We Are Not Against Civilization, Civilization is Against Us
civilize
civ·i·lize | \ ˈsi-və-ˌlīz \
Definition
1: to cause to develop out of a primitive state especially : to bring to a technically advanced and rationally ordered stage of cultural development.
2a: EDUCATE, REFINE
b: SOCIALIZE: to acquire the customs and amenities of a civil (“relating to the state or its citizenry”) community.
First Known Use of civilize: 1595.
We have been civilized to death. Since Europeans started to claim that they discovered Indians, civilization is death. Death of the spirit and of the land — of the Earth. The idea of the highest stage of human development cannot escape murderousness, because it places the primitive as a regression to be destroyed. But they were wrong about what was regressive. Western civilization isn’t so rational after all, and it’s as susceptible to bias and subjectivity as anyone else. Which is why the term “anti-civ” being used as an accusation astounds me — how can we not be? Civilisé is a concept created soon after the “discovery” of the Americas, although the only thing Europeans discovered was their own megalomania. And they disguised it in their urge to civilize colonized peoples. What can a critique of civilization look like nowadays? We can’t go back in time, and we certainly shouldn’t rely on the hypocritical European myth of the ‘noble savage.’ What, then, is there to do?
A return to uncivilized life can never look like it did before the invention of civilization. Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t go back, there has already been too much irreversible destruction. And there can certainly be no attempt while upholding anarchist values. As Wolfi Landstreicher amusingly puts in his short 2007 piece A Critique, Not a Program: For a Non-Primitivist Anti-Civilization Critique — “First of all, there is nothing inherently primitivist about a critique of civilization”. A ‘return’ to the uncivilized life is a way back to the future, a revolutionary praxis towards a future that unlearns the damaging principals of industrial capitalism. It’s informed by the past in its quest to make a new way of being.
Painting by Janayna Araujo.
Indigenous peoples weren’t civilizations the same way they weren’t anarchist. The concepts of civilization and anarchism were created by Europeans to fulfill or solve an European problem, respectively. There was no State to destroy or be a citizen of. There were other problems and other words for them, and the fact that we don’t know what they were is a failure of Western society, and a result of its megalomaniac expansion.
When first faced with Natives in the Amazon rainforest, Europeans were quick to assume they had “discovered” animalesque beings in the wilderness, as opposed to the intricate monuments of ancient peoples made of carefully crafted forests and coastlines. To this day, this so-called uncivilized legacy is toppled over and undermined for the sake of development. Sambaquis, for instance, which are up to 9 thousand years old indigenous monuments on the coast, are routinely land-filled and built over.
“Camboinhas beach was surrounded with barbed wire and the sandbank and dunes, where archaeological sites and sambaquis existed, were flattened by tractor to facilitate the parceling and demarcation of the lots." (From the Niterói town hall website)
This development is nothing more than the destruction it attributes to its opposition. Being anti-civilization is seen as the destruction everything developed nations have built and are trying to build. But from an unwesternized perspective, it means resistance against the relentless destruction of industrialization. It means a rejection of the construct of “development” and “Nation”, which have proven for over a century to prioritize profits above all else.
One regressive aspect of industrialization that is seldom talked about is the diversity of edible plants. Pollution, deforestation, climate change, fumes and plastic is brought up often, but the fact that our diet is based on “consumption standardization” is overlooked.
According to FAO - Food and Agriculture Organization (2004), over millennia, human beings have based their diet on more than ten thousand different plant species. Currently, however, there are less than one hundred and fifty species being cultivated.
Rice, wheat, corn and potatoes supply more than half of our energy needs. (EMBRAPA)
The Food and Agriculture Organization reveals that more than 90% of crops have disappeared from farming fields, posing a serious threat to agro-biodiversity. This means that what we learned to base our diets on is a major part of the destabilizing of the planet’s ecosystems. We have learned to despise weeds and value marketable plants based on capitalist standards we aren’t conscious of. The sheer fact that the plant is spontaneous and requires no effort to acquire automatically makes them unwanted. This is a civilized response, one that defines an acquired taste — and puts a price on it or calls it garbage.
What does unlearning our civilization mean? As an anarchist I would say that there mustn’t be a guideline or set of rules to define this process — each person can decide for themselves what this looks like for them. The process is based on the critical thought, not on the answer. Otherwise, we would just reproduce the indoctrination we are trying to undo. What are the ways in which each of us have been civilized? How have we been told to eat, dress, and behave? Since when have we been ashamed of dirt under our nails?
We often don't know how what we eat is made. It’s made for us by an industry. And it's made for maximum profit, keeping us alive only to the extent to which we function as consumers. A functional consumer is far from a functional part of the planet. We work to consume, and we consume to work, and the planet isn’t even in our periphery of vision. While, it is fair to say that Natives were functional inhabitants of the planet, for perhaps 10 thousand years before their “discovery”.
Today, as the cautionary tale that we have become, it’s not too late to start putting this planet back in our sights, even if it means looking at something uncomfortable and un-rescuable. There is a way back from the screens and social medias, to the future of the book and of the earth. Going from the digital to the analog doesn’t have to be a sacrifice, it can be a fulfilling experience, even though it’s easier said than done.
The Friend of the Plant, a new initiative born from the Enemy of the Queen magazine, is an autonomous initiative that explores ways or making it easier to make this transition from digital to analog, centering our relationship to plants. It has automated Instagram posts into a website that formats the posts into a printable book, and gives you advice based on personal accounts of how to go back to touching the earth. Anyone can participate by tagging the page on their posts about their relationship to a plant.
Drawing by Janayna Araujo.
In an urban setting, the efforts to reforest are weak in comparison to the forcefulness of urban expansion. The surviving weeds and occasional trees are often seen as a nuisance, especially when they attract animals and generate too much fruit. There is a need for bigger and stronger initiatives that seek to change our approach to them rather than changing them. Initiatives that promote caring for, identifying, growing and respecting in any circumstance.
Not all weeds are edible, but all have their value. Much of the modern practice of eating ‘Unconventional Edible Plants’ (PANC’s as we call them in Brazil) comes from a desire to preserve biodiversity, to fight back aggressive marketing for industrialized foods that lead to a standardization of food production and consumption — and also a desire to preserve traditional eating habits that are being lost.
Throughout the last century, the drifting away from eating unconventional plants is largely due to a desire to elevate standards of living. In a colonized country like Brazil — incredibly rich in biodiversity — these standards were posed by civilization to the detriment of the land and of the population. Efforts to rescue these eating practices serve to preserve plant species, promote agricultural autonomy, improve health, undermine destructive capitalist industries, and promote ecological literacy.
We are fully aware that it will not be possible to re-establish indigenous practices exactly as they were more than half a century ago. However, nothing prevents us from accessing knowledge from a non-Western point of view, aiming to abolish the concept of “civilization" instead of trying to insert ourselves into it. The screen is nothing more than a vehicle of information for our reunion with the earth — the source under our feet.
Let’s find our way back to the future of the book and the Earth.
Mirna Wabi-Sabi
My great-grandmother and I.
is site editor at Gods and Radicals, founding member of the Brazilian magazine Enemy of the Queen and of the Plataforma 9 media collective.