Domesticated Animals & Us

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Note: This article first appeared in the current issue of Fifth Estate (#391 Fall/Winter 2014)

creatures of empire

Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America
Virginia DeJohn Anderson
Oxford University Press, 2006, 336 pp., $19.95 paperback

 

 

Civilization is a lie. Its images mask violence and its logic is that of genocide. Even the most banal scene of grazing cattle, while seemingly serene, portrays a weapon a war.

Virginia DeJohn Anderson’s Creatures of Empire is an important work for many reasons. It restores agency to domesticated animals and recognizes their vital role in a key period of American history; by recognizing the role of livestock Anderson’s work contributes to a more complete understanding of the European invasion of North America. It also provides a compelling case study of how civilization has been spread and genocide carried out; while tactics may have shifted according to convenience and circumstance, the goal was always to eliminate Indians as such either by transforming individuals into pseudo-English Christians or simply through physical removal and extermination.

Anderson focuses on seventeenth-century releations between English colonists and two groups of Algonquian-speaking Indians: Indians of southern New England and Indians of the Chesapeake region of colonial America. Animals—both wild and domestic—often served as the intermediaries between colonists and Indians prompting both short-term cooperative efforts to minimize disputes as well as intense violence. Animals became tertiary targets of violence often being killed simply to send a message from one group to another. Anderson argues that toward the end of the seventeenth-century the fact “that animals could help incite a war between human combatants was eminently clear” (p. 232).

Even before direct contact between colonists and Indians, the two groups often encountered animals that would challenge their conventional understandings of human-animal relations. Indians would encounter domesticated animals such as cattle and pigs brought by colonists from Europe; animals that were deemed property. For people with a comprehensive and intimate knowledge of the landscape, encounters with unfamiliar animals must have been incredibly shocking. Furthermore, virtually all animals in the Indians’ experience were wild and no living animal was considered an individual’s property. Likewise, colonists would encounter wild animals who would prey on their livestock, destroy their crops, and generally make highly-controlled, English-style agriculture close to impossible.

Both groups—colonists and Indians—would regularly encounter feral animals that blurred conceptual categories. For Indians, feral livestock most closely resembled wild animals that could legitimately be hunted. And yet to the English, “livestock could no more become [wild] than colonists could become Indians” (p. 138). For the English, any animal that was deemed property would necessarily always be property regardless of how far the animal wandered or uncared for the animal was; any resemblance to a wild animal was superficial and for another to kill that animal would invite harsh sanction.

Initially, when Indians were in a dominant position and colonists were simply struggling to survive, the colonists’ civilizing agenda took a superficially cooperative or ideological approach. It was not only prudent to preserve peaceful relations with valuable trading partners but the English believed that they could distinguish themselves from Spain by adoption of “an ideological approach [to colonization] that advertised their nation’s moral superiority (p. 78). It would be a way to make up for the fact that Spain was farther ahead of England in the race to secure colonies.

Furthermore, “[c]olonists took it for granted that Indians would recognize the superiority of an English agrarian regime once they saw how it worked,” and so violence may not even be necessary (p. 171). The effort was not only to turn Indians into sedentary agrarians but into Christians as well. For the English, owning livestock was strongly invested with a normative component; indeed, it was deemed a hallmark of civilization. The fact that native populations had failed to domesticate animals was considered clear evidence of a serious deficiency on their part. To English eyes, the landscape was made for livestock and awaiting improvement. But in fact, as Anderson points out, there was little benefit to be gained from domestication and the species on the North American continent were not of the sort that would readily submit to domestication.

This “ideological approach” was evident when in 1656 the Virginia colony adopted a policy of rewarding Indians who killed a sufficient number of wolves by giving them a cow. The heads of eight wolves could be exchanged for one cow. It was a plan intended to eliminate wolves which threatened English livestock while simultaneously introducing the concept of livestock ownership to native peoples. Similarly, an effort in Rhode Island involved taxing colonists’ cattle to raise funds to assist Indians in building fences around their cornfields. This was to minimize disputes involving animal intrusions while shifting the burden onto Indians rather than animal owners. Once fences were built, Indians would be required to maintain them if they were to have their grievances heard and be considered for compensation.

