The follow up lecture to the one I posted yesterday (look ma, back in school):

John Zerzan: Anarcho-Primitivism (ft. Socrates & Rousseau)

This is a slide from that lecture that I want to gloss:

I heard JZ speak once in person at a gathering in Flagstaff, and I think “calling for destruction” here is a mischaracterization, lacking in subtlety.

I can’t speak for Zerzan of course, but in my embrace of his thought I am not calling for anything. I can believe that many technologies, including most certainly these fucking phones, are destructive to our essential humanity, and still own them and use them. Maybe if I really had the courage of my convictions I’d take a sledge to this laptop right now, but I’m not going to do that, not even if you call me a hypocrite, and as for your phone, my destroying of it would be a sin.

In the previous lecture she mentioned that JZ and Uncle Ted K. had a falling-out. Perhaps that can be partly explained by Ted being the Unabomber, and Zerzan being a mild-mannered resident of Eugene, Oregon who speaks at symposia and writes books.

I am neither, but I would favor building books instead of bombs, and leaving destruction to the destroyers.

The professor is oversimplifying, and as the lecture goes on that gets worse, until at last she is equating anaprim thought with anti-intellectualism, and finally (for godssake) antisemitism.

The last line of the lecture is: “We’re done with anarcho-primitivism.”

You’re definitely speaking for yourself there, lady.