the warbound online supplement

GREEN SCARE BENEFIT CD OUT NOW!!!

2009-04-27T12:46:00.000-07:00

Peregrine and Auryn have teamed up, and with the help of FC Records, released a benefit CD that is not only for a great cause, but contains superb music. I encourage everyone to purchase this CD, either from the bands or from the AETA4 Support site, or from other support sites or distros, since the money raised for this CD will be split amongst all of the Green Scare defendents/prisoners.

Peregrine take a huge step forward as a band on this CD. Their first full-length, The Agrarian Curse, while excellent in its own respect, clearly was a teaser of what this band is capable of doing. The song-writing is dynamic, strong, and well-delivered. While I have heard comparisons to Behemoth, I'd say the band Peregrine mostly calls to mind is Misery Index, except without the AK Press politics, and with a dead-on anarcho-primitivist message. It's refreshing to see a band take on the concepts of liberation and resistance in terms that aren't boring, re-hashed, flimsy, or worse moralistic.

Auryn remind me of a more metal Greyskull, the incredible crusty hardcore punk band from Tacoma, WA. The vocals stand out the most, in a good way. While most bands that sound like this forego melody on the mic, Geoff isn't afraid to carry a tune, and he does so in a way that is catchy without being too different from the tone of the music.

Both bands contribute brief essays on the Green Scare, and while both are poignant, I find Kevin's to bring a much-needed look at our current situation. Perhaps I have a bias because our views are so similar and he has fed me and housed me on more than one occasion, but regardless I've chosen to reprint his essay here:

The Green Scare: an organized and systemic effort on behald of the government, the handmaidens of civilization, to suppress the rising wave of earth and animal liberation action and thought. The suppression of thought, through repressive legal actions or through the use of the megamachine we invite into our own lives, is telling.

In the face of the collapse of civilization; as the economy fails, as the earth kicks and screams, as the domesticator's tighten their technological grip; they know and they fear that we are right. They fear the wildness that green anarchists have brough back into the forefront of our crisis. They fear the egalitarian savagery of our primal anarchy; the lifeblood of the nomadic gatherer-hunters and the resilience of those who remain. they fear the inevitable end of their cannibalistic worlds.

All feasts must end.

There are many words I wish I could say here and elsewhere that I cannot. But I will never give up, and I will always stand beside those sitting in jail or awaiting trial who have stood strong. And when the lights go out, the wild awaits our return.

Their jails detain, but they can't kill this rage.

For wildness and anarchy,
KT/Peregrine

Kevin Tucker - Benefit Talk for Rod Coronado 12/09/06

2009-04-02T14:03:00.000-07:00

I'm very pleased to present the following talk given by Kevin Tucker a few years back to benefit Rod Coronado, who was recently released from federal prison. KT has always gone the extra mile to support prisoners, and Rod, despite some recent positions that I strongly disagree with, has unquestionably done amazing, inspiring work for the liberation of animals and this planet. On a cold December night, KT braved a looming snowstorm to deliver this talk and help raise money at the time for Rod and his family.

After an unbearable yet thankfully short introduction by yours truly, Kevin goes on to discuss anarcho-primitivism, and in particular its relation to animal liberation. I'm sure there's bound to be some controversy over remarks made regarding veganism during the Q&A (although KT clearly makes the distinction between personal dietary choice and dogmatic ideology), but its time that everyone, especially vegans and leftists and others stuck in the corpse of morality, recognize the pitfalls of any ideology and its impediments to total liberation.

I strongly encourage you to download both parts, because the Q&A is a great example of KT's prowess and strength in the course of discussion, something that has really defined his contribution to the milieu.

DOWNLOAD THE TALK HERE

DOWNLOAD THE Q&A HERE

The Q&A was aburptly cut-off, but there was easily another 45 minutes and engaging discussion that night. We ended up raising over $100 for Rod, which was a lot for the small, mostly "red" anarchist community where the event took place.

On a related note, a book collecting some of Kevin's writing over the years should be expected by the end of summer, and rumor has it Species Traitor #5 will finally see the light of day (note the promise of it being available by Summer 2007 during the talk)...

Also, please visit ecoprisoners.org and greenisthenewred.com for information on the current wave of state repression against earth and animal activists.

Announcing BLOOD LUST

2009-04-01T21:08:00.000-07:00

a dear friend of mine has begun a very ambitious and exciting project. i encourage anyone to contribute in any way they deem useful...

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Blood Lust: a feminist journal against civilization
Deadline June 1, 2009
Focuses of this issue: The body, body image, and eating disorders

Some subjects we would like to explore in this and future issues:

- Personal accounts of having or recovering from an eating disorder or body image issues
- Supporting loved ones with eating disorders
- The body within civilization
- Wimmin in gatherer-hunter societies
- Civilization and patriarchy
- Self-defense
- Anarchy and feminism
- Emotional support/mental wellness/healing and recovery
- Anarchist sobriety
- Herbalism/DIY health care
- Direct action against the fashion, cosmetics, diet, and other insecurity industries
- Reviews of relevant media
- Feminist cultural criticism
- Any other related subject + poetry and artwork

Contact: sleepwalkersunion@hotmail.com
myspace.com/passionateexistence

John Connor on Lessons from the Last Thousand Years

2009-03-23T11:40:00.000-07:00

John Connor was an editor at Green Anarchist(the UK mag, not to be confused with Green Anarchy in the states) for many years, and his writing is sorely under-appreciated in the U.S. milieu. This is an excerpt from his amazing pamphlet The Rise of the West, which I plan on reprinting sometime in the next year for distribution stateside.

