"There's simply no way we can ecologically sustainably take care of disabled, sick, neurodivergent, or trans people, because that requires a complex medical system! Trans and neurodivergent people should just learn to love themselves as they are, and disabled and sick people should learn that you don't have to have a long and functional life for it to be meaningful! It's okay for me to say this because I'm disabled and say 'white western' and 'imperial core' a lot"
@anarchopunk_girl We have evidence of people from primitive cultures taking care of their sick and disabled. It's just our capitalist, socially regressed society that can't conceive that someone has value beyond their productive capacity in the "labour market".
@PacificNic I'm not sure how this responds to the point I was making at all honestly. I'm ridiculing the people who think that we can't and shouldn't have advanced medicine and technology to make the lives of sick and disabled people more livable and allow them to function better, and who offer up weak latitudes about how they'll be really nice to disabled people and how you don't really need that medicine as some sort of compensation. Honestly your point is basically exactly the point I'm making fun of — that it's fine not to have that medicine and technology that makes the lives of sick and disabled people much better because indigenous societies "took care of their sick and disabled too." But what you mean by that is essentially being really nice to someone and keeping them fed and stuff while they suffer and die. It's a very hollow olive branch to offer up after just saying that you want to get rid of things that make disabled people's lives livable today. Like saying that societies without advanced medicine and Technology took care of their disabled doesn't really mean the same thing and is honestly not that helpful
@anarchopunk_girl Love themselves as they are? They may apply that to trans people, but to the autistic? They simply curse and damn us as a byproduct of capitalism, privileged by capitalism, or worse yet some kind of evil origin point for it.
@FinalOverdrive that's a good point, a lot of these fucking ecological-shitheads are full on New Age woo people who think all illnesses and especially autism are caused by the modern world. It's awfully convenient for them to think that too, because then it means they don't have to contend with the fact that maybe their religious doomsday fantasies of eliminating all or most technology and "returning to the land" would actually hurt people.
@FinalOverdrive I'm making fun of desert here and also a particular disabled person's thread here on collectiva regarding desert which I'm sure you can find if you scroll back in the local feed long enough
@PacificNic but you see, the organization and expertise and supply chains necessary to keep all that medicine and technology going are more complex than any single person can understand, *let alone* our ecological shithead friends, and so they simply assume that it can't remotely be done in a sustainable way or done absent hierarchy or authority, because, since they don't understand it, they can't imagine doing it in an alternate way. It's essentially the ultimate appeal to ignorance. They simply aren't creative enough to think of ways that we could do these things without damaging the environment or using hierarchy so they decide we have to do without. Like the Crimethinc article about how we can't have computers because long supply chains require hierarchy to organize. Why? Because they said so that's why.
@anarchopunk_girl That's not at all how I intended it and I think I misunderstood your point. I was trying to say that, if we are progressive as a society, we should be doing everything we can to make the lives of the chronically ill and disabled easier, including making all advanced medical care required accessible and free, and that our current regressive ableist culture stands in the way of that. It wasn't intended to say that what we did in the past was enough. It wasn't.
I don't understand why we would throw away what we have as far as medical technology goes because the economic and political paradigm has shifted. If anything, I feel like we should be doubling down on improving medical technology, rather than building fucking rocket ships for tourism.
@FinalOverdrive if all agriculture was moved to the cities as well I don't know that living in a 100% urban environment would be that miserable because there be plenty of greenery around as a result. Idk
@anarchopunk_girl Maybe people who have figured out some sort of equilibrium with the ecosystem can live in it, but at this point that's not most of the species. Esp. not 8 billion.
@anarchopunk_girl Which, I admit, is depressing. It will mean that we'll have to sustainably maintain an infrastructure of distraction because otherwise it would be psychologically miserable. But we European strains have pretty much fucked ourselves and fucked things for the world at large, sooo
@anarchopunk_girl They also don't want to contend with the fact that the most ecologically sustainable thing is to be 100% urban species, all agriculture moved to the cities to serve the cities, and leave the rest of the world to the wild. To save nature we can't live in it.
@anarchopunk_girl Well yeah, but for this lot that wouldn't be enough for them. Sorry friends, not all of us or even most of us will get to live a wild, untamed life in the forest in a small community where everyone knows and cares for us.
