Greasing the Rails to a Cyborg Future

By John Zerzan

From Adbusters #35

When I sat down with the Adbusters Cyborg Manifesto at home in Eugene, Oregon, I
read it as intended: as a hoax. Not a cruel prank on the unsuspecting reader, but a tool
for drawing out our varying faiths in and sympathies for the ideological project of
shifting human culture, with finality, from the real and concrete to the virtual and
technological.
If many failed to see through the hoax or, more frighteningly, recognized it but still
gave it conditional support, then the reason lies in the reigning cultural ethos of our
times: postmodernism.
With its sharply narrowed ambitions concerning thought, its tendency to shade into
the cynical, postmodernism has become a term both pervasive and faceless. But it
does have a face. The theory of postmodernism began in large part as French reaction
against the grand and total claims of Marxism. Emerging and spreading about 20
years ago, in a period of reaction with almost no social movements, postmodernism
bears the imprint of conservatism and lowered expectations. It has also risen in
lockstep with the unfolding logic of an increasingly technological "cyborg" society.
Postmodernism tells us that we cant grasp the whole, indeed that the desire for an
overview of whats going on out there is unhealthy and suspect, even totalitarian. We
have seen, after all, how grand systems "metanarratives," as they are fashionably
referred to have proven oppressive. Having hit on this epiphany, the pomo troops
were quick to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Skeptical about the claims and
results of previous systems of thought, postmodernism has in fact jettisoned nearly all
desire or hope of making sense of what we experience. It abandons the "arrogance" of
trying to figure out the origins, logic, causality, or structure of the world we live in.
Instead, postmodernists focus on surfaces, fragments, margins. Reality is too shifting,
complex, and indeterminate to decipher or judge. Too "messy," too "interesting" to
allow for fixed conclusions, as Donna Haraway puts it in her own well-known
"Cyborg Manifesto."
The postmodern style is notorious for its dense language and games of contradiction.
In Haraways manifesto, for example, she concedes that "the main trouble with
cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and
patriarchal capitalism" but that in no way dims her enthusiasm for a part human,
part machine, high-tech future!
In a technified society, we are increasingly "connected" from isolation, our
experiences filtered through the Internet, television, and the spectacles of consumer
culture. Shared and direct experience, which once helped us understand the meaning
and texture of life, are two major casualties of this cyborg imperative. Things grow
stark and menacing in every sphere, and still Haraway and the postmodern crowd
insist that conclusions be avoided. Of course, once one renounces any attempt to
comprehend the overall situation, its easy to embrace the endless complex of
piecemeal "solutions" offered by technology and capital.

2
Postmodernism celebrates evanescent flows, a state of no boundaries, the
transgressive. If this sounds familiar, it's because these values are shared by the most
ardent architects of both consumerism and capitalist globalization. As the dimensions
of personal sovereignty and community steadily erode, along with meaning and value,
a consumer society in cyberspace becomes the uncontested next stage of human
existence.
Division of labor, structures of control, the nature of technology not to mention less
abstract factors like drudgery, toxicity, the steady destruction of nature are integral
to the high-tech trajectory. They are also of no concern, evidently, to postmodernists,
who continue to cling to the subtle, the tentative, the narrowly focused. Virtual reality
mirrors the postmodern fascination with surfaces, explicitly rejoicing in its own
depthlessness one obvious way in which the postmodernists are the accomplices of
the Brave New World. As we reject any possibility of understanding shared or even
personal experience, no challenge to that experience seems plausible. The political
counterpart of postmodernism is pragmatism; we find ways of accommodating
ourselves to the debased norm.
The decay of meaning, passion, and inner vibrancy has been going on for a while.
Today it is a juggernaut, in the face of which postmodernism is the culture of no
resistance. The good news is that there are signs of life, signs that folks in various
places are beginning to suspect our cultures greatest hoax.

John Zerzan

Rank-and-File Radicalism within the

Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s
In the following article are presented some unusual features of the Ku Klux Klan of
the 1920s, the only period in which the KKK was a mass movement. In no way should
this essay be interpreted as an endorsement of any aspect of this version of the Klan
or of any other parts of Klan activity. Nonetheless, the loathsome nature of the KKK
of today should not blind us to what took place within the Klan 70 years ago, in
various places and against the wishes and ideology of the Klan itself.
In the U.S. at least, racism is certainly one of the most crudely reified phenomena.
The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s is one of the two or three most important and most
ignored social movements of 20th century America. These two data are the
essential preface to this essay.
Writing at the beginning of 1924, Stanley Frost accurately surveyed the Klan at the
crest of its power: The Ku Klux Klan has become the most vigorous, active and
effective organization in American life outside business.[1] Depending on ones
choice of sources, KKK membership in 1924 can be estimated at anywhere between
two and eight million.[2]
And yet, the nature of this movement has been largely unexplored or misunderstood.
In the fairly thin literature on the subject, the Klan phenomenon is usually described
simply as nativism. A favorite in the lexicon of orthodox historians, the term refers
to an irrationality, racism, and backwardness supposedly endemic to the poorer and
less-educated classes, and tending to break out in episodic bouts of violentlyexpressed prejudice. Emerson Loucks The Ku Klux Klan in Pennsylvania: A Study of
Nativism is a typical example. Its preface begins with, The revived KKK and its
stormy career is but one chapter in the history of American nativism, the first chapter
is entitled, Some Beginnings of Nativism, and in the books concluding paragraph
we learn that Nativism has shown itself to be a perennial.[3]
Kenneth Jackson, with his The Ku Klux Klan in the City, has been one of a very few
commentators to go beyond the amorphous nativism thesis and also challenge
several of the prevailing ste- reotypes of the Klan. He argues forcefully that the
Invisible Empire of the 1920s was neither predominantly southern, nor rural, nor
white supremacist, nor violent.[4] Carl Deglers succinct comments corroborate the
non-southern characterization quite ably: Significantly, the single piece of
indisputable Klan legislation enacted anywhere was the school law in Oregon; the
state most thoroughly controlled by the Klan was Indiana; and the largest Klan
membership in any state was that in Ohio. On the other hand, several southern states

4
like Mississippi, Virginia, and South Carolina hardly saw the Klan or felt its
influence.[5] Jacksons statistics show clearly the Klans northern base, with only
one southern state, Texas, among the eight states with the largest membership.[6] It
would be difficult to even begin to cite Jacksons evidence in favor of terming the
Klan an urban phenomenon, inasmuch as his whole book testifies to this
characterization. It may be interesting to note, however, the ten urban areas with the
most Klansmen. Principally industrial and all but one of them outside the South, they
are, in descending order: Chicago, Indianapolis, Philadelphia-Camden, Detroit,
Denver, Portland, Atlanta, Los Angeles-Long Beach, Youngstown-Warren, and
Pittsburgh-Carnegie.[7]
The notion of the KKK as an essentially racist organization is similarly challenged by
Jackson. As Robert Moats Miller put it, in great areas of the country where the Klan
was powerful the Negro population was insignificant, and in fact, it is probable that
had not a single Negro lived in the United States, a Klan-type order would have
emerged.[8] And Robert Duffus, writing for the June 1923 Worlds Week, conceded:
while the racial situation contributed to a state of mind favorable to Ku Kluxism,
curiously it did not figure prominently in the Klans career.[9] The Klan in fact tried
to organize colored divisions in Indiana and other states, to the amazement of
historian Kathleen Blee.[10] Deg- ler, who wrongly considered vigilantism to be the
core trait of the Klan, admitted that such violence as there was was directed against
white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants rather than against the minorities.[11]
Which brings us to the fourth and last point of Jacksons thesis, that the KKK was not
predominantly violent. Again, his conclusions seem valid despite the widespread
image of a lynch-mad, terroristic Klan. The post-war race riots of 1919 in
Washington, Chicago, and East St. Louis, for example, occurred before there were any
Klansmen in those cities,[12] and in the 1920s, when the Klan grew to its great
strength, the number of lynchings in the U.S. dropped to less than half the annual
average of pre-war years[13] and a far smaller fraction than that by comparison with
the immediately post-war years. In the words of Preston Slosson, By a curious
anomaly, in spite of...the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, the old American custom of
lynch law fell into almost complete disuse.[14]
A survey of Literary Digest (conservative) and The Nation (liberal) for 19221923
reveals several reported instances in which the Klan was blamed for violence it did
not perpetrate and unfairly deprived of its rights.[15] Its enemies frequently included
local or state establishments, and were generally far from being meek and powerless
victims.
If the Ku Klux Klan, then, was not predominantly southern, rural, racist, or violent,
just what was the nature of this strange force which grew to such power so rapidly and
spontaneously in the early-middle 20s and declined at least as quickly by 1925?
The orthodox nativism answer asserts that it was just another of the periodic,
unthinking and reactionary efforts of the ignorant to turn back the clock, and therefore
futile and short-lived. A post-Jackson, neo-nativist position might even concede the
points about racism and violence not being determinant, and still essentially maintain
this point of view, of recurrent, blind efforts to restore an inchoate but rightist version
of the past.
But a very strong pattern regarding the Klan introduces doubts about this outlook,
namely, that militantly progressive or radical activities have often closely preceded,
coincided with, or closely followed strong KKK efforts, and have involved the same

5
participants. Oklahoma, for example, experienced in a mere ten years the growth and
decline of the largest state branch of the Socialist Party, and the rise of one of the
strongest Klan movements.[16] In Williamson County, Illinois, an interracial crowd of
union coal miners stormed a mine being worked by strike-breakers and killed twenty
of them. The community supported the miners action and refused to convict any of
the participants in this so-called Herrin Massacre of 1922, which had captured the
nations attention. Within two years, Herrin and the rest of Williamson County backed
one of the very strongest local Klan organizations in the country.[17] The violently
suppressed strikes of the southern Appalachian Piedmont textile workers in 1929,
among the most bitterly fought in twentieth century labor history,[18] took place at
the time of or immediately following great Klan strength in many of the same mill
towns. The rubber workers of the huge tire-building plants of Akron, the first to
widely employ the effective sit-down strike weapon in the early 1930s, formed a large
part of that citys very sizeable Klan membership,[19] or had come from Appalachian
regions where the KKK was also strong. In 1934, the very militant and interracial
Southern Tenant Farmers Union was formed, and would face the flight of its leaders,
the indifference of organized labor, and the machine-guns of the large landholders.
Many of its active members were former Klansmen.[20] And observers of the United
Auto Workers have claimed that some of the most militant activists in auto were
former Klansmen.[21]
The key to all these examples of apparently disparate loyalties is a simple one. As I
will show, not only did some Klansmen hold relatively radical opinions while
members of the Invisible Order, but in fact used the Klan, on occasion, as a vehicle
for radical social change. The record in this area, though not inaccessible, has
remained completely undeveloped.
The rise of the Klan began with the sharp economic depression that struck in the fall
of 1920. In the South, desperate farmers organized under the Klan banner in an effort
to force up the price of cotton by restricting its sale. All throughout the fall and
winter of 192022 masked bands roamed the countryside warning ginneries and
warehouses to close until prices advanced. Sometimes they set fire to establishments
that defied their edict.[22] It was from this start that the Klan really began to grow
and to spread to the North, crossing the Mason-Dixon line in the winter of 192021.
[23]
The KKK leadership disavowed and apparently disapproved of[24] this aggressive
economic activism, and it is important to note that more often than not there was
tension or opposition between officials and members, a point I will return to later. In a
southern union hall in 1933, Sherwood Anderson queried a local reporter about the
use of the Klan for economic struggles: This particular hall had formerly been used
by a Ku Klux Klan organization and I asked the newspaper man, How many of these
people [textile workers] were in on that? A good many, he said. He thought the Ku
Klux Klan had been rather an outlet for the workers when America was outwardly so
prosperous. The boom market never got down to these, he said, making a sweeping
movement with his arm.[25] Klan officials never spoke in favor of such uses of the
Klan, but it was the economic and social needs that often drew people to the Klan,
rather than religious, patriotic, or strictly fraternal ones.[26]
This is not to say that there wasnt a multiplicity of contributing factors usually
present as the new Klan rose to prominence. There was a widespread feeling that the
Glorious Crusade of World War I had been a swindle. There was the desperate
boredom and monotony of regimented work-lives. To this latter frustration, a KKK

6
newspaper appealed for new members with the banner, JUST TO PEP UP THE
GAME. THIS SLOW LIFE IS KILLING ME.[27] And with these feelings, too, it is
quite easy to imagine a form of progressive social or political activism being the
result. As Stanley Frost commented in 1924, the Klan movement seems to be another
expression of the general unrest and dissatisfaction with both local and national
conditions the high cost of living, social injustice, inequality....[28] Or, as Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr. offhandedly revealed in a comment about Huey Long, despite his
poor white sympathies, he did not, like Hugo Black in Alabama, join the Klan.[29]
The activities of the Klan have very commonly been referred to as moral reform,
and certainly this kind of effort was common. Articles such as, Behind the White
Hoods: The Regeneration of Oklahoma, and Night-Riding Reformers, from Fall
1923 issues of The Outlook bespeak this side of Klan motivation.[30] They tell how
the Klan cleaned up gangs of organized crime and combated vice and political
corruption in Oklahoma and Indiana, apparently with a minimum of violence or
vigilantism. Also widespread were Klan attempts to put bootleggers out of business,
though we might recall here that prohibition has frequently been endorsed by labor
partisans, from the opinion that the often high alcohol consumption rates among
workers weakened the labor movement. In fact, the Klan not infrequently attacked
liquor and saloon interests explicitly as forces that kept working people down.
It is on the plane of moral issues, furthermore, that another stereotype regarding the
KKK that of its total moral intolerance dissolves at least somewhat under
scrutiny. Charles Bowles, the almost successful write-in Klan candidate in the 1924
Detroit may- oralty race, was a divorce lawyer (as well as being pro-public works).It
cannot be denied that anti-Catholicism was a major plank of Klan appeal in many
places, such as Oregon. But at least part of this attitude stemmed from a belief that
the Catholic Church was a major obstacle in the struggle for womens suffrage and
equality.[31]
Margaret Sanger, the birth control pioneer, gave a lecture to Klanswomen in Silver
Lake, New Jersey, a speaking engagement she accepted with no little trepidation. She
feared that if she ut- tered one word, such as abortion, outside the usual vocabulary
of these women they would go off into hysteria. Actually, a real rapport was
established and the evening was a great success. A dozen invitations to speak to
similar groups were profferred. The conversation went on and on, and when we were
finally through it was too late to return to New York.[32]
At any rate, a connection can be argued between moral reform and more
fundamental reform attempts. I wonder if anybody could ever find any connection
between this towns evident immoralities and some of the plants evident
dissatisfaction?[33] pondered Whiting Williams in 1921. He decided in the
affirmative, that vice in the community is the result of anger in the mill or factory.
And Klan members often showed an interest in also combating what they saw as the
causes of immoralities rather than simply their manifestations.
Hiram Evans, a head of the Klan, admitted in a rare interview in 1923 that There has
been a widespread feeling among Klansmen that in the last few years the operation of
the National Government has shown weakness indicating a possible need of rather
fundamental reform.[34] A 1923 letter to the editor of The New Republic details this
awareness of the need for deep-seated changes. Written by an opponent of the Klan,
the passage expresses The Why of the Klan:

7
First: Throughout all classes there is a growing skepticism of democracy, especially
of the current American brand. Many Americans believe there is little even-handed
justice administered in the courts; that a poor man has little chance against a rich one;
that many judges practically buy their places on the bench or are put there by
powerful interests. The strong, able young man comes out of college ready to do his
part in politics, but with the settled conviction that unless he can give full time there is
no use bucking up against the machine. Furthermore he believes the machines to be
equally corrupt. The miner in West Virginia sees the power of the state enlisted on the
side of the mine owner.[35]
Throughout the literature there is a strongly prevailing tendency to deal with the social
composition of Klan membership by ignoring it altogether, or, more commonly, by
referring to it in passing as middle class. This approach enabled John Mecklin,
whose The Ku Klux Klan: A Study of the American Mind (1924) is regarded as a
classic, to say that The average Klansman is far more in sympathy with capital than
with labor.[36]In large part this stems from looking at the top Klan officials, rather
than at the rank and file members. William Simmons, D.C. Stephenson, and Hiram
Evans, the men who presided over the Klan in the 20s had been, respectively, a
minister, a coal dealer, and a dentist. But the membership defi- nitely did not share
this wholly middle class makeup.
Kenneth Jackson only partially avoids the error by terming the Klan a lower middleclass movement,[37] a vague appellation which he corrects shortly thereafter: The
greatest source of Klan support came from rank and file non-union, blue-collar
employees of large businesses and factories.[38]
Returning to the subject of socio-political attitudes of Klan members, available
evidence strikingly confirms my contention of a sometimes quite radical frame of
mind. In the spring of 1924, The Outlook magazine conducted a Platform of the
People poll by mail. When it was found that an organizational request for ten
thousand ballots came from the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Ku Klux Klan, pink
ballots were supplied so that they could be separately tabulated. To quote the article,
Pink Ballots for the Ku Klux Klan: The ballots returned all came from towns and
small cities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Of the total of 1,139 voters, 490 listed
themselves as Republicans, only 97 as Democrats, and 552 as Independents. Among
them are 243 women.[39] Approximately two-thirds (over 700) responded regarding
their occupations. The largest single group (209) is that of skilled workmen; the next
(115) is of laborers. The rest includes workers (e.g. railway men) and farmers, plus
a scattering of professionals and merchants. The women who listed their occupations
were mainly housewives.
Despite the generally high percentages of abstention on most of the issues, the results
on the following selected topics show clearly radical leanings:[40]