LESSONS FROM THE LAST THOUSAND YEARS

Without the experience of Civilization, there would be no need for an anarcho-primitivist critique of it. Contre the postmodernists, this dualism doesn’t affirm Civilization, only the need to get shot of it. People got on just fine without it for the majority of human existence, and didn’t need some wordy anarcho-primitivist meta-narrative to explain their lives to them either.

However, granting that I do write from this perspective, the immediate and obvious lessons to be drawn from the last thousand years, I see them, are:

The realisation that ideas of ‘Progress’ and ‘Reason’ are historically-specific (c. 18th century), were always pernicious and served only sectional interests, and have—if anything—now been superseded by ideologies more unchallenged but even worse.
An extension of this: what a hypocritical class the bourgeoisie that have dominated this era are, always saying one thing and meaning another, and always presenting their own interests as the common interest. How repressed and in love with the artificial and abstraction they are, rather than reality they have abstracted from, presumably because they find their own creations easier to control. They are also a vicious lot, always accusing others of the atrocities they are responsible for.
A tendency for Power—whether in the form of money, control, State structures or whatever—always to concentrate itself whilst simultaneously trying to elaborate and extend itself to control as far and as variously as possible. Contre Marx, if this tendency continues unchecked, it will keep doing this until what we know as human—or is worth knowing as human—wholly ceases to exist.
An extension of this—and of the increasingly complex nature of society—is how fewer and fewer are ‘in the loop’ when it comes to exercising real power, how utterly unaccountable and inaccessible they are, and how little real power even they exercise in overview due to their specializations and the way this limits their capacity for vision and general understanding.
The consequence of this has been a loss of the immediate, a loss of our sense of Self, of the selfhood of others (including non-human others) and our affinity with them, and also—paradoxically—a loss of control and of the meaningfulness and satisfaction of life the more Power is concentrated and elaborated.
The futility of entering into an ‘arms race’ with Power—particularly when it comes to mobilizing mass v. Mass, a relatively recent (c. 19th century) and highly contradictory phenomena—as this only accentuates the tendencies mentioned above, win or lose.
An extension of this: that material affluence is what such eruptions are most usually bought off with and this doers nothing to address our root dissatisfaction, as our alienation is the root of this affluence, a particular feature of the problematic above.
The realization that—however inaccessible it is to me now—that there is an ‘outside’ to this empire, Civilization, whether in distant past or places where Civilization’s writ doesn’t run and these are useful in drawing comparing, contrasting and critiquing the existing world order.

further delays, some downloads, and a site spotlight:

2009-03-07T22:52:00.000-08:00

- i know i promised updates, and believe me they are coming. however, i'm preoccupied much of the time with personal research and also efforts towards working on the next issue of warbound, so i haven't had time to genuinely update, nor have i responded to some of the talk on the last past... all in due time. have patience.

- some of you may already know, but i have finally begun to produce and release noise music under the warbound name. you can check out the myspace for the project here, which contains a short clip of a track, the full version of which is accessible here.

- recently, an electronic version of warbound #3 was made available through Green Anarchy WikiDot Page. this is an excellent online resource, which i am very excited about. it's also maintained by a fellow feral edger!

Intoxication And Civilization

2009-02-24T21:31:00.000-08:00

the following appeared in Warbound #3, and after several requests i've decided to make this effort available digitally. i encourage discussion, debate, and reproduction.

INTOXICATION AND CIVILIZATION:
FROM ENSLAVEMENT TO OBLITERATION WITHIN THE ADDICTION CULTURE

"There is no more profound way of understanding the course of history than in terms of this effort to escape from one's own 'sweating self' and to experience even temporary states of euphoria or relief of discomfort regardless of the cost."
- Nathan S. Kline

From its earliest inceptions, sedentary life brought with it a drudging misery for its inhabitants, and with such misery quickly arose the need to placate the unruly and desensitize the weary. As social beings, the disassociated conventions of civilized life have never come naturally, and these impositions into and upon our lives have induced massive, collective trauma. The infrastructure of civilization surrounds, envelops, and teaches us to embody its qualities. It's modern totality is the magnum opus of the domestication set out upon less than a dozen millennia ago, and we are it’s equally insane offspring, each generation's pathology more dysfunctional than the last. What began over ten thousand years ago when we began domesticating plants and animals to meet food demands, and from there led to the deforestation of the lands of Mesopotamia and beyond in order to meet the needs of agriculture, what meant the forcing of other peoples off the land wanted, has continued into the present today. We bind ourselves to its unreasonable and unsustainable demands, suffering a commitment to a lifestyle that demands constant production and expansion through ever-increasing and deepening levels of exploitation and an unwavering devotion to this culture as not only beneficial and enlightening, but the only way in which our species can survive. As demands increase and complicate, so do our techniques and our technologies. Exploitation is no longer enough, for we are no longer just consuming. We need hyper-exploitation for hyper-consumption. Our concept of Progress only serves to reinforce what Derrick Jensen simplified as the process of converting the living to the dead.

