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Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization
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Average Rating:  out of 7 Reviews
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Price: $12.00
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Sale: $6.00
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Manufacturer: Feral House
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EAN (European Article Number): 9780922915750
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Paperback
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Author: John Zerzan
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Publisher: Feral House
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Dewey Decimal Number: 320
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Publication Date: 2008-04-01
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Reading Level: 214
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Description: Thinker and revolutionary John Zerzan has been widely credited with inspiring the new generation of antiglobalization activists. Collecting essays and interviews, Running on Emptiness reflects Zerzan’s wide range of interests, from the political (“We All Live in Waco”) to the personal (“So ... How Did You Become an Anarchist?”). This book deftly mixes history, anthropology, science, cultural theory, and politics to offer a critique of society as well as a blueprint for change. “John Zerzan ... can now credibly claim the ... honor of being America’s most famous anarchist. ” — Derrick Jensen, Utne Reader
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Customer Reviews
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Review Summary: Assorted Essays From Zerzan |
Date: 2008-11-23 |
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Details: Running On Emptiness is a collection of anarcho-primitivist author Zerzan's essays from recent years ('90s and later) as well as a pun on the title of a Jackson Browne song.
I especially liked the autobiographical essay So...How Did You Became An Anarchist? Zerzan has had quite a life and he proved to be much more of an activist/militant than I had previously thought.
I highly recommend this short book of essays. It's worth the time to read it IMHO.
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Review Summary: The title describes the book better than it describes our society |
Date: 2006-11-22 |
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Details: I've seen plenty of political stances before, but I find this one unusual. Perhaps I've spent too much time reading books by liberals and conservatives.
Zerzan is an anarchist. To him, Noam Chomsky is simply too conservative, maybe reactionary. Now, to some extent, I might agree with that feeling, given that Chomsky has picked up some rather reactionary political allies. And Zerzan does make the point that Chomsky has said little about nature or women. But no, I don't buy the idea that this makes Chomsky just another right-winger. Nor do I agree with, for example, Zerzan's implication that Chomsky (who has said he wants a "two-state" solution in the Levant) is too pro-Israel.
Can a book annoy me to such an extent as to get me to give it a one-star review? Yes. And this book is an example of one that has done so. Zerzan thinks we need to dismantle our overly technological society. And I think that's a very poor idea. If this book had made a reasonable case for doing that, I would judge it less harshly.
In my opinion, bringing down our society would at best send us into a new Dark Ages, removing our rights, freedoms, prosperity, and well-being. It would also get rid of our access to truth and to our means of bettering ourselves. While our species might survive, I suspect that most individuals would die an ugly death, as without modern technology, the planet's population would quickly drop catastrophically. Even the end of the Western Roman Empire wasn't pretty, especially in the British Isles, and the demise of our present society could well be worse.
Yes, much of what our society does uses up non-renewable resources. But I think the answer to that is to use up fewer resources, not to abandon technology! After all, some technology has shown us how to better our lives inexpensively. Even some of the more expensive applications of technology, such as huge advances in the field of medicine, are things that many members of society might feel are worth preserving. And I think a great example of a less costly achievement of our present society is computer-based technology, which has made data storage and retrieval, calculations, and communications far easier. Let's see what Zerzan has to say (in this book, no less) to one of my heroes (Marvin Minsky), a person who has done superb work in a field (the theory of computation) that I think benefits all mankind:
"I believe I am not alone in the opinion that vermin such as you will one day be considered among the worst criminals this century has produced."
Um, wow. I have annoyed people in the past for many reasons, such as my religious views or political views. But I'm more than a little surprised to see such implicit annoyance with the fact that I've taught a couple of computer science courses in which I rather liberally used material from a textbook written by Marvin Minsky! I had to reread this, just to make sure that Minsky was actually being attacked for his scholarly achievements.
I guess that by teaching this subject, I've become an, um, accomplice to Minsky's "crimes." And that makes my failure to recommend this book rather self-serving. But I'll do it anyway.
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Review Summary: "We must be outsiders." |
Date: 2006-10-09 |
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Details: Anarcho-primitivist philosopher John Zerzan's book "Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization" is a collection of essays written between the years 1992-2001. While the essays cover a wide range of subjects--from the personal "So...How Did You Become an Anarchist?" the cultural critique "Why I Hate Star Trek" and the militant "He Means It--Do You?" the essays essentially cover the same idea--civilization is rotten. Zerzan argues that civilization "took a wrong turn with the advent of animal domestication and sedentary agriculture." These events, according to Zerzan, led to the exploitation of the planet, "hierarchal social structures" and the "ideological control of the many by the few." Zerzan argues we've been going downhill ever since, and "seeks to merge anarchist socio-political analysis with radical deep-green environmental thought" while advocating moving forward to a "future primitive" world.
