Disabled people against progress!

The dismantling of the techno-industrial system would almost certainly mean the end of the modern health care system. For this reason, members of the anti-industrial movement are sometimes criticized for defending validism, that is, discrimination against people with disabilities who depend on technology to survive on a daily basis.^[1]. Ironically, the vast majority of such accusations are made by able-bodied people. In order to give voice to those who are first interested, we have translated several texts by people with disabilities who are calling for the fall of the technological empire.

In the vast ocean of social war, some rebels — disabled, frail, or terminally ill — refuse to submit to the victimization of disability. The builders of this world are trying to appease them through promises of techno-assimilation and commercial comforts. But these rebels — these monsters — accept nothing but a hostile revolt against the domestication machine...

This collection compiles the voices of some of these rebels. Together through these texts, and individually in their daily lives, they conspire to challenge the victimizing and civilizing narrative of the disability narrative, while targeting civilization itself.

The standardization of mass society forcibly defines an increasing number of people as “disabled” if they do not fit into a narrowly prescribed form. The set of human variations that are considered “normal” is shrinking and those outside are stigmatized, pathologized, medicated, and manipulated. The civilized solution for living with people with different abilities is to treat large segments of the population as broken clocks that require new parts or regular maintenance. This approach is consistent with civilization's standard procedure of treating every human problem as a technical problem; it allows us to offload our responsibility to care for those around us by developing new products, offering new services, and building new infrastructure. The need for relationships is being erased. So civilization allows us not to worry about those who might need help. In other words, civilization allows others to not care about us when we need help.

— Ian E. Smith, “CIVILIZATION WILL STOP YOUR GROWTH: Defending primitivism against accusations of validism”

“Disabled, Black, Trans, and Primitivist? Why I don't like the pro-civilization story” by BLACK LUDDITE

I believe that civilization and its by-products are intrinsically limiting. As someone labelled disabled in the modern world, I despise civilization and what it did to people like me. The left would call me a fascist, saying that I promote eugenics, transphobia, and social conservatism, when that's the opposite of what I believe in. The primitivist, anti-left, anti-technology and anti-civilization movement is a liberation for those who are only seen as checked boxes on a form: the waste of society, the sinners, the Lucifers of the world! These accusations are based on the oversocialization of left-wing spaces, and the acritical moralism that follows. Ted Kaczynski invented the term oversocialization; he describes its occurrence as follows: “[The oversocialized person] cannot even have thoughts or emotions that are proscribed by common morality without feeling guilty; they cannot have 'impure' thoughts”^[2]. In this case, the person on the left thinks that by trying to defend minorities (people who are trans, disabled, people of color), they are on an untouchable pedestal. But that pedestal is not infallible.

Civilization began with the development of agriculture, passing from the food collection of hunter-gatherers to the Neolithic Revolution in Mesopotamia (around 10,000 BC).^[3]). I think that is where the roots of human problems lie.

Christopher Ryan, the author of “Civilized to Death,” wrote: “We tend to confuse progress with adaptation. Adaptation - and by extension, evolution - does not assume that a species improves as it evolves, but simply that it becomes better adapted to its environment...”^[4] It is from there that progress serves humanity. Gender is becoming a dominant factor as social life is becoming centered around sedentary agriculture, whereas previously, in pre-civilized society, equality was more prevalent. Women were now considered “inferior” because their tasks were not as physically demanding as those of men.^[5] ; they were relegated from a more egalitarian society to a confined position, seen as sexual beings meant to engender heirs for metaphysical concepts like land and inheritance. Moreover, this era marked the beginning of systemic oppressions. Social classes are formed because of the specialization of work and the accumulation of important resources (food and water). You may notice that there are already incredible levels of stress caused by adjusting to this new stressful environment.

Civilization has had “benefits.” Medical advances have treated the incurable, technological advances make it easier to travel and communicate, but at what cost? Millions of people of color everywhere treated like shit by white businesses? Thousands of black people used in the South as guinea pigs without their consent? This vaccine that you inject into your arm could not have been done without the massacre of my ancestors.

Many leftists refuse to recognize that they come from privileged backgrounds and do not look at the big picture: what must have happened for this luxury to exist. They may proclaim their support for equal rights, but they often forget that those they claim to defend are being exploited. And I don't even talk about the environment. Do leftists think that their “communism of luxury wholly automated” appears simply by overthrowing capitalism? No, it's idealistic. The only way to realize this fantasy is through total ecological destruction. Destroying the planet just to go into space?