Our every relationship is framed by through coercion. In the absence of wildness, our desire for direct experience is left unfulfilled. In its place, the hollowness of modernity: a psychically and ecologically barren monoculture of hyper-consumption makes a pathetic attempt, if any, to replace the engagement our species demands. Lacking the balance of a sustainable and natural experience, civilization deals with extremes, such as the bounce between over and under-stimulation, neither one satisfying or healthy for us in any way. In place of the forager's quest, we stand slack-jawed in the aisles of supermarkets (how many times have you heard someone say in those aisles, “there's just too much to choose from, I wish this were easier?”), a place where even the "original" hits of pop radio are replaced with tamed, detail-less muzak®, as is the warmth and light of the sun with the eerie glow of fluorescents. The conversation around the campfire is relegated to rare and novelty occurrences, if ever, as we take to replacing emotion with "emoticons," and even the voices of our friends and families over telephone lines are becoming more and more often replaced with the beeping and buzzing of text message notifications. It was once written that "our generation will go to its grave shouting its last words into a cell phone," but this dying world may not hear our screams. It has become frighteningly more realistic that we will go to our deaths silently, pressing keys and holding the "send" button.

We are truly surrounded/alone. Our social networking profiles boas legions of online friends, but the reality is we are isolated as we click our way through pseudo-relationships - it's not just quantity over quality, it is, like all of domestication, the abolition of quality itself. We surround ourselves with techno-comforts whilst prisoners within our increasingly standardized and dehumanized, our experiences overwhelmingly clustered yet simultaneously crushingly separated by walls physical and emotional. Fredy Perlman passed away before the permeation of the internet, cell phones, and so much of what shapes the technological ghost limb of many in this culture today, but the writing had been on the wall long before these "advances," and his words ring truer today than ever before when he wrote that "civilization is a humanly meaningless web of unnatural constraints." It is in our ever widening disconnect from reality and its pervasiveness of boredom and teeter-totter of over and under-stimulation that the misery of this culture expands into every facet of our existence.

Whether bombarded or deprived, the terror has started to blend into a painful dullness, and we search desperately for comfort, for euphoria, for anything that tells us we are actually alive. At every turn, our quest for connection finds itself funneled into ever-isolating and unfulfilling activities - escapes that replace outlets for the type of ecstatic energy life should create, diverting our desires and replacing them with false engagement, framing our relationship to such experiences originally through the habitual use of intoxicants and now through nearly every mediated aspect of civilization.

This undercurrent developed with the rise of domestication, deepening and strengthening with the onset of the enveloping hopelessness of the first cities. As David T. Courtwright so keenly observed in Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World:

“Humans evolved as hunter-gatherers in itinerant bands. After the Neolithic Revolution, most of them lived as peasants in crowded, oppressive, and disease-ridden societies. The misery and grinding poverty that were the lot of 90 percent of humanity in the early modern would go far toward explaining why tobacco and other novel drugs became objects of mass consumption. They were unexpected weapons against the human condition, newfound tools of escape from the mean prison of everyday existence."

The once-free were no longer so. Trapped inside, the now-broken were under a constant barrage of fear – the fierce coercion of the Big Man, the uncertainty of early agricultural food production, even the water that was once trusted to sustain was poisoned, diseased. It was no mere accident that the use of intoxicants grew rapidly into regular inoculations. In fact, inoculation is often what one intoxicant provided, as Bert L. Vallee discussed in Alcohol in the Western World: A History, his June 1998 Scientific American article:

“In the context of contaminated water supply, ethyl alcohol may indeed have been mother’s milk to a nascent Western civilization. Beer and wine were free of pathogens. And the antiseptic power of alcohol, as well as the natural acidity of wine and beer, killed many pathogens when the alcoholic drinks were diluted with the sullied water supply.”

As civilization expanded and complicated, so too did its connection to intoxicants and our dependency upon them. The coming of the industrial age only served to increase demands of precision and timeliness that weighed down those laborers chained (sometimes literally) to the engines of production. Concerning the constantly rising levels of alcoholism amongst workers in the early 19th century, Zerzan notes that this addiction “[wa]s an obvious register of strain and alienation, of the inability to cope with the burden of daily life.” Be it social control or survival, the relationship was there. Domestication and intoxication became inseparable, one augmenting the other - a vicious cycle that so suitably illustrates the functions of both.

“Alcohol has been around since the beginning of civilization. In fact, people loved alcohol so much that they forgot their nomadic ways and decided to settle down, just so they could grow the grains necessary to make beer. Just think: if it weren’t for alcohol, we’d still be wandering around pitching tents every night.”
- Drinkfocus.com, a website whose “aim is to empower consumers through providing information that may help in the development of informed decisions.”

