Quotes from book
Future Primitive and Other Essays

Future Primitive and Other Essays is a collection of essays by anarcho-primitivist philosopher John Zerzan published by Autonomedia in 1994. The book became the subject of increasing interest after Zerzan and his beliefs rose to fame in the aftermath of the trial of fellow thinker Theodore Kaczynski and the 1999 anti-WTO protests in Seattle. It was republished in 1996 by Semiotext, and has since been translated into French , Turkish , Spanish , and Catalan . As is the case with Zerzan's previous collection of essays, Elements of Refusal, Future Primitive is regarded by Anarcho-Primitivists and technophobes as an underground classic.

“The most influential specific postmodern approach has been Jacques Derrida's, known since the 60's as deconstruction. Postmodernism is philosophy means above all the writings of Derrida, and this earliest and most extreme outlook has found a resonance well beyond philosophy, in the popular culture and its mores.”

John Zerzan book Future Primitive and Other Essays

The Catastrophe of Postmodenity
Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994)

“All of us prefer what is friendly, sincere, pleasant - nice. But in an immiserated world of pervasive and real crisis, which should be causing all of us to radically reassess everything, the nice can be the false.”

John Zerzan book Future Primitive and Other Essays

The Nihilist Dictionary
Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994)

“We can either passively continue on the road to utter domestication and destruction or turn in the direction of joyful upheaval, passionate and feral embrace of wildness and life that aims at dancing on the ruins of clocks, computers and that failure of imagination and will called work. Can we justify our lives by anything less than such a politics of rage and dreams?”

John Zerzan book Future Primitive and Other Essays

Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994)

“It is clear that a retreat from the social, based largely on the experience of defeat and consequent resignation, promotes the personal as the only possible terrain of authenticity.”

John Zerzan book Future Primitive and Other Essays

The Mass Psychology of Misery
Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994)

“Stress, loneliness, depression, boredom- the madness of everyday life. Ever-greater levels of sadness, implying a recognition, on the visceral level at least, that things could be different. How much joy is there left in the technological society, this field of alienation and anxiety.”

John Zerzan book Future Primitive and Other Essays

"The Mass Psychology of Misery"
Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994)

“Never before have people been so infantalized, made so dependent on the machine for everything; as the earth rapidly approaches its extinction due to technology, our souls are shrunk and flattened by its pervasive rule. Any sense of wholeness and freedom can only return by the undoing of the massive division of labour at the heart of technological progress. This is the liberatory project in all its depth.”

John Zerzan book Future Primitive and Other Essays

Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994)

“postmodernism contemporaneity, a morass of deferred solutions on every level, featuring ambiguity, the refusal to ponder either origins or ends, as well as the denial of oppositional approaches, "the new realism." Signifying nothing and going nowhere, pm [postmodernism] is an inverted millenarianism, a gathering fruition of the technological "life"-system of universal capital.”

John Zerzan book Future Primitive and Other Essays

The Catastrophe of Postmodenity
Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994)

“The mental disorder of going along with things as they are is now treated almost entirely by biochemicals, to reduce the individuals's consciousness of socially induced anguish, tranquilizers are now the world's most widely prescribed drugs, and antidepressants set record sales as well. Temporary relief - despite side effects and addictive properties - is easily obtained, while we are all ground down a little more.”

John Zerzan book Future Primitive and Other Essays

The Mass Psychology of Misery
Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994)

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