Brainpolice : Primitivism

Rejecting The Natural/Synthetic Dichotomy

Brainpolice — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 14:34:00 GMT

I reject the natural/synthetic dichotomy. The natural/synthetic dichotomy is manifested in two fundamental ways: (1) the assumption that humans and/or human constructs are separate from nature and (2) the assumption that certain human constructs are "natural" while others are not. The problem with this dichotomy is that humans and their constructs are a part and product of nature; it is impossible for humans to step outside of the context of nature. Unless one wishes to posit a supernatural, all that exists or occurs is natural by default. Something that is not natural would be something that simply does not exist or occur at all. Hence, it makes no sense to speak of existing things or phenomenon as if they are not natural, or to defend or support a given thing or phenomenon by appealing to it being natural.

Everything is natural, regaurdless of how common or rare it is, when it occurs or doesn't occur, wether its beneficial or detrimental, good or bad, and so on. That which is natural, which is simply to say something that occurs or exists, cannot be construed as being good or bad by mere virtue of being natural. Nature is morally neutral in this sense, because the mere existance of a thing or phenomenon in of itself does not signify value. In other words, nature does not have intrinsic value. Understood broadly, it simply is what it is. This is not to say that there is no purpose or merit to assigning value to certain phenomenon, but that its mere occurance is not what gives it value. For if that which is natural is inherently good or bad, then literally everything must be assumed to be inherently good or bad, and that is absurd.

It's also important to note that just because something is natural does not necessarily mean that it is universal, inevitable or permanent. Nature is not static, it is dynamic, which is to say that it is in a constant state of flux. That which is common in the present may very well be rendered obsolete and archiac in the future. It can be quite fallacious to appeal to phenomenon from the past as if it is representative of an inevitable future or to regaurd current phenomenon as if they represent a permanent state of affairs. What once was natural can be rendered non-existant over time, and what once was little more than a pipe dream can become "the natural order". Appealing to the past as "natural" is simply a weak argument. The present and future is no less "natural" and the "naturalness" of things is really irrelevant.

One way in which the natural/synthetic dichotomy is manifested is in the arguementation of primitivists, anti-civilizationists and radical environmentalists. The contemporary technology and extended division of labor produced by humans is demonized as "unnatural" while more primitive and "self-sufficient" ways of living are romantisized as "natural". Human civilization is characterized as being inherently antagonistic with nature, and nature is assumed to have intrinsic value. Radically egalitarian philosophy makes use of the dichotomy as well, with egalitarianism being construed as "natural" while heirarchy is considered to be "unnatural". Interestingly, primitive societies are often pointed to as examples of egalitarianism, even though a non-biased look at such societies likely reveals quite a bit of heirarchy.

The natural/synthetic dichotomy is also manifested in conservative philosophy. Rigid class heirarchy, religious authority, familial authority, racism, nationalism, have been charactered as "the natural order" (with strong use of naturalistic language used to defend them), as if they are inevitable laws of nature and intrinsic authorities, and deviations from them are construed as synthetic attempts to produce a "new man" in antagonism with nature. Conservative philosophy strongly appeals to tradition as being "natural", and deviations from tradition such as homosexuality, secularism and multiculturalism are construed as "unnatural". All of this could be said to stem from a pessemistic and archiac accessment of nature that lies at the heart of conservatism.

Social contract theory and traditional statist apologetics is riddled with the natural/synthetic dichotomy because it tends to construe centralized political organization as if it involves man exiting "the state of nature", while at the same time there is a very strong temptation to characterize the rise of centralizd political organization as a "natural" phenomenon in the sense that is inevitable. Statism is construed as "the natural order" that inevitably arises from social organization. And statist politics is riddled with debate over precisely what kind of centralized political organization is the most "natural" or what the "natural progression" will lead to. Traditionally, anarchy is either brushed off as "unnatural" or is conflated with a primitivist "natural state" before centralized political organization took place.

While these various types of social phenomenon and organization most certainly can be evaluated, wether or not they are "natural" is really irrelevant to such an evaluation, because they are all "natural" to the extent that they occur or exist at all. The natural/synthetic dichotomy is a misnomer that sidetracks from the real substantive debates that could take place.

Avoiding The Argument From History and Normality

Brainpolice — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:34:00 GMT

Often times in political debates, market anarchists may find themselves pressured to produce historical examples of stateless market-based societies. Typically, the market anarchist responds to this by refering to particular periods of medieval iceland or ireland, certain aspects of fuedal Europe and the wild (or not so wild) west. And, no doubt, there are interesting case studies with regaurd these societies or historical periods demonstrating the effectiveness of a decentralized and polycentric legal system.

That being said, these are not examples of pure anarchy, they are close approximations at best, and it is dangerous for market anarchists to fall into the trap of defending these societies, many of which had a rather despicable cultural framework and questionable content to their customary laws. There is a danger of the market anarchist lapsing into a sort of primitivism or a general romanticization of the past. It begins to appear as if the market anarchist simply wants to return to some older form of social organization, and this leaves them open to be misunderstood and misaracterized horribly.