But by the middle of the seventeeth century, the civilizing agenda shifted from a strategy of assimilation to outright aggression and “depredations against livestock came to be seen as…acts of war” (p. 178). The fences that Indians were pressured into building were on several occassions burnt down by colonists who then proceeded to let their cattle roam through Indian cornfields; “roaming livestock acted as the advance guard of English settlement.” (p. 243) It was thought that such routine harassment could compel Indians to simply leave and cede the land to colonists. Disputes that would have previously been treated as delicate diplomatic issues to be navigated with caution—when the colonists were weak—were now simply regarded as a matters of law enforcement and handled with force.

Anderson’s concludes by saying that “livestock enabled the English to extend their dominion over the New World with remarkable speed and thoroughness” (p. 242). Livestock would advance, Indians would retreat, colonists would move in, and then the process would repeat itself as many times as necessary.

For anyone looking to better understand the specific mechanisms by which civilization encroaches and genocide is carried out, Anderson’s Creatures of Empire should be treated as required reading.

Pearce and Predation: The Intersection of Veganism and Transhumanism

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“The final dream of civilization is that everything will be controlled, organized, categorized; all wildness and spontaneity will be eradicated.”
-Miles Olson, Unlearn, Rewild

“Why confine the civilising process to a single ethnic group or species?”
-David Pearce

A recent interview with vegan and transhumanist David Pearce serves to illustrate the difficulty posed by predation for vegans and/or anyone concerned about the well-being of nonhuman animals. Predation is a Rorschach test and how one responds to it can inform their whole outlook on wild nature. Does predation mean that nature is necessarily and overwhelmingly a place of suffering and death (”red in tooth and claw”)? Alternatively, might the suffering associated with predation be offset by nature’s virtues?

Pearce understands veganism as a means to reduce suffering. But Pearce’s ultimate aspiration is not merely to reduce suffering but to eliminate suffering altogether. Predation is a significant source of suffering that would obviously need to be addressed for Pearce’s vision to be realized. Pearce says:

“I tentatively predict that the world’s last unpleasant experience in our forward light-cone will be a precisely datable event — perhaps some micro-pain in an obscure marine invertebrate a few centuries hence.” 


To realize this goal, Pearce is open to both phased extinctions and genetic reprogramming of carnivores. In the interview he says:

“I’m not personally convinced that we need such predatory species to survive.”

It is important to pause here. Pearce is saying that there may be no reason to be troubled by species extinction and that, in some cases at least, extinction might be a worthwhile goal to pursue. We don’t need lions or tigers and if they are only going to hurt other animals then they might as well disappear. Note that while such a view may seem strange, it is not necessarily inconsistent with Pearce’s veganism; Pearce would presumably view it as the logical extension of his veganism.

If predators are to be kept around:

“the carnivorous members of tomorrow’s wildlife parks will need to be genetically and behaviourally tweaked — with neurochips, GPS tracking and abundance of other high-tech safeguards to prevent accidents.”

He speaks of “wildlife parks” because at this point there will seemingly be no wilderness and consequently no free-living animals. Domestication will have reached its zenith. Animals that remain will effectively be zoo exhibits; they will exist at the discretion of human beings and in a form determined by human beings. He explains that:

“Within the next few decades, every cubic metre of the planet will be computationally accessible to surveillance, micro-management and control.”

Surveillance, micro-management, and control. These are the values of civilization and Pearce wonders: why limit the civilizing process to one species? The values of civilization aspire toward universal application.tiger collar

Note: David Pearce’s website–The Hedonistic Imperative–can be found at http://www.hedweb.com/

 

Two Thoughts on the Animal Liberation Front

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Brown-Bear-2-300x225

Animals have claws; the animal liberation movement should too. And many animals, when cornered or threatened, won’t hesitate to scratch somebody’s fuckin eyes out if that is what is necessary to secure their freedom and safety. Activists speculate and pontificate about what course of action animals would take but when we look at what animals actually do, what we see is attack and that should be inspiring.

This is why I have always supported the efforts of the Animal Liberation Front as well as other entities that do not share the ALF’s commitment to nonviolence.

With that said, I share the following two thoughts concerning the ALF:

First, defenders of the ALF consistently point out its adherence to nonviolence and its remarkable success in avoiding physical harm to humans and other animals. It is said to be a near flawless track record. And yet, it is somewhat difficult to assess this claim. Activists acting under the banner of the ALF generally only claim responsibility for an action after it is completed. Activists can assess its success prior to sending out a communique claiming responsibility. Might activists who botched an action opt not to take responsibility (in this case, blame)? A flawless track record might inevitably result when one has the opportunity to claim the successes and not the failures. In fact, the flawless track record might be nothing but a matter of semantics given that the ALF Credo says:

Any group of people who are vegetarians or vegans and who carry out actions according to ALF guidelines have the right to regard themselves as part of the ALF.

and ALF guidelines include:

TO take all necessary precautions against harming any animal, human and non-human

It may be the case that poorly executed actions are not ALF actions purely as a matter of definition. If one failed to take “necessary precautions” then that person does not have a legitimate claim to the ALF name.

