Iconoclastic Thoughts on a Savage World

Echo

Introduction

Why do I intend to destroy rather than build? Why do I want to see flames engulfing the cities as their populations watch with smiles? Why do I want to see the roads crack and deteriorate? Why do I to bring civilization to it’s knees?

Because I, comrades, am a savage!

Let us not be deceived by the illusion of civilization! Civilization is not morally correct, it is not beneficial, it is not stabilizing. Civilization is one of the forms of oppression! Let us free ourselves from the mass hysteria, the ultimate illusion that is civilization.

There is a huge misconception that many people have regarding civilization, from what it is to what it does. We see civilization as a saving grace, our great accomplishment- when really, it is our greatest failure. Civilization is antithetical to freedom.

Freedom is the lack of oppression. What is oppression? The usage of a power base to subjugate another being. Freedom is the ability to be self-propulsive, to be able to take control of our future without the fear of swift and sudden punishment. The ability to never work another day in our lives and have a life filled with play.

Freedom is the ability to arm yourself with joy.

And as we are realizing, we cannot have joy while we are oppressed. We can only have momentary play.

Before we continue with a deep critique of civilization, we must understand what it is. Civilization is a set of crystallized structures of domination that individuals and communities must maneuver within in a specific way that is determined by those structures in order to be successful.

This is not to say that we must operate within the laws- in fact there are many, many instances of people being successful while not following laws (capitalists and those at the top of the hierarchy of a crime organization jump to mind). Rather, that there are structures all around us that we do not even notice because trey have been so normalized. Some of these structures that are formed in civilization are hierarchies, infrastructure, work, and money, but there are far, far more. They can be large things or little things.

The problem that we see is that the structures force us all into specific roles, whether they be gender roles or class roles, or anything in between, you are molded into something that is most likely not yourself. We are being subjugated- not by any specific person, but by roles that we are told by our current, civilized society, that we must follow.

Civilization first arose with agriculture, which is the productive cultivation of food, rather than joy or to serve yourself or friends. This lead to the populations who previously were nomadic and survived off of hunting and gathering being more sedentary, which allowed for the creation of cities, which is a necessary step to be a civilization. In fact, once a city has been formed around an agricultural base we can say that it is a civilization, as it already has the required components like infrastructure, agriculture, production, and other things that come along with those elements, such as governance (whether it be privatized or not), work, and competition. Then it also led to gender roles, where women were more relegated to the “home” tasks and men doing other work. This led to patriarchy as men were given far more rights than women, and seeing as this enabled them to gain a larger base than women, they were able to oppress them. Civilization went on to cause other forms of oppression, and as civilization became more complex, the different forms of oppression became more complex with it. It introduced racism, classism, and many, many other forms of oppression in a short period, and it continues to do so.

All of these structures of domination lead to one realization: why keep it? Why not burn it down?

Come, comrades, to reduce our cities to rubble!

Tomorrow we shall wake up, and smell the ashes!

I. Savagery

I am a firm believer in savagery. Before you even delve into the subject, being savage does not mean primitive- simply put, it means uncivilized. Proponents of civilization like to use these words to show that we should not lose civilization, because they see these words as being violent and brutal, and they fear them.

To be savage is one of many aspects of freedom. Rather than simply meaning primitive and violent as many people seem to think, it means that I, being savage, can express my thoughts, I can do what I want, save for what limitations keep us from doing. As a savage, I wish to destroy these barriers, and in fact, until you are trying to tear at the roots of civilization, you cannot be savage.

Savagery is attacking. It is ruthless, as we must be if we wish to destroy that which oppresses us. A savage does not hold back.

A savage has no respect for images, for our pre-concieved notions of the world. A savage is an iconoclast, ready to light the fires that destroy our idols, and ready to bring ourselves into the light- as a true individual! We are in this for our self-realization. We do not wish to be seen as on of the greats in history- but to be worth everything to ourselves!

A savage will initiate brutal chaos to make herself happy.

A savage will not respect his idol’s brutal authority.

A savage will die the most tragic death, for they have lived a joyful life!

So, some might ask what gives a savage, the enemy of civilization, the right to decide to destroy civilization? They ask this, saying savage with poison in their voice.

Let me tell you: we don’t care. We are fighting for freedom- everyone else is supporting slavery. We are going to strive for our own ability to be free, and if you get in our way,you are enforcing our slavery imposed on us by civilization. All I can say is that I’m sorry if my freedom offends you, but as my lack thereof offends me, I won’t stop because others say they don’t like it. It does make me sad however, that it offends others that I wish to see value within myself.