Intoxication Culture is defined as a “set of institutions, behaviors, and mindsets around consumption of drugs and alcohol” by the author of Towards a Less Fucked Up World: Sobriety and Anarchist Struggle. To be clear, Intoxication Culture is not the same as intoxication itself. As mentioned earlier, many prehistoric (or is it pre-hysteric?) foraging people have, and their modern descendants continue to carry, knowledge of intoxicating plants and substances. The difference between an individual experience and our habitude is just that: what for the primal person is an individualized, conditional moment is for the civilized a compulsion. I have chosen to use the term Addiction Culture to expand and extend this concept to include other psychoactive substances, the pharmaceuticals that are pushed by mental and other conventional health industries, the aforementioned dependence upon technological mediation, and in fact the whole of domesticated existence.

In My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery From Western Civilization, Chellis Glendinning writes, “As an outgrowth of trauma, addiction is an attempt to confront the pain that lies at the heart of the traumatic experience.” Elsewhere, she cites Morris Berman when he delved even deeper into the core of the matter:

"Addiction, in one form or another, characterizes every aspect of industrial society... Dependence on alcohol (food, drugs, tobacco...) is not formally different from dependence on prestige, career achievement, world influence, wealth, the need to build more ingenious bombs, or the need to exercise control over everything."

Glendinning was one of the first to recognize not only the trauma of civilization and its relationship to literal addiction, but the similarities between how addictive behavior and civilization are rationalized. She identified the major characteristics of addiction as “an out-of-control, often aimless, compulsion to fill the lost sense of belonging, integrity, and communion” which is “shielded from awareness by denial: pretending everything is normal, not admitting pain or vulnerability,” followed by “an attraction to repeated trauma.” Let us explore theses concepts now.

An out-of control, often aimless, compulsion:

The entire natural world shudders beneath the load that our culture has created. Our entire lifeway - from our food acquisition to our social structures - has asked more from the natural world than it has ever been able to provide. At every rejection of our demands, we have thus forced our will upon the planet. We have desertified once-beautiful wild lands for our food staples: wheat, rice, soy, corn, and so on. We have thrust our drills deep within the earth to extract its black blood, and we have nearly bled her dry so that our daily activities continue. We have dredged the oceans, nearly wiping out all large sea mammals. We have blown the tops off mountains. We kill billions upon billions of land animals in factory farms and slaughterhouses. We've dammed (or is it damned? the answer is most likely both) the mightiest rivers for even more power. More food, more power... we constantly extract at insanely exploitative levels so that our culture, one of what we perceive as convenience, might survive. In turn, we have spread famine, poverty, disease, and every facet of destruction thinkable – and some unthinkable. We've even created weapons that in moments can undo billions of years of planetary development, leaving a scorched wasteland as our only legacy: a vicious cycle of rapacious consumption and incomprehensible desecration.

Denial:

“We cannot go back.”
“It was here way before us.”
“We can’t take something this big down.”
“It’s too late. There is nothing we can do about it now.” “We can change the bad things about this and keep the good things.”
“Were would we even begin if we did want to stop?”
“We’ll find a new way to make things work without it falling apart”
“You are being pessimistic.”
“You are the one who lives in a fantasy world.”
“It’s not my problem. It’s not OUR problem.”
“I don’t even want to think about this.”

... Is there any doubt about the depths of our refusal to accept the reality of our situation?

Attraction to repeated trauma:

Easter Island. Mesopotamia. Maya. Rome. Anasazi.

Waterloo Creek. Wounded Knee. The Great Purge. The Holocaust. My Lai. Darfur.

American Bison. Northern Spotted Owl. Bali Tiger. Mexican Grizzly Bear. Passenger Pigeon.

Time after time. Failure after failure. Over and over again. Forever and ever into oblivion.

Civilization is the culture of unrelenting trauma, its inhabitants helpless addicts seeking refuge from excruciating distress.

Not that our search for reprieve, however artificial, is condemnable, as the temperance and prohibition ideologies would have us believe (their intoxication being moral absolutism). Rather, such a search is only expected of a creature deprived and cut off. Erich Fromm wrote in Escape From Freedom that, “to feel completely alone and isolated leads to mental disintegration just as physical starvation leads to death.” All animals need engagement and without it the need for tranquilization quickly follow in hopes of survival. Courtwright again points to the confinement of domesticated life when he writes, “species seek and consume intoxicants in the wild, but they do so more often and more compulsively under conditions of captivity.” One can reflect upon the terrifying experiences of those confined in cages, from vivisection labs to psych wards to schools to Super Max prisons. Many of the more literal hostages of this culture die, whether physically, mentally, or emotionally, before their captors can administer all the appropriate tests/diagnosis/degrees/sentences - often from their implacable misery. Put simply, life is impossible without stimuli. Biologically, humans (and again, many other beings) just don't survive under such denied circumstances – in other words, even within its own scientific reasoning, we are at odds with civilization.

Our participation within this culture is driving us absolutely insane. We see the pathology playing out all around us – the news stories of people “snapping” have gone from freakish occurrences to freakishly often occurrences. Rates of autism and schizophrenia, among other mental illnesses, rise at what should be alarming rates – people turning within themselves, people tearing themselves into pieces, people unable to cope with the barrage of daily life. Perhaps these persons aren’t so much ill as more rooted in reality than the rest of us; perhaps it is the rest of us who have somehow managed to disassociate ourselves. Perhaps the real sickness is not automatically reacting with confusion or panic or dejectedness when faced with civilization.

