The Primitivist Critique of Civilization

The Primitivist Critique of Civilization
by Richard Heinberg

A paper presented at the 24th annual meeting of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations at Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio, June 15, 1995.

I. Prologue
Having been chosen--whether as devil's advocate or sacrificial lamb, I am not sure--to lead off this discussion on the question, "Was Civilization a Mistake?", I would like to offer some preliminary thoughts.

From the viewpoint of any non-civilized person, this consideration would appear to be steeped in irony. Here we are, after all, some of the most civilized people on the planet, discussing in the most civilized way imaginable whether civilization itself might be an error. Most of our fellow civilians would likely find our discussion, in addition to being ironic, also disturbing and pointless: after all, what person who has grown up with cars, electricity, and television would relish the idea of living without a house, and of surviving only on wild foods?

Back to Paradise

Back to Paradise

By Richard Heinberg
Paradise: A Lost Global Civilisation 

Standard views of human history leave little room for a lost paradise. But it seems that each year brings fresh evidence suggesting that our knowledge of the ancient human past is sketchy at best. For example, the recent discovery of a carved bone flute in a Slovenian cave, dated (by current estimates) at between 43,000 and 82,000 years old, suggests that humans have had music – and probably language and art as well – for a very long time indeed. What were people thinking and doing for all those millennia?