The nature of freedom is such that if there are any people who are not free, none can be free. So while I am struggling to free myself, this will not stop me from trying to free others. Of course, I cannot determine what is best for other people. In fact, I truly can only be an expert in my own freedom, so I act to inspire others to struggle for their freedom. I do not hold back, I push forward. I play to show others that they can play. My struggle for myself is simultaneously a struggle for others.

I wish I could say I was simply doing this out of my love for humanity, but I’m afraid I can’t.

Little things, or big things- it doesn’t matter. Anyone can struggle. You need not perform a bombing, you need not shoot a cop. You can simply do little things (from putting up educational posters to stealing some food) to make your life easier. But one should not say that bombings and killing cops are not actions that are part of the struggle. All of it is part of the struggle.

Come, comrades, let us be savages!

Let us destroy civilization so we may be free!

II. Civilization: the Arrival

If you were to look at the world before the idea of civilization had be introduced, what would we see?

So we may answer this question, we must go back to the earliest known lives of humans. They were not accumulated in large cities, they did not have mass farms, and they certainly did not have enough food all the time. They had a limited population, meaning they were far more likely to have affinity groups to accomplish tasks. Plus, before civilization, there was no hierarchy to speak of.

Men and women were far more equally involved in the acquisition of food in the paleolithic time period. This means that women and men were afforded equal responsibilities, as well as being afforded equal opportunities.

There was no racism that we can detect.

We can also go as far to say that no Superstructure based oppression existed.

We can derive this from our own brains. We were adapted to hold a limited number of connections to other people in our minds. The highest predicted number we have currently is 290 connections, but it goes as low as 150 connections. After that, we organize into hierarchical relationships, and stereotype, so our brains can understand the connections we have made. Which is why in small, tribalist communities, there was little to no social class or hierarchy.

However, yes, there were problems. One of the biggest being the inability to ensure there would be enough food for you tomorrow, or the next week, or the next month. And then, something happened. Agriculture was born. A relatively simple idea, but at the same time, incredibly powerful.

Suddenly people we able to live in the same area for their entire lives. They began to work which is one of the most well known traits of civilization. But even more astounding, with the congregation of humans around agriculture, was the birth of gender roles. Men were working more to produce food on a farm, while women were doing home jobs. This led to women being given less and less opportunities compared to men, who continued gaining opportunities. The role of men as the producer, as the family supporter, began to crystallize. They were seen as powerful. The role of women, on the other hand, crystallized into a home-worker, someone who was supported, and they were seen as weak. This was the beginning of patriarchy, and the crystallized gender roles we see today. Our brains took effect, and stereotyped us into categories to deal with the larger groups that we now encountered.

Another frankly astonishing effect agriculture had on humanity was the creation of hierarchies based on occupation and trade, which then led to social classes. If the point of anarchism is really trying to establish a world without hierarchy, then all anarchists should oppose civilization- which for all intents and purposes, is entirely based in hierarchical relationships.

The rise of civilization gives us this- capitalism. The highest stage of civilization. The most complicated form it can take.

III. Capitalism: The Highest Stage of Civilization

We were wrong. We looked at everything entirely wrong.

If you look at the world, we can see easily the problems with capitalism, and in fact, we got very good at noticing them, and critiquing them. I would say that we did good.

But we were wrong. We got the enemy wrong the whole time. We saw the capitalists as the enemies, simply because they were capitalists, which we were partially correct in. But we should have seen civilization and its protectors as our enemies. Of course, the average protector is the same people who would work to defend capitalism, but our analysis had always failed us due to only allowing us to see the capitalists as being attacked on a basis surrounding the idea of capital being neutral, and thus being able to be controlled by us for the greater good. Capital, I promise you, is not neutral. But because of our idea of “neutral capital”, we saw the acquisition of capital as being important- we wanted to have the power that came with it.

We shouldn’t control capital, and we shouldn’t idolize it. We should destroy it, as the base unit of civilization is agriculture, which is capital, seeing as it is a form of production, and thus oppression.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Let us take a step back and examine capital and civilization, and we will see that capitalism is just the final stage of civilization.

