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According to wikipedia

“It’s not that Kaczynski, who is a fierce, uncompromising critic of the techno-industrial system, is saying anything I haven’t heard before. I’ve heard it all before, many times. By his own admission, his arguments are not new. But the clarity with which he makes them, and his refusal to obfuscate, are refreshing. […] Maybe it’s what scientists call ‘confirmation bias’, but I’m finding it hard to muster good counter-arguments to any of them, even the last. I say ‘worryingly’ because I do not want to end up agreeing with Kaczynski.”

http://paulkingsnorth.net/journalism/dark-ecology/

More from Paul Kingsnorth: “I would suggest that 'anti-globalisation' is simply a continuation of the Luddites' struggle, and I touched on this in my book on the movement (One No, Many Yeses) years ago. Same shit, different century, as it were.”

“We see this all the time: one man’s freedom is another’s industry run amok” http://illusionofmore.com/on-being-a-luddite/

modern Neo-Luddites are more likely to “confine their resistance…to a kind of intellectual and political resistance.” The manifesto of the 'Second Luddite Congress' specifically rejects violent action (…) Neo-Luddites are generally opposed to anthropocentrism, globalization and industrial capitalism. (…) Neo-Luddites also believe that current technologies are a threat to humanity and to the natural world in general, and that a future societal collapse is possible. (…) They advocate a return to nature and what are imagined as more natural communities. (i.e. small-scale agricultural communities) –Neo-Luddism

… Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they need rather than want…

Much misunderstood, the Luddites weren't Primitivists, but opposed machinery 'harmful to commonality'. Their view that technology is never neutral is very resonant today. However for activists they also pose the troubling question of when tactics become self defeating. The people of Britain in 1812 had the choice of supporting injustice or anarchy, and they chose injustice.“

http://uncivilisation.ning.com/forum/topics/200-years-of-the-luddites

In 1990, Chellis Glendinning published her “Notes towards a Neo-Luddite manifesto” in the Utne Reader, reclaiming the term 'luddite'. According to Glendinning, Neo-Luddites are “20th century citizens — activists, workers, neighbors, social critics, and scholars — who question the predominant modern worldview, which preaches that unbridled technology represents progress.”[15] Glendinning then gives the following principles of Neo-Luddism:

  • “Neo-Luddites are not anti-technology:” Glendinning proposes that Neo-Luddites are only against specific kinds of technology which are destructive to communities or are materialistic and rationalistic.
  • “All technologies are political:” Technologies are not neutral but have been created in specific social contexts for specific interests. Mass technological society has created technologies to perpetuate its specific values (short-term efficiency, ease of production and marketing, profit) and this has led to rigid social institutions.
  • “The personal view of technology is dangerously limited:” Instead of focusing on how technology will improve the life of an individual, critics need to look at the wider social, economic and ecological implications of technological systems.

Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes “treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most certainly not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.

http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html

Laws in Walden (Thoreau):

  • One must love that of the wild just as much as one loves that of the good.
  • What men already know instinctively is true humanity.
  • The hunter is the greatest friend of the animal which is hunted.
  • No human older than an adolescent would wantonly murder any creature which reveres its own life as much as the killer.
  • If the day and the night make one joyful, one is successful.
  • The highest form of self-restraint is when one can subsist not on other animals, but of plants and crops cultivated from the earth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden

“What are you? The answer, Determined – he will say, What for? Your answer, Free Liberty”

“Precarious as this moment may be, however, an awareness of the fragility of what we call civilisation is nothing new.”

“We the biopunks are dedicated to putting the tools of scientific investigation into the hands of anyone who wants them. We are building an infrastructure of methodology, of communication, of automation, and of publicly available knowledge.”

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  • Last modified: 2014-04-09 12:53
  • by maja