@anarchopunk_girl Seems super fucking lazy, intellectually. They can conceive of a new framework for a society, but can't imagine running supply chains more efficiently than the current monsters who do so only for profit? Way to set the bar high for a vision of the future...
I see this really popular sentiment among particularly radical anarchists, even ones who don't consider themselves primitivists, that producing stuff like personal computers is just impossible to do in a manner consistent with anarchist principles. This seems... very untrue to me, but it's almost an article of superiority for some — are *you* willing to do without this wonderful aspect of the modern world? No? Then you're an inferiorly pious monk-like anarchist.
> I hope I’ve shown that you don’t need to be an anti-tech primitivist to see why we cannot expect the production of complex, modern, technological conveniences to continue in an anarchist society, as they require ecological destruction, division of labor, and pronounced hierarchy.
Ecological destruction I can't speak to, but I don't see why the division of labor has to be inherently anti-anarchist or alienating or whatever. We might have to change up how we divide tasks to make them more meaningful and less monotonous, but the main source of alienation from labor isn't specialization, it's a lack of self-direction and investment in/control over the distribution and reward for the end product. It doesn't seem to me like there's any kind of fundamental reason why the division of labor is un-anarchist or impossible to do right, this sounds to me like a fundamentally primitivist notion.
And if the complaint is primarily just that some of the jobs involved in producing computers involved toxic substances or danger than that seems like a reason to increase the agency and compensation of such people and for us to expect fewer people to want to do it (and less often), but I don't think it just simply wouldn't get done at all. Maybe we could start viewing minors as heroes like we do firefighters?
Am I missing like a core anarchist principle that means the division of labor isn't allowed?
And honestly, if so, I've got serious concerns, honestly. I'm not sure how you could have anything *but* a primitivist society without some division of labor. Requiring everyone to directly participate in the production of any product they want seems like it would be difficult from a logistical and even just life standpoint even for basic things like bread.
Nor does large scale industrial coordination require hierarchy. The article tries to show that it does by saying that anarchist principles would organize such large scale production less efficiently, and so hierarchies would form in the interest of more efficiency — but why are we assuming efficiency will be the only, or the most important, value these presumably anarchists producing these things will have?
Most of the rest of the article is devoted to establishing that the process of creating modern computers is extremely complex and interesting, which doesn't inherently mean it's impossible to do, so those parts seemed more like an appeal to emotion to me — trying to overwhelm the reader with details and steps until they feel that it could never be done just because it looks intimidating to a layman. Then again, if you assume nobody is allowed to specialize...
@PacificNic agreed. To quote a friend who I was talking to about this, "it feels like they're tacitly conceding to statists by genuinely believing ecocide and statism are necessary for a medical system rather than actively impeding and profiteering off the proliferation of hrt and meds. literally just the other side of the "checkmate anarchists, who'll take care of the sick" coin. shut the fuck up this is ridiculous"
It seems like an analysis of the capabilities of anarchist/communist societies through the lens of liberalism/capitalism. I can't see that argument as anything but bad faith.
I know governments intentionally inject absurd arguments into leftist communities in order to discourage hope for anything better than what we have. Maybe it's nothing more than that. Primitivism, to me, looks like people just throwing their hands up and saying only capitalism works if we are to have a standard of living that is acceptable to most people.
I don't really talk to many leftists about theory, though, despite considering myself a leftist. I know it's important but it often feels like a minefield and I think people get bogged down in details but real life isn't just theory. We can have an amazing concept of the future, but we are still going to have to adapt to realities as they unfold. I'm sure my ignorance of leftist thought is showing...
@anarchopunk_girl@PacificNic In fairness, crimethinc wasn't doing in the the lens of capitalism and liberalism, they just thought that ecocide was an unavoidable feature of mass production and it was...common but not universal to a lot of anarchism at the time. It was the greenies who were most guilty of it
@FinalOverdrive@PacificNic ah yes I look forward to getting the most condescending and short tempered exegesis of deep anarchist lore conceivable 😝 and being railed at for not being a moralist in the bargain for some reason
@FinalOverdrive@anarchopunk_girl I don't know much about it. I've never really discussed my economic/political stance on things with other leftists so I'm maybe way out of the loop. Still, though, I think it lacks imagination and seems morally inconsistent. Like, okay we can minimize ecological harm by maximizing social and human harm? I dunno, though. This isn't really my area.