Second, support for the ALF and ALF-style actions cannot plausibly hinge on the success of any particular action or how well it is executed. It makes no sense to support a tactic provided only that it is always executed flawlessly and that mistakes are never made. To attach such a caveat is to essentially oppose the use of a given tactic.

If we would like to see a large number of actions carried out against those who harm, exploit, torture, and kill animals, then we must be open to the inevitability that mistakes will be made. Humans and nonhumans may be physically harmed. Even in instances when every consideration is taken, every safeguard is put in place things may not go well through no fault of those carrying out the action. We must also be open to the fact that some people will naturally possess a greater level of skill than others. One virtue of ALF actions is that they are accessible to a wide range of people, can be done individually or in small groups, and may be relatively inexpensive. In short, these tactics are not the exclusive province of experts.

Individual actions should be assessed but only for the purpose of making future actions more effective. When individuals are caught, the mistakes they made (i.e. how they got caught) should be assessed but only for the purpose of providing lessons to others who can then avoid repeating such mistakes.

If we have zero tolerance for risk, then we take such tactics off the table. I believe that would be a drastic mistake.

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Civilization Will Stunt Your Growth / Engaging with Eco-Ability Conference

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The video below was my contribution to the 2nd Annual Engaging with Eco-Ability Conference that recently took place on July 26, 2014. The abstract for the presentation appears below the video (which will be properly oriented when playing).

ABSTRACT: Anarcho-primitivism is frequently described by its critics as being incapable of providing sufficient accommodation for people with disabilities; it purportedly “requires a non-disabled body for its ideal society” and is thus viewed as an inherently ableist position. I will argue, on the contrary, that anarcho-primitivism advocates a society that would provide the fullest flourishing for people with a diverse range of abilities and that civilization itself is a disablizing force. It is civilization that effectively stunts our growth and renders many of us disabled; it is civilization that narrows the range of our senses, shrinks our world and our horizons, and denies us the opportunity to experience the full use of our bodies. The standardization of mass society necessarily defines an increasing number of people as “disabled” if they do not fit a narrowly prescribed form. The “normal range” of human variation is being shrunk and those outside of this range are stigmatized, pathologized, medicated, and manipulated. The civilized solution to living with people of different abilities is to treat large segments of people like broken clocks in need of new parts or regular servicing. This approach is in accordance with the standard operating procedure of civilization to understand every human problem as a technical problem; it allows us to discharge our responsibility to care for those around us by developing new products, offering new services, and building new infrastructure. The need for relationship is erased. In this way, civilization allows us not to care for others who may need assistance, which is to say, it allows others not to care for us when we need assistance. The civilized solution to accommodating people with a diverse range of abilities is worse than the perceived problem. The solution is runaway technological escalation and all of the consequences that come with that.

Videos of the other presentations from the conference can be found here at the website for the Institute for Critical Animal Studies.

 

 

Wooden Ships

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Slave Ship Fredensborg II, 1788_jpg

Billions will die. This is possibly the most quickly voiced objection to anarcho-primitivism: if implemented billions will die. Only civilzation can support a human population of 7 billion (and growing).  There cannot be 7 billion hunter-gatherers. A population of 7 billion needs to be packed into dense cities like slaves into wooden ships. The density alone means that there will be a significant attrition rate but anti-primitivist critics are seemingly just trying to ignore the fact that the ship is already sinking. Yet it’s difficult to celebrate the sea-worthiness of a slave ship. Anarcho-primitivists are suggesting a mutiny and possibly a turning back but are consequently blamed for putting the whole vessel at risk and besides, it is said that we’ve already gone too far. How will we make it to land without the captain?

Even those who are seemingly receptive to the critique of civilization such as Ronald Wright, author of A Short History of Progress, counsel against rocking the boat too hard. Wright counsels:

“Those who don’t like civilization, and can’t wait for it to fall on its arrogant face, should keep in mind that there is no other way to support humanity in anything like our present numbers or estate.”

