-->

Introduction

The issue of environmentalism is widely acknowledged, perhaps due to the increasing awareness on the effect of globalization today. While many are beginning to be concerned about the situation of the environment and the world’s natural resources, many are still more inclined into devoting their energy to technological advances and even to the point of exhaustion of the resources that human kind once witnessed in full bloom. This paper is a brief discussion of the notion of the green primitivism and its possible impact and influence to environmentalism.

Human-caused environmental risks are unavoidable in a technologically and economically advanced society. Contemporary environmentalists deploy ecological and ethical axios to structure the debate over environmental uncertainty and risk management. They adopt the “imperative of sustainability” and the “precautionary principle” as the foci of an ethical and ecological effort to evaluate and limit environmental risk (Thiele, 2000, p. 540). Many of the anthropogenic environmental risks that people face are voluntarily assumed. One increases the probability of death from lung cancer by 1 in a million for every 1.4 cigarettes that one smokes (Wilson as cited by Thiele, 2000, p. 540). This risky activity is freely chosen (at least before addiction develops), and the nature or level of the risk involved is relatively well known.

Environmentalism and Green Primitivism

While various conservation movements have roots going back at least into the last century, environmentalism is a phenomenon that can be traced back no further than the 1960s. Needless to say, contemporary environmentalist thought has gone beyond its beginnings. But its instincts remain clear in its repeated attempts to harness for its use critical theory, Marxism, neo-Marxism, socialism, feminism, anarchism, and most problematically, deconstructionism (Smith, 1998, p. 21). These are all modern phenomena, descended from modern political philosophy. Environmentalism will never escape the confining grip of the modern, which is where the origin of the real problems lies.

The public awareness of the environmental hazards of pesticides, automobile emissions, and the contamination of the nation’s rivers and lakes–the most famous of which was the eutrophication of Lake Erie in 1972–was part of the changing public sentiments in the decades following World War II (Novotny, 2000). Widespread fears of health threats from the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons increased concern for the environment as early as the 1940s. However, the emergence of the postwar environmental movement did not get fully under way until later in the next decade, when the magnitude of environmental depredation was given renewed attention in the work of scientists, naturalists, and journalists, who publicized the magnitude of environmental damage during this period through their writings and photographs.

For Gottlieb, the limits of environmentalism stem from the movement’s failure to assume a more inclusive social perspective. By allowing opponents of the environmental agenda to paint issues as choices between jobs and the environment, for example, environmentalists have ostracized vital constituencies (White, 2001). Environmentalists often strive to promote either maximizing consumption of environmental goods, such as scenic resources, or minimizing negative impacts, such as overpopulation and waste. This emphasis on the product ignores the role of the producer, giving rise to criticism of environmentalists as elitist, anticity, and antiworker.

On the other hand, Green Primitivism, more popularly known as anarcho-primitivism (or simply primitivism), is focused on the rejection of industrialization, technology, and division of labor or specialization. Green anarchists instead embrace environmentally friendly technologies and do not necessarily condemn any advanced means of organization or production.

Primitivism or anarcho-primitivism is for an anti-technological critique of the origins and progress of civilization and a political platform advocating the deindustrialization of society and the creation of a non-technological civilization based on a primitive hunter-gatherer model. According to anarcho-primitivists, anthropology shows that the shift in the relationship to food from procurement by gathering and hunting to production through agriculture and the subsequent sedentary, surplus based life-way leads to an increase in the complexity of social organization and that this is characterized by more and more hierarchy and coercion.

Primitivists hold that for 99% of the existence of the Homo genus humans lived in small nomadic groups who depended on wild foods and natural materials like wood, bone, hide and stone for all of their needs. These band societies are politically, economically, and in gender relations egalitarian. They are organized without hierarchy or coercion. They are thus anarchistic.

Eco-anarchism is centered on eco-villages, communities of a few hundred or less individuals which are self-sustaining. Green anarchy makes no such requirements, but it is not necessarily exclusive of them either.

Anarcho-primitivism and eco-anarchism may be seen as more specific forms of green anarchy, considering that it is not exclusive of their beliefs. However, green anarchy tends to be more distinctly focused on relatively less radical changes to the fundamental physical structure of society. Thus the term green anarchy should only be used when the ultimate organization of an “environmental anarchism” is either not in question or unrestrictive.