Addiction Culture provides the context necessary for placation and pacification, to further disempower us, to more easily break us. Under its enchantment, we perpetuate a cycle of docility and destruction. That is why it is called addiction.

And that is why we must resist Addiction Culture’s promises of a lull in the torrent of civilized misery. Some may argue, as Courtwright has, that “the use of drugs to cope with fatigue and obliterate misery is in many ways a byproduct of civilization itself,” but it increasingly seems more feasible that Addiction Culture is not an unintended consequence, but rather an integral and vital part of the domesticating process. Without civilization addiction culture would not exist, but just as importantly without addiction culture, civilization could not exist. Relief from domestication through civilization has always been the mythology handed to those who would otherwise resist. The fix, whatever it may be, has always been just around the corner, requiring just another act of subservience from us.

“To be addicted is to be a slave. To be a slave is to be addicted. The heroin ceases to serve the addict, and the addict begins to serve the heroin. We can say the same for civilization: it does not serve us, but rather we serve it.

There's something desperately wrong with that."
- Derrick Jensen

Just as the environmental movement will never save any ecosystem, just as the worker’s movement will never abolish work, a culture of false and/or detached pleasure will never bring about a participatory experience. There never was and never will be balm in Gilead, to borrow from the western mythical tradition. Sadly, the stranglehold of addiction was in place long before our struggle to undo it, and it is to no surprise that anarchist communities suffer as much as any other from the pitfalls of Addiction Culture, amongst the many other undesirable aspects of civilization. What is surprising, however, has been the absence (and in some cases removal) of dialogue around the subject, particularly within the context of resistance to civilization and the unlearning of domestication. As Glendinning showed, denial is a central part of the addict pathology. Until we acknowledge the major deficiency of praxis our resistance suffers from by perpetuating Addiction Culture, our opposition will continue to falter, stumbling drunkenly towards abject failure, towards the realization of domestication and civilization: extinction.

As with so many of the problems facing those hoping to overcome and outlive civilization, this undertaking will not be easy, and I make no claim to have all or even any answers to this problem. I can only say that the damage wrought by this culture is deep and manifests itself widely, and the rewilding of our planet and our selves must go as deep as civilization’s despoliation. Our hopes for a life engaged and enmeshed within actual experiences lay within an attack on the totality of civilization and nothing less. The only way we will achieve total liberation from this culture is by tearing out every last vestige of the malicious roots of domestication from within our communities and ourselves. Anarchists purport to be fighting against the world that creates such wretchedness while seeking, building, and sustaining communities free of the stifling woe that is necessary for civilization to continue and that Addiction Culture numbs us to. To end oppression of all kinds, we must confront it by any means necessary and must also be willing to look critically at, speak openly about, and fight vigorously against such an omnipresent component of oppression, simultaneously seeking to heal, working to support on another in our recovery.

An anarchist world is a world of liberatory reality, of daily engagement and constant stimulation, with rewarding experiences and real relations – a world without domestication or civilization, without this web of boredom, depression, docility and misery.

- D.L. Lobos, August 2008.

Blog Spotlight: ANARCHO-SAVAGIST

2009-02-09T12:33:00.000-08:00

In lieu of an update from me, I thought I'd refer everyone to Anarcho-Savagist, an excellent blog specializing in anthropology, prehistory, and many other topics of concern for anyone looking to strengthen and develop their critique of civilization and domestication. I'd recommend the interview with James Woodburn and his article "Egalitarian Societies," which in my opinion is an excellent cornerstone in anarcho-primtivist thought, althought that certainly wasn't the purpose of the piece. Also of note is R. Brian Ferguson's "10,000 Years of Tribal Warfare," in which the opening line really says it all:

"War has always been a central icon of civilization..."

UPDATES COMING

2009-01-09T15:05:00.000-08:00

my apologies for the delays, i have been busy gallivanting around the states, finding little time to work on this little online adventure. i promise more to come, and very soon. until then, here's a hard-to-find and technically unreleased KILLTHESLAVEMASTER song. It's a demo version of "Coenobite (Of The Abattoir)"...

check it.

The Other Side of Eden...

2008-08-26T21:05:00.000-07:00

The lack of updates to this newly-started project has meant that I've been working on the new physical issue of Warbound, which will be available starting this weekend at the Tearing at the Roots Conference in Baltimore, MD, where I will be presenting some of my work regarding the roles that intoxication/addiction culture and animal liberation play within the larger confines of domestication.

If you desire a copy of Warbound, they are available on a donation basis, which can be arranged via email: deloslobos@wildmail.com, or through mail at the below address:

D.L.
15 Berry Avenue, Lower
Lackawanna NY 14218
(may take 6-8 weeks for response)

Now, for this installment I have provided an mp3 version of an interview conducted by the BBC program Outlook with Hugh Brody.

From their site:
"Hugh Brody is a writer, anthropologist and filmmaker. From his experiences of hunter-gatherer culture gleaned from years of living and hunting with the Inuits of the Arctic and the salmon-fishing tribes in the Canadian Northwest, Brody reaches through everyday realities to reflect on the human condition.

Speaking to Outlook about his latest book, The Other Side Of Eden, Brody introduces us to the hunter-gatherer way of life and explores the misunderstandings and the historic division between hunter-gatherers and farmers."