Civilization was born in capital- agriculture. This is why the trend we see in capitalism, permanent expansion, is apparent in civilization, where more and more resources are used. Populations continue to increase, and thus, more resources are needed, and more resources are extracted. As time goes on, the resource extraction grows less for need. Capitalism continues this trait in its higher form: extracting resources at an incredibly high rate, not for any need, rather for greed. Civilization has undergone many changes. Most of them are very small. The two we have the most access to, and that are the easiest to analyze as they are the biggest changes: the change to feudalism and the change to capitalism.

Before feudalism, there was tribalism. Some might say this is an inherently un-civilized system, but this is incorrect. Of course, there were un-civilized tribes, but there were others who were just beginning to form a civilization. We already know about the hunter-gatherer tribes, their personal freedoms and equality. But what do we know about those who began to develop agriculture?

They began to congregate. The first steps of civilization had been taken: agriculture and congregation into cities. And suddenly, we have more than 290 people who we have to interact with. We have to start categorizing. People who do this are important, people who do that aren’t. People who are like that do this, people who are like this do that.

These categories allowed for us to stereotype, and crystallize the roles of people within our societies. And with that, the path to feudalism was born.

First off, we need to understand what feudalism is. I believe this is the most correct definition, where feudalism is a social and economic system defined by inherited social ranks, each of which possessed inherent social and economic privileges and obligations. In such a system wealth derived from agriculture, which was arranged not according to market forces but on the basis of customary labour services owed by serfs to landowning nobles.

This was born as a result of those who had, by a simple chance, had been at the top of the crystallized hierarchy, began to accumulate land, using the concept of ownership. And then there were the serfs who worked under them, and eventually they had developed a chain, with one person at the top of the hierarchy, with others in the middle, and the serfs being held down at the bottom. These groups were later taken control of, or had assimilated into other groups, until there were just a few, massive feudal systems.

The serfs of course, worked for necessity, for if they did not work for their masters, they were subject to being killed or enslaved by their masters, or others. Their choice was slavery under one, or slavery under another.

The masters began to be able to accumulate more, with their control over capital. They were never in any particularly dire shortages, and they had the resources to be frivolous. They began to accumulate for greed.

The ability to accumulate for greed, and the action of doing so, put a dire enemy of workers everywhere on the horizon.

The most complex and all intruding rule of capital, the highest form of civilization.

Despite the fact that capital had always ruled over all people since its conception, it has never before been so completely pervasive. Capitalism has pervaded in such a way that we have developed consumerism so that we can deal with our plight, and we can then “play” in our “leisure time”.

Civilization is the child of capital, and it will do anything to perpetuate its survival. We can see this by the way capital has reigned ever since civilization was born, and how every change in civilization has benefited capital. Due to this trait of civilization, the need for expansion based on the survival of capital, so it can continue to rise, we know that civilization has the exact trait that capitalism has: permanent expansion. If capital will permanently expand, so will civilization.

Civilization is invalid, and unsustainable. Just like capitalism. Both will collapse.

I put forward that it is impossible to have true communism while capital exists. Capital cannot be controlled. It will always rule over us as long as we let it live. It is incredibly manipulative, and someone will always try to be the primary controller of it. We saw this with the Marxists in the USSR who became addicted to capital. And even if we got community control over capital, the individual would still be oppressed by the community, for if they did not wish to work under capital, they would lose benefits of being part of the community. Even if they contributed, capital is based in production, so if you aren’t producing goods, then you aren’t considered part of the community, and you will be allowed to starve. In extreme cases, maybe even labeled as in idler, and exiled or killed.

Due to civilization, we cannot even succeed in a revolution where we are attempting to reappropriate capital, because that would weaken capital. If civilization is to exist, then capitalism will continue to exist as well. We must attack civilization!

IV. Against Morality

I was told that I was wrong, morally, for my ideas. That they must be constrained and I must not attack, I must hold back, because I do not deserve to challenge the world.

If the world has declared itself the opposition to my ideas, so be it! I will fight back with a passion society and civilization can only imagine! For I am fighting for myself, I am fighting for my joy.

Forward, savages, iconoclasts, and individualists! For us who have dark opinions, which shadow society!

Let us attack!

Morality changes depending on who’s perspective you are looking from. My morality is not yours. Therefore, if you tell me what I am doing is immoral, I accept that, and continue.

Ethics, however, are important. If we oppress people, we are making it so we cannot truly be free, as it would create another crystallized hierarchy, and we’d have to fill those crystallized roles. So we should follow ethics, to avoid oppressing ourselves.

But morality is a tool of oppression, meant to keep us from doing something that we want or need to. So we must declare ourselves amoral!

Take action, take control of your life!