Wright follows this point with a footnote that says; “Put bluntly, billions would die.”

Those who are less receptive to the critique of civilization than Wright will regularly use the word “genocidal” to describe the anarcho-primitivist ideal. Anarcho-statist Noam Chomsky has said that primitivists are “calling for the worst mass genocide in human history”. Resistance is both crazy and dangerous; better to bide one’s time in the belly of the ship, strive to adapt to one’s new conditions.

In reality, anarcho-primitivists are sounding the alarm: things do not get better when the slave ship arrives in the so-called “New World”. Waiting to act allows the stakes to get higher and puts even greater numbers in jeopardy.

Civilization currently has about 7 billion hostages. Anyone who seeks to disrupt civilization’s machinations is accused of putting those hostages at risk. But civilization is a fanatic who is not looking to make a deal. The hostages will never be released; as it stands, many of them already show symptoms of aligning with their captor. Indeed, as the human population grows, civilization claims even greater numbers. Soon anarcho-primitivists will likely be accused of putting 8 or 9 billion people in jeopardy. “Billions will die” the critics will warn. Ronald Wright explained that as civilization advanced, it “kicked out the rungs below” and so it will inevitalby be a terrifying and painful jump (or perhaps fall) back to sane way of life.

Nonetheless, mutiny remains the best course of action even knowing full well that not everyone will survive; we do not want to go where this ship is heading.

Veganism’s Industrial Infrastructure

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“I feel that the technology problem is the source of Animal and Earth degradation. If there was no industry and computer tech, even if everyone hunted and ate Animals, 99% of the Animal abuse and murder that exists today would be gone!”
-ALF prisoner Walter Bond, May 2014*

What if the very infrastructure necessary for widespread veganism is itself a threat to the well-being of nonhuman animals? Might the best of all possible worlds be a less-than-vegan world?

Industrial infrastructure may make veganism possible for a wider range of people than it would otherwise be and yet it almost necessarily will claim the lives of a great number animals. The factories producing tofurky jerky and soy ice cream will be located on land that was once habitat; parking lots will replace forests. Refrigerated trucks transporting fresh produce will require a massive interstate system and will foul the air that all life—human and nonhuman—depends on.

If we think of veganism as more than a diet—as many will quite fairly insist upon—the problem grows more severe. Synthetic materials for vegan clothing often rely on fossil fuels and we thus have a need for drilling, refinement, global shipping, and the whole climate changing operation that we currently live (and die) with.  Every step of the way is going to degrade and cut short the lives of animals.

Many, including Peter Singer and PETA, have put their hopes of widespread veganism in the prospect of in vitro meat and yet to accept this is to accept vivisection. There are also hopes for lab grown leather and lab grown cow’s milk which on the surface eliminate animal suffering but are deeply intertwined with the industrial system that is antithetical to animal flourishing.

The mainstream animal rights movement—like mainstream society generally—anticipates technology solving the problems that concern them rather than amplifying problems. This expectation is an article of faith and therefore unthreatened by existing evidence. A much younger Wayne Pacelle is quoted in Ted Kerasote’s book Bloodties as saying:

“I…believe in interstate transfer of food items. I believe in providing that food to people in other regions where it cannot be locally produced. My ethic is not a local food production ethic. It’s an interlocal, interstate, and perhaps an international system of food distribution to allow people to tread lightly on the planet, and it should be a food production system that is as energy efficient as possible, and hopefully one day it will be an energy-based system that’s not based on fossil fuels.” (255)

Pacelle is endorsing a global food system and with it mass society; he can only hope that “one day” the problems associated with such a system will be overcome in some currently inconceivable way. Transitioning from fossil fuels, to say wind or solar, is still going require intense environmental degradation including the mining of rare earth metals.

Closer to the present, vegan author James McWilliams has written and article titled “The Future is in Plastics, Son: Technology and Veganism” in which he argues:

 “should vegans want a future in which the world’s population has a steady access to wide diversity of plant-based foods, it will require…an expansion of food miles and advanced plant biotechnology”

I would agree with this point but where I see domestication and industrialization as the most basic threats to animals, McWilliams evidently sees them as exciting paths forward.

Does this mean the veganism is a mistake?

My belief is that for myself, and people who are similarly situated, veganism remains morally obligatory. I feel it is the most defensible option in my particular time and place. The mistake would be extrapolating from one’s own particular time and place to the universal claim that veganism is obligatory to all people and at all times. Ethical vegans, that is vegans motivated by concern for animals as opposed to simply health concerns or celebrity endorsements, tend to extrapolate in this fashion—possibly making exceptions for those notorious desert-island castaways that are so frequently posited in discussions of veganism.