Percent
Compulsory freight reduction
Nationalization of the railroads with
cooperative administration by workers,
shippers, and public
Federal Aid for Farmers Co-operatives
Federal purchase of wheat
Price fixing of staple farm products
Further extension of farm credit
Equal social, legal, and industrial rights for
women
Amendment enabling Congress to prevent
exploitation of children in industry
Federal Anti-Lynching Law
Establish Federal Employment Bureau
Extension of principle of Federal aid for
education
Abolition of injunctions in labor disputes
Nationalization, and democratic administration
by technicians, workers, and consumers, of coal
mines
Government control and distribution of highpower transmission

Approved: Ignored: Condemned:

30
77
3
24

72

30
20
23
32

68
68
75
67

2
2
5
1

41

56

45

54

38
37

60
60

2
3

91

20

73

23

72

33

64

Also favored were immigration restriction and prohibition. The Outlook, obviously
displeased with the response, categorized the Klan participants as more inclined to
accept panaceas at face value, willing to go farther. In general, they concluded, this
leads to greater radicalism, or progressivism.[41] The Klan movement declined
rapidly within a year of the poll, and research substantiates the enduring validity of
The Outlook editors claim that The present table provides the only analysis that has
ever been made of the political views of members of the Ku Klux Klan.[42]
With this kind of data, it is less surprising to find, for example, that the Socialist Party
and the Klan formed a 1924 electoral alliance in Milwaukee to elect John Kleist, a
Socialist and a Klansman, to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.[43] Robert O. Nesbitt
perceived, in Wisconsin, a tendency for German Socialists, whose most conspicuous
opponents were Catholic clergy, to join the Klan.[44] The economic populist Walter
Pierce was elected governor in Oregon in 1922 by a strong agricultural protest vote,
including the endorsement of the Klan and the Socialist Party. Klan candidates
promised to cut taxes in half, reduce phone rates, and give aid to distressed farmers.
[45] A recent study of the Klan in LaGrande, Oregon revealed that it played a
substantial role in supporting the strikers during the nationwide railworkers strike of
1922.[46]

9
In fact, the KKK appealed not infrequently to militant workers, despite the persistent
stereotype of the Klans anti-labor bent. An August 1923 Worlds Work article
described strong worker support for the Klan in Kansas; during the state-wide railroad
strike there in 1922, the strikers actually did flock into the Klan in what seems to
have been large numbers.[47]
Charles Alexander, who wrote the highly regarded The Ku Klux Klan in the
Southwest, though generally subscribing to the anti-labor Klan reputation, confessed
his own inability to confirm this image. Referring to himself, he said, the writer has
come across only two instances of direct conflict between southwestern Klansmen and
union organizers, one in Arkansas and one in Louisiana.[48] Writing of Oklahoma,
Carter Blue Clark judged that violence against the International (sic) Workers of the
World and radical farm and labor groups was rare...[49] He found sixty-eight
incidents of Klan-related violence between 1921 and 1925, only two of which
belonged to the Unionization/Radicalism category.[50]
Goldbergs study of the KKK in Colorado found that despite coal strikes in 1921,
1922, and 1927, which primarily involved foreign born miners, the Klan never
resorted to the language of the Red Scare. During the Wobbly-led strike of 1927, in
fact, the Canon City Klan formed an alliance with the IWW against their common
enemy, the ruling elite.[51]
Virginia Durr, who was Henry Wallaces Progressive Party running mate in 1948,
gives us a picture of the Klan of the 20s and labor in the Birmingham area:
The unions were broken...So, the Ku Klux Klan was formed at that point as a kind of
underground union and unless you were there and knew it, nobody will believe it.
They will say, Oh, but the Klan was against the unions. Well, it wasnt.[52]
Gerald Dunne found that ninety percent of Birminghams union members were also
involved with the Klan,[53] and that the Klan in the state at large attacked the
Alabama Power Company and the influence of the ruling Bankhead family while
campaigning for pub- lic control of the Muscle Shoals dam project and government
medical insurance.[54]
In the 20s the corrupt and inert officialdom of the United Mine Workers was presided
over by the autocratic John L. Lewis. Ku Kluxers in the union, though they had been
officially barred from membership in 1921, formed a coalition with leftists at the 1924
convention in a fight for union democracy: Then the radical- s...combined with the
sympathizers of the hooded order to strip Mr. Lewis of the power to appoint
organizers.[55] Though this combination was narrowly defeated, Lewis was
outvoted in a first test of the question as to whether local executives and organizers
should be appointed by the national officials or by the rank and file. The insurgents,
headed by the deposed Alexander Howat and spurred on by the members of the Ku
Klux Klan, who exerted a lobbying influence from the convention doorways,
combined to carry the first vote.[56] Though officially denied membership, strongly
pro-UMW sources have admitted that, in fact, a great many union members were
Klansmen. McDonald and Lynch, for example, estimated that in 1924 eighty percent
of UMW District 11 (Indiana) members were enrolled in the KKK[57]. An
examination of the Proceedings of the 1924 union convention supports this point;
areas of Klan strength, such as Indiana, Illinois and Pennsylvania voted very
decisively against Lewis, in favor of the election of organizers by the rank and file.
[58]

10
A New Republic article in March, 1924 told of the strength of the Klan in Williamson
County, Illinois, scene of the Herrin Massacre referred to above. The anti-Klan
piece sadly shook its head at this turn of events in an area of one hundred percent
unionism.[59] Buried in the middle of the account is the key to the situation, an
accurate if grudging concession that the inaction of their local labor leaders gave to
the Ku Klux Klan a following among the miners.[60]
The following oral history account by Aaron Barkham, a West Virginia miner, is a
perfect illustration of the Klan as a vehicle of class struggle and of the reason for
its official denunciation by the UMW. It is worth quoting at length:
About that time 1929, in Logan County, West Virginia, a bunch of strikebreakers come in with shotguns and axe handles. Tried to break up union
meetings. The UMW deteriorated and went back to almost no existence. It
didnt particularly get full strength till about 1949. And it dont much
today in West Virginia. So most people ganged up and formed the Ku
Kluck Klan.
The Ku Klux was the real controllin factor in the community. It was the
law. It was in power to about 1932. My dad was one of the leaders til he
died. The company called in the army to get the Ku Klux out, but it didnt
work. The union and the Ku Klux was about the same thing.
The superintendent of the mine got the big idea of makin it rougher than
it was. They hauled him off in a meat wagon, and about ten more of the
company officials. Had the mine shut down. They didnt kill em, but they
didnt come back. They whipped one of the foremen and got him out of
the county. They gave him twelve hours to get out, get his family out.
The UMW had a field representative, he was a lawyer. They tarred and
feathered im for tryin to edge in with the company. He come around, got
mad, tryin to tell us we were wrong, when we called a wildcat. He was
takin the side of the company. I used a stick to help tar im. And it wasnt
the first time.
The Ku Klux was formed on behalf of people that wanted a decent living,
both black and white. Half the coal camp was colored. It wasnt anticolored. The black people had the same responsibilities as the white. Their
lawn was just as green as the white mans. They got the same rate of pay.
There was two colored who belonged to it. I remember those two niggers
comin around my father and askin questions about it. They joined. The
pastor of our community church was a colored man. He was Ku Klux. It
was the only protection the workin man had.
Sure, the company tried to play one agin the other. But it didnt work. The
colored and the whites lived side by side. It was somethin like a
checkerboard. Thered be a white family and a colored family. No sir,
there was no racial problem. Yeah, they had a certain feelin about the
colored. They sure did. And they had a certain feelin about the white, too.
Anyone come into the com- munity had unsatisfactory dealins, if it was
colored or white, he didnt stay.[61]

11
Why have the few, standard accounts of the Klan been seemingly so far off?
Principally because they have failed to look at the Klan phenomenon from the
bottom up, to see KKK participants as historical subjects. One result of this is to
have overlooked much material altogether. As most labor attention focuses on the
unions at the expense of the individual workers, so has the Klan been ig- nored as a
movement relevant to the history of working people. The Lean Years: A History of the
American Worker, 19201933, by Irving Bernstein, is widely regarded as the best
treatment of labor in the 1920s. It does not mention the Ku Klux Klan. Similarly, the
Lynds Middletown, that premier sociological study of Muncie, Indiana in the 20s,
barely mentions the Klan[62] and then only in terms of a most marginal area, religious
preference.[63]
Certainly no one would seriously maintain that the KKK of the 20s was free from
bigotry or injustice. There is truth in the charac- terization of the Klan as a moment of
soured populism, fermented of post-war disillusion. But it is also true that when large
numbers of people, feeling a sense of defeat[64] in an increasingly urban South, or
their northern counterparts, conscious of their growing inferiority,[65] turned to the
Klan, they did not necessarily enact some kind of sick, racist savagery. On occasion,
they even turned, as we have seen, to a fairly radical activism to the chagrin of
their corrupt and conservative leadership.
In fact, it was internal dissension plus, to a lesser extent, the return of relative
prosperity in 1925[66] that brought about the precipitous decline of the Klan.
Donald Crownovers study of the KKK in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania discussed
some of the abortive efforts to form state and even national organizations alternative
to the vice and autocracy prevailing at the top of the Invisible Empire.[67] Revolt
from within, not criticism from without, broke the Klan.[68] More fundamentally,
the mid-1920s, against the background of a decisive deformation provided by World
War I,[69] saw the real arrival of the consumer society and the cultural displacement
of militancy it represented.[70]
The above research, limited and unsystematic as it is, would seem to raise more
questions than it answers. Nonetheless, it may be possible to discern here something
of relevance concerning racism, spontaneity and popular values in the context of a
very important social movement.[71]
[1] Stanley Frost, The Challenge of the Klan (New York, 1969), p.1.
[2] Between five and six million is probably the soundest figure. Morrison and
Commager found garnered in the Northeast and Midwest an all-time peak of six
million members. The Growth of the American Republic (New York, 1950), vol. II,
p.556. Jonathon Daniels estimated that the supposedly Southern organization had
sprawled continentally from beginnings in Atlanta in 1915, up from 100,000 members
in 1921 to 5,000,000 in 1924. The Time Between the Wars (Garden City, New York,
1966), p. 108.
[3] Emerson Loucks, The Ku Klux Klan in Pennsylvania: A Study of Nativism (New
York, 1936), pp. vi, 1, 198.
[4] Kenneth Jackson, The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 19151930 (New York, 1967), p.
xi.

12
[5] Carl Degler, A Century of the Klans: A Review Article, Journal of Southern
History (November 1965), pp. 442443.
[6] Jackson, op.cit., p. 237.
[7] Ibid., p. 239.
[8] Robert Moats Miller, The Ku Klux Klan, from The Twenties: Change and
Continuity, John Braeman, Robert H. Bremner and David Brody, eds. (Columbus,
1968), p. 218.
[9] Robert L. Duffus, How the Ku Klux Klan Sells Hate, Worlds Week (June,
1923), p. 179.
[10] Kathleen M. Blee, Women of the Klan (Berkeley, 1991), p. 169.
[11] Degler, op.cit., p. 437.
[12] William Simmons, head of the Klan in 1921, testified without challenge
that the post-war race riots in Washington, East St. Louis and Chicago took place
before there were any Klan members in those cities. See Hearings Before the
Committee on Rules: House of Representatives, Sixty-Seventh Congress (Washington,
1921), p. 75.
[13] Daniel Snowman, USA: The Twenties to Viet Nam (London, 1968), p.37.
[14] Preston W. Slosson, The Great Crusade and After (New York, 1930), p. 258.
[15] See Literary Digest: Quaint Customs and Methods of the KKK, (August 5,
1922) A Defense of the Ku Klux Klan, (January 20, 1923), esp. pp. 1819; The
Klan as the Victim of Mob Violence, (September 8, 1923), p. 12; The Nation: Even
the Klan Has Rights, (December 13, 1922), p. 654.
[16] See Garin Burbans Agrarian Radicals and Their Opponents: Political Conflicts
in Southern Oklahoma, 19101924, Journal of American History (June 1971).
Burbank argues that the Socialist Party and the Klan had different constituencies in
Oklahoma, but much of his own data contradicts this conclusion. Esp. pp. 2021.
[17] See Paul M. Angles Bloody Williamson(New York, 1952), esp. pp. 4, 210 2829,
137138.
[18] See Irving Bernsteins The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920
1933 (Baltimore, 1966), pp. 143.
[19] Jackson, op.cit, p. 239. Akron had the eighth largest member- ship of U.S. cities.
[20] See Thomas R. Brooks Toil and Trouble (New York, 1971), p. 368, and Jerold S.
Auerbachs Labor and Liberty: The LaFollette Committee and the New Deal
(Indianapolis, 1966), p. 38.
[21] Irving Howe and B.J. Widick, The UAW and Walter Reuther (New York, 1949),
p. 9.
[22] John Higham, Strangers in the Land (New York, 1968), pp. 289- 290.
[23] Donald A. Crownover, The Ku Klux Klan in Lancaster County, 19231924,
Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society (1964, No.2), p. 64.
[24] Higham, op.cit, p. 290.
[25] Sherwood Anderson, Puzzled America (New York, 1935), p. 114.

13
[26] Neill Herring, a veteran progressive and scholar from Atlanta, has testified to this
kind of utilization of Klan organization as enabled by a structure that left a fair
measure of local indepen- dence of action. Letter to author, March 25, 1975.
[27] Miller, op.cit., p. 224.
[28] Frost, op.cit., p. 270.
[29] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Politics of Upheaval (Boston, 1960), p. 45.
[30] Stanley Frost, Night-Riding Reformers, The Outlook (November 14, 1923);
Frost Behind the White Hoods; The Regeneration of Oklahoma, The Outlook
(November 21, 1923).
[31] Robert Klan Goldberg, Hooded Empire: the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado (Urbana,
1981), p. 23.
[32] Margaret Sanger, An Autobiography (New York, 1938), pp. 366- 367.
[33] Frost, op.cit., p. 86.
[34] Frost, op.cit., p. 86.
[35] Mary H. Herring, the Why of the Klan, (Correspondence) The New Republic
(February 23, 1923), p. 289.
[36] John Moffat Mecklin, The Ku Klux Klan: A Study of the American Mind (New
York, 1924), p. 98.
[37] Jackson, op.cit., p. 240.
[38] Ibid., p. 241.
[39] Pink Ballots for the Ku Klux Klan, The Outlook (June 25, 1924), pp. 306307.
[40] Ibid., p. 307308. My percentages involve slight approxima- tions; they are
based on averaging the percentages given for Republicans, Democrats, and
Independents proportionally.
[41] Ibid., p. 306.
[42] Ibid., p. 308.
[43] Jackson, op.cit., p. 162.
[44] Robert O. Nesbitt, Wisconsin: A History (Madison, 1973), p. 467.
[45] George S. Turnbull, An Oregon Crusader (Portland, 1955), p. 150. Promises and
Lies, (editorial) Capital Journal (Salem, October 31, 1922).
[46] David A. Horowitz, The Ku Klux Klan in LaGrande, Oregon, The Invisible
Empire in the West, ed. Shawn Lay (Urbana, 1992), p. 195.
[47] Robert L. Duffus, The Ku Klux Klan in the Middle West, Worlds Work
(August, 1923), p. 365.
[48] Charles Alexander, The Ku Klux Klan in the Southwest (Louis- ville, 1965), p.
25.
[49] Carter Blue Clark, A History of the Ku Klux Klan in Oklahoma. Ph.D.
Dissertation (University of Oklahoma, 1976), p. 115.
[50] Ibid., p. 147.

14
[51] Goldberg, op.cit., pp. 122, 146.
[52] Virginia Durr, Interview (conducted by Susan Thrasher and Jacque Hall, May
1315, 1975), University of North Carolina Oral History project.
[53] Gerald T. Dunne, Hugo Black and the Judicial Revolution (New York, 1977), p.
114.
[54] Ibid., pp. 116, 118, 121.
[55] Cecil Carnes, John L. Lewis (New York, 1936), p. 116.
[56] Ibid., p. 114.
[57] David J. McDonald and Edward A. Lynch, Coal and Unionism (Silver Spring,
Md, 1939), p. 161.
[58] United Mine Workers of America, Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Consecutive
and Sixth Biennial Convention (Indianapolis, 1924), p. 686.
[59] Ku Kluxing in the Miners Country, The New Republic (March 26, 1924), p.
123.
[60] Ibid., p. 124.
[61] Studs Terkel, Hard Times (New York, 1970), pp. 229230.
[62] Robert and Helen Lynd, Middletown (New York, 1929). pp. 333, 364366, 479.
[63] George Brown Tindall, The Emergence of the New South (Baton Rouge, 1967),
p. 196: careful historians have found that neither the major church bodies and
periodicals nor fundamentalist leaders ever worked closely with the Klan. There
seems to have been even less of a connection between the churches and the Klan in
the North.
[64] Ibid, p. 191.
[65] George E. Mowry, The Urban Nation (New York, 1965), p. 34.
[66] Degler, op.cit., p. 441.
[67] Crownover, op. cit., pp. 6970.
[68] Loucks, op.cit., p. 165.
[69] Zerzan, Origins and Meaning of World War I, Telos 49, esp. pp. 107108.
[70] Stewart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Roots of the
Consumer Society (New York, 1977). For example, pp. 189190, 201.
[71] Special thanks to Neill Herring of Atlanta, Susan Thrasher of New Market,
Tennessee, and Bob Hall of chapel Hill, North Carolina.

