An Explosion of Ecotopias

Can't speak for the man myself, but I have long been a proponent of cyber-primitivism, or off the grid living with salvaged technology and permaculture. The current difference between hi-tech and low-tech involves the intensity of energy consumption and interconnection with the rest of the world.

The primitivist line as advocated by Derrick Jensen is that the only sustainable technology is stone-age technology. I think John Zerzan probably falls into the same realm of thinking, mostly they promote a world in which society has collapsed and people have reverted to hunting and gathering for subsistence and decentralized by lack of spatial or technological cohesion.

I think the very concept of an ecoptopia is pretty much in line with appropriate technology as primitivists would prefer there be simply wandering about with a band of your friends hunting deer and picking berries to be the way the world works. At the same time many are actively of the mindset that civilization needs to be stopped as soon as possible to minimize the destruction to the ecosphere before the inevitable collapse.

I'm not sure where we are going to head, but I think there is a great hope for decentralized autonomous self-sufficient communities, or sustainable autonomy as I call it and the more of these the better. I think that most primitivist thinking tends to lead to extremism and self-contradictions and a kind of cynicism that makes it hard to inhabit this society, but perhaps that's just a healthy dose of skepticism towards the many destructive practices we are required to participate in every day just to exist inside of most cities.

Those are just some of the many thoughts I have on this subject. What would be more interesting than discussing the technology they use is the internal social dynamics they utilize to facilitate their daily interactions.