Future Primitive and Other Essays

Future Primitive and Other Essays is a collection of essays by Elements of Refusal, Future Primitive is regarded by Anarcho-Primitivists together with technophobes as an underground classic.

Thesis

Future Primitive is an unequivocal assertion of the superiority of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Zerzan rejects the thesis that time and technology are neutral scientific realities, arguing instead that they are carefully constructed means of enslaving people. He cites as examples the computer and the Internet, which he maintains form an atomizing effect on society, devloping novel divisions of labour, demanding ever increasing efficiency and portions of leisure time. Life prior to domestication and agriculture, Zerzan argues, was predominantly one of "leisure, intimacy with nature, sensual wisdom, sexual equality and health". In the Paleolithic era, as The Wall Street Journal summarized Zerzan's thesis, "people roamed free, lived off the land and knew little or nothing of private property, government, money, war, even sexism. In the wild, the shackles of civilization weren't necessary, as people were instinctively munificent and kind, the primitivist parameter goes."