What is the Primitive?
a brief definition

             The common belief behind the word primitive is that it exists at the bottom of a hierarchy and applies to everything that is simple: “primitive stone tools” as opposed to iron tools; “  “primitive people” as opposed to civilized ones; etc.  Again, this is a common misconception – and its very wrong.  The word “primitive” is derived from the word “prime” which essentially means the first – so, technically using the word “primitive” means that something is the first – not that it is more simple than this or that.  In this context, applying the word “primitive” to human beings simply means they were the first, or more fitting – they are exhibiting the primary human pathways.

            In the context of a critique, the primitive is opposed to civilization.  Thus, the primary human pathways is opposed to a newer, and radically different one.  However, in this critique, it is not comparing different methods of food retrieval to each other but the actual human relations that came with that period of time.  The green anarchist or anarcho-primitivist critique of civilization does not oppose gatherer-hunter to farmer but the social relations of the time before and after agriculture.

            With this is mind, it is easier to understand the critique.  The time before agriculture offered a more egalitarian, cooperative, non-authoritarian state of being – and since this state of being characterizes our primary human pathway, it is termed the “primitive”.  The time after agriculture is remarkably different and is termed “civilization” – which, in Stanley Diamond’s great words, “begins with conquest abroad and repression at home”.  Civilization is characterized by ideological, gender, and labor specializations; centralized power; poverty and inequality; slavery; rampant diseases; and environmental devastation.

            But this must not be looked at an inevitable step on a hierarchy from the primitive to civilization.  Stanley Diamond also defined the primitive as the “primary human potential” because it could lead to different societies evolving (or changing) in many different ways.  Civilization hampers this autonomous progress by destroying all other potentials – literally forcing the inevitability of itself.  No one has ever opted for civilization, for dictatorship – it had to be forced.

            Civilization must be looked at as a mistake – a forced middle state which exists between the primitive of the past and the primitive of the future.  It is time to throw of the shackles of the despot of civilization.  It is up to us to recreate the freedom that once was in the future primitive – not characterized by a level of technology or food procurement method – but a relationship between each other and Mother Earth.