real life is intended as ‘ironic’ or ‘sarcastic’. But I can’t even really explain what ‘irony’ is. I realize that I can’t get any of these things to really mean anything. That is what Western civilization feels like for me; it is like an attempt to distance perception from everything; the mind or soul is something that exists outside of time, space, and matter; something that views/comments on existence; it is the same principle where God is outside of time and space and abstracted from existence. It’s like when a cell forms a membrane and tries to separate itself from everything around it; it is saying ‘this is an individual entity separate from everything else’; the idea of making distinctions and divisions. This is also, I think, why we live in little boxes and wear clothes and try to protect ourselves from everything else with fictional concepts like ‘husband’ and ‘law’ and ‘dignity.’
Okay, just to address a few comments here:”Culture simply ‘is.’ The idea of there being a ladder where culture moves forward and improves is an idea that anthropologists gave up about 1900. And that also means that earlier hunter-gatherer cultures such as the Penan are not necessarily better either. So first, you can skip the idea of ‘real progress’.”I’m not sure I really believe in progress myself, either. But at the end of the entry I was trying to report what one member of the Penan had said. I was, of course, implying, or stating, that Penan culture is superior to our own. This is one of those questions where, for me, the answer has got to be ‘yes and no’. I do feel that there is something there more natural, and therefore more human. I mean, humans generally do have ideas of morality, aesthetics and so on, in which some things are judged to be better or more beautiful than others. I think there’s a similar paradox in ideas like enlightenment. You might hear the idea that everyone is enlightened, and yet some are more so than others.Anyway, the idea of community seems to be quite a big thing for me, and the simple fact is, I don’t feel it in the society in which I live. I feel like, instead of community, we have quiet desperation.”If we must give up biscuits, can’t we at least keep the chocolate ones?”Well, quite possibly. I realise that the way I write things can often be misleading. I don’t actually know if it would be helpful to give up biscuits or not. Apparently, 50 per cent of the world’s palm oil come from the plantations in Malaysia/Borneo. I don’t know where the other fifty per cent comes from. Anyway, palm oil is now another ingredient for me to look out for and avoid if possible.”This is also, I think, why we live in little boxes and wear clothes and try to protect ourselves from everything else with fictional concepts like ‘husband’ and ‘law’ and ‘dignity.'”Yes, I think life is, in this way, permanently postponed. It seems like all our satisfaction is derived in a very convoluted way. For instance, instead of me simply being able to communicate with other humans when they are in my presence, I shut myself away and write strange stories, which some people might read and tell me are very good, or not so good, and which one day might make the name ‘Quentin S. Crisp’ known to a large number of people who have never met me.
ALWC writes:
Hi Quentin,There is actually is a movement called primitivism, which is based on just the idea that you have put forth in this post- that civilization as we have defined it is a bad thing, for all the reasons you described, and which favors a return to hunter-gatherer life, in some form- obviously this is impossible now, but the primary goal of the movement is to lay the grounds in various ways for the reestablishment of such ways of life after the inevitable collapse of this civilization, and to preserve the surviving examples of them. I don’t know if you know of it, but this post reminded me of them a great deal. I thought it was interesting that you mentioned that you’d had the idea of working only in the oral medium- many of them have attempted things like that. (Though on a purely selfish note, I would miss your blog if you decided to do that- as I think I said before when I last posted, I find your outlook on life agrees with mine to a startling degree. And though it’s almost a cliche to say it, when one holds a minority belief, it can be very reassuring to find others who think the same way.)If you’re interested in learning more, Derrick Jensen is one of the more prominent primitivist writers, and his books might be a decent place to start- A Language Older than Words and The Culture of Make Believe are the ones usually recommended as starting points. Also, there is a very large primitivist website and blog at http://www.anthropik.com, which has a lot of information- there are a number of interesting articles from various sources relating to the subject at http://www.anthropik.com/library, and the site owner Jason Godesky has written what he calls his “Thirty Theses” here- http://www.anthropik.com/thirty -which might also be a good introduction. He also tends to be very happy to answer questions.Another decent introduction might be one book Godesky strongly recommends called The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram, which I haven’t read yet, though it is on my list of books to read- it is a fairly wide-ranging book by the sounds of it, but apparently it is largely about language and the ways in which the written word and the civilization it is a product of have distanced us from nature and the non-human world. Based on what you said here about writing and the oral tradition, I imagine it might be of some interest to you. (And yes, there’s a certain irony in a book with that premise, as there is in primitivist websites and in your words and mine here, but such is basically unavoidable in the modern world, I suppose.)For my part, I don’t know that I’d really call myself one- I tend to think they paint a rather overly rosy picture of hunter-gatherer life at times, and I’m not as sure as they are that it’s the only possible sustainable existence, that it’s the only one in which humans can truly be human as you put it, though I think it’s possible that it is.However, when it comes to their critique of civilization, though, and the belief system that motivates it, I am in complete and passionate agreement.(Somewhat off-topic, though perhaps ultimately not- I know Yukio Mishima is a favorite author of yours, and though I haven’t read enough by him he’s a favorite of mine as well, one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever read about. I think it’s very interesting that even though Mishima wasn’t really an environmentalist, as far as I know, I have found that he seems to be quite popular with environmentalists of a certain bent, as I suppose you and I illustrate. I have the beginnings of a theory as to why, but this post is long enough- perhaps next one. Anyway, I was wondering if you’d noticed the same thing.)
