Customer Reviews

Twilight of the Machines

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Zerzan updates his exploratory work on the illness of a "productionist civilization"(as he calls it) that began with the collection of essays entitled Elements of Refusal, but this time Zerzan leaves out all the post-Left labor studies stuff.

The principal issue facing mankind as Zerzan sees it is that civilization itself is so alienating and harmful to to our health and contentment that nothing less than a full renunciation of it will enable life to survive on earth. Zerzan then goes on to make his case for this thesis.

One unique feature of Twilight is that it contains the only positive review of Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski's The Unabomber Manifesto: Industrial Society and Its Future I've ever read, as well as comparing Kaczynski favorably with philosopher Frederich Nietzsche.

The amazing thing about civilization and its "discontents" says Zerzan is that just when you think it can't possibly get any worse for us, it does. But not for much longer he predicts. The present downward course of productionist civilization is going to kill us all if we don't shut it down soon.

All in all Zerzan has written a very challenging book and deserves more recognition as the preeminent philosopher of anarchism. An accolade usually accorded to the likes of Noam Chomsky, Anton Pannekoek, or Murray Bookchin.

I recommend Twilight of the Machines to those interested in exploring the possibility of a post-Left anarchism.

I wonder at the irony of someone railing against civilization and "symbolic culture" using turgid "intellectual" prose to spew out an academically flavored pastiche of platitudes and cliches.

The second part of the book is supposed, according to the author, to have a "more contemporary focus". I guess it does: it is full of self-reverential references to the black bloc anarchist movement. There is also plenty of discussion of deservedly obscure intellectuals of the most predictably useless sort. Oddly enough there is a chapter that contains some gossipy, snarky commentary about Theodore Kaczynski (and Friedrich Nietzsche!). However pointless and demented the actions of Kaczynski, at least he did something other than pontificate and posture. Zerzan peforms his anti-civilization act for his fans from the comfort of a U.S. city.

I suspect that if you gathered up all the "anarcho-primitivism" activists and plunked them down in a wilderness they would not long survive. Anarcho-primitivism is a mostly theoretical endeavor to be carried out from the comfort of a coffee house with a zippy Internet connection.

As a wholesome alternative to Zerzan and his ilk I'd suggest the recently published (in English) Can Life Prevail? by Pentti Linkola. At least the Finnish deep ecologist has walked the walk. Linkola's anti-civilization polemics have the feel of something that came from a lifetime of real world experience.

Zerzan is the best, most thorough, social and political analyst of our time. He is literally the only one to look civilization-as-we-know-it square and tell it like it is. His books are essential tools for dispelling the miasmas
of the last 10,000 years and getting into recovery.

This was such a disappointment. I'll just bring up a few issues that stand out to me.

To begin with, Zerzan lays much blame on language. (It reminds me of the irony of the feminists who rail against logical argument as a male-centered discourse. Of course, they then try to use logic to attack it, only failing in the process.) He first confuses language with conceptualization and abstract thinking; he also has scant evidence and misinterprets what evidence he does have. For example, most linguists and psychologists who work on language acquisition have shown (with controlled studies, another bastard child of civilization) that children develop conceptual thinking and categorization before they can recognize nouns that reflect these, and far before they can produce them. Also, Zerzan has some howlers, such as suggesting that autism is a reaction against civilization and symbolism because the first cases were identified 'in the literature' in the late 18th century... just when a newly formed scientific medical establishment was around to create a literature and to identify it. Isn't the emergence of a new disease better explained by the emergence of a scientific class of humans that are out to diagnose disease than to suggest some existential howl against 'stuff'?

I skimmed his 'contemporary' and anti-Unibomber/bestbuddy essays, and I kept thinking, "does this guy really want to throw out modern dentistry and being able to enjoy an apple at his age?" (I guess he'd rather be gumming meat pre-chewed by his harem or brood.) Does this guy do his research by walking to the authors' houses, or how does he manage to make an interlibrary loan without the internet? (Surely he doesn't buy books, seeing how he claims we'd be better off in grass huts.) I wonder if his kids have flu shots...

Whatever you call this brand of Anarchism, it's bizarre, it's stupid, and if you're reading this and thinking I just don't get it, I can tell you don't, either, Netizen!

As usual, Zerzan's latest work is a stroke of genius! Read it and weep! Learn how the world "really" works and how it will effect our future. May John Zerzan live 1,000 years!