Exceptions are also sometimes made for indigenous communities with food cultures that are not vegan but this is less often a principled exception than it is a strategic, face-saving concession granted for the purpose of avoiding an even more difficult conversation.

But in any case, it does not seem that veganism will be possible for all people in all bioregions given a minimally disruptive level of technological development. To push for greater levels of development may be to spread veganism but simultaneously harm animals.

Praxis

To safeguard animals from the systematic aggression and encroachment of humanity we need to dismantle existing industrial infrastructure, sabotage ongoing projects, and prevent future development.  Paradoxically, these vitally important actions may make veganism less feasible than it currently is for many people. But veganism is a means to an end; the end is animal liberation. As is so often the case, the means sometimes get confused for the end.  The means may vary even while the goal remains unchanged.

Veganism is potentially appealing because it is an intellectually easy answer; it forgoes nuance in favor of clearly defined lines. Clearly defined lines are helpful especially when nuance is apt to generate confusion or mask self-interest but occasionally those lines need to be reassessed. Veganism is not always possible, not always necessary, and never sufficient.

————

*Private communication via email. May 13, 2014. Shared with permission.

 

 

Sympathy for the Devil: Thinking About School Shooters

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“[the] demands of civilization issue a culture that is a priori rooted in suffering”
-Layla AbdelRahim, Wild Children, Domesticated Dreams (2013)

“Today’s schoolyard shootings are disturbing because they are attacks on the
very core of our culture.”
-Mark Ames, Going Postal (2005)

Most kids hate school and adults are generally fine with that.

But given the number of hours, days, and years that children are legally required to be in school, to hate school is dangerously close to hating life. It is not an occasional inconvenience but is their everyday reality. They are pulled from their homes, separated from people they care about, segregated by age, and forced into the company of others who may torment them.

There is almost literally no end in sight for a young person who hates school. Elementary and middle school students may not have the ability to look beyond high school. How very young people experience time is radically different from how adults experience time. And what if, hypothetically, they did have a perspective that allowed them to look far enough into the future to a point when they would no longer be in school? As the saying goes, “if you liked school, you’ll love work”. And if you didn’t like school…then what? This is a situation that must be perceived as a life sentence; a situation where a vast number of young people have no hope and little to lose.

Mark Ames, the author of Going Postal, writes: “[the] misery built into the modern school culture…is so obvious, and so common, that only a kind of adult amnesia, combined with powerful cultural propaganda, could edit away such a widely-held bad memory”

Of course, few young people offer much in the way of resistance to the school system. So-called “good students” acclimate and find that compliance is the least difficult path. They react to ringing bells with the prescribed behavior. So-called “bad students” may sometimes try to avoid classes, refuse to complete assigned work, or perhaps defiantly look out a nearby window to the world outside rather than facing forward. Both sets of students may hate school but their coping mechanisms are not genuine challenges to that which threatens them. The school system knows how to handle both good and bad students.

This is a point that is made after every high-profile school shooting: homicide (and suicide) in schools are statistically uncommon. It could happen anywhere but it generally doesn’t. A child is far more likely to kill or be killed elsewhere such as at home. But Ames writes:

Most Americans know that the low homicide rate doesn’t mean that schools are really safe so much as it reflects effective policing, snitching, and zero-tolerance repression, keeping many more would-be rage murderers, by a factor of tens or hundreds, from crossing the line from plotting to killing.

Success is apparently defined as a situation where students merely wish to kill themselves and others but find themselves unable to do so for one reason or another. This is evident in the immediate calls for gun control. Annette Fuentes, author of Lockdown High, has explained “without guns, Columbine could never have occurred.” True, but somewhat simplistic; without schools Columbine could never have occurred as well. Lack of guns could have averted the massacre but would have done nothing to remove what has been described as a “toxic culture”. The despair felt by students would have remained in place. But again, most kids hate school and most adults don’t care.

Almost by definition, the “well-adjusted” do not resist. Resistance tends to be quite literally a suicide mission. In the face of repression, the well-adjusted tend to, well…adjust. Resistance must then come from those who are not so well-adjusted; those who fail to adapt to the school setting, who find no safe space in the school hierarchy, and nothing to look forward to in the workplace.