I think it's important to reject the premise upon which the argument from history is based, which is the assumption that something must have existed or functioned in the past in order for it to exist or function in the present or future. This isn't to completely deny the value of empirical examples, but to avoid the fallacy of ruling things out simply because they have never been done yet. All progress throughout history inherently has involved deviation from the norm, and expecting people to appeal to the norm in order to prove the possibility or viability of something that is a relatively new idea and blatantly outside of the norm is simply nonsensical.

For example, if such an attitude was taken in the 18th or 19th centuries, one could just appeal to the historical normalcy of slavery to argue that its abolition is impossible and slavery is simply the inevitable "natural order". And precisely this same attitude is commonly taken with respect to anarchy. The more reasonable response is not to sift through history for obscure examples of quasi-anarchic societies, but to point out the problem with the argument from history to begin with.

Beyond the fundamental problems with the argument from history, there are questionable elements and incoherancies to the historical examples that market anarchists often find themselves giving. For one thing, these are mostly pre-industrial societies, and market anarchism in the present or future is in the context of an industrial or post-industrial society. This isn't necessarily to say that market anarchism cannot contain some agrarian elements to it, but nonetheless it makes no sense to act as if the economic framework of these societies is remotely resemblant of what the framework of a modern market anarchy may look like.

Another problem is that, by and large, many of the cultural attitudes and customs of these societies were very unlibertarian, or by the very least simply archiac. It could hardly be said that the bulk of the people that existing in these societies were particularly a bunch of "rugged individualists" who valued non-aggression. And the content of some of their customs would make just about any modern man, libertarian or not, very weary.

I do not mean to deny that case studies into these historical examples can be insightful in some ways, but they should not be held up as solid examples of a libertarian anarchism, because they simply aren't. I'm not necessarily pleading that libertarians give up these historical examples altogether, but perhaps they should be more careful and selective in their use of them and be weary of opening themselves up to be strawmanned horribly.

Objects Are Morally Neutral

Brainpolice — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:45:00 GMT

I've always been a stickler for the notion that objects are morally neutral. This notion usually comes to play in debates about gun prohibition, to counter people essentially claiming that guns are causal determinant for violence in and of themselves, but of course they truly aren't causal determinants, only instrumental means. A gun can be used to murder someone or to defend someone from an attempted murderer. In either case, the moral neutrality of objects has implications more far reaching than the issue of gun control. For example, there is the idea among some people that money is the root of all evil, but money is only a means and object that one can use for a plethora of purposes, both good and bad.

In the case of both the gun prohibitionist and the "anti-monetarist", an object is claimed to be intrinsically and absolutely evil merely because sometimes certain people may use them towards negative ends, and the abolition of the object is proposed as a solution. The problem is that no such intrinsic value exists in such objects, and morality judges actions, not tools. There is nothing about such tools in and of themselves that can be rationally assigned with moral properties. What matters from the perspective of morality are the actions that people engage in while using such objects. While the nature of an object may certainly be to facilitate a particular end, it is only the end in question and the way in which the object is used that can be morally judged, not the object itself.

Some may nitpick and try to find acceptions to the rule by pointing to something such as nuclear weaponry, which can function for nothing but mass destruction. But once again it would not be the mere existance of the object itself that can constitute immorality, it would be the decision of an individual to make offensive use of them. Isolated from any decision on the part of people and interaction between people and the object, the object has no moral significance whatsoever. Personally, in an ideal world I'd like all nuclear weapons to be jettison into the sun. Of course, I don't except that to happen. But all the same my own weariness about nuclear weapons does not stem from a moral condemnation of the object itself, but an awareness of the general danger of the object itself when used by human beings.

The moral condemnation of objects would seem to naturally lead towards primitivism the more consistantly that one applies it. What is contemporary industrial civilization but the extensive use of objects for the purposes of mass-production to appease human needs and wants? Instead of opposing power or institutional frameworks or bad ideas, the neo-luddite puts all of their energy into opposing objects, tools, instruments. They misplace blame entirely, effectively ignoring the role of individual action. They only emphasize the negative possibilities for how objects can be used while acting as if they have no positive use.

It should be fairly obvious why objects cannot be assigned with moral properties. Objects are not moral agents, they do not have conciousness or willpower, they do not think or act. A rock cannot be blamed for anything, it makes no sense to assign responsibilities to it. A rock can only be an instrumental tool for something that one can blame a human being for. It is possible for a rock to be thrown at someone to harm them, and it just as possible that a rock can be turned into a statue or carving or used to build a building. Indeed, treating objects as moral agents leads to absurdity, as such objects would have to be regaurded as if they were human beings. Surely one doesn't want to end up at the reductio ad absurdum of arresting objects for disturbing the peace.