communication and green anarchism

While civilization and technology have both been addressed by the ideologies of green anarchism and anarcho-primitivism, neither ideology has fully addressed the place of communication and communication networks in an ideal or closer-to-ideal ecocentric setting, or if it has any place in such a setting at all.

From the primitive to the modern

The most basic communication skills, such as talking, involve the usage of the tongue in the forming of distinct sounds known as words. Whole ideas, thoughts and words were communicated through visual and audial signals that could be displayed over a limited geographic distance.

However, in many civilizations, this communication was codified into pictoral, visual records known as text. Text could be distributed between whole regions in order to deliver ideas, thoughts, and pronouncements to masses of people without any further waver than what would be allowed by the text.

From then on, most communication mediums which have existed throughout history have been facilitated or enabled by technological inventions for purposes of connecting between people within and without civilizations, allowing communication to become faster and more widespread. Text has continued to play a role, now increased tenfold, in the determination of lingual and etymological boundaries for languages where a portion of the world's population is "literate", or fully immersed in the text definitions of the language to be fluent almost entirely on communicating thoughts exclusively within such boundaries. In the computerized information age, such exclusive communication in text has become a norm for millions of people.

Furthermore, communication through text has also played a role in the development of computer technology. Programming has become a profession in which many are employed or skilled; even the produce of the Free Software Movement is used in the development and furthering of the encompassing industrial technology upon which our Western civilization has become increasingly dependent.

Can communication transcend technology?

Technology continues to expand to include the full breadth of possible means of communication. It makes it increasingly available to individuals; in fact, ongoing research is looking into the expansion of communication technology to other biological species, with less focus on text and more on both general visuals and audials.

But once technology encompasses the full breadth of human communication wants, then the creation of further technology will wind down and cease; the exploitation of the Earth's resources will cease as well. This day may never come, as human desire may continue to demand more from technology in order to sustain communication, which is not ceasing in its own expansion anytime soon.

Responses

A primitivist response to communication

A primitivist argument would go against the usage of text definitions in or by technology in order to advance civilization. However, the primitivists would also likely argue that, while communication has brought together people from widely-varying civilizations, the increasing ubiquity of communication (again, facilitated by communication-focused technology produced through the extraction of raw materials from the Earth) could also drive people away from each other, putting a wall of physical distance reinforced by computing technology between individuals.

In such a setting, where the individual is isolated from physical contact, a sort of anarchism can thrive within the padded cell where the user only has communication to tie himself to semi-autonomous pseudo-communities that only exist within communication.

Unabomber manifesto perspective

The Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, wrote in his manifesto a slight critique of communication as being a tool of oversocialization, but only in the sense that it is used to advise and tell people how to act and think, resulting in low self-esteem, defeatism and lack of freedom on the Left wing.

A green response

The green anarchists, while taking into account the role of communication and information as being a side effect of technology's expansion, may emphasize the need for some form of communication that bypasses most of the technological threshold that is usually needed in order to communicate over wide distances and civilizations.

The lack of a response

Due to the dependency of communication upon technology, communication could easily be lumped in with technology as an exploitative method of control. However, like the necessary technology, communication is used to spread the ideas of the green anarchists and the anarcho-primitivists to others and allow them to communicate with each other over wide distances.

Whether minimal communication between the hypothetical autonomous villages would result in the creation of the anarcho-primitivists' utopia or basic platform for living is not known.