Approximately 10,000 years ago there began a shift in the relationship between humans and their food. This was a shift from gathering and hunting, to horticulture, then to agriculture, and then to modern industrial agriculture. Primitivists believe that as these infrastructural changes took place they led to changes in the political structures of the societies, from effectively leaderless egalitarian bands, to groups lead by headmen, then by chiefs, and, with the emergence of the state, by kings and in modern times by presidents, parliaments, and dictators. Primitivists advocate the destruction of civilization as we know it. They oppose all its aspects including specialization of tasks/the division of labor and technology. The primitivist movement has connections to radical environmentalism. Primitivism has been notably advocated by John Zerzan, Theodore Kaczynski (the Unabomber) and, to some extent, by Derrick Jensen. Michael Casimir (2001, p. 7) cites Roy Allan who pointed out that this myth, which he calls `the illusory of green primitivism’, is the other extreme of the environmentalist ideology. It claims that indigenous people, especially foragers, have always lived as `Ecologically Noble Savages’ in harmony with their environment and that, because of their very specific `spirituality’, they never overexploited their habitat. This led to the idea that if these communities were left to themselves, they would never change their traditions and would continue to live in harmony and balance within their respective habitats. The basis for such beliefs which are grounded in European romanticism (Fitzgerald, 1949\7), and were dismissed as early as 1971 by Edmund Leach as `sentimental rubbish’ (cited after Ellen 1992), has now been radically questioned by many anthropologists and historians.

Another concept that must be taken in consideration with regard to this text is extreme environmentalism, which could be incorporated with green primitivism. Extreme environmentalism is considered misanthropic. It sees human beings simply as destructive forces. Particularly now that human beings have discovered science and technology, they threaten, on this view, the continued existence of every form of life. At the very least, they should revert to the hunter-gatherer stage of human development, living as other animals do, but their total disappearance from the earth’s surface would be the ideal solution, provided that it could be accomplished without the loss of other species. Moderate humanism, responding to this, is not obliged to deny that many human beings have been, are, and will always be greedy, power-ridden, and destructive. But at the same time it points to the creativeness of human beings, to what they have added to the world by their presence, not as hunter-gatherers but in virtue of their development of civilization (Passmore, 1993, p. 13).

When the environmentalist demands the reduction of pollution, supports recycling, stresses the importance of reducing population growth, asks for the setting aside of areas as national parks, there is not the slightest reason why the moderate humanist should object; what is in question is human health, human welfare, human enjoyment even when it is also true that other species will benefit. When, too, the environmentalist seeks to preserve areas, or species, of great beauty or of scientific interest, the moderate humanist does not object (Passmore, 1993, p. 13). The more difficult cases arise when what is in question is the preservation of species that are not obviously useful or obviously beautiful and of wilderness. In these cases, too, the environmentalist may appeal for humanist support by arguing that the species and the habitats that are at risk could turn out in the long run to be useful as genetic sources or as supplying medically useful drugs.

Conclusion

Colchester (1997, p. 114) observes:

“One conclusion from a recent review of the available literature on Amazonian societies is that `Amazonian tribal populations make no active or concerted effort to conserve fish and game resources. At the same time, it is clear that in most cases there may be no need for a conservation policy, because current local subsistence demands on resources have not led to severe resource shortage’”.

Humans, as members of ecosystems, have always interacted at the highest trophic level in more or less complex food chains with the other species in their habitat. It can therefore be said, that wherever humans live or have lived, there has been no `nature’ in the sense in which European romantics imagined it–as a Garden of Eden. With very few exceptions, lands which were considered to be in a virgin state of `pure’ or `true nature’, without human influence and therefore worthy of protection, never existed in the last centuries. Long before the arrival of the White man, even the greatest part of contemporary United States of America and Australia was an anthropogenic landscape, molded more or less by human activities. Yet, these false, romantic ideas of `tribal populations’ always living in harmony with their environment have influenced and guided many actions of environmentalists and continue to do so. Long integrated in a globalized world, many of these `noble savages’ sell `their nature’ and use their resources to keep up economically with the dominant sections of society.

The over-exploitation of resources by nomadic populations is, indeed, largely embedded in local economic and power structures. Quick profits for some, coupled with unemployment or underemployment for the majority are the outcome of rapid changes demanded by expanding global markets. In the process, the incontestable and enormous knowledge of nomadic peoples about various phenomena in their natural environment are often ignored and its value rejected outright. This is particularly striking in the case of wildlife protection programs and natural parks which are designed and created in order to preserve biological diversity.

The concept of green primitivism could perhaps appear as helpful to the environment. However, with the extremity of the concept of green primitivism, it may be regarded as being a little bit to unrealistic. Perhaps, the romanticists ideal have greatly influenced the said concept and thus, such may not be at all too helpful in the revival of today’s environment, considering its situation today. To quote Casimir (2001. p. 7):

“The development of the last decades have clearly shown that both extreme points of view–the myth of `true nature’ as well as the romantic and false idea of `noble savages living in harmony with their environment’ – have failed as concepts for planning reserved areas, sanctuaries and national parks to secure biodiversity and rare fauna and flora. New approaches are urgently required.”

Through a growing history of more diverse environmentalisms, scholars are becoming more attentive to the fact that in every historical period, there are different, conflicting, and sometimes contradictory understandings of the environment. This is especially crucial in light of the emerging involvement of African-Americans, Latinos and other groups with the environmental justice movement. This movement shows that it is necessary to reconstruct narratives about the environment not merely from the perspective of one particular group, but from many different groups (Novotny, 2000).