It's a very short interview, but it's got some amazing observations from Brody, and I cannot recommend his book enough for those looking for more anthropological insight into the unsustainability and unhealthiness of domestication, which is available from Black & Green Press.

download here

Cacophony: Noise Music as a Critique of Civilization

2008-07-17T17:02:00.000-07:00

Before I begin:

"The environment we live in is no longer connected to the mix of planetary processes which brought us all into being. It is solely the product of human mental processes. It is real, but only in the way that a theatrical play or a fun house is real. Our artificial environment is there and we can experience it, yet it has been created on purpose by other humans. It is an interpretation of reality, it no longer reveals how nature works and it cannot provide much useful information to human beings who seek to see their own lives as part of some wider natural process. We are left with no frame of reference untouched by human interpretation."

-Jerry Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (New York: Quill, 1978), 87.

Mander brings to attention something that I think is vitally lost on a regular basis by people in general and anarchists in particular - EVERYTHING HAS CONTEXT. Failure to examine whatever is at hand without first recognizing context has and continues to be a major problem when addressing civilization, domestication and opposition to all that prevents a liberated existence. I can only imagine the dismissals applied to Warbound and inevitably to this blog, or to any participation I have in the culture that I say I resist...

With the concept of context in mind, I choose to begin this project with what many even in anarcho-primitivist circles would find to be a strange subject.

I have recently had the pleasure of speaking with a few different artists in the noise/integrated sound (its hard to generalize here) world about my interest in the genre as a critique of civilization.

My original interest in this genre originally began with the singer of Integrity's harsh noise project PSYWARFARE. His eccentricities aside, I found the content and form of Psywarfare to be terrifyingly exciting - a chaotic bombardment of feedback, white noise, eerie samples, and even a Blondie song backwards! From there, I was exposed to another Cleveland group, the infamous LOCKWELD, who are known to incorporate power tools, machinery and weapons as part of their music - oftentimes resampled, looped, processed and distorted with the use of an analog synth. In live performances, Lockweld have used power tools such as sanders and metal grinders, and often start fires. In interviews they often cite the dark industrial landscape of our shared hometown as inspiration for the harshness of their sound.

Then, in March of this year, I had the pleasure of seeing Father Of The Flood during and after a performance by the band Deepen The Wound. FOTF is essentially on the opposite side of the integrated sound spectrum, using elements of everyday life and minima, often droning electronics to create striking and stark compositions. Since DTW was very outspoken on their stance against civilization, I assumed that FOTF would share these sentiments, and as I was leaving the show I was able to strike up a conversation with Daniel, the person solely responsible for the project. It turns out I was right, and since then we've had a wonderful correspondence and a growing friendship. An interview with Daniel is availble HERE.

From there, i began contemplating the relationship between the noise genre and a critique of civilization. An incident from my childhood immediately came to mind. When i was younger, my mother suffered a complete breakdown (readers of the first preliminary issue of Warbound will be familiar with this) and was later diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. Once, after an episode where she had to be medicated much stronger than usual, she made the remark, "There is so much racket in my head, i just can't take it." Needless to say the entire situation has and to this day does affect me greatly, but that always stuck with me.

"There is so much racket in my head, I just can't take it..."

I feel those words, so real for my mother's everyday experience, are a perfect metaphor for how this culture has invaded our lives. We are a domesticated species, constantly bombarded by a relentless techno-industrial cacophony. Most of the time, we are shell-shocked into submission by the culture, but as always there are some who don't take the breaking - some of those people are the ones who choose to resist in hopes of returning to wildness, but sadly many of the untameable are left broken and neurotic - witness the widespread panic and pathology inherent in these final hours of civilization.

We are overwhelmed, and addiction is a fantastic example of the civilized mentality of "can't have enough"... I think it's interesting that many "overdose" scenes in movies seem to be accompanied by overwhelming noise or intense music...

Sady, domestication also manifests an inverse effect - an increased isolation of ourselves, emotionally and physically, psychically, and so forth. The human animal becomes an island, crammed up against 6 billion other islands, desperately seeking connection, and finding only frustration.

So, you have the extremes in a dance macabre with little hope for our species well-being - there's always a connection between overshoot and collapse, even when we are speaking of the ecology of our "spirit" - and what is more appropriate to complement these extremities and extensive kinds of experience in regards to our environment than a genre that goes from projects that quietly fragment pieces of our everyday experience such as Father Of The Flood to Lockweld using metal grinders and concrete to express the sheer terror of the industrial process? In noise I find a sort of naked expression of the aural experience of civilization, and in that I am absolutely fascinated...

Through my exploration of this issue, I was happy to find yet another project that shared these ideas with me, the Australian outfit Cull, who on their website describes the effort as "one of many voices of the Primal War." I was lucky enough to get an interview in with Cull as well, which is included HERE.

In closing, the latest issue of Green Anarchy featured a piece by John Zerzan entitled "Silence," which provides an excellent compliment to this piece. Read that HERE.

interview with FATHER OF THE FLOOD

2008-07-17T14:45:00.000-07:00

FATHER OF THE FLOOD interview. july 2008.
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[x] please give a brief summary of Father Of The Flood's history, origins, etc.

i began "Father of the Flood" during the winter of 2005. At that time i was strictly documenting improvisational sketches of "songs" on an old cassette recorder. in July of 2007, i began performing and releasing pieces on cassette and cdr regularly.