15

SEIZE THE DAY

by John Zerzan

The rapidly mounting toll of modern life is worse than we could have imagined. A
metamorphosis rushes onward, changing the texture of living, the whole feel of
things. In the not-so-distant past this was still only a partial modification; now the
Machine converges on us, penetrating more and more to the core of our lives,
promising no escape from its logic.
The only stable continuity has been that of the body, and that has become vulnerable
in unprecedented ways. We now inhabit a culture, according to Furedi (1997), of high
anxiety that borders on a state of outright panic. Postmodern discourse suppresses
articulations of suffering, a facet of its accommodation to the inevitability of further,
systematic desolation. The prominence of chronic degenerative diseases makes a
chilling parallel with the permanent erosion of all that is healthy and life-affirming
inside industrial culture. That is, maybe the disease can be slowed a bit in its
progression, but no overall cure is imaginable in this context--which created the
condition in the first place.
As much as we yearn for community, it is all but dead. McPherson, Smith-Lovin and
Brashears (American Sociological Review 2006) tell us that 19 years ago, the typical
American had three close friends; now the number is two. Their national study also
reveals that over this period of time, the number of people without one friend or
confidant has tripled. Census figures show a correspondingly sharp rise in singleperson households, as the technoculture -- with its vaunted "connectivity" -- grows
steadily more isolating, lonely and empty.
In Japan "people simply aren't having sex" (Kitamura 2006) and the suicide rate has
been rising rapidly. Hikikimori, or self-isolation, finds over a million young people
staying in their rooms for years. Where the technoculture is most developed, levels of
stress, depression and anxiety are highest.
Questions and ideas can only become currents in the world insofar as reality, external
and internal, makes that possible. Our present state, devolving toward catastrophe,
displays a reality in unmistakable terms. We are bound for a head-on collision
between urgent new questions and a totality--global civilization--that can provide no
answers. A world that offers no future, but shows no signs of admitting this fact,
imperils its own future along with the life, health, and freedom of all beings on the
planet. Civilization's rulers have always squandered whatever remote chances they
had to prepare for the end of life as they know it, by choosing to ride the crest of
domination, in all its forms.
It has become clear to some that the depth of the expanding crisis, which is as
massively dehumanizing as it is ecocidal, stems from the cardinal institutions of
civilization itself. The discredited promises of Enlightenment and modernity represent
the pinnacle of the grave mistake known as civilization. There is no prospect that this
Order will renounce that which has defined and maintained it, and apparently little
likelihood that its various ideological supporters can face the facts. If civilization's
collapse has already begun, a process now unofficially but widely assumed, there may

16
be grounds for a widespread refusal or abandonment of the reigning totality. Indeed,
its rigidity and denial may be setting the stage for a cultural shift on an unprecedented
scale, which could unfold rapidly.
Of course, a paradigm shift away from this entrenched, but vulnerable and fatally
flawed system is far from unavoidable. The other main possibility is that too many
people, for the usual reasons (fear, inertia, manufactured incapacity, etc.) will
passively accept reality as it is, until it's too late to do anything but try to deal with
collapse. It's noteworthy that a growing awareness that things are going wrong,
however inchoate and individualized, is fuelled by a deep, visceral unease and in
many cases, acute suffering. This is where opportunity resides. From this new
perspective that is certainly growing, we find the work of confronting what faces us as
a species, and removing the barriers to planetary survival. The time has come for a
wholesale indictment of civilization and mass society. It is at least possible that, in
various modes, such a judgment can undo the death-machine before destruction and
domestication inundate everything.
Although what's gone before helps us understand our current plight, we now live in
obvious subjection, on a plainly greater scale than heretofore. The enveloping technoworld that is spreading so rapidly suggests movement toward even deeper control of
every aspect of our lives. Adorno's assessment in the 1960s is proving valid today:
"Eventually the system will reach a point--the word that provides the social cue is
'integration'--where the universal dependence of all moments on all other moments
makes the talk of causality obsolete. It is idle to search for what might have been a
cause within a monolithic society. Only that society itself remains the cause."
(Negative Dialectics, p. 267).
A totality that absorbs every "alternative" and seems irreversible. Totalitarian. It is its
own justification and ideology. Our refusal, our call to dismantle all this, is met with
fewer and fewer countervailing protests or arguments. The bottom-line response is
more along the lines of "Yes, your vision is good, true, valid; but this reality will
never go away."
None of the supposed victories over inhumanity have made the world safer, not even
just for our own species. All the revolutions have only tightened the hold of
domination, by updating it. Despite the rise and fall of various political persuasions, it
is always production that has won; technological systems never retreat, they only
advance. We have been free or autonomous insofar as the Machine requires for its
functioning.
Meanwhile, the usual idiotic judgments continue. "We should be free to use specific
technologies as tools without adopting technology as lifestyle." (Valovic 2000). "The
worlds created through digital technology are real to the extent that we choose to play
their games." (Downs 2005).
Along with the chokehold of power, and some lingering illusions about how
modernity works, the Machine is faced with worsening prospects. It is a striking fact
that those who manage the dominant organization of life no longer even attempt
answers or positive projections. The most pressing "issues" (e.g. Global Warming) are
simply ignored, and propaganda about Community (the market plus isolation),
Freedom (total surveillance society), the American Dream (!) is so false that it cannot
be expected to be taken seriously.

17
As Sahlins pointed out (1977), the more complex societies become, the less they are
able to cope with challenges. The central concern of any state is to preserve
predictability; as this capacity visibly fails, so do that state's chances of survival.
When the promise of security wanes, so does the last real support. Many studies have
concluded that various ecosystems are more likely to suffer sudden catastrophic
collapse, rather than undergo steady, predictable degradation. The mechanisms of rule
just might be subject to a parallel development.
In earlier times there was room to maneuver. Civilization's forward movement was
accompanied by a safety valve: the frontier. Large-scale expansion of the Holy Roman
Empire eastward during the 12th-14th centuries, the invasion of the New World after
1500, the Westward movement in North America through the end of the 19th century.
But the system becomes "mortgaged to structures accumulated along the way"
(Sahlins again). We are hostages, and so is the whole hierarchical ensemble. The
whole system is busy, always in flux; transactions take place at an ever-accelerating
rate. We have reached the stage where the structure relies almost wholly on the cooptation of forces that are more or less outside its control. A prime example is the
actual assistance given by leftist regimes in South America. The issue is not so much
that of the outcome of neo-liberal economics, but of the success of the left in power at
furthering self-managed capital, and co-opting indigenous resistance into its orbit.
But these tactics do not outweigh the fact of an overall inner rigidity that puts the
future of techno-capital at grave risk. The name of the crisis is modernity itself, its
contingent, cumulative weight. Any regime today is in a situation where every
"solution" only deepens the engulfing problems. More technology and more coercive
force are the only resources to fall back on. The "dark side" of progress stands
revealed as the definitive face of modern times.
Theorists such as Giddens and Beck admit that the outer limits of modernity have
been reached, so that disaster is now the latent characteristic of society. And yet they
hold out hope, without predicating basic change, that all will be well. Beck, for
instance, calls for a democratization of industrialism and technological change -carefully avoiding the question of why this has never happened.
There is no reconciliation, no happy ending within this totality, and it is transparently
false to claim otherwise. History seems to have liquidated the possibility of
redemption; its very course undoes what has been passing as critical thought. The
lesson is to notice how much must change to establish a new and genuinely viable
direction. There never was a moment of choosing; the field or ground of life shifts
imperceptibly in a multitude of ways, without drama, but to vast effect. If the solution
were sought in technology, that would of course only reinforce the rule of modern
domination; this is a major part of the challenge that confronts us.
Modernity has reduced the scope allowed for ethical action, cutting off its potentially
effective outlets. But reality, forcing itself upon us as the crisis mounts, is becoming
proximal and insistent once again. Thinking gnaws away at everything, because this
situation corrodes everything we have wanted. We realize that it is up to us. Even the
likelihood of a collapse of the global techno-structure should not lure us away from
acknowledgement of our decisive potential roles, our responsibility to stop the engine
of destruction. Passivity, like a defeated attitude, will not bring forth deliverance.
We are all wounded, and paradoxically, this estrangement becomes the basis for
communality. A gathering of the traumatized may be forming, a spiritual kinship
demanding recovery. Because we can still feel acutely, our rulers can rest no more

18
easily than we do. Our deep need for healing means that an overthrow must take
place. That alone would constitute healing. Things "just go on", creating the
catastrophe on every level. People are figuring it out: that things just go on is, in fact,
the catastrophe.
Melissa Holbrook Pierson (The Place You Love is Gone 2006) expressed it this way:
"Suddenly now it hits, bizarrely easy to grasp. We are inexorably heading for the Big
Goodbye. It's official! The unthinkable is ready to be thought. It is finally in sight,
after all of human history behind us. In the pit of what is left of your miserable soul
you feel it coming, the definitive loss of home, bigger than the cause of one person's
tears. Yours and mine, the private sob, will be joined by a mass crying..."
Misery. Immiseration. Time to get back to where we have never quite given up
wanting to be. "Stretched and stretched again to the elastic limit at which it will bear
no more," in Spengler's phrase.
Enlightenment thought, along with the Industrial Revolution, began in late 18th
century Europe, inaugurating modernity. We were promised freedom based on
conscious control over our destiny. But Enlightenment claims have not been realized,
and the whole project has turned out to be self-defeating. Foundational elements
including reason, universal rights and the laws of science were consciously designed
to jettison pre-scientific, mystical sorts of knowledge. Diverse, communally sustained
lifeways were sacrificed in the name of a unitary and uniform, law-enforced pattern of
living. Kant's emphasis on freedom through moral action is rooted in this context,
along with the French encyclopedists' program to replace traditional crafts with more
up-to-date technological systems. Kant, by the way, for whom property was sanctified
by no less than his categorical imperative, favorably compared the modern university
to an industrial machine and its products.
Various Enlightenment figures debated the pros and cons of emerging modern
developments, and these few words obviously cannot do justice to the topic of
Enlightenment. However, it may be fruitful to keep this important historical
conjunction in mind: the nearly simultaneous births of modern progressive thought
and mass production. Apt in this regard is the perspective of Min Lin (2001):
"Concealing the social origin of cognitive discourses and the idea of certainty is the
inner requirement of modern Western ideology in order to justify or legitimate its
position by universalizing its intellectual basis and creating a new sacred quasitranscendance."
Modernity is always trying to go beyond itself to a different state, lurching forward as
if to recover the equilibrium lost so long ago. It is bent on changing the future -- even
its own -With modernity's stress on freedom, modern enlightened institutions have in fact
succeeded in nothing so much as conformity. Lyotard (1991) summed up the overall
outcome: "A new barbarism, illiteracy and impoverishment of language, new poverty,
merciless remodeling of opinion by media, immiseration of the mind, obsolescence of
the soul." Massified, standardizing modes, in every area of life, relentlessly re-enact
the actual control program of modernity.
"Capitalism did not create our world; the machine did. Painstaking studies designed to
prove the contrary have buried the obvious beneath tons of print." (Ellul 1964). Which
is not in any way to deny the centrality of class rule, but to remind us that divided
society began with division of labor. The divided self led directly to divided society.

19
The division of labor is the labor of division. Understanding what characterizes
modern life can never be far from the effort to understand technology's role in our
everyday lives, just as it always has been. Lyotard (1991) judged that "technology
wasn't invented by humans. Rather the other way around.
Goethe's Faust, the first tragedy about industrial development, depicted its deepest
horrors as stemming from honorable aims. The superhuman developer Faust partakes
of a drive endemic to modernization, one which is threatened by any trace of
otherness/difference in its totalizing movement.
We function in an ever more homogeneous field, a ground always undergoing further
uniformitization to promote a single, globalized techno-grid. Yet it is possible to avoid
this conclusion by keeping one's focus on the surface, on what is permitted to exist on
the margins. Thus some see Indymedia as a crucial triumph of decentralization, and
free software as a radical demand. This attitude ignores the industrial basis of every
high tech development and usage. All the "wondrous tools," including the ubiquitous
and very toxic cell phone, are more related to eco-disastrous industrialization in China
and India, for example, than to the clean, slick pages of Wired magazine. The
salvationist claims of Wired are incredible in their disconnected, infantile fantasies. Its
adherents can only maintain such gigantic delusions by means of deliberate blindness
not only to technology's systematic destruction of nature, but to the global human cost
involved: lives filled with toxicity, drudgery, and industrial accidents.
Now there are nascent protest phenomena against the all-encompassing universal
system, such as "slow food," "slow cities," "slow roads". People would prefer that the
juggernaut give pause and not devour the texture of life. But actual degradation is
picking up speed, in its deworlding, disembedding course. Only a radical break will
impede its trajectory. More missiles and more nukes in more countries is obviously
another part of the general movement of the technological imperative. The specter of
mass death is the crowning achievement, the condition of modernity, while the
posthuman is the coming techno-condition of the subject. We are the vehicle of the
Megamachine, not its beneficiary, held hostage to its every new leap forward. The
technohuman condition looms, indeed. Nothing can change until the technological
basis is changed, is erased.
Our condition is reinforced by those who insist -- in classic postmodern fashion -- that
nature/culture is a false binarism. The natural world is evacuated, paved over, to the
strains of the surrender-logic that nature has always been cultural, always available for
subjugation. Koert van Mensvoort's "Exploring Next Nature" (2005) exposes the
domination of nature logic, so popular in some quarters: "Our next nature will consist
of what used to be cultural." Bye-bye, non-engineered reality. After all, he blithely
proclaims, nature changes with us.
This is the loss of the concept of nature altogether -- and not just the concept! But the
sign "nature" certainly enjoys popularity, as the substance is destroyed: "exotic" third
world cultural products, natural ingredients in food, etc. Unfortunately, the nature of
experience is linked to the experience of nature. When the latter is reduced to an
insubstantial presence, the former is disfigured. Paul Berkett (2006) cites Marx and
Engels to the effect that with communism people will "not only feel but also know
their oneness with nature," that communism is "the unity of being of man with
nature." Industrial-technological overcoming as its opposite--what blatant
productionist rubbish. Leaving aside the communism orientation, however, how much
of today's Left disagrees with the marxian ode to mass production?

20
A neglected insight in Freud's Civilization and its Discontents is the suggestion that a
deep, unconscious "sense of guilt produced by civilization" causes a growing malaise
and dissatisfaction. Adorno (1966) saw that relevant to "the catastrophe that impends
is the supposition of an irrational catastrophe in the beginning. Today the thwarted
possibility of something other has shrunk to that of averting catastrophe in spite of
everything."
The original, qualitative, utter failure for life on this planet was the setting in motion
of civilization. Enlightenment--like the Axial Age world religions 2000 years before-supplied transcendence for the next level of domination, an indispensable support for
industrial modernity. But where would one now find the source of a transcending,
justifying framework for new levels of rapacious development? What new realm of
ideas and values can be conjured up to validate the all-encompassing ruin of late
modernity? There is none. Only the system's own inertia; no answers, and no future.
Meanwhile our context is that of a sociability of uncertainty. The moorings of day-today stability are being unfastened, as the system begins to show multiple weaknesses.
When it can no longer guarantee security, its end is near.
Ours is an incomparable historical vantage point. We can easily grasp the story of this
universal civilization's malignancy. This understanding may be a signal strength for
enabling a paradigm shift, the one that could do away with civilization and free us
from the habitual will to dominate. A daunting challenge, to say the least; but recall
the child who was moved to speak out in the face of collective denial. The Emperor
was wearing nothing; the spell was broken.

2006

21
The Imperialism of Everyday Life

By John Zerzan
Violence, even terror, always exists on the periphery of empire. They are the means by
which empire is consolidated, defended, extended. Similarly, empire must respond to
attack, or its basis is forfeit. All that is new about September 11 is that it didnt occur
on a distant horizon. It was as if Rome had been attacked 2,000 years ago, at the
height of its power. The heartland of empire has a vast and ever-present meaning
separable, and inseparable, from those twin towers in Manhattan. Everyday existence,
under the sign of the capital and technology that the World Trade Center represented,
also cries out.
We live in a culture of increasing emptiness; there is a vacuum at the heart of our
empire. Epidemics of illegal drugs succeed one another, while tens of millions,
including children as young as two, need antidepressants to get through the day. A
great hunger exists for anesthesia in the face of emotional devastation and loss.
Everyone knows that something is missing, that meaning and value are steadily being
leached out of daily life, along with its very texture. "The less people really live - or
perhaps more correctly, the more they become aware that they havent really lived the more abrupt and frightening death becomes for them, and the more it appears as a
terrible accident." Theodor Adornos observation of decades ago seems even more
pertinent today. Exploding jetliners and anthrax can terrify; meanwhile a much deeper
crisis triggers a far more pervasive and fundamental fear.
The empire is global. There is nowhere to go to escape its corrosive barrenness.
Frederic Jameson reminded us that we live in the most standardized society that has
ever existed. In Global Soul, the peripatetic Pico Iyer ups the ante, meditating on how
the whole world now tends towards a universal sameness. A global unity of alienness,
of disorientation and disconnection, destined to resemble a mall or an airport. People
now dress alike in every major city in the world. They drink Coca-Cola, and watch
many of the same TV shows.
The empires landscape of unreality and routinization grows steadily more
pathological. Damage to nature and violence to the psyche compete in a postmodern
culture of denial, punctuated by eruptions of the homicidal at work, at home, at
school.
We can expect to hear more and more alarm bells that will wake us altogether.
Peaceful slumber is unthinkable. Who doesnt know, on some level, where this empire
- this civilization - is taking us?
Our liberation movement needs to be qualitatively different from all the failed, limited
approaches of the past. Everyday life is waiting - waiting to be truly lived.
John Zerzan

22

John Zerzan

The Left Today

Alas, still around to some degree, going through the motions and in some cases
finding new ways to repackage the same old shit.
The eternally superficial liberal-left progressives are as transparently averse to
liberation as are the few surviving leninoids.
The Social Forum, in its Global as well as more local forms, is a recent catch-all for
leftists, including communists looking for a home in the post-Soviet Union era. At
anti-G8 Genoa in 2001, Genoa Social Forum partisans did their best to deliver
anarchists to the police and worked hard afterwards to spread lies about the Black
Bloc effort in Genoa. At last years Global Social Forum in Porto Alegre these statists
or those in charge, anyway spent their time praising Brazilian president Lulas
leftist regime and having anarchists physically attacked in the streets. Closet
anarchist Noam Chomsky is one of the main Social Forum leaders.
The anti-state communists we still have with us, although they seem to be going
nowhere. The term has appeal to some, but is meaningless and contradictory. The antistate commies have yet to criticize mass production and global trade, because they
apparently want to preserve all the techno-essentials of the modern setup. It is
impossible to have global production and exchange without government call it by
any name you like to coordinate and regulate any such mass system.
Michael Alberts participatory economics (parecon) holds that the state function
could be replaced by an enormous amount of meeting-hours by everyone, in order to
set production and trade quotas, etc. If ones priority is to run a world just like the one
we now endure, I guess such an unappealing blueprint somehow makes sense.
A rather different phenomenon is the (largely European) insurrectionalist stance,
which seems to be a kind of amorphous hybrid of several contradictory tenets. In
order to maximize the unity required to achieve an insurrectionary condition,
insurrectionalists find it useful to minimize a potentially non-unifying discussion of
specifics. But this approach runs the risk of tending toward suppression of ideas.
Meanwhile, insurrectionalist theorist Alfredo Bonanno can espouse national liberation
fronts (states-in-waiting), while others in this camp are very lucidly anti-civilization
(Bonanno, it should be added, has been prosecuted repeatedly and imprisoned in Italy
for his courageous resistance over the years). Maybe insurrectionalism is less an
ideology than an undefined tendency, part left and part anti-left but generally
anarchist.
What all these left-leaners lack is a willingness to confront the basics of domination
with the resolve and pointed questioning required if domination is to be erased.