My background gives me an interesting critical look at civilization and the events that resulted from it. I could talk about the enslavement of 10 million Africans by Christian white supremacists; the idea of “superiority” based on something as superficial as skin color is largely the result of civilization. I can talk about the valid idea that mental differences are a disease that needs to be corrected to match what the outside world expects of you. My traumatic experiences may not be yours, but is it not worrying to see their recurrence among minorities (considered” sub-citizens ”)?

The idea of being a superior citizen based on this or that reason is stupid and almost only exists in civilization.

I have suffered from psychosis for over a decade, I am black and transgender. I will remain critical of civilization and the scourge that it has had and will have on my existence.

The constant anxieties of living being myself and the likelihood of being abused or assaulted plague my mind. I am tired of feeling like I have to live in this small box where white capitalists, Christians and cisgender people want me to be. My psychosis is not just a medical deviation from “normal”; I accept this title and refuse to be medicated by a system that only cares about me for the money. My anti-psychiatric position stems from the belief that humans should not only be medicated to solve their problems if they are deeper than that. My trauma facilitated my psychosis, but I believe that the events that happened to me were the result of living in a world of stress, overpopulation, systemic oppression, etc. All of these are distinctly the result of civilization and would be impossible in a pre-civilized life. My gender identity (and even the concept of gender) would not have played such a big role in a hunter-gatherer society. Christianity, through colonization and domination, forced millions of people who did not have a strict male/female binarity to adhere to their ideas of gender and sexuality. And being black? I have the world against me for something that is just a simple genetic accident.

To all communists who think that civilization and progress are beneficial, I ask: what makes you think socialism will be different? Economic change does not alter the structure of civilization and what it produces. I am against all of this because I know that the stress associated with my unchanging differences would be minimal if I did not live in such an environment. My ancestors were able to live relatively peaceful lives, free from the fascist hell that is today's world. I will always see civilization as a regressive obstacle to the lives once lived by the first Homo sapiens.

Death to progress! Long live the unwanted minorities of this world; we are embracing anarchy and taking back control of our lives!
Down with the established order, these professionals only make my despair worse. Not only do they not help me, but in addition, they benefit, prestige, good conscience and power from their active and insidious participation in controlling the entire population.

Black Luddite

“My Fractured Mind and Body: A Critique of Civilization and Modern Medicine” by Artxmis Graham Thoreau

It's an understatement to say that living with my disabilities is difficult. Not because I can't function in this toxic, standardized world — because I'm expected to. My “problems” go unnoticed by those who are not aware. It almost always stays hidden in me. Inside my fractured mind and body. I have Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI) and DID — this means I have glass bone disease as well as dissociative identity disorder.

No, don't mention Split or Glass by Mr. Night Shyamalan.

Osteogenesis Imperfecta weakened my teeth, destroyed my joints, and ravaged my muscles. I am fortunate that I have never had a bone fracture despite my 20s. Some are killed as children because of this disability.

Dissociative identity disorder occurs early in those who suffer from it. It is the presence of two or more distinct personality states, accompanied by amnesia between these states. For example, if I [Artxmis] am in control of my body, another identity may not be aware of what I did, felt, or thought during this time. It works both ways. There are times when I have memories that are missing for a few seconds or several months. I can't remember the majority of my first year in high school.

All of this combined creates suffering that is almost invisible. I can have trouble climbing stairs and maintaining stable relationships.

But I still reject civilization, technology, and domestication.

I still celebrate Nature, call for a return to the wild, and hate modern medicine.

I do it, not because I hate myself or because I am a validator, quite the opposite. I hope that those who struggle with mental and physical illnesses can find solace in Nature and dance to the ashes of Civilization. Note: I don't think hiking can cure depression.

Civilization is a force for standardization. It takes individuals and attempts to organize, categorize, and dominate them. It also has a narrow range of “ideal” citizens. For those who do not fall into this category, they are offered two options: assimilation or exclusion. That is often the role of modern medicine. She takes care of many outcasts of Civilization. It can be thought of as a filtering system.

(By modern medicine, I am referring in most cases to Westernized/colonial medicine. However, it can be argued that Medicine, in general terms, with the advent of all Civilization, can be criticized in the manner below.)

As Civilization develops, it needs a larger workforce. This is the major impact of many social movements. Women's rights, while giving women other legal and social rights, gave them greater access to Civilization's workforce. Medicine, in its modern form, acts in a similar way. If one cannot adapt to Civilization [techno-capitalism, industrial society, socialist experiences, etc.], one shalt adapt.

