Against the Strong Version of Primitivism

I understand Tinderbox is print only. I like it. I prefer paper texts myself, when available, and I appreciate people putting effort into expanding availability. Keeping things analog isn’t an ideological choice for me like I’m guessing it could be for a group of people who subtitle their project “An Offline Journal,” but I dig it nonetheless. The article “Against Technology,” though, takes anti-digital sentiments a bit too far. It’s unfortunate, because the author has important shit to say, but some sections come across as downright insulting. I’ll explain why.

First, though, some acknowledgments of sentiments I agree with wholeheartedly from the article. There are quite many:
- Technology as developed by techno-fascists and AI cultists is advancing too quickly and in an exploitative, destructive direction.
- It’s important to attack capitalist realism wherever it exists. One repugnant myth is that the current state of affairs – the apocalyptic trajectory of technological advancement – is inevitable.
- Not all technologies are made equal and not all are neutral.
- Most digital products these days are marketed as being good for progress and good for us, but progress for the ruling class can only bad for the rest of us.
- The effectively mandatory proliferation of using capitalist-designed technologies has made everyday functioning, social connections, and spiritual enrichment increasingly inaccessible for too many people.
- Efforts to invisibly weave these products (especially surveillance devices) into everyday life must be unmasked.
- The omnipresence of smartphones in particular looms large and can be quite difficult to cope with.
- Eco-fascists are on the rise and ready to capitalize on the climate crisis using new technologies for the recuperation of civilization aka colonial capitalist imperialist domination.
- It’s healthy to remain sensitized & consciously aware of the role of technology in our lives. Stay flexible and critical rather than lulled into normalizing any given technology thoughtlessly.

Here’s where my agreement breaks down:
“All technologies, whatever they may give you, take something away.”

Have you ever met a transsexual anarcho-nihilist raver? We take high-tech drugs. We worship high-tech music production methods. We are the shit. We are full of life and love. We are often laser-focused on destroying the death cult that is amerikkka.

This is not a liberalized identity politics argument that says you suck because your privilege is showing because you don’t like everything most transsexuals like. This is a declaration that most transsexuals are wiser than most cisgender people and even most transgender people. Certainly not comprehensively, but in general, other characteristics like race being equal. We are especially clear on the meaning of autonomy and the impacts of domination on our bodies, emotions, and spirits.

Talk about the crucial importance of staying sensitized and consciously aware of the role of technology in our lives. I love my high-tech hormone replacement therapy (HRT). I thought long and hard about starting it, and I am deeply aware of its entirely positive effects on my existence. So acutely aware, in fact, that it is all the easier to notice when some other technology is not serving my interests. For the majority of trans people, HRT takes nothing away except that which we long to exorcize. It gives many of us everything that matters: the strength to survive and the power to fight. I bet I’ve got more fight in me than you have in you, just because I love some technology and you’re against it all.

By the way, once our common enemies are gone, if anybody tries to take HRT from me and mine, we’ll mark them too. Same for electronic music. Do not come for the DJs.

Perhaps you haven’t yet developed the skill to distinguish between an iPhone and HRT, but many people have. We have the ability to make conscious, nuanced decisions about the role of technology in our lives. Maybe this is what you’re arguing for, too, and you just fumbled it by attacking “all technologies?”

Furthermore, many of us can codeswitch between using a phone to dissociate from oneself or relationships versus as a tool to support our collective wellbeing. I sometimes spend time on my phone. I sometimes spend long hours phone-free in quiet contemplation. The former activity does not negate the power of the latter. To animate phones with a singularly evil spirit, to deny the fact that we can get resourceful, clever, sneaky in how we engage with phones, is another version of capitalist realism.

Who knows, maybe the author of “Against Technology” is a transsexual raver. Doubtful, but nothing surprises me anymore. If so, their self hatred is palpable. While self hatred under oppression is understandable and not a moral failing, raising it as strategically ideal really sucks. Again, see: attack capitalist realism wherever it exists.

Another silly quote:
“Anarchists have decried this [internet of things proliferation] as an expansion of the surveillance state, but have largely failed to put the technological project in its totality into question.”

I have not failed to challenge technology in totality. I have chosen not to. I’m neither a post-humanist nor one of these “fully automated luxury space communism” anarchists, but some technologies I adore. It would be self-destructive of me to decry them all. See above.

And another:
“Like prison, technology is designed to keep us captive, and will never set us free.”

Only if you lack creativity or drive to actually do what it takes to get free. I’d love to see an attack drone take down a prison guard tower. I do understand that the prison architects are the original designers of drones, and I wish with all my being that military technologies never existed in the first place. My argument isn’t that this shit is somehow morally neutral. But wishes and attachment to the moral essence of an object won’t turn our enemies to dust.

It’s not wrong to say that some technologies are purely bad; it’s just such an inane, pointless waste of breath. It is important to reject the inevitability of future capitalist progress, but some cats are so far out of the bag at this point. We’d be fools not to utilize every technological tool already at our disposal.

Finally, there is a place in anarchist movements for all sorts of ways of life, from checked out of tech to tricked out with the latest. Despite my gloating about having a stronger-than-average ability to codeswitch, I do understand how life can feel quite disjointed if one person tries or is pressured to “do it all.”

It is certainly helpful to have people around who deeply integrate themselves in lower-tech lifeways, for example spending most of their time with plants. That way, we may all access benefits that come from knowing people who know plants intimately. It similarly benefits everybody when some militants go all-in to live especially high-tech lives in order to understand, redirect, and destroy the enemy’s technologies as effectively as possible. It’s awful that capitalism non-consensually pushes everybody toward specialization, but now that things have come this far, I want tech experts on my side.