23
The Lines are Being Drawn

by John Zerzan
Why are we so angry? You would do better to ask why there is so much anger and
frustration in modern society generally. - Unabomber
Surely the most shocking event of this century was the systematic murder of millions
of Jews under German National Socialism. Fifty years on, we are witnessing a
steadily accelerating extinction onslaught against most species of life on this planet.
Barring some kind of overthrow of the present global system of techno-capital, the
elimination of the last traces of free nature is inevitable.
And how much evidence is left, even now, of a healthy human species? Mass
depression, widespread belief in bizarre occult notions, an ever-rising suicide rate
among the young, almost universal drug use of one kind of another, increasingly
common homicidal rampages. The symptoms of a malignant social order multiply and
deepen to a chorus of pain and desolation.
Consider how debased the fabric of life has become in just the past couple of decades:
from Jonestown to the Tokyo subways, not forgetting Bhopal, Chernobyl, the Exxon
Valdez, Waco, Oklahoma City, schoolyard massacressuch horrors seem to be
multiplying, the convulsions of a terminally diseased landscape.
But the struggle for health and freedom goes on. Scobert Park and Warner Creek were
vigorously defended, and a strong blow was struck with the torching of the Oakridge
Ranger Station. The blacks of St. Petersburg repaid another murder by police with
automatic weapons fire.
Meanwhile, the 96 electoral farce received its lowest turnout since 1924, as if our
masters could have believed that the nothingness and denial of that long-running con
game could go on fooling most people indefinitely.
How far is it justified to go when we know that voting and recycling change nothing?
When we contemplate the vista of high-tech barrenness, the boom in prisons and
homelessness, the fact that a growing economy means an even faster rate of
destruction of the natural world
Joan of Arc and the 19th century abolitionist John Brown employed violence and gave
their lives in struggle. These visionaries were considered demented by their
contemporaries but are now revered. It may be that the Unabomber will be looked
upon similarly, as a kind of warrior-prophet who, as Arleen Davila wrote, tried to
save us.
To un-learn our illusions is to begin to save ourselves.
Autonomous Anarchists Anonymous
PO Box 11331
Eugene, Oregon 97440
John Zerzan is the author of Future Primitive (1994, Autonomedia), Questioning
Technology: A Critical Anthology (co-edited with Alice Carnes, Freedom Press) and
his 1988 bestseller, Elements of Refusal will be re-released shortly by CAL Press. He
has also written numerous essays, co-edits Anarchy Magazine, and is completing a
book of new essays.

24

What ails us
John Zerzan
On the level of personal affliction or dis-ease, matters are steadily
worsening. This situation corresponds to the deepening crisis at every
level. At the same time, according to Michelle Mary Helvica, "we live in a
society that seems increasingly numb to the causes and effects of
human suffering." In this sphere as with every other, the
promises/protections of technological civilization are failing on a grand
scale.
Tuberculosis and malaria have grown resistant to modern antibiotics
and other standard medicines. E-coli and West Nile virus outbreaks are
now common in the U.S. Infectious diseases of all kinds, once declared
conquered, are on the rise. They accompany the major degenerative
illnesses that are a staple of civilized life. Rift Valley fever, mad cow
disease, hanta virus, Ebola, cholera, etc. "At least 20 major maladies
have reemerged in novel, more deadly, or drug-resistant forms in the
past 25 years," pronounced the February 2002 National Geographic's
"War on Disease" survey.
It is hardly surprising that industrialized medicine is unable to remedy
the toll that is inherent in industrialized, standardized, estranged daily
life. In fact, updating a point made by Ivan Illich decades ago, Michael J.
Berens' investigations have revealed the extremely high levels of lifethreatening infections produced by hospital environments and other
aspects of the health care industry (3-part Chicago Tribune series, July
2002). Recent studies have shown that artificial light causes breast
cancer, by superseding the natural light cycle. Food now contains only a
small fraction of its former nutritional content, as packaging and
appearance considerations dictate that nutrients be bred out of fruits
and vegetables. Nonetheless, health-threatening obesity, epidemic in
the U.S., has become a global problem because of the increase in junk
food and processed food.
More than 20 million Americans -- mostly women -- suffer from often
devastating autoimmune disorders, such as lupus, Crohn's disease,
multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis. Many afflictions attack
women almost exclusively, notably anorexia and bulimia. Hilde Bruch

25

finds that anorexia is typically about a young woman's "struggle for

control, for a sense of identity, competence and effectiveness."
A struggle within a patriarchal, male-defined culture that actively
excludes her from all of those fundamental human dimensions. Michelle
Mary Helvica's Starving for Salvation (1999) focuses on eating disorders
as a yearning for meaning and wholeness in the context of how very
much is missing, especially for women. J.A. Sours' Starving to Death in
a Sea of Objects testifies, from its title onward, to the underlying
deprivation or emptiness at the base of these life-threatening conditions.
Margaret Talbot observed that physical incapacitation has been one of
the few ways in which women could effectively absent themselves from
their assigned duties and roles. Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue
syndrome are among the illnesses, suffered by millions, that must be
seen in light of women's basically unimproved condition in society.
Countless forms of suffering, from AIDS to cancer to depression, are
experienced within the increasingly unhealthy regime of technology and
capital. There can be no "cure" so long as we all must strive to endure
the bludgeoning conditions of daily life. Rural America now resembles a
constellation of meth labs and Oxycontin supply networks, while
epidemic drug use varies only in terms of which narcotic is most popular
in a given season. What kind of society is it in which the teen suicide
rate has been climbing for decades and self-mutilation is
commonplace? Male sexual function will become dependent on
pharmaceuticals like Viagra, a development far less grotesque than the
growing number of toddlers on anti-depressants. The techno-world
serves up increasingly bizarre "solutions" to the problems it continues to
create, not forgetting the rising levels of both climatic temperatures and
environmental toxins. Pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer proclaims, "Life
is our life's work," as if anyone needed a reminder of the genetic
engineering and human cloning in our future to which cyber-leftists like
Donna Haraway have no objections. An increasingly overworked
populace labors in a more and more anxiety-prone, destabilized
consumer void. The need to be diverted from a glaringly impoverished
present and future is addressed in books like Neal Gabler's Life the
Movie: How Entertainment Conquers Reality (1998), a point explored in
greater depth by writers such as Adorno and Debord, but accurate and
timely all the same. And in just four years (New York Times, 8/4/02),
Gabler says, this situation has become qualitatively much worse. We

26

now get only short-hand, truncated versions of escape that he terms the
illusion of entertainment. Ersatz or otherwise, entertainment is now quite
possibly the primary value of modern life, precisely because reality has
become unbearable.
But of course it is only "chemical imbalances" that are said to account
for this massive immiseration. This reactionary and desperate claim
responds to phenomena such as the fact that 2.8 million kids had what
is euphemistically called a "runaway experience" in 1999, by diagnosing
most of them with a pseudo-medical condition called "conduct disorder."
A mid-2002 survey conducted by the National Sleep Foundation
showed that 69% of Americans experienced some insomnia after
September 11. (Glaxco Wellcome, by the way, spent $16.5 million
promoting Paxil in October 2001.) Even more noteworthy is their finding
that 51% of the population were already insomniac during the previous
year! What will new polls on sleeplessness, anxiety, depression, etc.
reveal in light of more systemic bad news: revelations that corporations,
science, the Red Cross, et al. are routinely fraudulent, that 90% of
students cheat, that male athletes begin steroid use in adolescence,
and so on and on..
David Barlow's Anxiety and its Disorders (2002) discusses the high
prevalence and chronicity of a range of such conditions, like panic
attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and various phobias. He
concludes that the aggregate toll on social life "dwarfs even the most
pessimistic estimates." Many have charted a steady rise of more
serious mental illnesses that began with and correspond to the
industrialization of society, as documented for example in The Invisible
Plague: the Rise of Mental Illness from 1750 to the Present, by Torrey
and Miller (2001). The answer to this scourge is obviously
deindustrialization, the undoing of the root cause of all this and other
crises in physical and mental health.
Society is a racket, and its everyday practices are no longer hidden from
us. Nonetheless, as everyday life becomes steadily more impoverished,
cheapened, surveilled, standardized, and otherwise debased, the official
version (in many more aspects than mentioned in this article) prevails,
with its stark omissions and lies. As Derrick Jensen has it, it is truly a
"culture of make believe." Marx inaccurately predicted that growing
material poverty would bring revolution.

27

A more plausible forecast today is that growing psychic or emotional

suffering may inform a widespread refusal of this no-future reality.

28

Whose future?
by John Zerzan

My advice or exhortation is the same to everyone, but especially to you who have the
most to lose: Fight Back.
We're on a death march with the destination coming into clear view.
Bill Joy, founding CEO and chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, says we have maybe
thirty years before genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics become fully
self-replicating. The high-tech Brave New World will then rule us directly.
One hundred species of plant and animal life go extinct every day, and that number
continues to inch upward. The oceans are dying. Proliferating studies tell us that
global warming, increasing steadily, will kill the biosphere within a few decades.
Ozone holes get bigger, and cancer has become epidemic as air, water, and soil
became increasingly toxic.
From the age of two children are now liable to be prescribed Ritalin and/or antidepressants to drug them into compliance with an ever more empty, unhealthy lifeworld. Kids shooting kids at school has become almost a commonplace, joining the
horror of multiple-homicide rampages at home, work, or Burger King. The teenage
suicide rate has tripled over the past three decades, and forty to fifty million
Americans are on Prozac. "Mystery" afflictions-for which there is no known causefrom chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia to False Memory Syndrome torture
millions, as do eating disorders, health-threatening obesity, and a host of other kinds
of immiseration. A sterile, isolating, technicized society, truly pathological in its
engulfing impoverishment.
Resist. Break ranks. Trust your desires. It's not you who's fucked up.
The cancer-like domination of technology and capital must be stopped and
dismantled.
After thirty years a current of radical opposition is developing and it needs you.
The new movement is anarchy, which is about freedom, health, authenticity. Crossing
the threshold into your adult years, how much freedom, health and authenticity do you
think the Megamachine will make possible for you? Does it not offer, instead, a "life"
of mediation, hierarchy, and isolation on a dying planet?
We humans didn't always live like this. Our ancestors, who used fire to cook fibrous
vegetables 1.7 million years ago, had a qualitatively different existence until just
10,000 years ago. Our adoption of agriculture brought division of labor and
domestication. Until then, humans lived in keeping with an egalitarian ethos with
ample leisure time, gender equality, and no organized violence. Archeological studies
in various parts of the world demonstrate this, our true history.
Unknown to most, this has been the mainstream view presented in anthropology and
archeology textbooks for the past few decades. It sounds utopian, but it's now the
generally accepted paradigm, and has had heartening implications for a growing
number of us in the new culture of opposition. If we once-and for so long-lived in
balance with nature and each other, we should be able to do so again. The catastrophe

29
that's overtaking us has deep roots, but our previous state of natural anarchy reaches
much further into our shared history.
Check out your life, as sold to you by this lying system. For you, and for all of us, we
must break the spell of denial and reclaim our birthright.
Come alive and fight!

30

Worse & Worse

This article first appeared in Anarchy: a journal of desire armed. #39, Winter '94.
(Includes "Schiz-flux" by Julian Flowers, & "When Nationalist Frenzy Strikes" by
Michael William).
The atrocities typical of advanced capitalism/advanced civilization seem as
pronounced here in Eugene, Oregon, as elsewhere. ``Teenage Suicides Rocket''
proclaimed the local front page in September (1993), explaining that the rate of teen
self-destruction in Oregon has increased 600% over the past 30 years. November
found a man in the adjacent town of Springfield suffocating his toddler daughter, then
burning himself to death with gasoline. He'd had a history of violence, but neighbors
considered theirs a ``quiet, church-going family.''
Freud's prediction that in time everyone will be made neurotic by civilization's power
to deny fulfillment is beginning to look like too rosy a take on the future. In society at
large a breakdown can be seen unfolding in every area of life. The federal Education
Department in September unveiled a study depicting almost half of all adults as
functionally illiterate. As in cannot read or write, cannot cope with the minimum
requirements of industrial life. This kind of fundamental turn-off makes the fact that
now no-one puts any stock in politicians seem trivial.
Soon, apparently, a majority will be dependent on Prozac (``the hottest psychiatric
drug in history'') or other anti-depressants, not to mention how widespread is the use
of heroin and cocaine. River Phoenix died of too much of the latter drugs on
Halloween, prompting his publicist to muse, ``It leaves you to question why are young
people compelled to do this?''
Meanwhile, as if rehearsing for the growing mayhem at large, the video games to
which pre-teen boys are addicted embody a noticeably escalating violence. At the end
of October a score of devastating Southern California fires mostly the work of
arsonists grabbed national headlines for several days. Two weeks later Clinton decried
the ``great crisis of the spirit'' in America, in lamenting the war-zone nature of inner
cities.
Science News for September 25 disclosed two studies linking workplace stress and
cancer. There were 6,000 on-the-job fatalities in 1992, but the word is getting out that
in fact work kills virtually everyone. An existence defined by working and paying has
never produced such a sense of barrenness and even fear, for which the numbing
sterility and homogeneity of consumer malls stand as perfect landmarks.
The generalized culture we label postmodern, with its trademark refusal to look at the
whole of this horror show, reaches its appropriate level with the moronism of Beavis
and Butthead. A cynical, know-nothing stance only prompts new levels of stupidity
and denial. In this way the crisis of the education system and what stands behind it
can be better understood: it is not so much the function of the totality to instill
conformist convictions as it is to destroy the capacity to form any.
Can everyday life really be enacted on this basis much longer? Support for such a
ghastly, immiserating set-up is eroding, but not nearly fast enough.

Zerzan and Media: An Ignominious Tale

31

By John Zerzan

April 30 was a Saturday. It was raining in Eugene. What a surprise.