These are young people with brains that are still developing, placed in high pressure, arguably intolerable, situations, who feel they have little to lose. It might as well be a social science experiment designed to see what people can endure before lashing out. To quote Ames again:

“The whole country is infested with this meanness and coldness, and no one is allowed to admit it. Only the crazy ones sense that it is wrong—that what is “normal” is not at all normal—and some of them, adults and kids alike, fight back with everything they have.”

Consequently, it is unrealistic to judge their actions based on normal measures of efficacy or even fairness. Rebellions are not always fully understood in the time they are carried out. Indeed, they are not always even fully understood by the people who carry them out.  Brenda Spencer was sixteen in 1979 when she opened fire on an elementary school located across the street from where she lived. When asked about her motive, she explained, “I just don’t like Mondays.” And while only the most uncurious of societies would be willing to except that explanation; the explanations that are on offer are not much better.

Furthermore, almost never will the negative consequences of such rebellions fall exclusively on the most culpable; innocent people will almost necessarily be harmed especially when the target is both ubiquitous and abstract. The target is both more and less than the school building, other students, teachers, and administrators. But this harm cannot be laid wholly at the feet of those who resist injustice but must be attributed in large part to those who created and maintained the injustice that generated such violence. When an animal has been place in a cage lashes out, even wildly and without direction, it is the person who locked the cage that is culpable.

The question that we should be asking after each school shooting is not what is wrong with a particular individual who happened to snap before any his or her peers did but rather: what is it about schools that continues to generate such violence?

School violence is not simply a problem but rather a symptom of a problem. Schools are often referred to as a microcosm of society. It is therefore revealing that they are bastions of repression with occasional outbursts of violent rage.

 

Holy Zoltan, Batman!

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Zoltan arcade“We didn’t evolve through billions of years to remain animals.” -Zoltan Istvan

Only a troubling amalgam of self-hatred, stunning arrogance, and (I charitably presume) willful ignorance could make the above sentiment possible; only a culture where such dysfunctional traits are widespread yet unacknowledged could interpret the statement as profound rather than pathological.

Self-hatred because it cast our fundamental identity as animals as something to be denied, belittled, and ultimately escaped. Arrogance because it positions humans as qualitatively different from and above all other animals.  And (willful) ignorance because even an elementary understanding of evolution reveals that no species is “more evolved” than any other. It is not as though evolution is a race where some individuals opted to drop out early (reptiles, perhaps?), others made it a considerable distance (chimpanzees, for example), but only one group finished the race (human beings!) and can now claim the prize of shedding their animality altogether.

Zoltan Istvan is the author of The Transhumanist Wager which has been described as transhumanism’s Atlas Shrugged (sometimes as praise and sometimes as criticism). He has allegedly (by Huffington Post at least) been described as a “visionary” and yet at their core his views represent what must be the most common prejudices in the western world: we are not animals, we are above animals, we are more evolved than animals, we can overcome death.

His ideas are promoted as cutting edge and yet they are not radically different than Descartes’ division between humans and other animals (except that for Descartes it was other animals who were the automatons whereas transhumanists anticipate a day when humans are essentially the automatons).  And despite his avowed atheism, Zoltan’s prejudices are similar to those of the Catholic Church which deny our animality, grant us dominion over other animals, and place us closer to God than other animals.

A few recent ideas from Zoltan:

  • In February, he wrote about transhumanism and environmental concerns: “While New York City, Boston and Miami may be partially underwater by 2100, many futurists don’t plan to be around in the flesh by then. And if they are, they’ll have the technology to walk on water.” He elaborates:

     
    “There are probably zero futurists who feel good about damaging our beautiful planet. However, many of them realize that the benefit of the species’ rapid evolutionary ascent outweighs the harm progress is causing to Earth. Our planet is strong; it can handle climate change and an expanding human population while our species prepares for the transhumanist age. The evolutionary outcome of humanity will be better of by turning a blind eye to Mother Earth.”

  • In April, Zoltan called for “one-time 1 percent life extension tax” which he refers to as the Jethro Knights Life Extension Tax (naming it after the lead character in his novel). In the article, he suggests that “the world can conquer death in about a decade’s time if enough resources are put towards it” and that “no sane and reasonable person wants to die if it can be avoided.”
  • Last December: “the birth of an advanced artificial intelligence will become far more important than the birth of Christ…reasonable people will celebrate AI Day, the real moment in history the savior of civilization was born.”

