I've been interested for quite some time in the Primitivist movement. The idea that there is some residuum of authentic being waiting to be recovered is compelling, if misguided; that whole "Into The Wild" schtick played out by badly dressed, earnest young men. While we should see the saintliness in all this, we should also take note of the evasion that sets such lives apart and the ugly hunger for purity that more dangerous minds have made use of. We live among the ruins and the ruins are where we make love, talk, hurt each other, imagine, labour unthinkingly, sing songs, type out our messages and dream. There's plenty of people in the marketplace trading in authenticity and little room for any more. Let's learn their spiel so we can properly unnerve them. Let's also acknowledge that truth shows up clearest in struggle.
And yet many of us ache for that simplicity; cut from the thrall of our created wants we can get up to all kinds of jiggeryfuckery, be big children and chatter in ecstasy, keeping the auditors from the door.
One of the more eloquent figures in the movement is John Zerzan. He considers even mathematics a mutilation of our humanity. For a time, he had a correspondence going with the Unabomber: a proper loon, then. I wish for more of his like. The reasonable voices leave me cold.
Keeping house is for small souls.
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ReplyDeleteIt's strange coming back to these earlier pieces. Part of me wants them gone. I wouldn't feel happy writing such posts now. I think I have to learn to be unashamed of the past material. Signs on the way or some such shite.
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