The phone rang and I thought, what an obvious way to have succumbed to
technology. Interrupting my usual wakeup of coffee and toast, I walked over and
picked up.
Voice claimed it was Ken Noble, L.A. Bureau Chief of the New York Times. Wanted
to talk about Unabomber, as in where do such ideas come from. I showed some
interest in the topic and he said he'd get a flight and be over that evening.
Anyway, such was the opening to my Warholian fifteen minutes of fame, for which
the reviews have been mixed. Just before this encounter, I'd been struck by the few
lines I'd read that supposedly were at the heart of Unabomber's "anarchist" critique,
namely his(?) desire for the erasure of industrial society in favor of radically
decentralized modes of living. It was rather stunning to realize that in effect, everyone
was hearing, at least minimally, what had heretofore been completely blocked from
public awareness. The mere fact of this "mass breakthrough" of sorts, in the absence
of any further information (concerning Unabomber's 35,000 word treatise, most
notably), was of major significance to me, as well as raising several questions along
the way.
Certainly, and explicitly, Unabomber's lethal strikes were the reason for the New York
Times interest in me. Ken Noble's call came just a week or so after the death by
package bomb of a top PR exec in charge of propaganda supporting the clear cutting
of forests. Predating this knowledge by a few decades is my knowledge of the
essential function of media. It is twofold: to maintain the general level of
obliviousness created by more fundamental institutions like work and school, and to
assist the circulation of commodities via advertising and other commercial
information. It can be argued that Unabomber's acts of violence, especially as
mediated by the nightly news, lend themselves to the stupefying role that media play.
In the familiar Debordian construction, the "society of the spectacle" is that in which
life as lived gives way to life as represented. The images of the Unabomber's
vengeance are thus "spectacular," that is, objects of passive consumption or
entertainment and hence part of the overall social confinement.
However, it is harder to see the accompanying critique, if I understand it correctly, as
just an image that serves media and its values and interests. There may be a curious
minor irony, by the way, in the fact that it is journalists who have brought out the
radical kernel of the Unahomber's ideas. (This would be especially ironic if it turns
out that some of us have assumed a greater radical lucidity for his ideas than they
actually possess.)
But I digress. Mindful of media's basic functions, I met with the Times' Noble, as
agreed, and did so out of a desire to situate, amplify, and if possible deepen the
critique of industrial society raised by Unabomber. I thought at the time, and still
think, that to have declined to make use of the public space that had been opened
would have been a failure on my part.
A few surprises were in store when the article appeared eight days later, on Sunday,
May 8, 1995. For one thing, it had not occurred to me that the piece would take the

32
form it did. The five column article, headlined "Prominent Anarchist Finds Ally in
Serial Bomber," was cast as a profile of me, as much as a discussion of the whys and
wherefores of a critique of industrial civilization. I suppose it should have come as no
surprise that the press would rely, once again, on the manufacture of a spectacular
image. By this justifying logic I was cast not only as "prominent" but also as
something of a "guru," even an "idol," to those in radical, anti-tech circles. To tailor
this image ever further, I became a shadowy figure, "rumpled" and ascetic, as befits, I
suppose, the popular idea of a bearer of misfit ideas.
The piece was carried by other papers all over the country, and provoked angry
reactions from some of them. The May 14 Omaha Sunday World HeraldThe next
surprise was the huge amount of attention the Times article immediately engendered
from other media, including television, talk radio, book publishers, and other
newspaper reporters. Without having to consult more abstract criteria, it was fairly
easy to reject the requests for TV appearances (e.g. "Good Morning America",
"Dateline") due to the lack of time available for a minimally coherent presentation,
and their nonsuitability for anything approaching a serious context. But I did
participate in half a dozen talk radio programs, mainly out of New York (by
telephone).
Yet another development that I should have anticipated, but didn't, was the negative
reaction to my collaboration with the media. I began to get wind of this fairly early
on, receiving a bit of vaguely articulated, but unmistakable opposition. Feeling a little
hurt, I fired off an "open letter" of sorts to two dozen people in thc milieu, challenging
possible nay-sayers to state their views. I hoped to bring us all further along through
an exchange, but my effort fizzled; I got only a couple of responses. This article is a
more public second effort.
The second objection, less weak, relates to media's role in spectacular society. It is
evil and unclean, the argument runs, to have any dealings with mainstream media, on
principle. But as Neal Keating points out, "the only way to avoid the media is by
insulating yourself, forming some kind of specialized sub-elite, replete with
publications."
We know that media are complicitous, part of the ensemble of modern domination; we
are aware of the deformations that make up media's usual content. But if our
movement is going anywhere, it is extremely unlikely that we could avoid media
attention even if we wanted to. Keating suggests that it would be self-marginalizing to
have no input, and the point, as I understand it, is contact and dialogue with all of our
fellow inmates.
It is noteworthy that the critique is unevenly diffused. A number of columns have
appeared in popular publications (e.g. "E Pluribus Unabomber," The New Yorker,
August 15) noting that Unabomber's antipathy to the present industrial order finds
considerable resonance in American society. Similarly, Kirkpatrick Sale's Rebels
Against the Future has made a large impact this year with its neo-luddite call for the
overthrow of industrialism. Meanwhile, Anarchy and Fifth Estate, our own leading
publications, now appear only once or twice a year, and in the pages of the latter's
latest issue it was depressing to find two letters to the editor, by supposed anarchists,
advocating the ballot.
I happen to be as involved as I have ever been with our media, with FE and Anarchy,
and with other quality periodicals such as Extraphile and Kaspahraster. I am definitely
not advocating switching to the mainstream. But maybe my particular experience with

33
the media can give us all an excuse to pause and consider how to proceed, in the
context of a failing dominant culture. Are we serious about mounting a real challenge
to all that is? For some of us, this is not a game. By taking thought now, we can be
better prepared for openings to come.

34

Silence
Silence used to be, to varying degrees, a means of isolation. Now it is the absence of
silence that works to render today's world empty and isolating. Its reserves have been
invaded and depleted. The Machine marches globally forward and silence is the
dwindling place where noise has not yet penetrated.
Civilization is a conspiracy of noise, designed to cover up the uncomfortable silences.
The silence-honoring Wittgenstein understood the loss of our relationship with it. The
unsilent present is a time of evaporating attention spans, erosion of critical thinking,
and a lessened capacity for deeply felt experiences. Silence, like darkness, is hard to
come by; but mind and spirit need its sustenance.
Certainly there are many and varied sides to silence. There are imposed or voluntary
silences of fear, grief, conformity, complicity (e.g. the AIDS-awareness
"Silence=Death" formulation), which are often interrelated states. And nature has
been progressively silenced, as documented in Rachel Carson's prophetic Silent
Spring. Nature cannot be definitively silenced, however, which perhaps goes a long
way in explaining why some feel it must be destroyed. "There has been a silencing of
nature, including our own nature," concluded Heidegger,[1] and we need to let this
silence, as silence, speak. It still does so often, after all, speak louder than words.
There will be no liberation of humans without the resurrection of the natural world,
and silence is very pertinent to this assertion. The great silence of the universe
engenders a silent awe, which the Roman Lucretius meditated upon in the 1st century
BCE: "First of all, contemplate the clear, pure color of the sky, and all it contains
within it: the stars wandering everywhere, the moon, the sun and its light with its
incomparable brilliance. If all these objects appeared to mortals today for the first
time, if they appeared to their eyes suddenly and unexpectedly, what could one cite
that would be more marvelous than this totality, and whose existence man's
imagination would less have dared to conceive?"[2]
Down to earth, nature is filled with silences. The alternation of the seasons is the
rhythm of silence; at night silence descends over the planet, though much less so now.
The parts of nature resemble great reserves of silence. Max Picard's description is
almost a poem: "The forest is like a great reservoir of silence out of which the silence
trickles in a thin, slow stream and fills the air with its brightness. The mountain, the
lake, the fields, the sky - they all seem to be waiting for a sign to empty their silence
onto the things of noise in the cities of men."[3]
Silence is "not the mere absence of something else."[4] In fact, our longings turn
toward that dimension, its associations and implications. Behind the appeals for
silence lies the wish for a perceptual and cultural new beginning.
Zen teaches that "silence never varies...."[5] But our focus may be improved if we
turn away from the universalizing placelessness of late modernity. Silence is no doubt
culturally specific, and is thus experienced variously. Nevertheless, as Picard argues,
it can confront us with the "original beginnings of all things,"[6] and presents objects
to us directly and immediately. Silence is primary, summoning presence to itself; so
it's a connection to the realm of origin.
In the industrially-based technosphere, the Machine has almost succeeded in
banishing quietude. A natural history of silence is needed for this endangered species.
Modernity deafens. The noise, like technology, must never retreat - and never does.

35
For Picard, nothing has changed human character so much as the loss of silence.[7]
Thoreau called silence "our inviolable asylum," an indispensable refuge that must be
defended.[8] Silence is necessary against the mounting sound. It's feared by
manipulative mass culture, from which it remains apart, a means of resistance
precisely because it does not belong to this world. Many things can still be heard
against the background of silence; thus a way is opened, a way for autonomy and
imagining.
"Sense opens up in silence," wrote Jean-Luc Nancy.[9] It is to be approached and
experienced bodily, inseparably from the world, in the silent core of the self. It can
highlight our embodiment, a qualitative step away from the hallmark machines that
work so resolutely to disembody us. Silence can be a great aid in unblocking
ourselves from the prevailing, addictive information sickness at loose in society.[10] It
offers us the place to be present to ourselves, to come to grips with who we are.
Present to the real depth of the world in an increasingly thin, flattened technoscape.
The record of philosophy vis-a-vis silence is generally dismal, as good a gauge as any
to its overall failure. Socrates judged silence to be a realm of nonsense, while Aristotle
claimed that being silent caused flatulence.[11] At the same time, however, Raoul
Mortley could see a "growing dissatisfaction with the use of words," "an enormous
increase in the language of silence" in classical Greece.[12]
Much later, Pascal was terrified by the "silence of the universe,"[13] and Hegel clearly
felt that what could not be spoken was simply the untrue, that silence was a deficiency
to be overcome. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche both emphasized the prerequisite value
of solitude, diverging from anti-silence Hegel, among others.
Deservedly well known is a commentary on Odysseus and the Sirens (from Homer's
Odyssey) by Horkheimer and Adorno. They depict the Sirens" effort to sidetrack
Odysseus from his journey as that of Eros trying to stay the forces of repressive
civilization. Kafka felt that silence would have been a more irresistible means than
singing.[14]
"Phenomenology begins in silence," according to Herbert Spiegelberg.[15] To put
phenomena or objects somehow first, before ideational constructions, was its
founding notion. Or as Heidegger had it, there is a thinking deeper and more rigorous
than the conceptual, and part of this involves a primordial link between silence and
understanding.[16] Postmodernism, and Derrida in particular, deny the widespread
awareness of the inadequacy of language, asserting that gaps of silence in discourse,
for example, are barriers to meaning and power. In fact, Derrida strongly castigates
"the violence of primitive and prelogical silence," denouncing silence as a nihilist
enemy of thought.[17] Such strenuous antipathy demonstrates Derrida's deafness to
presence and grace, and the threat silence poses to someone for whom the symbolic is
everything. Wittgenstein understood that something pervades everything sayable,
something which is itself unsayable. This is the sense of his well-known last line of
the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: "Of that which one cannot speak, one should
remain silent."[18]
Can silence be considered, approached, without reification, in the here and now? I
think it can be an open, strengthening way of knowing, a generative condition. Silence
can also be a dimension of fear, grief - even of madness and suicide. In fact, it is quite
difficult to reify silence, to freeze it into any one non-living thing. At times the reality
we interrogate is mute; an index of the depth of the still present silence? Wonder may
be the question that best gives answers, silently and deeply.

36
"Silence is so accurate," said Mark Rothko,[19] a line that has intrigued me for years.
Too often we disrupt silence, only to voice some detail that misses an overall sense of
what we are part of, and how many ways there are to destroy it. In the Antarctica
winter of 1933, Richard Byrd recorded: "Took my daily walk at 4PM... I paused to
listen to the silence...the day was dying, the night being born - but with great peace.
Here were imponderable processes and forces of the cosmos, harmonious and
soundless."[20] How much is revealed in silence through the depths and mysteries of
living nature. Annie Dillard also provides a fine response to the din: "At a certain
point you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, to the world, Now I am
ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait,
listening."[21]
It is not only the natural world that is accessible via silence. Cioran indicated the
secrets in the silence of things, deciding that "All objects have a language which we
can decipher only in total silence."[22] David Michael Levin's The Body's
Recollection of Being counsels us to "learn to think through the body...we should
listen in silence to our bodily felt experience."[23] And in the interpersonal sphere,
silence is a result of empathy and being understood, without words much more
profoundly than otherwise.
Native Americans seem to have always placed great value on silence and direct
experience, and in indigenous cultures in general, silence denotes respect and selfeffacement. It is at the core of the Vision Quest, the solitary period of fasting and
closeness to the earth to discover one's life path and purpose. Inuit Norman Hallendy
assigns more insight to the silent state of awareness called inuinaqtuk than to
dreaming.[24] Native healers very often stress silence as an aid to serenity and hope,
while stillness is required for success in the hunt. These needs for attentiveness and
quiet may well have been key sources of indigenous appreciation of silence.
Silence reaches back to presence and original community, before the symbolic
compromised both silence and presence. It predates what Levinas called "the unity of
representation,"[25] that always works to silence the silence and replace it with the
homelessness of symbolic structures. The Latin root for silence, silere, to say nothing,
is related to sinere, to allow to be in a place. We are drawn to those places where
language falls most often, and most crucially, silent. The later Heidegger appreciated
the realm of silence, as did Holderlin, one of Heidegger's important reference points,
especially in his Late Hymns.[26] The insatiable longing that Holderlin expressed so
powerfully related not only to an original, silent wholeness, but also to his growing
comprehension that language must always admit its origin in loss.
A century and a half later, Samuel Beckett made use of silence as an alternative to
language. In Krapp's Last Tape and elsewhere, the idea that all language is an excess
of language is strongly on offer. Beckett complains that "in the forest of symbols"
there is never quiet, and longs to break through the veil of language to silence.[27]
Northrup Frye found the purpose of Beckett's work "to lie in nothing other than the
restoration of silence."[28]
Our most embodied, alive-to-this-earth selves realize best the limits of language and
indeed, the failure of the project of representation. In this state it is easiest to
understand the exhaustion of language, and the fact that we are always a word's length
from immediacy. Kafka commented on this in "In the Penal Colony," where the
printing press doubled as an instrument of torture. For Thoreau, "as the truest society
approaches always nearer to solitude, so the most excellent speech finally falls into

37
silence."[29] Conversely, mass society banishes the chance of autonomy, just as it
forecloses on silence.
Holderlin imagined that language draws us into time, but it is silence that holds out
against it. Time increases in silence; it appears not to flow, but to abide. Various
temporalities seem close to losing their barriers; past, present, future less divided. But
silence is a variable fabric, not a uniformity or an abstraction. Its quality is never far
from its context, just as it is the field of the non-mediated. Unlike time, which has for
so long been a measure of estrangement, silence cannot be spatialized or converted
into a medium of exchange. This is why it can be a refuge from time's incessancy.
Gurnemanz, near the opening of Wagner's Parsifal, sings "Here time becomes space."
Silence avoids this primary dynamic of domination.
So here we are, with the Machine engulfing us in its various assaults on silence and so
much else, intruding deeply. The note North Americans spontaneously hum or sing is
B-natural, which is the corresponding tone of our 60 cycles per second alternating
current electricity. (In Europe, G-sharp is "naturally" sung, matching that continent's
50 cycles per second AC electricity.) In the globalizing, homogenizing Noise Zone we
may soon be further harmonized. Pico Ayer refers to "my growing sense of a world
that's singing the same song in a hundred accents all at once."[30]
We need a refusal of the roar of standardization, its information-noise and harried,
surface "communication" modes. A No to the unrelenting, colonizing penetrability of
non-silence, pushing into every non-place. The rising racket measures, by decibel upticks and its polluting reach, the degrading mass world - Don DeLillo's White Noise.
Silence is a rebuke to all this, and a zone for reconstituting ourselves. It gathers in
nature, and can help us gather ourselves for the battles that will end debasement.
Silence as a powerful tool of resistance, the unheard note that might precede
insurrection. It was, for example, what slave masters feared most.[31] In various
Asian spiritual traditions, the muni, vowed to silence, is the person of greatest
capacity and independence - the one who does not need a master for enlightenment.
[32]
The deepest passions are nurtured in silent ways and depths. How else is respect for
the dead most signally expressed, intense love best transmitted, our profoundest
thoughts and visions experienced, the unspoiled world most directly savored? In this
grief-stricken world, according to Max Horkheimer, we "become more innocent"
through grief.[33] And perhaps more open to silence - as comfort, ally, and
stronghold.
Footnotes
[1]^ Martin Heidegger, What is a Thing? (Chicago, Henry Regnery Company, 1967),
p. 288.
[2]^ Quoted in Pierre Hadot, The Veil of Isis, translated by Michael Chan (Cambridge,
MA: Bellknap Press, 2000), pp 212-213.
[3]^ Max Picard, The World of Silence (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952), p.
139.
[4]^ Bernard P. Dauenhauer, Silence: the Phenomenon and Its Ontological
Significance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), p. vii.

38
[5]^ Chang Chung-Yuan, Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism (New York: Vintage,
1971), p. 12.
[6]^ Picard, op.cit., p. 22.
[7]^ Ibid., p. 221.
[8]^ Henry David Thoreau, "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers," in The
Works of Thoreau, edited by Henry Seidel Canby (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946),
p. 241.
[9]^ Jean-Luc Nancy, Listening, translated by Charlotte Mandell (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2007), p. 26.
[10]^ I first encountered this term in Ted Mooney's novel, Easy Travel to Other
Planets (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1981).
[11]^ Aristotle, Works of Aristotle, translated by S. Forster, Vol. VII, Problemata
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927), p. 896, lines 20-26.
[12]^ Raoul Mortley, From Word to Silence I (Bonn: Hanstein, 1986), p. 110.
[13]^ Blaise Pascal, Pensees, edited by Phillipe Seller (Paris: Bordas, 1991), p. 256.
[14]^ Franz Kafka, Parables, cited in George Steiner, Language and Silence (New
York: Atheneum, 1967), p. 54.
[15]^ Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, Vol. Two (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), p. 693.
[16]^ Martin Heidegger, "Letter on Humanism," Basic Writings (San Francisco:
Harper San Francisco, 1992), p. 258.
[17]^ Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, translated by Alan Bass (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 130.
[18]^ Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London: Routledge,
1974), p. 89.
[19]^ Quoted in James E. B. Breslin, Rothko: A Biography (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1993), p. 387.
[20]^ Quoted in Hannah Merker, Listening (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 127.
[21]^ Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk (New York: HarperPerennial, 1982), pp
89-90.
[22]^ E. M. Cioran, Tears and Saints, translated by Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnson
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 53.
[23]^ David Michael Levin, The Body's Recollection of Being (Boston: Routledge,
1985), pp 60-61.
[24]^ Norman Hallendy, Inuksuit: Silent Messengers of the Arctic (Toronto: Douglas
& McIntyre, 2000), pp 84-85.
[25]^ Emmanuel Levinas, Proper Names, translated by Michael B. Smith (Stanford
CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), p. 4.
[26]^ Emery Edward George, Holderlin's "Ars Poetica": A Part-Rigorous Analysis of
Information Structure in the Late Hymns (The Hague: Mouton, 1973), pp 308, 363,
367.

39
[27]^ Samuel Beckett, "German letter" dated 9 July 1937, in C.J. Ackerley and S.E.
Gontorski, The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett (New York: Grove Press, 2004),
p. 221.
[28]^ Northrup Frye, "The Nightmare Life in Death," in J.D. O'Hara, editor, Twentieth
Century Interpretations of Malloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), p. 34.
[29]^ Thoreau, op.cit., p. 241.
[30]^ Pico Ayer, The Global Soul (New York: Knopf, 2000), p. 271.
[31]^ Mark M. Smith, Listening to Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: The
University of North Carolina Press), p. 68. See also Thomas Merton, The Strange
Islands (New York: New Directions, 1957); specifically, this passage from "The
Tower of Babel: A Morality": Leader: Who is He? Captain: His name is Silence.
Leader: Useless! Throw him out! Let Silence be crucified!
[32]^ Alex Wayman, "Two traditions of India - truth and silence," Philosophy East
and West 24 (October 1974), pp 389-403.
[33]^ Max Horkheimer, Dawn and Decline: Notes 1926-1931 and 1950-1969 (New
York: Seabury Press, 1978), p. 140.