By taking this initial idea into account, we can begin to understand that modern science is not about helping or empowering people, but about assimilating them all so that they can become beneficial to mainstream society. Many highlight genetic diseases or problems such as cancer. The Institute of Evolution, among others, affirms that there is a contradiction between our evolutionary traits and our contemporary environment. The lack of exposure to bacteria and diseases during childhood has devastating consequences on our immune system. Agriculture causes problems with our teeth and digestive systems. The domestication of plants and animals has created new diseases that were previously unknown to our species.

Even maternal habits have an effect on breast cancer! The Institute of Evolution states: “Modern reproductive methods also contribute to the risk of breast cancer. In hunter-gatherer populations, women generally start having children around 18, have 5 children, and stop breast-feeding after 3 years. This is very different from women today who generally start having children at 26, have an average of 1.86 children, and generally stop breastfeeding after 6 months. Our ancestors likely had reproductive patterns similar to those of present-day hunter-gatherers and therefore had far fewer menstrual cycles than the rest of us. Modern reproductive patterns like these are associated with a higher risk of hormone-dependent breast cancer.”

In addition to experiencing the effects of Civilization during their lives, some may even have a predisposition to diseases. before they were born. Epigenetics is defined as “the study of hereditary changes in gene expression (active versus inactive genes) that are not related to changes in underlying DNA sequence—a change in phenotype without a change in genotype—which then affects how cells read genes”, according to What is epigenetics?.

For example, those who live in dense urban areas, in contact with polluting factors such as air and water pollution, are more predisposed to cardiovascular diseases and cancers. This is especially true for African American communities, according to a 2017 research article entitled “Epigenetics and Health Disparities.”

A 2009 article, “Epigenetic Mechanisms in Schizophrenia,” indicated that urban environments played a role in psychotic disorders. The article stated: “Reports indicate that psychoses seem to cluster in urban environments and in lower socioeconomic groups. For example, Afro-Caribbean immigrants to the United Kingdom and especially their descendants are 10 times more likely to develop schizophrenia, and ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom have a schizophrenia incidence rate at least 3 times higher. These observations have led some to propose that schizophrenia may be an epidemiological transition disease, or in other words, a disease that increases its incidence during the development of a society.”

Modern medicine is also a centralized practice. It attempts to limit itself to only one area of society — “real medical use.” By that, I mean medical use that is understood in modern consciousness. Vaccines, advanced surgeries, or other medical procedures. It is also integrated into a diverse and hierarchical culture — doctors of different specialties, nurses, nursing assistants, etc.

Contrast that to pre-civilized medicine. This form cut across areas of social cohesion, such as religious practices and conflict resolution; ethnobotany and other biogeographic knowledge; as well as “real medical use.” Medicinal practices varied from culture to culture, of course. They could be in the hands of doctors, healers, sorcerers, shamans, and other spiritual leaders, or could be practiced by the whole community. Some cultures placed greater emphasis on ceremonies and magic, considering illnesses to be linked to spirits. Others used less religious practices and herbalism.

Psychiatry, despite many apparent benefits, is focused on “repairing” individuals so that they can working. Psychiatrists are like mechanics and technicians who repair machines to keep the factory running. Some even argue that it is not a form of medicine in the literal sense, but a social institution that hides under the disguise of modern medicine, using its glorification for its own purposes.

Personally, I have always been an energetic person. I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in the first year of elementary school and received medication. Although I am too young to remember the details now, this diagnosis has really hurt me and is still having lasting effects. Many have similar stories and experiences. To quote an anti-technology thinker: “In our society, the concept of 'mental health' primarily refers to an individual's ability to comply with the needs of the system without showing signs of stress.”

As others have argued, and as I mentioned before, civilized medicine, and perhaps all of Science, is just a trend aimed at adapting individuals to the needs of Civilization itself. Where does it end? Inventions like CRISPR-Cas9 present themselves as the solution to genetic predisposition to disease, but we cannot honestly admit that they will be used only for this purpose, and not for racist or fascist purposes. It's not hard to imagine what leaders like Hitler would do with such progress.

In fact, I invite supporters of psychiatry and psychology to investigate the use that was made of them under the National Socialist Party regime in Germany. The program was called “Law for the prevention of progeny affected by hereditary diseases.” It targeted people (and their children) with diagnosed mental retardation, schizophrenia, and even alcoholism. The “Action T4” plan was the systematic mass murder, by eugenics, of patients in psychiatric hospitals. Between 270,000 and 300,000 people died. Methods such as gas chambers were used, laying the groundwork for the Holocaust.