This project was created primarily as a means of coping with the psychological assaults we are confronted with by our civilization and ourselves, whether the dangers of self-introspection or the traditions and practices we have accepted and continually participate in.

The sounds that are at the source of these pieces are collages of field recordings - completely riddled with interference from the surroundings they were created in, as well as, deep drones meant to mimic and bring awareness to the vibrations we as people and machines constantly fill the atmosphere with.

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[x] What are your thoughts on the relationship between the totality of domestication in your daily life to FOTF?

The reason why i have been working to make this project more of a public endeavor is rooted in my belief that in any of our actions we are essentially accountable for the impact of those decisions. Because of this belief, i have encountered and been the source of so much guilt that i am continuously unsure of as being (un)necessary.

Due to the chaotic nature of our everyday lives and the violent consequences of our actions - we exist in an unrelenting crisis of values. Yet, upon any instinct we can grasp escape in a tangible form that has been formulated to directly tranquilize or keep us consumed in that spectacle, whether through synthetic drugs that sometimes "find" their way into our drinking water if we haven't already sought them out for our own discretion, or simply televisions selling us insecurities and enticing our emotional being with scripted "living", all the while laying the foundation for learned behaviors in just how much attention and ultimate control we allow towards our imaginations.

i want to create pieces that allow space and encourage contemplation or self-abandonment at will, that are composed largely by actual sounds from our urban enviornments that offer the listener an opportunity for a naive ear and a more self-focused position of judgement.

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[x] Do you think that ambient/noise/soundscape/whatever you wish to call it music plays into a critique of civilization, technology, etc. knowingly or unknowingly?

It is unavoidable that much "noise/integrated sound" reflects civilization and technology. Especially with so many artists actually constructing their own synthesizers, effects, and other tools and the actual sounds born from these inventions. However, i can't say that each artist is aware of their own intention and how it compares to the structures around them, i can't even say they want to be.

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[x] I know that i am very passionate about the Warbound project, along with other endeavors that are intimately tied to the existence of civilization (such as our means of communication right now). With that in mind, and with the almost certain reality of major collapse within our lifetimes, what are your feelings on what will inherently mean a loss of your ability to create in this format and others?

i can not be certain or sworn to my desire to create musically, especially in relation to such a collapse, but i do know that i am presently faced with concerns to the inadvertant harm this project is essentially creating. You know, just more packaged goods, just more plastic. The fact that i tour and am doing so by driving a very inefficient vehicle.

i must accept the inevitable collapse and understand the forces which are fueling it. i must also be trusting and selfless in the reality of the vitality it will yield. granted, i have not also dissappeared with our common means of living - i will continue in practice of listening with a naive ear and trying to remain thoughtful of our direct impact upon things (especially when that direct impact can be implemented beneficially).
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For more information and mp3s from Father Of The Flood, you can check out the link in my "Musicians" section, although the reader should be aware that many of these compositions were meant for analog listening, and I encourage everyone to acquire the tapes that are available through Daniel's label, Featherspines.

interview with CULL

2008-07-17T14:22:00.000-07:00

CULL interview. july 2008.
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[x] Please give a brief summary of Cull's history, origins, etc.

I got into the noise and industrial genres back in my teens. There seemed to be a kind of purity of expression in this “music” - not bound up in chord structures, and 4/4 rhythms, the noise/power electronics and industrial artists could move me as much as even the most powerful traditional music. Eventually, like a million DIY/punk kids across the globe, I finally decided that I could do that, too. So I started making noise about 5 years ago. For a brief time I was trying to pander to the whims of the power electronics scene, which has a lot of severely dodgy and even moronic elements, finding a way of introducing eco-ideas to that subculture. So Cull was originally couched into some bullshit concept of “Green Totalitarianism”. I quickly got tired of suppressing my real “political” position to pander to dickheads, so now Cull is a more honest expression of my own experience and desires.

While it’s been 5 years since Cull started I’m one hell of a procrastinator (emigrating to the other side of the world didn’t help). There’s been some .mp3’s produced, a track released on the R.I.N.O. compilation on Roil Noise records (http://www.roilnoise.com), and some collaboration work. I’ve finally got my shit together and actually know where I’m going with Cull and will hopefully have the first album,“Scream,” out by the end of the year if I can find someone suitable to release it.

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[x] What are your thoughts on the relationship between the totality of domestication in your daily life to Cull?

Cull is very much a reflection of my experience. It’s an expression of both my feelings of loss and of rage. Like you, and all of us trapped within civilization, I’ve had to watch loved ones being destroyed in various ways by the violence of this system. I’ve had to deal with my own acts of abuse, upon myself and others, passing the violence further down the hierarchy, and the guilt that that brings. Cull reflects all this and more.