As I passed through a particularly rotten part of town yesterday, I watched people on filthy, rubbish covered streets, pushing their shopping carts, while mini-skirted, drug-ravaged prostitutes hawked their wares at passing motorists. Zerzan's words came back to me, and I found myself mulling over his arguments. And he is right on many issues here. Civilization is rotten, but when it comes to what we should do about it, I admit that I part ways with anarcho-primitivism. There's a great deal to be said for a cessation of global warming, and living with less in a simpler society with no division of labour etc. But I have to think that civilization and technology have brought some positive results. A future primitive state would certainly solve a lot of problems but other problems would be created in its wake. For example, humans now live a lot longer than our ancient ancestors, and a future primitive culture would mean a total lack of medicine--other than 'natural' cures. Zerzan argues that cancer was "unknown before civilization" but it's impossible to know that--there may have been less cancer, but we can't assume there was NO cancer. The modern diet, along with contaminants and pollutants are no doubt partly responsible for the epidemic proportions of cancer in today's society. But there's absolutely no guarantee that cancer would disappear in a future primitive culture, and it doesn't take a great deal of imagination to realize that in a future-primitive society, deaths would occur for fairly simple routine problems due to untreated appendicitis, for example, or c-sections without anesthesia.
Zerzan's essay "So...How Did You Become an Anarchist?" is one of the highlights of the book. It's intensely personal and details Zerzan's gradual philosophical development towards green anarchy. The essays "He Means It--Do You?" and "Who Is Chomsky?" draw a line between anarcho-primitivism and traditional anarchy while condemning the latter. Other essays cover Zerzan's anti technology position, his relationship with Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, and his beliefs regarding time keeping and memory. There's a direct connection between anarcho-primitivism and Situationist ideas, and Zerzan's book offers the prescriptive theory that the original Situationists never really discovered.
"Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization" gets five stars for making me think--and while most of that thinking was to decide what I did and didn't agree with, the book was well worth reading. There are lessons to be learned from these essays, and while I can't see myself in a future primitive culture, who knows what lies ahead for our planet. If politicians insist on using their arsenals of nuclear weapons, humans may well find themselves living in a primitive state--not by choice--but thanks to the stupidity of those in power--displacedhuman |
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Review Summary: The System Creaks -- Will It Topple? |
Date: 2003-02-16 |
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Details: As we continue down the numbing path of modern "civilization," the anarcho-primitivist critique becomes more obviously true. As I made my way through Zerzan's essays, a radical split emerged in my consciousness. On the one hand, we're enmeshed in day-to-day struggles and anxieties, the all-consuming attention required just to scrape by and maintain some sense of sanity (and this in one of the more affluent societies on the planet). But Zerzan's stance is like a slap in the face. I began to see just how ridiculous and dehumanizing the entire modern system is. This dissonance between civilization's maximum-seriousness demands and our personal awareness that it's all a huge sham is essentially the substance of alienation, a theme which most liberals have abandoned, but which Zerzan always keeps central. Alienation is still the most explosive analytical tool for confronting our current situation. Anarcho-primitivism may not have the most useful prescriptive program, but its descriptive power is unparalleled. The anarcho-primitvist goal is certainly utopian, but that is a good thing. Without utopian goals, we can have no transcendent position from which to challenge the present order. The intermediate mechanisms of change, through which we must work toward the utopian anarcho-primitivist future, should be the true program of liberalism. The left has condemned itself to irrelevancy by ignoring its utopian strand in favor of technical tinkering. We must recover our utopian roots in order to bear anarcho-primitivist fruit. |
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Review Summary: Is Technological Progress Good for You? |
Date: 2003-02-04 |
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Details: What a wonderful book! After reading it, I had so many question, I felt the need to talk with the author in person. After tracking down his number, I gave him a call (noting how odd it was to be talking with an "anarcho-primitivist" on the phone) and we arranged to meet the following week.
Within no time, I was down in Eugene, Oregon, walking through the infamous Whitaker district, known for it's vagrants and black-block anarchists, searching for Zerzan's co-op.
After spotting him on the porch, he greated me and invited me into his small, box-shaped house. Asside from a desk and a giant bookcase filled to the brim with old ragtag books and zines, his little house was empty and austere.
Sitting on an old, cleary-secondhand softa, we talked for over an hour about anarchism, ecology, history, technology, society, permaculture, natural farming and ecovillages. Then we took a walk to a local, independent coffee house to chat some more.
What struck me about Zerzan was his humility, patience, kindness, and penchent for critical thought. I mentioned my suprise that he had a telephone, and he agreed, in an ideal world one would not need a telephone. But, he said, he does not have a watch, or any of the other things that weigh us down and distract more than they help. Despite his revolutionary prose, I realized that a certain degree of compromise must be made for those who wish to stay inside civil society and reform it.
Sure, one could pack up and go live in a commune, but how would that help? The global economy would still spin out of control, and people would continue to live in ways that destroy the planet. Aside from the phone (and I have heard now that he sometimes borrows a friend's computer), which keeps him connected to the larger movement as well as curious people like me, Zerzan purposefully chooses to live as "primitive" as possible - a word and way of life he esteems for reasons outlined in this book.
I highly recommend reading RUNNING ON EMPTINESS even if you are an avowed progressive or technophile, if only for the sake of balance. As Zerzan shows, technological progress is not a unilinear process of self-refinement. In many ways it has alienated us from self, other and earth.
For those who have already begun to notice that civilization is not all roses, this book is absolutely essential. There is perhaps no better perspective on this subject. Zerzan will enrich and deepen whatever nascent criticisms you already have, and inspire you to learn more and take action.
A MUST READ |
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