Similar practices existed outside Nazi Germany, such as in the United States in the early 1900s. Henry G. Goddard, an American psychologist and eugenicist, was one of many to discuss the treatment of the “unfit” or “feeble-minded.” For him, segregation was the main way to avoid mixing “bad” genes. Other people in his field advocated immigration bans, even exterminations. Women living in poverty were often seen as the most likely to be “unfit.”

I am not going to lie and pretend that some pre-civilized cultures did not abuse, exclude, or neglect people who are sick and/or disabled. My aim is to reveal that modern medicine is one of multiple attempts to resolve the many contradictions of modern society, contradictions between our evolution and our current environment. Nor am I advocating an idealistic return to Paleolithic life. It is entirely possible that future medicine will look like a synthesis of the past and the present.

Nor can I deny some of the benefits of medicine and science in this day and age. But anarchists wouldn't accept American police on the grounds that they also do good things like arresting rapists. They criticize the police for maintaining the order of the system as a whole, and the few benefits that come with it are a secondary consequence. The same is true for modern medicine.

Artxmis Graham Thoreau

“Call for crazy escape” by queer cannibal collective^[6]

we can't work for the machine; the machine will never work for us

The domestication of the human-animal^[7] is a central and fundamental process of civilization, acting as the main force for its continuation. Without the continued domestication of humans, civilization (including its current domestication of the rest of the world) could not be maintained.

for those who seek to destroy civilization, the dismantling of this domestication is a necessity. To find the movement towards this destruction, we look for where a challenge arises, forbidden, from within the civilized world. here, we see innumerable flaws in the hegemony of domestication: the madness of its subjects.

While domestication deforms the human-animal into a human-person, there are those who are unable or unwilling to comply with its requirements. these disabilities and denials were first classified as diseases of the mind, and now mental.^[8]. we are seen in silhouette; unmet needs and disoriented desire are only seen as aberrations. the field of medicine therefore serves to reduce innumerable experiences to a handful of diagnoses. the ways in which we have survived in this world so far, whether they worked well or not, are considered failures to “live well.”

we challenge this statement. an inability to interact joyfully with the mechanisms of civilization is not an inability to live. we do not fail to learn when we cannot be educated; we do not fail to empower ourselves when we cannot be employed. we are not isolated when we cannot interact with the symbolic. on the contrary! it is the very functioning of these mechanisms that snatches the life out of our lives, the being of our beings, and leaves us adrift in the abstraction of a manufactured world, disconnected from our desires. our inability to participate in them requires that we look for something else. How can a faulty part find life in a machine designed to deprive us of our own?

we are looking for our own way out

clarity arises when “cannot” coincides with “will not be able to.” When the total realization of the impossibility of living in this world occurs, socio-political turbulence is resolved into an understanding of our status and our enemies.

it is becoming clear that compared to this society, we are a kind of enemies. more precisely, we are the counterexample of the successful production of a human-person. we are the unrepentant waste; we are in a way fearsome but emphatically disgusting. we are the “not finished.”

According to the institutions that attack us, there is a cure. they tell us that there are ways to access this wonderful kingdom — representation, acceptance, inclusion, community. but there is no “health” in domesticated lifestyles. their words are lies: no wonderful kingdom exists: no wonderful kingdom exists, productive workers also want to kill themselves, and nowhere does this wasteland harbor a community.

despite institutional attempts at assimilation and their rhetoric of inclusiveness, there will always be those left behind by domestication. if it is not us, if the mold is remade to satisfy us, there will be other Others. for the internality of civilization to be legible, there will be other Others. for the internality of civilization to be legible, he shalt There will be an Outside^[9], and the crazy people occupy a specific and singular position as an integral part of it. we are the Outside that opens from within - we are holes in the Inside, unpredictable tears in its fabric. when the illusion of reality extends to the extreme and breaks, we are those spaces.

our position within makes it clear that their division between the Outside and the Inside is an invention, a construction that is necessary for the purposes of civilization. the division is only reflected in lived experience to the extent that it is imposed by social violence. however, they cannot force it to exist in its entirety : their narrative maintains hegemony but cannot completely obscure the living mass that flows and fluctuates below.

there is a world beyond the World of Abstractions that hovers over us like a shroud, desperately trying to hide the swarming and pustular life we've always been a part of. human-people work tirelessly to compartmentalize this life (to barricade ourselves within) but, in madness, we glimpse the world beyond the shroud. whether we want it or not. in our ability to to resist the abstraction of the world, to protect ourselves from representation and symbolism, to be also useless As possible for the machine, we are looking for the way out of this cage.