An aspect in particular that I want to explore with Cull, and possibly in some writings, is a stage of my own attempts to “decolonize my own mind,” as Ward Churchill might call it. This isn’t my culture. Being a white European male, it’s often easy to fall into the trap of thinking that in some way I am the cause, or at least a contributor, to all this. For me it’s important to realize that civilization was imposed in Europe as it has been everywhere else. A particular inspiration for me in this regard is a monologue in Tacitus’ Agricola, which is attributed to a Pictish leader called Galcagus. Galcagus describes the invading forces of the Romans in a way that would be clearly recognizable to any occupied peoples around the globe. Coming across this text some years back really realigned my perception and in a way deepened my feelings of loss by having it in black & white that we too have had our wild culture stolen from us. No doubt along the way I’ll be throwing in themes related to Feral Edge. Not in the dogmatic "True Til Death" way of the traditional straight edge movement, but, having been an abuser of various substances in various times of my life, I think it’s an important element of my experience of civilisation and should be discussed in my art.

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[x] Do you think that ambient/noise/soundscape/whatever you wish to call it music plays into a critique of civilization, technology, etc. knowingly or unknowingly?

This is an interesting question. In some ways I’d say absolutely it does, and even to some extent it has been a knowing critique at times. Back in the old days there were artists like Throbbing Gristle that were directly critiquing the structure of society. While it may not have been a critique of the totality there was certainly a critique, and a mirroring of, the mini-industrial collapse in the North of England in the 1970’s and early 80’s. There’s was influence from writers such as J.G. Ballard, and even the Situationists, in the depiction of the banality of modern and post-modern life. Even the exploration of serial killers, the Nazis, and other themes, that are so passé in the modern noise scene, are in some ways a critique of the totality.

Unfortunately, in these days, as with the punk scene, a lot of the critique is gone with just hollow shock tactics used by people fitting into the power electronics/harsh noise ghetto (something, as I mentioned in the first question, that I was guilty of myself in the early days of Cull). There are still artists that genuinely have some analysis, from The Grey Wolves with their “cultural terrorism”, to the rise of explicitly anarchist noise artists such as Militia and Black Bloc. Then, there's the fact that we’re taking various forms of technology and subverting them - taking a synth, for example, and creating an intentional sound that a more traditional musician would think makes it sound broken. In taking these instruments and sounds that are normally so mediated with melody and rhythm and unleashing them in different ways, we’re kinda inadvertently critiquing the notion of domestication itself.

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[x] I know that i am very passionate about the Warbound project, along with other endeavors that are intimately tied to the existence of civilization (such as our means of communication right now). With that in mind, and with the almost certain reality of major collapse within our lifetimes, what are your feelings on what will inherently mean a loss of your ability to create in this format and others?

I actually think about this a lot. It comes up occasionally with people opposed to the anti-civ milieu (primarily other anarchists, sadly) calling me out for using technology, such as computers and synths, to create my art.

I tend to look at the issue in two ways... the first way I look at it is that all this shit - the internet, the CD’s, the DVD’s, my music project, all of it - is just a variety of anti-depressants. While I’m trapped within this system there are certain things that make life less unbearable. When the collapse reaches that tipping point (it being a process rather than an event) in which I can no longer use this stuff, I probably won’t need it anymore. Once I’m living in a less mediated state and can fully engage in daily life and the process of healing, I’ll be able to wean off these anti-depressants. Just as, even now, when I’m out in the woods or at the ocean, I feel no urge to stare at a screen or scream into a microphone. It’s only when locked in the city I need these things.

The second way I look at this question is that Cull isn’t just a noise project. Cull is an expression of my experiences. In a post-collapse world Cull will become part of the healing process. Cull will become stories around a fire. Cull will be the knowledge of where we’ve been so we know what not to do again.

However, there’s a part of me that worries that instead of channeling all this rage and loss into Cull I should be out there taking it down. It’s like that whole Derrick Jensen thing of writing or blowing up a damn. There’s a nagging voice inside that tells me I’m making the wrong choice. Perhaps one day it’ll get loud enough to have me change tactics, who knows? The other motivational doubt I have is about Cull as a propaganda tool. I know that music doesn’t really change shit, the popularity of Rage Against The Machine proves that one, but there’s a part of me that hopes that someone somewhere will stumble across my noise shit and be inspired or at least find something that shines some light on their own experience. I think rather than Cull as propaganda maybe I’m just reaching out, trying to “find the others.”

method - s/t 7"

2008-07-13T23:22:00.000-07:00

this record featured a member of killtheslavemaster, and has quickly become a favorite in regular rotation around the warbound office (coming to a living room or library near you!). the lyrics for the first song are incredible, and in 1996 are clearly ahead of their time - it must've been 2-3 more years before another outspokenly anti-civ hardcore band came out...

Culture
Culture bleeds us dry. Civility breaks us. Rapes our instinct. Culture leaves us barren. Foundation anchored in the flesh of nature, this flower wilted when its roots were burned. We stoke the fire but this cinders forever cold. This cinder's ash. Worthless, the fossil that cannot shed this lie. Cast away by the hand that created. Forsaken by the soil that shaped life. Suffer the alienation as the bond is broken. Choke on the wrath of our mother betrayed. Roused from our slumber to hold hands with death. Sentient grown barren, now dwells in the forest of pestilence. Soil lies empty, we walk within death. Torn from our instinct, rendered dead. Forever exiled from our nature, we are nothing.

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