A collection of excerpted writings, critiques of civilization by the eminently civilized. Therefore a sadness pervades - the alternative they seek is only a dream or a concept, or an anthropological hypothesis. None of these writers knows what it is like to live in a time or social group that is outside of civilization. So overall, I was reminded of that TS Eliot line (paraphrasing): "each in his cell thinking of the key/ thinking of the key, each confirms the lock."

Here's a particularly sad thought from Richard Heinberg - we have domesticated ourselves - "We are to primitive [sic] peoples as cows and sheep are to bears and eagles."

So those who dream of a human life without civilization are like sheep or cows who dream of being bears and eagles. ( )

A short and diverse compilation of excerpted writing from the Greeks to the present that comes from the anti-civilization and primitivist currents that, the editor argues, have rightly opposed "progress" since the origins of civilization.

I found it to be a powerful and uncommon illustration of the potential depth of a critique of domestication and an exploration of wildness in all domains of human being. ( )

Sisällysluettelosta:
Foreword: Chellis Glendinning; Introduction: John Zerzan; Preface: Kevin Tucker, Unintended Consequences
Section I. Outside Civilization. Roy Walker, The Golden Feast; Hoxie Neale Fairchild, The Noble Savage: A Study in Romantic Naturalism; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality; Henry David Thoreau, “Excursions”; Fredy Perlman, Against His-story, Against Leviathan!; Arnold DeVries, Primitive Man and His Food; Marshall Sahlins, “The Original Affluent Society”; Lynn Clive, “Birds Combat Civilization”; John Landau, “Wildflowers: A Bouquet of Theses”; Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life; Marvin Harris, Our Kind; Ramona Wilson, Spokane Museum  huom. Kursivointi
Section II: The Coming of Civilization. George B. Marsh, The End as Modified by Human Action; Frederick Turner, Beyond Geography: The Western Spirit Against the Wilderness; James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America; John Zerzan, Elements of Refusal; Paul Shepard, Nature and Madness; Mark Nathan Cohen, Health and the Rise of Civilization; Robin Fox, The Search of Society; Chellis Glendinning, My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization; Pierre Clastres, Society Against the State; Madhusree Mukerjee, The Land of the Naked People; Robert Wolff, Reading and Writing