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“Read it and you will never think of civilization in the same way again.”—Kirkpatrick SaleThis anthology about "the pathology of civilization" offers insight into how progress and technology have led to emptiness and alienation.
Paperback: 276 pages
Publisher: Feral House; Revised ed. edition (May 10, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0922915989
ISBN-13: 978-0922915989
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.5 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #183,687 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #36 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Ideologies & Doctrines > Anarchism #134 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Ideologies & Doctrines > Radicalism #480 in Books > History > World > Civilization & Culture
Transcend the misery of the last 8000 years of Empire and join the Paleolithic heritage of over 2 million years of tribal life, ecstatic in wildernesses of soul, forest, and desert! Zerzan collects the feral souls of the ages, insurging to overcome this inhuman leviathan that seeks to swallow us all and spit us out as lifeless cogs! This book demonstrates a possibility to really go for the gold, to stop whining and demanding the petty-possible of Democrepublican corporate sellout mediocrity, and to reimagine how Wild life could really be! Especially noteworthy is the article on the Animals Fighting Back... It is high time we put the whole nonsense of civilization on the table to be debated and overcome. Why is civilization nonsense? Because it means war, hierarchy, class oppression, environmental degradation, et al. True "progress" will involve going beyond civilization to something more "civilized" and something more paleolithic and intense! Buy this book! It will provoke your thoughts! It will take you outside media culture!
Against Civilization by John Zerzan is a great compilation of writings from the hands of many different authors.The essays/excerpts cover a variety of subjects, including: topsoil depletion, deforestation, the loss of bio-diversity, pollution, and the human influence on the natural world. Many of the essays also discuss the harms of modern life, the emptiness of civilized living, and the pervasive unhappiness that pervades so many human lives.My favorite writings were:Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of InequalityFredy Perlman, Against His-story, Against Leviathan!Marvin Harris, Our KindChellis Glendinning, My Name is Chellis and I'm Recovering from Western CivilizationIvan Illich, Toward a History of NeedsTamarack Song, The Old Way and CivilizationWilliam Koetke, The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and The Seed of the FutureTheodore Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Postindustrial SocietyFeral Faun, Feral RevolutionKirkpatrick Sale, Rebels Against the Future: Lessons from the LudditesAll in all, this book is a great read for those willing to take an honest, hard look at what we call civilization.
This I a beautiful collection of work from the most important thinkers of our time. John Zerzan put this amaizing book together for people who know the horrors of civilization. I would reccomend this book to anybody and everybody living in our destructive modern culture. This book brings up points of an all around great perspective of civilization, with words from my personal favorite authors. Another plus is it is short but still a very percise and accurate read. You could finish it in a day or weekend. Over all beautiful piece of work.
Well written and informed, a must read. I read books of this nature all the time and my mind has not been stretched this far in a decade.
I really like this book. It's a great primer for critically thinking the many facets of what we call civilization as we confront our civilization's destruction of life on this planet. As such it contains an interwoven approach to the effects of civilization upon the non-human world as this destruction simultaneously includes human domestication socially, psychologically and spiritually in the form of dominating institutions of State, capital and organized religion. There is no distinction between 'man' and 'nature.' (I'm reminded here of Nietzsche when he pointed out the perniciousness of the word 'and' in this very context.)Today, as civilization is taken as *the* given, as *the* inevitable, I wonder why this is so when there have been, and still remain, demonstrable alternatives for human flourishing within the whole web of life. And in terms of the rhetoric of 'sustainability,' what exactly is to be sustained? There is no 'greening' of consumptive, exploitative, institutions of State and capital, each seeming bent upon endless expansion, centralization, management, class-stratification, order, and of course, obedience.Detractors may whine that there's no going back to the Stone Age, but I don't think that's what this book is necessarily about. Nor is it some ridiculous apologia for some 'perfect' Golden Age. It's perhaps better received as an introduction to alternatives that have, and do, allow for the flourishing of all life. As such it's a book which may provide for much needed critical thought and creative action against the Leviathan (civilization) which has, in actuality, produced and maintained the very war of all against all old Hobbes fraudulently blamed the conditions of 'nature' for producing. It is the re-examination of this lie for Leviathan, the deep implications which remain almost religiously axiomatic today, and the solution Leviathan always supplies for itself: a bigger, better Leviathan.
Will keep this short because I hate the "review novelists!!" (who reads it all anyway?.....) My first introduction to Zerzan and look forward to more to come. A collection of essays.....related by characteristic....and what is so eye-opening are the essays from the late 1700's and mid 1800s that identify "civilization" (you'll gain a new perspective of that word) as having the same ills and frustrations as we lament now. In short, "we're" not sustainable.
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