John Zerzan

Anarchy After September 11

40
Every day it is clearer that the global cancer of capital and technology devours more
of life in every sphere. More species, cultures, and ecosystems are under attack, at
every level. The cancer of the megamachine is always at work, consuming its host.
And if it ever stops expanding, economic alarm bells go off worldwide.
This relentless colonization/globalization has ignited resistance everywhere. In this
painful twilight struggle, as the crisis deepens, some of this opposition has taken the
desperate form of religious fundamentalism. From this desperation arises the ultimate
gesture of suicidal violence, hopeless and indefensible on any level.
Novelist V.S. Naipal reminds us that The world is getting more and more out of
reach of simple people who have only religion. And the more they depend on religion,
which of course solves nothing, the more the world gets out of reach.
But as New York Times Magazine writer Joseph Lelyveld (10/28/01) discovered
through interviews with families and supporters, suicide bombers are recruited by a
promise with widespread appeal among disaffected youth: better a meaningful death
than a pointless life.
Heidegger described our period of history as one of consummate meaninglessness.
The loss of the possibility of personal fulfillment is hardly confined to the Third
World. In fact, the standardized barrenness of the First World is quite as devastating,
in its own way. In the postmodern void that is the United States today, tens of millions
of all ages take anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication. Its not unimaginable that
before long, psychotropic drugs will be routinely prescribed for everyone, beginning
in infancy. And this is just one example in a list of well-known pathologies that bridge
the personal and social spheres. Why are people willing, even eager, to accept a druginduced state as normal in themselves and their children? Perhaps because of fear,
more widespread lately. Adorno wrote penetratingly about the fear of death: The less
people really live or, perhaps more correctly, the more they become aware that they
have not really lived the more abrupt and frightening death becomes for them, and the
more it appears as a terrible accident.
For those in the U.S. on the threshold of adult life, suicide is the third leading cause of
death. For every two murders there are three suicides. Painful life pointless life.
Ignoring these omnipresent realities, the American Spectator (Sept 2001) focused on
the anti-technology aspect of the 9/11 suicide hijackings. Luddites Over Broadway
argues that only technology can save us, since nature is brutal, deadly, and
Darwinian. Opposing creativity to the Luddite sensibility of the attackers, AS
argues that creativity is our key endowment. Asserting that creativity flourishes only
under capitalism, AS reveals what kind of creativity theyre talking about fueled
by instrumental reason, and grounded in domination.
In no way, in my opinion, does the anti-technological, Luddite, primitivist vision of
anarchy have anything to do with the viciously misogynist and theocratic Bin Laden
types. Which is not to say that the relentless technologizing of the world should not be
indicted and reversed. As psychotherapist Robert Marchesani wrote recently, The
more technology we have, the more we seem to be burdening people and
dehumanizing them, perhaps making them into these pieces of technology themselves
so that they cant feel anything anymore.
In Turkey, according to some anarchists there, a bridge from religious fundamentalism
to primitivism has been built, at least by a few. They have traded the escapist (and
therefore always reactionary) utopia of the afterlife for the effort to confront

41
technology and capital in the here and now. A very hopeful, if so far inadequately
discussed phenomenon.
About two years ago (Tikkun, Jan/Feb 1999), David Ehrenfeld predicted The
Coming Collapse of the Age of Technology. His summary: Techno-economic
globalization is nearing its apogee; the system is self-destructing. There is only a short
but very damaging period of expansion left.
To redeem the collapse and avoid further victimization, we must find renewed resolve
and solidarity. Its crucial that we undertake the inevitable deconstruction of
technology energetically and consciously. Those who elect to passively endure everworsening personal, social, and planetary conditions, or to flame out in suicidal acts
of terror, are fundamentally powerless against a massively destructive system.
No one could have believed that these massive towers could just come down like
this, declared an incredulous CNN reporter on September 11. They did fall, social
systems and even civilizations fall, this order will fall. Creative resistance and
resilience have never been so needed. Never has there been so much at stake; never
has the prospect of liberation from the no-future death march of civilization been
perhaps more feasible.

Levica danas
Dzon Zerzan

42

Green Anarchy #15, Winter 2004.

Avaj, jos uvek je tu, u izvesnoj meri, menjajuci se i ponekad uspevajuci
da pronae nacine kako da prepakuje isto, staro sranje.
Beskrajno povrsni levi, liberalni progresivci ocigledno nemaju nikakve
veze sa osloboenjem, bas kao i nekoliko prezivelh lenjinoidnih
autoritaraca. Oni nisu vredni ni pomena. Ali, tu je nekoliko novijih
manevara, koji mozda zasluzuju mali kriticki osvrt.
Socijalni forum, kako u svojim globalnim, tako i u svojim lokalnim
oblicima, najnoviji je mamac za sve levicare, ukljucujuci i komuniste koji
traze novo utociste u postsovjetskoj eri. Na demonstracijama protiv G-8,
2001. godine, sledbenici Socijalnog foruma dali su sve od sebe da
anarhiste izruce policiji, a zatim vredno radili na sirenju lazi o ucinku
Crnog bloka u enovi. Na proslogodisnjem skupu Globalnog Socijalnog
foruma u Porto Alegreu (Brazil), ti etatisti ili makar oni na duznosti
najveci deo vremena su proveli slaveci rezim brazilskog levicarskog
presednika Lule i fizicki napadajuci anarhiste na ulicama. Naftalinski
anarhista Noam Comski jedan je od glavnih lidera Socijalnog foruma.
S nama su i dalje antietatisticki komunisti, iako, po svemu sudeci, ne
idu nigde. Taj pojam jos privlaci neke ljude, ali je besmislen i
kontradiktoran. Antietatistickim komicima jos uvek ostaje da kritikuju
masovnu proizvodnju i globalnu trgovinu, posto ocigledno nastoje da
sacuvaju sve sustinske tehnoloske aspekte modernog poretka. Ali,
nemoguce je imati globalnu proizvodnju i trgovinu bez vlasti kako god
je zvali koja bi usklaivala taj masivni sistem i upravljala njime.
Participatorna ekonomija (Parekon) Majkla Alberta (Michael Albert,
ZMag) tvrdi da funkciju drzave moze da preuzme ogroman iznos
sastanaka-sati, u kojima bi ucestvovali svi ljudi, koji bi tako odreivali
proizvodne i trgovinske kvote, itd. Ako je nekome prioritet da upravlja
svetom koji vec trpimo, onda ce mu ovi odbojni predlozi mozda izgledati
razumno.
Prilicno drugaciji fenomen, uglavnom evropski, jeste insurekcionisticki
pristup (insurekcija = pobuna; nap. prev.), koji izgleda predstavlja
amorfni hibrid nekoliko kontradiktornih struja. U nastojanju da
maksimalizuju jedinstvo neophodno za dostizanje stanja pobune,
insurekcionisti kao da minimaliziju potencijalno neujedinjujuce rasprave
o nekim specificnim pitanjima. Takav pristup rizikuje da u jednom
trenutku pocne da potiskuje ideje. U meuvremenu, insurekcionisticki
teoreticar Alfredo Bonano (Alfredo Bonanno) izlaze kritici pokrete za

43

nacionalno osloboenje (drzave u senci), dok drugi iz tog kampa razvijaju

vrlo lucidnu kritiku civilizacije. (1) Treba reci i da je Bonano godinama
bio proganjan i zatvaran od strane italijanskih vlasti zbog svog hrabrog
suprotstavljanja. (2) Mozda je insurekcionizam vise nedefinisana
tendencija nego ideologija, delimicno levicarska, delimicno
antilevicarska, ali generalno anarhisticka.
Ono sto svim tim grupama i pojedincima koji naginju levici nedostaje
jeste spremnost da se suoce s temeljima dominacije, sa odlucnoscu i
fokusiranoscu nephodnim da bi se toj dominiciji stalo za vrat.
Green Anarchy #15, Winter 2004.
Napomene:
1. Videti sajt/ casopis Killing King Abacus, koji donosi veliki broj
tekstova Alfreda Bonana, torinske grupe Diavolo in corpo i drugih
insurekcionista. (nap. prev.)
2. Afredo Bonano se trenutno nalazi na odsluzenju sestogodisnje
zatvorske kazne zbog pripadnosti oruzanoj bandi i subverzivnoj
organizaciji.
Kontakt: Alfredo M. Bonanno, Via Papinano, 134133, Trieste, Italy.
Uprkos razilazenju sa insurekcionistima u nekim pitanjima, tekstovi A.
Bonana, Sase K, Anona, Divolo in corpo, itd., i dalje spadaju u najcesce
objavljivane i citirane materijale u primitivistickim publikacijama.
Drugi veliki izvor nadahnuca i najveca zajednicka ljubav boraca iz ova
dva tabora jesu situacionisti; istina, ta ljubav, u oba slucaja, nije idilicna,
ali to je ono sto joj daje posebnu draz. Sto se tice upotrebe svih tih cudnih
etiketa (insurek... primiti... situacionisti) mozda vredi pogledati kratak
komentar Johna Moora. (nap. Prev.)

Secanje na Fredija Perlmana

Dzon Zerzan

44

Sa Fredijem sam prvi put stupio u kontakt 1975. godine. Tada je u izdanju
Black & Red pripremao zbirku tekstova pod nazivom Sindikati protiv
revolucije, u koju je ukljucio i moj tekst Pobuna protiv rada, koji se nesto
ranije pojavio u izdanju Telosa. U isto vreme, Fredi me je upoznao sa
redakcijom radikalne detroitske publikacije Fifth Estate.
Nas jedini susret dogodio se godinu dana kasnije, u San Francisku. On i
Lorejn su proveli kod mene nekoliko dana tokom svog putovanja kroz
Kaliforniju.
Ono sto me je kod njega najvise zapanjilo bila je njegova energija,
njegova zudnja za zivotom. Dok su se raspakivali, video sam kako iz
torbe ispada bocica sa lekom koji je uzimao zbog srcanih problema. (Bio
je to jedan bapski lek, jedini lek koji je pristao da uzima, ispricala nam
je Lorejn; nap. izd.) Lorejn mi je rekla da se uopste ne obazire na lekarska
uputstva, sto je bilo ocigledno, jer se nije odrekao jake, crne kafe i
pusenja!
Secam se i jednog izleta tokom te posete. Fredi i ja smo imali raspravu o
Hegelu. On je insistirao na sustinskom znacaju Hegela, kako sve pocinje
sa Hegelom, dok sam mu ja govorio da zaboravi na Hegela. Bilo je to u
vreme kada se pojavila njegova knjiga Letters of Insurgents; ta knjiga je
izvrsila ogorman uticaj na ljude koje sam poznavao. Toliko sjajnih uvida,
toliko izazovnih tvrdnji, posebno u odnosu na uobicajena levicarska
dostignuca. Jedan prijatelj, koji je tada bio u zatvoru, a koji je knjigu
procitao pre mene, rekao mi je: Sledeci put doi u posetu tek kada
procitas tu knjigu!
Fredi je bio covek tako zivog duha, a opet potpuno otvoren i srdacan. S
njim je uvek bilo zabavno. Suvise kasno sam shvatio da nam se vise nece
pruziti prilika da uzivamo u druzenju, kao sto je to bilo tokom te njihove
posete.
Nastavili smo da se dopisujemo sve do njegove smrti 1985. godine. Od
Fredija sam mnogo naucio; uzivao sam u njegovim tekstovima, u nacinu
na koji je primenjivao najrazlicitija stilska resenja. Koliko god da je bio
odmakao u kritici civilizacije, kao i u drugim istrazivanjima, siguran sam
da bi otisao i dalje, da je mogao da sa nama ostane bar malo duze.
Judzin, Oregon, 15. decembar 2002.

Situacionisticka internacionala: Kriticki uvod

Dzon Zerzan

45

Krajem 1950-tih, sacica avangardnih umetnika, zgaena impotencijom

umetnosti, dosla je do zakljucka da je jedini pravi kreativni poduhvat
potpuna promena zivota i sveta. Tako je, u par reci, nastala
Situacionisticka internacionala (SI).
SI je odbacila celu drustvenu organizaciju zasnovanu na najamnom radu i
robi, kao i svaki oblik hijerarhije, predstavljanja, zrtvovanja i
posredovanja. Svi panduri modernog drustva profesori, levicari,
psihijatri, sindikalisti, ideolozi, eksperti bili su razotkriveni i ismejani u
ime zivota kao oblasti neogranicene zelje i neprekidnog zanosa.
Svoj antipoliticki program situacionisti su hranili najpoeticnijim i
najspontanijim ostvarenjima utopista, anarhista, ludih pesnika, nihilista i
drugih opasnih nezadovoljnika, racunajuci tu i doprinos njihove
sopstvene radikalne subjektivnosti. Ali, ovi revolucionari su smatrali i
da je potrebno razraditi mnogo prezicniji organizacioni program. Tako su
izgradili svoju stratesku teoriju, u velikoj meri zasnovanu na Marksu.
Glavni podsticaj bila su iskustva proleterskog samoupravljanja, to jest,
radnickih saveta od Rusije 1905, Kronstata 1921, Spanije krajem
1930-tih, do Maarske 1956. Tako su u svoju teoriju situacionisti uneli
kontradikciju koju nikada nisu uspeli da razrese.
S jedne strane, tvrdili su da je samo neposredna, eksperimentalna i
strastvena aktivnost vredna zivota. Rad mora biti ukinut u korist
slobodne, kreativne igre u kojoj ce sva pravila i oni koji ih donose takoe
biti predmet igre. Upravo duz tog glavnog pravca svog delovanja,
situacionisti su razvili kritiku levice kao dosadnog, irelevantnog
nastavljaca starog sveta i njegove logike.
Ali, magicna moc subjektivnosti tog soka kojim je ova grupa prodrmala
celu Evropu i tako najavila pobunu iz maja 1968 bila je prizemljena
teskim balastom sovjeta.
Apsolutna vlast saveta je vise nego ocigledno protivrecila ideji o
ukidanju vlasti. Unitarna i globalna koordinacija proizvodnje putem
hipermoderne tehnologije zbog svog masivnog karaktera i funkcije
takoe je bila u suprotnosti s apsolutno nedirigovanim,
samooslobaajucim i nesputanim pojedincem.
Kako bi ta stvar sa savetima uopste funkcionisala? I zar na taj nacin, kroz
sistem transkontinentalnog svetskog planskog procesa, ne afirmismimo
specijalizaciju, za koju smo prethodno utvrdili da je nuzno autoritarna?
Najzad, kako bi i preko koga ta iskljuciva vlast saveta bila tehnicki
sprovedena?
Ipak, cak i uz sve unutrasnje konflikte, SI je dala neprocenjiv doprinos,
izmeu ostalog i zato sto je pokazala sta jedna sacica odlucnih ljudi moze

46

da postigne. SI je pruzila veliki podsticaj mnogima koji su tada

pokusavali da artikulisu svoju kritiku i krenu dalje. Zbog svega toga, i to
treba reci, situacionisti su na sebe navukli mrznju svih branilaca proslosti,
ukljucujuci tu i prakticno sve frakcije levice.*
Usavsi u fazu stagnacije pocetkom 1970-tih, SI je radije ukinula samu
sebe nego da nastavi dalje kao puka senka nekada zive sile; sve veci broj
njenih obozavalaca (pro-situ) bio je tako prepusten sopstvenim
resursima. Ipak, svega nekoliko prositua bilo je ozbiljno privuceno
popularnoscu SI koja je i dalje rasla u andergraund krugovima. Oni su se
poistovetili sa situacionistickim idejama i nastavili da ih propagiraju
(nigde tako intenzivno kao u Berkliju). Ali, vime je pocelo da se hladi;
nigde visu nisu mogli da se cuju glasovi poput Deborovog ili
Vanejgemovog. Ubrzo, u kratkom razmaku i sa svega nekoliko izuzetaka,
ti okasneli situacionisti vratili su se u okrilje najtuplje levice, odakle su
bukvalno svi i poticali.
Uprkos zalosnom padu tih pojedinaca, uglavnom iz oblasti San Franciska,
u ultralevicarsku politiku, autenticni opozicioni pokret razvija se sirom
zemlje, kao sto je to primetio Zak Elil (Jacques Ellul) u svom tekstu Od
1970-tih do 1980-tih (Society, 1980):
Izgleda da izmeu institucija i drustvenog tela postoji kontradikcija, koja
se izrazava nezadovoljstvom radnika njihovim sindikatima, odbijanjem
rada meu omladinom, nepoverenjem levicara u njihove partije i graana
u lokalne vlasti. Primecuju se opadanje i gubitak interesovanja, sto
dovodi u pitanje legitimnost svih tih institucija.
Preuzeto iz John Zerzan: Just another brick in the wall, Anarchy: A
Journal of Desire Armed, br. 29/ 1991, broj posvecen SI. Prvi deo teksta
je objavljen u okviru kritickog dodatka za Gi Debor: Drustvo spektakla,
anarhija/ blok 45, Porodicna biblioteka br. 4, maj 2003.

