John Zerzan



John Zerzan is an American anarcho-primitivist political philosopher.

Philosophy
Zerzan's early life seems to have been a case of joining up with progressively more sharply leftward groups in succession, each time ultimately rejecting them as having compromised with something he understood to be inherently oppressive and thus abominable. Somewhat reflective of this by looking like a case of rhetorical outbidding among anarchists, his writings are critical of all civilization, which he deems to be the root of all oppression, discrimination, hierarchy, and alienation. He lauds the life of hunter-gatherers, or at least, the absolute held-in-common core of the known ones. Taking the elements that are in common to all of them, he has constructed an idea of a primal human methodology that manages to have quite a bit in common with the archetypal noble savage, and that all of humanity — the current hunter-gatherers included — needs to regress to that point, if they are to be free of oppression and corruption. Most anarchists disagree with this, seeing it as dangerous bullshit or at least over-simplifying, to put it mildly.

Zerzan has inveighed against art, mathematics, work, and the very concept of time itself, as he believes they deviate from his primal ideal. He regards agriculture and language as the original sins of humanity, the innovations that first alienated humans from nature and made civilization and all its ills possible. He is willing to make some allowances for tool-making, particularly the "simple machines" (inclined planes, et al), justifying this by drawing a distinction between tools and technology; to him, technology controls its users while tools are controlled by their users. Essentially, he believes that any level of reification or distinction of objects is a distortion and alienation; little more than immediate desire, and openness to the totality of what one is interacting with, are acceptable.

To clarify the elements noted above, he believes that if a given group (a) has not developed a certain precept (say, numbers; this might be the case with a South American tribe named the Pirahã), and (b) is not obviously ravaged for it, then it follows that it isn't actually necessary for living and is probably never going to go much past "hindrance". Zerzan may be thought of as believing that only the absolute simplest life possible is the one humans are "meant" to live by (despite the fact that so many beyond the South American interior, and some within, evidently found a non-ruinous purpose for numbers).

Quotes
On postmodernism:

On Star Trek:

This, of course, disregards the crew beaming down to planets (usually in very "natural" environments) every freaking episode, spending time in very pastoral environments they always show great appreciation for.

Friendship with the Unabomber
Zerzan was friends (to a measure, anyway) with the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. Or at least, the motivation of self-defense against civilization's encroachment; he doesn't approve of the means, on account of the severe risk of killing innocents. Curiously, Kaczynski was dismissive of leftward primitivism like that espoused by Zerzan; rather, he believed civilization is baleful to humanity because of its liberal and leftward qualities, obstructing what he sees as honest resolve, desire for might and splendor. In other words, unlike Zerzan, Kaczynski was a rugged individualism-primitivist, and regarded civilization's errors as being based on succoring the weak and dragging down and obstructing the strong and proud in the process. Whether Zerzan has internalized this is open to debate. In 2008, Kaczynski published an essay called "The Truth About Primitive Life: A Critique of Anarchoprimitivism" that dissects the philosophy, showing its idiocy. Zerzan's work is the main target of the piece, indicating a possible falling-out between the pair.