our experience in this world, our experience as what we are, is undeniable. it is perhaps the only thing we cannot deni. we have an opportunity here; in this way, crazy people possess a particular kind of blessing. By not complying with the damping and guiding effect of normative social reality, we sense this world in a way that those who are completely immersed in reality cannot.

our knowledge is painful; but for us, would it be less painful to ignore it? we believe that it is in our best interest to use our experience to try to escape in any way possible. If our madness is a hole in domestication, we must resist the forces that push us to close, to stitch us up, to keep quiet; we must instead tear ourselves apart, tear as much of the fabric of the Interior as possible.

there is no life for us here. not as these creatures that we are. to live, we have to embrace madness and help each other get out.

Queer Cannibal Collective

“Wild Medicine” by Ria Del Montana

Thirty years ago, an autoimmune disease appeared in my blood. I studied harmful and artificial medications and tore up prescriptions. Rheumatologists, those responsible for the highest rate of prescription deaths, treated me like an outlaw for refusing their expertise. Afterwards, they treated me as a curiosity when I explained how botanical remedies soothed my ailments. They felt powerless when they asked me to spell out the names of the plants to enter in my file.

Even if modern care was safe and effective, civilization and medicine collaborate to distribute enough “benefits” to maintain order, keeping the “possessing” strata well separated from the “poor.” The disparity in institutional health care is an injunction from civilization to walk straight, otherwise you too will perish in famine and plague. But, like schools and jobs, medicine is a subterfuge promoting the ecocide of civilization, rooted in the belief in progress. This belief is too frightening to be considered false; we are trapped in the trap of progress, as if there were no other options. Progress has become the only world that humans know.

What is the price of progress? Medicine contributes to the carnage of modernity against the Earth and “poor” animals — by torturing and killing laboratory animals, by polluting waterways with toxic drugs that create mutations in fish and amphibians, by polluting the land with tons of synthetic waste. Heart patients are fed the bodies of slaughtered animals, which are harmful to their health, and then require more medications and surgeries. A well-oiled gear.

It's not that I'm automatically rejecting modern medicine. I intuitively choose what's right for me. A broken bone — ok, I'll get a cast. I feel entitled to exploit techno-dystopia as I wish. It stole humans' wild knowledge and their wild home, where food and natural remedies live. Disastrous, it causes a multitude of human and non-human illnesses and deaths, earning as much trust and respect as a sociopathic murderer. From technological pollution to car accidents, from home fires and suicides by depression to disasters related to climate change, the list is endless. Although the pre-civilization landscape presented a different set of risks and dangers, the ills and deaths of early humans were paltry in comparison.

In the Neanderthal era, effective treatments for serious chronic injuries and conditions were widespread. There were individuals with injuries and illnesses requiring extended levels of daily care for months or even years. Feldhofer's Neanderthal (~40,000 years ago) recovered from a severe arm fracture requiring the immobilization of his limb and received food, water, and protection, as well as long-term care for a chronic condition. Shanidar I (~45,000 years ago) received care to survive at least a decade with an atrophied arm, a damaged leg, possibly eye blindness and hearing loss. La Chapelle-aux-Saints (~60,000 years before today) has been treated for severe osteoarthritis and systemic disease. Just benevolent companions and primitive means. No need to commit carnage.

Early humans also took care of their own medical needs. For example, anthropologists discovered a sick Neanderthal in El Sidrón Cave with a dental abscess and an intestinal parasite causing diarrhea. DNA analyses of foods found in dental tartar revealed that it ate mainly on poplars (Populus), which contain salicylic acid, a natural pain reliever and the active ingredient in aspirin, as well as plants covered in the mold Penicillium, the antibiotic penicillin. Ancient humans, like all other animals, found their cures and healing strategies through deeply loving relationships, instincts, and keen primal senses that were dulled by civilization.

Science doubts and mocks primitive wisdom. The reactivation of animal health returns control to ecology, restoring belonging and symbiosis. Although advanced medical technology surpasses the health care of the past, especially for children, how many injuries and illnesses are caused by technology? And is it worth the cost of a techno-ecocide for everyone? I feel that most animals, including myself, prefer wild care and that our stolen land and lives are returned to us. Progress replies: “Do you want a child to die from an infection that is easy to treat? ” Nor do I want a child to be shot dead, ingest grandma's pills, or commit suicide because of what we do to our planet.

Ria Del Montana