47

John Zerzan
ivotinjski snovi
Da li nam je potrebno da znamo i da li uopte moemo znati
mnogo o drugim ivotinjama? Moda nam je najvie potrebno
saznanje da bi trebalo da im se pridruimo u njihovoj
nepripitomljenosti.
Nekada je postojao komunalni ivot organizama, unutar
jedinstvenog ekosistema. ivot se hranio ivotom, ali ne na
destruktivan nain. ak ni danas ne bi trebalo da gubimo iz
vida da je pobeda pripitomljavanja daleko od konane. Mnoge
vrste, iz razliitih razloga, ostaju van njegove putanje.
Krotitelj lavova zapravo ne kroti nita, podsea nas Don
Harington. On mora ostati u granicama koje su povukle
make.
***
Ovo je doba bestelesnosti, u kojem nase osecanje odvojenosti od zemlje
postaje sve snaznije i u kojem se od nas ocekuje da zaboravimo svoju
animalnost. Ali, mi smo zivotinje i razvijali smo se, kao i one, u skladu s
drugim telesnim formama i aspektima sveta. Um i cula se razvijaju kroz
telo, sto je nacin na koji i druge zivotinje prenose znacenja ili je tako
bilo, do pocetka moderniteta
Nalazimo se na samom vrhu lanca ishrane, sto od nas cini jedinu
zivotinju koja nikome nije potrebna. Hamlet je bio daleko od istine kada
je ljudska bica nazvao lepotom sveta i uzorom za zivotinje.[1] Mark
Tven je bio mnogo blize: jedina zivotinja koja crveni od stida. Ili ima
tu potrebu.[2] Oblik zivota koji je verovatno najslabije prilagoen
stvarnosti, s najmanjim sansama za opstanak, meu najmanje deset
miliona zivotinjskih vrsta (od cega najveci broj cine insekti). Ljudska
bica spadaju i meu svega nekoliko vrsta sisara koje ubijaju svoje bliznje
bez povoda ili zbog ekstremne gladi.
Ljudska vrsta je jedinstvena, ali to vazi i za sve druge vrste. Ne
razlikujemo se od ostalih, po svemu sudeci, nista vise nego sto se ostale
vrste razlikuju izmeu sebe. Neljudske zivotinjske vrste se po pravilu
odlikuju zadivljujucom sposobnoscu za ponasanje na osnovu informacija
koje dobijaju od svog okruzenja. To su bica instinkta, ali to smo i mi.
Dzozef Vud Krac (Joseph Wood Krutch) se pitao, ko je dublje upoznat
sa svetom u kojem zivi?[3] Prilagoavanje na vlastiti svet je kognitivni

48

proces. Ako se upitamo koja je vrsta najpametnija, najbolji odgovor,

najverovatnije, glasi: sve.
Mislim da je Henri Beston to izrazio na divno podsticajan nacin: Na njih
gledamo s visine, zbog njihove nedovrsenosti, zbog njihove tragicne
sudbine, koja im je dodelila oblik mnogo nizi od naseg. I tu pravimo
gresku, veliku gresku. Naime, zivotinje ne treba meriti po coveku. One se
krecu u svetu starijem i potpunijem od naseg, dovrsene i celovite,
obdarene rasponom cula koji smo mi ili izgubili ili ga nikada nismo ni
stekli, ziveci s glasovima koje mi nikada necemo cuti.[4]
Negde tokom osamdesetih, poznavao sam osobu koja je svoje izvanredne
antiautoritarne tekstove i letke potpisivala sa 70 zivotinja. Od tada, ta
vrsta poistovecivanja nije prestala da me ocarava. Dugo prisutna zabrana
takvog cina, kao i onog najveceg greha, antropomorfizma, namece se u
prilicno drugacijem duhu. U nastojanju da se ta strasna greska ispravi,
dolazimo do toga da majmun ne moze da pobesni: on ispoljava
agresivnost. Zdral ne moze da oseca naklonost; on pokazuje udvaracko ili
roditeljsko ponasanje. Gepard se ne plasi lava; on pribegava bekstvu
(flight behavior).[5] Zasto u tom reduktivnim pristupu ne bismo isli jos
dalje i prosto izbacili zivotinje iz svog recnika? To se vec desava, ako je
Oksfordski renik za mlade (Oxford Junior Dictionary) neki pokazatelj.
Izdanje iz 2009. je donelo neke nove tehno-izraze, kao sto su Twitter i
mp3, dok su imena raznih zivotinja, vrsta drveca, itd., izbrisana.[6]
Najzad, deca (i ostali) imaju sve manje dodira s prirodom.
Ali, nema zamene za direktan dodir sa zivim svetom, ako jos uvek treba
da spoznamo sta znaci biti zivo bice. Nas svet se suzava i isusuje,
odsecen od zivotinjske kulture, od oblasti tog zajednicki usvajanog
ponasanja. Od onoga sto je Jakob fon Ikskul (Jacob von Uexkll, 1864
1944) nazvao Umwelt, univerzum znan svakoj vrsti. Trebalo bi da
budemo otvoreni za zajednistvo nasih korena, kao i za postojeci neljudski
zivi svet.
Amfibije postoje vec 300 miliona godina; ptice nekih 150 miliona. Vilini
konjici uzimaju od biosfere isto koliko i pre 100 miliona godina, dok
vrstu Homo, koja ne postoji duze od 3 miliona godina, cine zivotinje koje
od pocetka pripitomljavanja i civilizacije nikada nisu zadovoljne, koje
stalno slede neke nove prohteve.
Zar priroda nije tu zbog srece svih vrsta, a ne samo jedne?[7] Osecamo
nesto slicno tome, dok u vakuumu civilizacije tragamo za oazama
divljine. Nada je stvorenje s krilima, pisala je Emili Dikinson.[8]
Uglavnom smo izgubili osecaj za prisustvo ili auru zivotinja, za bica koja
svoja tela ispunjavaju tako celovito, tako potpuno. Ljudi iz tradicionalnih,
uroenickih kultura nisu izgubili tu svest. Oni osecaju da su u srodstvu sa

49

svime sto je zivo. Neke od tih veza ostale su i kod nas i mogu se
prepoznati u nekim malim stvarima na primer, u nasoj instinktivnoj
ljubavi prema pesmi ptica.
Nije sve med i mleko ni u neljudskom domenu, narocito u ovom
uzdrmanom i poremecenom svetu. Silovanje je primeceno i kod
orangutana, delfina, foka, muflona, divljih konja i nekih ptica, iako ni kod
jedne od tih vrsta ono nije norma.[9] Ali cak i u zivotinjskim drustvima s
jasnom dominacijom muzjaka, zenke po pravilu ostaju samodovoljne i
odgovorne za sopstveno izdrzavanje, za razliku od vecine ljudskih
(pripitomljenih) drustava. U stvari, u nekim grupama, zenke se staraju o
svima. Na primer, lavice ponosno idu u lov.[10] Svako krdo losova
predvodi neka zenka, obdarena mudroscu jednog kojota, vuka, risa,
kuguara i ljudskog bica. Takoe, mnogi smatraju da se neljudska bica
mogu pojedinacno razlikovati, kao i mi. Dilija Akeli je zakljucila da
majmuni i covekoliki majmuni variraju u svojim naravima isto koliko i
ljudska bica,[11] dok je Bari Lopez pisao o upadljivo razlicitim
individualnim osobinama vukova.[12] Ali, meu mnogim
nepripitomljenim zivotinjama primecuje se i odsustvo starih, onemocalih
i uginulih zivotinja. Pitamo se kako tu deluje lanac ishrane, da li to
znaci da vukovi ubijaju samo one zivotinje koje su ionako pri kraju
stare, bolesne, povreene? Prema Lopezu, to bi se moglo grubo zakljuciti.
[13]
Hijerarhija i dominacija meu zivotinjama je stara pretpostavka, cesto
potpuno neutemeljena. Na ideju da je meu njima obicno, ako ne i uvek,
prisutan neki hijerarhijski poredak, dosao je jedan norveski student
zoologije, 1922 (Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe, 18941976). Njegova teorija
je nastala na osnovu posmatranja domacih kokoski iz njegovog dvorista,
da bi se onda prosirila u oblasti proucavanja zivotinja, kao zaraza. To je
klasican primer projekcije pripitomljenog ljudskog sveta, u kojem su
hijerarhija i dominacija zaista pravilo. Ali njihovu navodnu univerzalnost
obara cinjenica da se hijerarhijski poredak domace zivine ne srece u
divljim jatima.
Isto tako pogresna bila je frojdovska paradigma o ubilackom rivalstvu
izmeu oceva i sinova kao prirodnom stanju. Ona je problematicna vec u
slucaju ljudi; jos vise, u odnosu na neljudska bica. Mason i Makarti
(Masson i McCarthy) pisu da ocevi meu zebrama, kivijima, dabrovima,
vukovima i mungosima prihvataju svoje potomstvo i pokazuju veliku
naklonost prema njemu.[14] Juznoamericki vunasti majmuni pauci
(muriqui), muzjaci i zenke, neagresivni su, tolerantni i kooperativni.
Clanak Stiva Kempera (Steve Kemper), Zabranjen pristup alfa
muzjacima, bavi se istrazivanjima majmuna paukova Karen Strier, koja
podrivaju uvrezeno vienje muskih primata.[15] Kod azijskih gibona,

50

primata koji zive u parovima, muzjaci mogu ostati sa svojim partnerkama

dugo posle zavrsetka seksualne aktivnosti.[16]
Dzon Mjur (John Muir) je opisao kako je jedna guska napala lovca da bi
zastitila svog ranjenog partnera: Nikada ranije nisam pomislio da bi
divlja guska mogla biti opasna ili sposobna za tako plemenitu,
samopozrtvovanu odanost.[17] Divlje guske se pare monogamno, tokom
celog zivota.
Meu ljudskim bicima siroko su rasprostranjene drustvene crte kao sto su
roditeljska briga, zajednicka potraga za hranom i uzajamna dobrota ili
uzajamna pomoc. Meri Midzli (Mary Midgely) uopsteno govori o
njihovoj prirodnoj sklonosti ka ljubavi i uzajamnom poverenju.[18]
Takoe, ka ljubavi i poverenju prema drugima, kao sto su ljudska bica, do
tacke da se ona i neguju. Zak Graven (Jacques Graven) iznosi
zapanjujuce primere dece koju su usvojili vukovi, medvedi, gazele, svinje
i ovce.[19]
U svojoj neodoljivoj knjizi Desert Solitaire, uvek svadljivi Edvard Ejbi
pomislja da zabe ciju je pesmu slusao, to rade iz raznih prakticnih
razloga, ali i iz spontane ljubavi i razdraganosti.[20] N. Dz. Beril
(Norman John Berrill) izjavljuje: Biti ptica znaci biti ziv na intenzivniji
nacin nego bilo koje drugo zivo bice, ukljucujuci i coveka one zive u
svetu u kojem postoji samo sada i koji je najcesce ispunjen radoscu.[21]
Dzozef Vud Krac je smatrao da nasa sposobnost za radost atrofira.
Zivotinjama je, primecuje on, radost mnogo vaznija i pristupacnije nego
nama.[22]
Izgleda da u poslednje vreme razne vrste neljudske inteligencije pocinju
da se uvazavaju vise nego ranije. Dokumentarni film Dzona Hoptasa i
Kristin Samjueslon (John Haptas, Kristine Samuelson), Tokyo Waka, iz
2013, posmatra snalazljive gradske vrane. Kako, na primer, koriste
kljunove da bi grane oblikovale u kuke kojima skidaju larve s drveca.
Godine 2002, jedna vrana iz Nove Kaledonije, po imenu Beti, bila je,
prema jednom istrazivacu sa Oksfordskog Univerziteta, proglasena za
prvu zivotinju koja je napravila alatku za odreeni zadatak, bez probe i
greske, sto primati ocigledno tek treba da postignu. Prema Dz. H
Vilijamsu (J. H. Williams), ponasanje slonova uvek ukazuje na
inteligenciju koja pronalazi odgovarajuca resenja za teskoce.[23]
Jos vise iznenauju nova saznanja o onim zivotinjama za koje obicno
mislimo da se nalaze jos nize u lancu ishrane. Katrin Harmon Keridz
(Katherine Harmon Courage) je ukazala na do sada nepoznate
sposobnosti oktopoda. Moze da pronae izlaz iz lavirinta, da otvara
tegle, koristi alatke. Izgleda da cak ima i neku vrstu sofisticiranog
unutrasnjeg zivota. Keridz dalje izjavljuje da oktopod ima mozak

51

drugaciji od skoro svakog stvorenja koje bismo mogli smatrati

inteligentnim.[24] Odatle sve vece zanimanje za hladnokrvnu
inteligenciju, s nedavnim istrazivanjima koja su otkrila da mozak
gmizavaca nije tako nerazvijen kao sto smo mislili. Gusteri i kornjace, na
primer, pokazuju zadivljujucu sposobnost za resavanju problema.[25]
Zak Graven je bio zapanjen kada je shvatio da se metod za trazenje izlaza
iz lavirinta jedne bubasvabe jedva razlikovao od metoda pacova, i da se
zadivljujuca dostignuca sisara srecu ponovo, u skoro identicnom obliku,
kod insekata.[26] Kada je rec o lavirintima i slicnim zadacima, treba
dodati da se u kontrolisanim, laboratorijskim eksperimentima, bez obzira
o kojoj je vrsti rec, moze doci do vrlo malo vaznih istina.
Pamcenje je za mnoga ziva bica vazna pomoc u prezivljavanju. Radovi
zoologa Tecura Macuzave (Tetsuro Matzuawa) pokazuju da simpanze
imaju daleko bolje pamcenje od ljudi.[27] Zrikavci imaju slusni raspon
mnogostruko veci od naseg. Pcele mogu da vide ultraljubicastu svetlost,
koja je za nas nevidljiva. Parazitske osice (Ichneumonoidea) mogu da
osete miris kroz cvrsto drvo. Monarh leptir (Danaus plexippus) ima culo
ukusa dvesta hiljada puta osetljivije od ljudskog jezika. Balegari se u
svom kretanju orijentisu prema Mlecnom putu. Cetvoronozne zivotinje,
one bez potkovica, verovatno uspevaju da uhvate razna isijavanja i
vibracije koje su za nas izgubljene. Sta je s psima i mackama, kucnim
ljubimcima, koji se nau stotinama kilometara daleko od svojih domova,
a opet nekako pronau put do njih? U mnogim takvim slucajevima
mozemo se pozvati samo na neku vrstu telepatije.
Jos mnogo toga bi se moglo reci o darovima zivotinja. Ili o njihovoj igri.
Nema niceg antropomorficnog u zapazanju da se zivotinje igraju.
Pogledajmo samo udvaranje kod ptica. Jednom sam u zoru posmatrao
predivni ples kanadskih zdralova. Njihov ples je nadahnuo bezbrojna
ljudska drustva. Sta je s divljim guskama, pred cijom nenadmasnom
gracioznoscu, elegancijom i posvecenoscu mi, ljudska bica, mozemo
samo da se postidimo?
Pojedinacne zivotinje iz mnogih vrsta pokazuju svest o razlici izmeu
sebe i drugog. Pripadnik jedne vrste uvek moze da prepozna drugog
pripadnika iste vrste. Ta vrsta samoprepoznavanja je ocigledna. Drugi
slucaj predstavljaju grizliji, koji se kriju od pogleda ljudi i drugih zivih
bica. Prisutna je svest da se celo telo ili sebstvo, ako hocete mora
sakriti.
Ali, da li neljudska bica shvataju da su sebstva? Da li su samosvesna na
taj nacin da shvataju svoju smrtnost? Mnogi ukazuju na taj navodni
nedostatak samorefleksije i od njega prave glavnu liniju podele izmeu
ljudi i ostalih zivotinja. Pcele koriste znake, ali nisu toga svesne.

52

Meutim, na osnovu cega pretpostavljamo sta pcele ili druge zivotinje

znaju ili ne znaju? Simpanze i orangutani se prepoznaju u ogledalu, ali ne
i gorile. Sta to tacno govori?
Ima mnogo neresenih pitanja, u stvari, ne mozemo da odgovorimo ni na
pitane koliko je svesno ili nesvesno ljudsko ponasanje, narocito u svetlu
cinjenice da je svest kod nas nesto potpuno neuhvatljivo. Slozeni,
svestrani i adaptivni odgovori koje vidimo kao pravilo meu zivim
bicima na ovoj planeti, mogu, ali i ne moraju biti voeni samosvescu. Ali,
samosvest verovatno nije iskljuciv fenomen, u smislu sve ili nista.
Razlike izmeu ljudskih i ostalih zivih bica nisu radikalne; one su
verovatno vise stvar stepena. Jos vaznije, mi cak ne mozemo ni da
pojmimo svesnost drugaciju od nase.
Nase shvatanje samosvesti, iako krajne maglovito, postalo je zlatno
merilo za vrednovanje neljudskih bica. Drugi granicni kriterijum je jezik:
da li smo jedina vrsta koja ga poseduje? I te dve odrednice obicno idu
zajedno, kao pretpostavka da se svest moze izraziti samo kroz jezik. U
iskusenju smo da jezik vidimo kao objasnjenje svesti, da se pitamo da li
se o svesti moze govori samo kod bica koja se sluze jezikom. Zaista je
tesko zamisliti stanje nasih umova bez oslonca u jeziku. Ali, ako je jezik
jedina osnova misaonog poretka, onda bi neljudske zivotinje zivele u
potpuno neureenom svetu.
Vukovi, psi, delfini, slonovi, kitovi, da navedem samo neke, imaju raspon
glasovnih promena slican ljudskom. Pesme grbavih kitova su slozene
forme kulturnog izrazavanja na velikim udaljenostima. U celini gledano,
moguce je da je zivotinjski zov vise stvar cinjenja, a ne znacenja.
Ako pogledamo simboliko znacenje, koje se smatra karakteristicnim za
nasu vrstu, videcemo da ono ne postoji meu nasim zivotinjskim
saputnicima. U svom prirodnom stanju, papagaji nikada ne oponasaju
ljudski glas; vrste za koje je primeceno da to rade u zatocenistvu, to
nikada ne rade u divljini. Primati trenirani da koriste jezik nikada to ne
rade kao ljudi. Herbert Teras (Terrace), nekada ubeeni istrazivac jezika
covekolikih majmuna, postao je jedan od najzescih kriticara te
pretpostavke. Pokusaj da se izvuce nekoliko mrvica jezika od simpanze
koji ocekuje nagradu, ne donosi nista narocito znacajno, kaze Teras.[28]
Zivotinje ne rade ono sto ljudi rade pomocu jezika, naime, ne prave
simbole koji zamenjuju stvari.[29] Kao sto kaze Tim Ingold, one ne
pokrivaju tok iskustva konceptualnom resetkom i, samim tim, ne
desifruju to iskustvo u obliku simbola.[30] Zadivljujuce bogatstvo
signala, najrazlicitijih vrsta, nije isto sto i simbolizacija. Kada neko
stvorenje pokazuje svoje namerne postupke, ono to cini bez potrebe da ih
opisuje, da ih predstavlja.

