The Noble Savage

Whether symbolic thought is a false consciousness, as Zerzan supposes, is not clear to me. It presupposes some sort of true consciousness, which in Zerzan's view some might argue is really a preconsciousness because the advent of language is one of the evolutions that precipitated consciousness. I am not in agreement with a definition of consciousness as belonging to frontal lobe processes to start off with, as consciousness to me is evident at a much lower level - I reckon trees have consciousness and certainly animals do as well. But it may be a very different sort of thing than that which those who connect consciousness with language and conceptual (symbolic) thought have in mind. They may be thinking of self-awareness.

Where false consciousness can be talked about with more certainty is in view of the conceit inherent in the 19th century view of science, wherein the possibility of absolute or true knowledge is assumed. Once that certainty is rendered insecure the mind's conceptual response to its environment and mental environments are like the responses of the central nervous system to the environment: they are responses. That much the mind and the other senses have in common - there is a lot they don't.

Ok to put it differently, it is not clear why symoblic consciousness should be more false than, say, a bicameral consciousness in which natural forces have spirits and are proclaimed gods. Zerzan doesn't talk about the bicameral mind so I have no idea what he thinks of it (in the bicameral mind religion plays a role, which Zerzan links with symbolic thought, if that's any indication).

But to come back to my other gripe with his ideas - his alternative is a little too ... simplistic. Too "natural". Whereas his advocacy for a future primitive is described as radical and anarchist, his basis for that vision is not a new idea. I keep on thinking of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but compare these words written by Montaigne 2 centuries earlier already, as he describes the Noble Savages:

"The laws of nature still rule them, very little corrupted by ours, and they are in such a state of Purity that I am sometimes vexed that they were unknown earlier, in the days when there were men able to judge them better than we. ...This is a nation...in which there is no sort of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no science of numbers, no name for a magistrate or political authority, no custom of servitude, no riches or poverty, no contracts, no successions, no partitions, no occupations but leisure ones, no care for any but common kinship, no clothes, no agriculture, no metal, no use of wine or wheat. The very words that signify lying, treachery, dissimulation, avarice, envy, belittling, pardon-- unheard of." (quoted from The Victorian Web)

Beautiful. Now if only I could believe in it.

I suppose the role of an anarchist is to some extent to inject ideas that will eventually become more moderate in their execution, but could not have drawn attention or be successful as ideas in a more moderate form. In that respect Zerzan is probably forced to take a rather extreme stance. There is some evidence, as noted in my post yesterday, and maybe some patterns will emerge as I read the rest of the essays.