Hello ALWC.I think my comments section’s gone a bit mad, so your comment didn’t appear on my screen before I wrote my last comment (which appears after yours). Thanks for the recommendations. I’d heard of primitivism, but only vaguely. I’m not sure if I’d call myself one or not. Probably not, just because, I think, none of us have the whole picture in view, so to call yourself one thing or another is a bit like freezing things in a certain perspective. It could be that we are all forced back into a ‘primitive’ mode of existence, anyway, or it could be that we move on to something in which civilisation and nature become reconciled in some way. In any case, the current state of affairs simply cannot last.That’s a good question about Mishima. I suppose that the first thing that springs to mind would be something like the League of the Divine Wind, some of whose members, if I remember correctly, refused to walk beneath telegraph wires. Perhaps the thing is that a great deal of traditional Japanese culture was so linked with nature and the seasons, and to lose nature was therefore to lose the culture. Most people were all too ready to make such an exchange for the material benefits that were offered. Very few resisted. At the end of The Decay of the Angel, Honda is climbing a mountain to meet the abbess of the monastery there, and he notices how the slopes of the mountain, which he climbed sixty years ago, are now littered with coca-cola cans. But I think what it must basically come down to is an aliveness of the spirit which is destroyed by the materialism of ‘cvilisation’.
Itās very strange, difficult; to really wrap your mind around what has happened to this whole planet in just the last fifty-sixty years. When I look at it in terms of an historical perspective, really, the quality of life as we know it has never been better. For us. For us who, well, have the ability to communicate through the internet. For us, who can cool, and heat our homes depending on the season. Oh, and this one really astonishes me, the fact that ,we can walk into the local super-market and buy any food item we want. Letās just look at the point for a minute. Food. One of the most basic of needs is there for us 24-7. We are supposedly more over weight than the previous generation. If you look back four, five generations, those poor souls had to really work hard, physically, to constantlyput food on the table. As a woman, one hundred fifty years ago, I would have started my day lets say, milking five cows before beginning the preparation of the morning meal. All before 7am. Then the rest of the day would have followed with a string of laborious tasks to further insure the continued survival of my family. There would have been less time to read, and maybe discuss a passage or two from the Bible, or some other fictional work, to hopefully ignite thought in the preceding generation. Pour souls, not really. There is something to be said for physical labor, just not twelve hours worth. I heard somewhere said, that a day should be split three ways. Eight hours work, (in many cases these days that are in front of a computer screen). Eight hours leisure, you know, whatever puts a smile on your face. Then eight hours sleep. Now that oneās hard for me, because I really do much better with about ten hours sleep. Maybe if I applied one of those hours to leisure, and the other to the work section, it would balance out. Because really, most times that last hour of sleep, thereās a lot of brain power being used, running numbers in your head, analyzing the freaky dream you just had, and so on. Balance, balance, on the high tight rope of modern life, at the circus of western civilization. It is an act, a juggling act. A Native American friend once told me, āwe were put here to dream, and gaze at the starsā. I am for that one hundred per cent, itās a shame you canāt slow down a bit, pay a visit to some shaman who will give you a āspecial plantā to chew on to help you remember, and literally spew up your delicate, fractured past. Big chunks of fear, all over the dirt floor. Hopefully cleaned away with a little effort, on your part.The indigenous peoples on this planet, I believe, are so much more connected to spirit. That is what guides them. We are so far from that source. We need more guys like that one from the BBC to bring that knowledge back home to the āpoorā guy in front of his computer screen who should have his dormant humanity re-awoken.Hereās something that really pisses me off: the construction of a fucking Wal-mart with in eye shot of the anchant city of the Gods, about thirty miles east of Mexico City known as Teotihuacan. Why would they do that? That would be the equivalent to building a McDonalds at Giza!!!! Western Civilization, good for medical break throughs, space exploration, not so good for the respect of third world cultures. Itās more like the exploitation of those of third world cultures. We are out of balance.
My sleep pattern is all over the place. I do think the ability to dream about the stars (for instance), is more important than the ability to build a spaceship to them. “Hereās something that really pisses me off: the construction of a fucking Wal-mart with in eye shot of the anchant city of the Gods, about thirty miles east of Mexico City known as Teotihuacan. Why would they do that? That would be the equivalent to building a McDonalds at Giza!!!!”The interesting thing about that is that it’s like juxtaposition of two civilisations. Wal-mart is the temple of the new world, since the only form of reverence and worship allowed to us now is shopping, and Teotihuacan, the sacred city of the old. My guess is that Wal-mart will go first. I remember in Japan visited Momoyama Castle near Kyoto and discovering in horrified bewilderment that they had built a tastless funpark called ‘Castle World’ right next to it. The modern age really lacks all dignity. It’s as if the planet is being terrorised by Mickey Mouse.
The image that comes to mind is Mickey Mouse doing a soft shoe shuffle on the top of the pyramid while double fisted, clinching dollar bills that are positioned in its four digit hands showing the pyramid on the back of the bills. Of course that shit eating grin. While a womanās beautiful long hand appears out of the sky, with red polish, drops coins into the slit between its ears.
That’s very arresting. What’s at the other end of the beautiful long hand?
Thank you. The beginning of a beautiful long arm, of course.