Zoltan himself acknowledges that it would be easy to dismiss such ideas as science fiction.  It would also be easy to dismiss his articles as well-designed click-bait for sites such as Huffington Post.  And yet the popularity of transhumanism appears to be growing.  The most noteworthy of all transhumanists, Ray Kurzweil, currently works for Google which is not exactly a fringe outfit.

Furthermore, the ideas need not be plausible or even desirable in order for the individuals infected with such ideas to be dangerous; even a fairly sympathetic review of his novel points out “some fascist measures” that are taken by the putative heroes in realizing their transhumanist goals. Evidence that those fascist tendencies are not necessarily limited to the pages of a novel or the minds of fictional characters can be found in a January 2014 article in Psychology Today titled: “When Does Hindering Life Extension Science Become a Crime?” in which Zoltan laments that “America continues to be permeated with anti-life extension culture” and argues that “[s]tifling or hindering life extension science, education, and practices needs to be recognized as a legitimate crime.” To not support radical life extension policy is, by Zoltan’s lights, to “prematurely [end] human lives” and thus “criminal manslaughter”.  Presumably refusing to pay your Jethro Knights tax might invite a harsh punishment.

(Note: for information on the above pictured Zoltan arcade amusement, visit here.)

Letter to the Editor re Rose on roadkill

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Letter to the Editor re:Joseph Rose: Handling Roadkill
Date submitted: June 1, 2014
News outlet: The Oregonian

Based on the fact that we spend a lot of money on dog toys and a lot of time on cat memes, America tends to think of itself as a nation of animal lovers. And yet, there is a demonstrable hatred toward animals that cannot credibly be denied. It’s not necessarily a hot searing hatred but rather a cold, callous hatred; a hatred that manifests less often in acts of rage and more often in passively accepting the suffering and making light of the killing of other animals.

For example, in response to a reader’s question about the legal requirements that fall upon a driver who has struck and killed an animal, Oregonian columnist Joseph Rose singled out opossums and rats as particularly unworthy of our concern should they be killed and he concludes his brief reply by quoting a trite bumper sticker that read “Cats: The other white meat”.

The number of animals killed on American roadways is staggering.  Light-hearted jokes about this fact send a message to others that these deaths are unimportant and not worth caring about or addressing. Such jokes help enforce a norm that says concern for animals is inappropriate and that their suffering can be laughed at. In such an atmosphere even those who do empathize are apt to remain silent.

Bodies on roadways and the jokes they illicit confirm that we are not really the nation of animal lovers that we pretend to be.

The Future of the Internet: Everything, Everyone, Everywhere

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Kaczynski typewriter

“amplified connectivity will influence nearly everything, nearly everyone, nearly everywhere.” (26)

“we can think of each person as a plug and each part of life as a socket…the transition will be relatively seamless and accompanied by little resistance” (26)

1. The Next Unabombers

A recent article appearing on the website of the UK newspaper The Telegraph was titled “As Technology Swamps Our Lives, the Next Unabombers Are Waiting for Their Moment”.  In a sense, to borrow a tech phrase, Ted Kaczynski may have been an “early adopter”; an early adopter, that is, of a violent methodology to resist all-encompassing totalitarian technological development.  Early adopters always pay an inflated cost but they also attract followers and help create trends.

Following Kaczynski’s arrest, it was alleged by some that he selected his targets from a zine titled Live Wild or Die or possibly from the Earth First! Journal.  Such suggestions are probably best understood as calculated attempts to link Kaczynski with such entities as a means of discrediting them; an attempt to blame the violence of one individual on a host of political enemies.  It’s guilt by association except that the association is completely contrived. In fact, Kaczynski deliberately sought isolation and didn’t have access to much more than a local public library—it’s beyond unlikely that he was attending zine fairs or relying on hand circulated photocopies from radical environmentalists as a means of identifying potential targets.  After all, targets can easily be found in mainstream news coverage  by anyone who is interested in looking.

2. “The Internet of Things Will Thrive by 2025”

For example, there is a new document that the “Next Unabombers” may be keen to read.  It’s not the pages of a radical zine.  It is a report that was just released last week on May 14 by the Pew Research Center focusing on the so-called Internet of Things.  It is a survey of experts, analysts, academics, journalists, trend trackers, futurists, and other self-styled gurus who offer their opinions and predictions on the future of the Internet of Things.  The title of the report—“The Internet of Things Will Thrive by 2025”—presents the opinions of those surveyed as being generally optimistic.

