Today's Great Disappointment

[oneirophrenia]

Afterculture Art - An Anthropology of the Future

This site could have bee brilliant. The conception os simple, but elegant, and scientifically-defensible: design an anthropologically realistic portrayal of the various cultures of "New Native Americans," the lowtech survivors of our present hightech civilization's fall. The initial image you encounter on the page is beautiful and thoughtful: a greeneyed, but somewhat darkskinned, woman in a heavy, sarape-like covering with Native American-esque bead jewelry centered on a salvaged VW hood ornament pendant. Awesome! Post-apocalyptic anthrolopology at its finest!

Wrong.

Just beneath the picture starts the useless neohippy, neopagan "back to the Earth Mother" bullshit:

This is a glimpse of "a future that works:"
sustainable, simple, sacred--and
anthropologically defensible.
But it's not the only possible way we could live:
the Afterculture signals a return to the rich
"cultural biodiversity" that has characterized the
human species for most of its sojourn here, and the
viewer is challenged to imagine other versions,
other tribes.

Ummmmm. No. The main hypothesis here is that this "future society" will evolve out of ours by natural cultural evolution, not the apocalyptic ending of our own civilization. What MORON will trade the technologies and abilities we have to day to go back to sitting in longhuts, listening to the old women of the tribe babble about birthin' them babies and the Corn Mother, and building farming implements out of pieces of old cars? A civilization like this could certainly evolve in the wake of, say, a major civilization-destroying war or plague, or could easily be what remnant "amish" Luddites and those too poor or too isolated to take part in a technological Singularity, a gradual conversion of "first world" civilization to an uploaded virtual state, or some other form of technologically-based evolutionary moment could form in the shadows of posthumanity's processor monoliths or whatnot...but, dear gods, I am so horribly sick of "back to the Earth" predictions of sustainable societies, matriarchal utopianism, and antitechnological mysticism. Humanity has grown beyond that crap; only a major planetary disaster like an asteroid strike could potentially eliminate the bleeding edge of human technological evolution--at which point, survivors would very likely sink back into ecologically-sustainable farming or hunting-and-gathering societies just for the sake of basic survival. THAT could happen. But everyone one day deciding...ohhh, we're sick of a world run by those brutish and evil MEN with their cars and their strip mining and their machines that are an affront to the Harvest Crone, so let's just scrap civilization and go back to being Iroquois?

FAT. FUCKING. CHANCE.

I say: "Go listen to the Talking Heads, 'Nothing But Flowers' and THEN hit me up with your la-la rhetoric of macrobiotics and virgin-sacrifice, you filthy fucking hippies. Enjoy what's left of the planet when the rest of us become machines and leave this cruddy, polluted ball of mud."

Comments

Re: I'm

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

And don't forget the awesomest of all the awesome gods:

DOCTOR FUNKENSTEIN.

[lyssabard.livejournal.com]

There is a reason why I love you. This is but part of it.

Lys--been rantin' about this for a while.

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

Keep an eye peeled to pegritz.com for a longwinded and SAVAGELY MISOGYNISTIC (well, not really) rant about filthy fucking matriarchal hippies--a.k.a. Ani DiFranco fans with unshaven armpits and dreads that stink of patchouli, sweat, and other women's poona-juice--and the completely indefensible and ludicrous mythoi of the "back to nature" fools.

I live in the middle of the fucking woods. I am surrounded in plants and wild animals. I spend a good percentage of every day wandering about and just enjoying the wonder of our planetary ecosystem. BUT I'M NOT A FUCKING EARTHFUCKER! I respect the planet but, at the same time, I'm a tech geek. You CAN BE BOTH!

And I don't care how badly Arnold Schwarzenegger is fucking up in California, I will still vote for him for President because I truly believe he will lead our civilization forward into a glorious Hyperborian Age!

Re: Late Summer Reading

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to read that book for a long time since I saw it on your bookshelf and spent some time reading the first few chapters. A lot of it seems like hooey to me, but it's very creative and *interesting* hooey--much like theosophy, which is the COOLEST fucking syncretic myth-work I've ever encountered. Gods bless you, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky--you may have looked like a tractor and smelt of borscht and sweat, but I would've done you James Joyce Style a hundred times for just being cool!

Re: Late Summer Reading

[shimmer-star.livejournal.com]

i'll have to check this out. it sounds intriguing!

[shimmer-star.livejournal.com]

pegritz, you know i love you, but where the fuck does this anger come from??

back to the earth does not equal feminist hippy ideas. lots of men are into the movement, too, and it doesn't necessarily have to do with any earth-based religion. in a lot of ways, i think it makes sense. yes, i'm also a tech geek, but i can see the benefits of going back to the earth.

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

Actually, I should've been more accurate in my vicious assessment of "back-to-earthers": I haven't any problem at all with ecologically-minded folks who want to live their lives more "in tune," I suppose you could say, with the ecosphere around them and to care more for the survival of the planet--that's a very laudable goal and I'd probably say that I number myself among them. But the people I just loathe are not those who simply realize that "getting back" to a simpler lifestyle involving sustainable basic farming, self-sufficiency, and the like. The people I loathe are those who babble endlessly about scrapping EVERYTHING--all "modern conveniences"--and basically going amish...except that their version of the amish lifestyle is wrapped up in a frankly ludicrous melange of retro-paganism, anarcho-socialist utopianism, and an anachronistic lust for a so-called long gone golden age of matriarchal bliss in which the mothers of the tribes rather than the hunters and gatherers made all the pertinent social decisions. THOSE kind of people--the folks behind the "Afterculture" project--are not advocating ecologically-sound technologies, lifestyles, and so forth...they're infusing that concept with a goofy luddite worldview compounded with completely, verifiably *wrong* conceptions of humanity's glorious "Earth Mother" past. These people are always talking about forsaking contemporary civilization for a past social ideal that never existed in the first place: the so-called glorious "matriarchal cultures" of the past that were supplanted by violent, brutish patriarchal cultures were no less violent and brutish...they just had priestesses instead of priests calling for the unending human sacrifices to appease the Mother of the Rivers so she'll guarantee a good flood this year. There's a good friggin' *reason* those cultures are no longer around: they became irrelevant to the changing needs of evolving civilizations. What's the point of hearkening back, even slightly, to societies that FAILED? Fundamentally, "getting back to the earth" does not involve taking backwards steps: it only recommends taking better care of what we have *now*, ecologically. Filthy neohippies wrapped up in regressive dreams of supposed past glories *are* taking backwards steps...and whereas I fully support their right to do so (they certainly aren't harming *me* in any way by doing so), I'm more than willing to criticize them for being unrealistic and goofy. :)

Hell, you know me...I have this deeprooted psychological need to bitch about something at least once per week. :) This week it was neohippies!

amen, brotha!

[shimmer-star.livejournal.com]

Fundamentally, "getting back to the earth" does not involve taking backwards steps: it only recommends taking better care of what we have *now*, ecologically.

*bows*

well-put!