53

Pesnik Ricard Grosman (Richard Grossman) je verovao je da je istina

put koji se sam otkriva.[31] Zak Lakan je u orijentaciji prema
predstavljanju video nedostatak; zivotinje ne pate od tog nedostatka, koji
cini ljudski subjekt. U srcu prirode, pisao je Dzozef Vud Krac, nalaze se
vrednosti koje jezik jos nije dosegao; dodao je i da se lepota zdralova
nalazi s one strane potrebe za recima.[32]
Dugo sam se pitao kako to da nas toliko mnogo zivotinja gleda u oci? Sta
time hoce da kazu? Gavin Maksvel (Maxwell) je uzivao u zacueno
radoznalom pogledu kanadskog morskog praseta (porpoise;
Phocoenidae),[33] dok je knjiga Dajen Fosi, Gorile u magli (Diane
Fossey, Gorillas in the Mist, 1983) puna primera gorila i ljudi koji zure
jedni u druge s poverenjem. Dzon Mjur je pisao o Stikinu, psu sa Aljaske,
s kojim je preziveo jednu opasnu situaciju: Snaga njegovog karaktera
lezi u ocima. Izgledale su stare kao planine i isto toliko mlade, isto
toliko divlje.[34] Dzona Lejna (John Lane) su privukle oci aligatora, sto
je bilo nezaboravno iskustvo. Njihove crne oci su bile mirne kao da zure
kroz milione kilometara ili godina.[35]
Mozda se tu moze nauciti jos nesto, od tih direktnih prozora, od te
otvorenosti i neposrednosti, umesto kroz verovatno neresiva pitanja o
svesti i jeziku. I kada bismo nekako mogli da gledamo tim ocima, da li
bismo onda zaista videli sebe?
Oci su ogledalo neposredne otvorenosti. Ovde mozemo spomenuti i smrt,
kao mozda poslednje neposredno iskustvo ili svakako jedno od njih.
Loren Ajzli (Loren Eiseley) je, kada se i sama blizila svom kraju, osetila
da divlja bica umiru bez pitanja, bez znanja o milosti univerzuma,
znajuci samo sebe i svoj vlastiti put ka kraju.[36] U knjizi Ernesta
Setona-Tompsona, Biografija jednog grizlija (E. Seton-Thompson,
Biography of a Grizzly, 1901), receno je mnogo toga o smrti. Danas smo
udaljeniji nego ikada od realnosti smrti kao i od zivotinja. Kako se nasi
zivoti suzavaju, Toroove reci iz 1859. zvuce jos istinitije: Izgleda da u
Americi jos nijedan covek nije umro; naime, da biste umrli, prvo morate
ziveti.[37] Moglo bi se dodati da nisu ljudi ti koji znaju kako se umire,
vec zivotinje.
Kao da su svega toga bili svesni, ljudi su krenuli da se svete nekim
probranim vrstama. Pripitomljavanje je vrsta smrti, svoenje zivotinjske
vitalnosti na stanje potcinjenosti. Kada se zivotinje kolonizuju i prisvoje, i
pripitomljeni i pripitomljivaci prolaze kroz kvalitativnu redukciju. To je
ona poslovicna najveca greska u ljudskoj istoriji, za obe strane.
Direktne zrtve, koje su nekada bile u stanju da se same staraju o sebi,
gube na autonomiji, slobodi kretanja, velicini mozga i onome sto je Krac
nazvao herojskim osobinama.[38]

54

Domaca svinja je ljudska tvorevina skoro isto koliko i seljakov traktor.

Samo je treba uporediti s divljom svinjom. Divlje znaci slobodno. Prema
Dzonu Mjuru, divlje ovce predstavljaju stanje pre Pada; nasuprot tome,
kaze on, Ako je domaca ovca neki pokazatelj, onda je covekovo delo
bilo degradirajuce, kako za njega za samog, tako i za njegove
podreene.[39] Nivo savrsenstva neke zivotinje, prema Niceu, mogao se
meriti time koliko su bile divlje i snazne da se odupru pripitomljavanju.
[40] U kontekstu opsteg potcinjavanja, Dejvid Najbert naziva tu
instituciju domesekracijom,[41] a ne iznenauju ni primedbe zbog toga
sto se za divlje i domace pripadnike neke vrste koriste iste reci.
Industrijalizam je, naravno, doneo daleko gori zivot, u masovnim
razmerama, masovnu bedu, zbog ishrane masovnog drustva. Zooloski
vrtovi i morski parkovi su pokazatelji daljeg porobljavanja, pravi dodatak
opstem zatocenistvu. Kako se nefabrikovani, nemasifikovani svet povlaci,
granica izmeu pripitomljenog i nepripitomljenog se zamucuje. Skoro sve
zahteva nekakvo upravljanje, sve do oksimorona kao sto je upravljanje
divljinom(wildlife management). Sada smo u stvari usli u novo doba
pripitomljavanja, ukljucujuci i nezabelezenu eskalaciju kontrolisanog
zivotinjskog razmnozavanja, u poslednjih nekoliko decenija.[42]
Potpuno nebiocentricni, humanisticki mit o besmrtnosti deo je etosa
pripitomljavanja; njegovi rituali su fokusirani na zrtvovanje, a ne na
slobodu zivota pre pripitomljavanja. Frojdov edipovski model porodice
plod je pripitomljavanja kroz koje su prosli i zivotinje i figura oca.
Lakanove formulacije cesto dolaze iz zapazanja o zatocenim zivotinjama,
kao sto se i pojmovi abjekta[43] ili stalne pretnje Julije Kristeve u
osnovi pozivaju na cin pripitomljavanja. Ali, nepripitomljeni ne ucestvuju
u asimilaciji u pokorenu celinu, u frojdovskom ili nekom drugom smislu.
Nekada je postojao komunalni zivot organizama, unutar jedinstvenog
ekosistema. Zivot se hranio zivotom, ali ne na destruktivan nacin. Cak ni
danas ne bi trebalo da gubimo iz vida da je pobeda pripitomljavanja
daleko od konacne. Mnoge vrste, iz razlicitih razloga, ostaju van njegove
putanje. Krotitelj lavova zapravo ne kroti nista, podseca nas Dzon
Harington.[44] On mora ostati u granicama koje su povukle macke.
Skoro sve u vezi s kitovima je opicinjavajuca misterija, zakljucila je
Dajen Akerman (Diane Ackerman).[45] Vendel Beri (Wendell Berry)
citira svoju kcerku u pesmi Nevienoj ivotinji: Nadam se da negde
postoji neka zivotinja koju jos niko nije video. I nadam se da je nikada
niko nece ni videti.[46] Da li nam je potrebno da znamo i da li uopste
mozemo znati mnogo o drugim zivotinjama? Mozda nam je najvise
potrebno saznanje da bi trebalo da im se pridruzimo u njihovoj
nepripitomljenosti.

55

Kant je napravio strahovitu gresku kada je govorio o ljudskoj

superiornosti. Kao jedino bice na zemlji obdareno spoznajom, on
svakako polaze pravo na titulu gospodara prirode.[47] Volt Vitman je
dao jednostavan odgovor: Ne govorite za kornjacu da je bezvredna samo
zato sto nije nesto drugo.[48] Vazno je primetiti da su zenke te koje
dominiraju onim sto se naziva zivotinjskom etologijom
(karakterologijom), kao i da su daleko manje sklone da slede Kanta u
njegovoj nastranoj orijentaciji.
Iluzija o ljudskoj dominaciji prirodnim svetom poprima razne oblike.
Jedan od njih je pretpostavka da nam nasa domisljatost donosi dugorocnu
sigurnost. Zaboravljamo da nas takva orijentacija, dugorocno gledano,
moze dovesti u opasnost. Nase izgubljene veze, nasa izgubljena svest
dovela nas je u doba uzasa svih vrsta. Kao sto je Olaus Mjuri (Murie)
jednom rekao, U evoluciji ljudskog duha, ljude moze zadesiti nesto
mnogo gore od gladi.[49]
I Zak Derida je poceo da uvia veliki znacaj pitanja animalnosti za ljude,
kao neceg presudnog za sustinu i buducnost covecanstva.[50] Slika
slobodne zivotinje podstice na sanjarenje, ona je snevaceva polazna
tacka. U meuvremenu, ziva stvarnost zajednistva meu vrstama ipak
opstaje. Ljudi iz naroda Inuipat i Gvicin (Gwichin), koji i dalje putuje
bez mapa i odreuju pravac bez kompasa, znaju da irvasi nose u svojim
srcima deo njih, kao sto i oni u svojim srcima nose irvase.[51]
Vera u neposrednost, u direktne veze, nije zamrla. Ali pitaj zvijeri, i
poucit ce te; ptice nebeske pitaj, i razjasnit ce ti. Ili se razgovori sa
zemljom, naucice te, i ribe ce ti morske pripovjediti. (Biblija, Jov 12: 7
8)[52] Za vreme boravka na Arktiku, Dzonatan Voterman (Jonathan
Waterman) je poceo da se udaljava od te odvojenosti, od
pripitomljavanja: Prvo sam skinuo sat. Moja sposobnost da osetim
razlicite i nepoznate mirise postala je neverovatno uznemiravajuca.
Izgleda da je i sluh poceo da mi se popravlja.[53] Daleko od Arktika,
ostaci te dimenzije uvek su mogli da se osete. Melvil je u prizoru uljesure
video kolosalno postojanje bez kojeg ostajemo nepotpuni. Prisecamo se i
Virdzinije Vulf i njenog pozivanja na zivotinjske vokabulare i odnose
meu vrstama.
Nesto celovito, nesto povezano, postojalo je milionima godina pre pojave
vrste Homo. U naslee nam je preneto nesto sto je Henri Beston Sijen
(Sheahan) nazvao zivotinjskom verom, za koju je smatrao da je
unistena s pocetkom Mehanickog doba.[54] Izgubljeni smo, ali druge
zivotinje nam pokazuju na pravi put. One su taj pravi put.
Nedostaje nam to stanje blazenstva, ali ipak znamo koliko je toga
ugrozeno. Lori Olman (Laurie Allman), o pesmi jedne micigenske ptice:

56

Odmah mogu da kazem da ne zna koliko je ugrozena. Zna samo da

peva, danas, na vrhu jednog mladog kanadskog bora. Kljun joj je otvoren,
pun neba koje se siri iza nje.[55]
Evo i stihova Ricarda Grosmana, koji pozivaju na povratak drevnoj
radosti:
Skovaemo
novi um
i konano shvatiti
da je duh
ivotinja.[56]
I dalje smo zivotinje, bica ove planete, sa svim njenim izvornim
porukama koje cekaju u nasem bicu.
[1] Navedeno u Marc D. Hauser, Wild Minds (New York: Henry Holt and
Company, 2000), str. 70.
[2] Konrad Lorenz, The Waning of Humaneness (Boston: Little, Brown
and Company, 1987), str. 70.
[3] Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (New York: Ballantine Books,
1976), str. 83.
[4] Henry Beston, The Outermost House (New York: St. Martins Griffin,
2003), str. 25.
[5] Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson i Susan McCarthy, When Elephants Weep
(New York: Delacorte Press, 1995), str. 34. Meu delima koja ukazuju na
pomak od anti-antropomorfizma nalaze se i Ruth Rudner, Ask Now the
Beasts (New York: Marlowe & Company, 2006) i How Forests Think
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013).
[6] Eoin OCarroll, Oxford Junior Dictionary Dropping Nature
Words, Christian Science Monitor, February 9, 2009.
[7] Ruzan primer suprotnog vienja dolazi od komunistkinje Oksane
Timofejeve (Oxana Timofeeva), History of Animals: An Essay on
Negativity, Immanence and Freedom (Maastricht: Jan van Eyck
Academie, 2012), s predgovorom Slavoja Zizeka. Timofejeva osuuje
prirodu zbog otpora koji pruza tehnologiji, dok u sito vreme, bizarno, o
zivotinjama govori kao o prirodnim komunistima! Videti str. 146147.
[8] Navedeno u Susan Hanson, Icons of Loss and Grace (Lubbock: Texas
Tech University Press, 2004), str. 182.
[9] Masson and McCarthy, op. cit., str. 140.
[10] Barbara Noske, Humans and Other Animals (London: Pluto Press,
1989), str. 115.

57

[11] Vera Norwood, Made from this Earth (Chapel Hill: The University of
North Carolina Press, 1993), str. 235.
[12] Barry Lopez, Of Wolves and Men (New York: Scribner Classics,
2004), str. 18.
[13] Ibid., str. 55.
[14] Masson and McCarthy, op. cit., str. 72.
[15] Steve Kemp, No Alpha Males Allowed, Smithsonian, September
2013, str. 3941.
[16] Noske, op. cit., str. 116.
[17] John Muir, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1912), str. 151.
[18] Mary Midgley, The Ethical Primate (New York: Routledge, 1994),
str. 131.
[19] Jacques Graven, Non-Human Thought (New York: Stein and Day,
1967), str. 68.
[20] Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (New
York: Ballantine Books, 1971), str. 157.
[21] Joseph Wood Krutch, The Great Chain of Life (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1956), str. 224.
[22] Ibid., str. 227.
[23] J. H. Williams, Elephant Bill (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1950), str.
58.
[24] Katherine Harmon Courage, Alien Intelligence, Wired, October
2013, str. 84.
[25] Emily Anthes, Coldblooded Does Not Mean Stupid, New York
Times, November 19, 2013, str D1, D5.
[26] Graven, op. cit., str. 127.
[27] Justin McCurry, Chimps Are Making Monkeys Out of Us, The
Observer, September 28, 2013.
[28] Navedeno u Stephen Budiansky, If a Lion Could Talk (New York:
Free Press, 1998), str. 45.
[29] Kelly Oliver, Animal Lessons: How They Teach Us to be Human
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), str. 186.
[30] Tim Ingold, Evolution and Social Life (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1986), str. 311.

58

[31] Richard Grossman, The Truth, Animals (Minneapolis: Zygote

Press, 1983), str. 421.
[32] Leopold, op .cit., str. 102.
[33] Gavin Maxwell, Ring of Bright Water (Boston: Nonpareil Books,
2011), str. 45
[34] Edwin Way Teale, The Wilderness World of John Muir (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1954), str. 281.
[35] John Lane, Waist Deep in Black Water (Athens: University of
Georgia Press, 2002), str. 49.
[36] Loren Eiseley, The Night Country (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1997), str. 173.
[37] Henry David Thoreau, The Journal, 18371861, ed. Damion Searls
(New York: New York Review of Books, 2009), str. 585 (beleska od 22.
oktobra 1859).
[38] Krutch, op. cit., str. 102.
[39] Michael P. Cohen, The Pathless Way: John Muir and American
Wilderness (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), str. 173, 176.
[40] Jennifer Ham, Taming the Beast, navedeno u Jennifer Ham and
Matthew Senior, eds., Animal Acts (New York: Routledge, 1997), str. 158.
[41] David A. Nibert, Animal Oppression and Human Violence:
Domesecration, Capitalism, and Global Conflict, Columbia University
Press, 2013. Domesecration: od domestication i desecration
(skrnavljenje). Domesekracija je sistematska praksa nasilja kojom se
drustvene zivotinje porobljuju i bioloski menjaju, sto za ishod ima
postvarenje, potcinjavanje i ugnjetavanje. (D. A. Nibert)
[42] Clive Roots, Domestication (Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 2007),
str. xii.
[43] Prelazno stanje izmeu objekta i subjekta, u razvojnoj teoriji Julije
Kristeve. Videti pojmove abject i abjection. (Prim. prev.)
[44] Navedeno u Lane, op. cit., str. 125.
[45] Diane Ackerman, The Moon by Whale Light (New York: Random
House, 1991), str. 112.
[46] Wendell Berry, To the Unseeable Animal, navedeno u Ann FisherWirth and Laura-Gray Street, eds., The Ecopoetry Anthology (San
Antonio TX: Trinity University Press, 2013), str. 178.
[47] Immanuel Kant, trans. J.C. Meredith, Critique of Judgement (Oxford
University Press, 1952), Part 2, Section 431.

59

[48] Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (New York: Library of America,

2011), section 13.
[49] Navedeno u Jonathan Waterman, Where Mountains are Nameless
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), str. 237.
[50] Navedeno u Leonard Lawlor, This is Not Sufficient (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2007), str. 7.
[51] Waterman, op. cit., str. 212.
[52] Pocetak prvog stiha je preuzet iz hrvatskog prevoda Jerusalimske
Biblije, gde se eksplicitno govori o zverima, a ne o stoci, kao u
prevodu Danicic-Karadzic ili u zvanicnom hrvatskom prevodu Biblije:
Zapitaj stoku, naucice te, itd. (Prim. prev.)
[53] Ibid., str. 10.
[54] John Nelson, Henry Beston Sheahan, Harvard Magazine,
September-October 2013, str. 40.
[55] Laurie Allman, Far From Tame (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1996), str. 73.
[56] Grossman, op. cit., The New Art, str. 2.