1,606 people responded to the following question (providing both a “yes” or “no” as well as an elaboration of their point of view):

The evolution of embedded devices and the Internet/Cloud of Things—As billions of devices, artifacts and accessories are networked, will the Internet of Things have widespread and beneficial effects on the everday lives of the public by 2025?

83% responded affirmatively.

And while more than 4 out of 5 indicated that they expect “widespread and benefiical effects” there is no shortage of warnings being sounded in the report…or, at least what sound like warnings to my ears (for it is sometimes difficult to ascertain if someone is horrified, ambivalent, or enthusiastic about their own predictions and it is all to easy to assume that something that sounds horrible to oneself was intended to sound that way).

Consider the following excerpts from the survey responses:

 “People will engage with information using all of their senses: touch and feel, sight, sound, smell, and taste” (7)

“Every part of our life will be quantifiable, and eternal, and we will answer to the community for our decisions” (8)

“There will be absolutely no privacy, not even in the jungle, away from civilization” (9)

“The effect will be widespread but pernicious…The Internet of Things will demand—and we will willingly give—our souls.” (10)

“the workplace plugged into the Internet of Things will be more productive and more prison-like” (10)

“A major global megatrend here is de-skilling—our children will learn less and achieve more” (19)

“Finally, my toothbrush will tell my dentist if it detects something that needs fixing.”  (19)

“The biggest effect will be government-sanctioned spyware in every aspect of our lives.”  (44)

“effects will be primarily to increase the level of control and monitoring of citizens to further de-skill jobs. It could be more dystopian than the Borg.” (50)

“The Internet of Things could be a major threat to society as we know it, and possibly, to our continued existence as a species on this planet” (50)

Many of these would not be out a place in a communique taking credit for some act of industrial sabotage.

3. Reading Past the Headline

How is the prevalence of such seemingly negative opinions consistent with the fact that over 80% of survey responders answered the overarching question about “widespread and beneficial effects” affirmatively?

At least a few survey responders provide an explanation themselves.

Stuart Chittenden: “My main concern is that the question asks about beneficial effects, which I can see with such devices, though the diminuation of the human experience, our uniqueness, and interaction with the world around us, may be at risk, too” (30)

The other difficulty with the question is that it is really two questions.

Internet law and policy expert Robert Cannon explains: “Will it have beneficial effects? Certainly. Will it be beneficial on balance when weighing the negatives—that’s another question.” (26)

The survey is worded in such a way as to guarantee a highly favorable headline with an overwhelming majority of experts successfully identifying possible “beneficial” effects; only the pathologically uncreative would be unable to imagine any benefit whatsoever.

Karl Fogel of Open Tech Strategies said: “we don’t need this, and most people aren’t asking for it. I’ve never been quite clear on where the demand is supposedly coming from.” Certainly Fogel realizes that sometimes demand simply needs to be manufactured.

4. Kaczynski’s Ideological Descendants

There are signs that the violent tactics employed by Ted Kaczynski may be catching on.  Groups in Mexico such as Individualists Tending Toward the Wild (ITS) and Obsidian Point have, perhaps even more recklessly than Kaczynski, adopted violent tactics to resist imposed technological development.  They have not needed to seek out targets in obscure places for targets are “nearly everywhere”. Triumphant news reports in mainstream publications announcing “breakthroughs” provide more than enough targets.

But it is important to read past the healdine to differentate friend from foe from bystander.  The apparent momentum of the technological juggernaut is not without weak links and self-doubt. There is no uniformity of opinion about a coming technological nirvana; even the so-called experts see the possibility of a future consisting of a technological boot stomping on a human face.  In fact, many of these experts are strategically positioned to best see the boot coming down, many of them are apparently ready to start sounding alarms.   They may not always be prepared to offer much in the way of tangible resistance but others clearly are—sometimes violently, sometimes recklessly.

The opinions expressed in the Pew report suggests that gleeful futurists like Ray “Live Long Enough to Live Forever” Kurzweill may be at least as far from the mainstream as Ted Kaczynski.  Perhaps Kurzweill and his ilk will be remembered as monsters while Kaczynski and his ideological descendants such as ITS and Obsidian Point will be remembered as astute, well-meaning, even if somewhat reckless.   History can be surprisingly willing to forgive excesses when they are excesses in pursuit of a more sane world.

Kaczynski

Note: All numbers in parentheses refer to page numbers in the original Pew report.