The Anthropik Network
Categories: Movies
Tags: collapse, peak oil, primitivism, sustainability
The Library collects important essays and articles for primitivism and rewilding into a single archive.
Have we podfaded? Honestly, yes. We still harbor plans to bring back the podcast, once we have a place where we can record! Expect us back sometime in 2008.
The Newsrrom gathers the latest headlines on environmental, energy and social news all in one place.
The Directory gathers links to some of the best rewilding and primitivist sites we know of, gathers them in one place. Syndicated from the Anthropik Ma.gnolia Group.
Hey, taxes, hunting & fishing licenses and all the rest cost money. Besides, you'll need field guides, books, and some other gear anyway. The indigenous peoples of the world have spoken: the most useful thing to come out of civilization is the t-shirt.
Coming soon.
Tyler Kimble’s half hour documentary, Yu Koyo Peya, has been a favorite feature on the Vault for some time now, though we’ve never given it the spotlight with a blog entry before. Of course, it’s only recently we’ve begun posting videos as blog entries, so perhaps that’s understandable. At any rate, Yu Koyo Peya is a really incredible documentary, featuring an original interview Kimble conducted with John Zerzan. It explores peak oil, collapse, and the opportunities that opens up in such a powerful way that we often point to it as the most succinct, stirring example of what Anthropik is all about that we could really ask for. All credit for the video has to go to the amazingly talented Tyler Kimble. You may find my fingerprints all over it online, but that’s just because I was the one that digitized it, uploaded it, and made it available to online audiences (with Tyler’s permission).
Comment by Jason Godesky — 13 September 2006 @ 2:13 PM
A powerful film. The film seems, however, to be infused with a belief that there are other species and cultures that are somehow in “balance” with nature. I would dispute that. All species - plant and animal - expand aggressively to the limits of the resources available to them. When they exceed the carrying capacity of their environment, or encounter an insuperable rival for those resources, or become themselves a food resource, their populations adapt or collapse. We call that process equilibrium. Evolution clearly demonstrates that no such balance has ever existed.
Comment by Eugene Marner — 15 September 2006 @ 12:21 PM
Those are some odd definitions you’re using there. I agree that all species expand to their limits, but if those limits are intact, and each species pulls on all the others, isn’t that the very definition of “balance”? I always compare it to the way my tent works: all the poles are pulling in opposite directions, they all limit each other, and the result is that the whole structure stands up—it’s balanced. Of course, if I release one of those poles, the whole thing will fall apart. Ecology is held in balance by tension: look at a Lotka-Volterra cycle. If that’s not balance, I don’t know what is.
So, I’d say balance—equilibrium—is what evolution is all about: balancing one species expanding as aggressively as it can, against another species, expanding as aggressively as it can.
And I’d also say that civilization provides a fine example of what happens when that balance is broken—something an ecologist would understand as overshoot.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 15 September 2006 @ 12:58 PM
Interesting video. I guess the thesis (per John Zerzan) is that after the collapse, the survivors will live the lives of hunter gatherers, and forsake that foolish venture into agriculture.
Zerzan undercuts himself by not trying to lead that kind of life. Instead, we see him behind a computer terminal, just another self-absorbed intellectual advocating things he doesn’t put into practice himself.
How society survives peak oil depends on what steps are taken to adapt, and how soon those steps are taken. The lack of adaptive steps makes it hard to be optimistic about what will result, but surely organic farming must be at the forefront. To write off agriculture and advocate a return to hunter gatherer livestyles is to advocate shrinking the population by 99.99% instead of by a third or three-quarters or whatever.
In any case, the hundreds of millions of people who survive off traditional forms of farming are not going to give it up and die. And they shall inherit the earth. Remember, 4 billion people don’t have access to electricity or the internal combustion engine. How much will they be affected by peak oil?
Comment by Jim Burke — 17 September 2006 @ 12:30 AM
Well, I don’t think agriculture is going to be viable, but horticulture/permaculture probably has a future, at least for a while.
[quote]In any case, the hundreds of millions of people who survive off traditional forms of farming are not going to give it up and die. And they shall inherit the earth[/quote]
The vast (and I do mean vast) majority if agriculture relies on oil in some form. Even many of the “organic” farms nowadays use it in [b]some[/b] form. Keep in mind the Great Dust Bowl if you want to know the logical ramifications of pre-industrial agriculture.
Comment by jhereg — 17 September 2006 @ 7:42 AM
Documentary? Much of this footage was ripped from Barraka
Comment by dimeo — 17 September 2006 @ 5:22 PM
Very interesting presentation. I agree almost entirely, and I like most of the interview sources.
I suspect, though, that something more angering will happen, because there is so much of it going on right now, and the recent book “Overthrow” by Stephen Kinzer, describes a century of the US doing it extensively.
That ‘it’ being, Western nations avoiding collapse by forcing collapse onto more vulnerable countries, in order to gain control of resources, or keep cheap labor available.
Comment by Carl — 20 September 2006 @ 1:34 PM
> “You may find my fingerprints all over it online, but that’s just because I was the one that digitized it, uploaded it, and made it available to online audiences (with Tyler’s permission).”
well its crap quality - the one on google/youtube. Any chance of finding a torrent of a higher-res version somewhere? It would make great propaganda to show at the uni but that version is unwatchable…
Comment by banana — 13 January 2007 @ 9:24 PM
Can you tell me how to get Yu Koyo Peya? Some folks have asked me and I’d really like to score a copy myself.
Zerzan at anarchyradio@hotmail.com.
Comment by anarchyradio@hotmail — 18 February 2007 @ 2:52 PM
I’m sure Tyler would be happy to help you out; I’ve emailed him to let him know about your comment here, so I think he’ll be in touch with you soon. I don’t want to post his email and subject him to spam, you understand.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 19 February 2007 @ 10:38 AM
I should really check this page more often…
Jason - thank you so much for you support, but as dimeo (correctly) mentioned, nearly all the footage was taken from Baraka and other films. So I think it’s misleading to attribute all the credit to myself.
John - I’ll have your copy in the mail ASAP!
Honestly, I am quite amazed and thrilled this video became as popular as it did. I very much doubted it would get any viewership beyond my Environmental Studies class (I wasn’t even thinking about IshCon at the time), and damn how wrong I was! Thank you all for your support.
Comment by Tyler Kimble — 19 February 2007 @ 11:59 AM
I didn’t say you shot the film, I said you made the documentary—and documentaries are all about putting sound and images from other sources together. You collected all this stuff, you put them together, and you fully deserve the credit for that.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 19 February 2007 @ 12:07 PM
Tyler - can u contact me? I’d love to run this film on our site….. http://oftheworld.tv
Comment by Tom Kendall — 15 March 2007 @ 11:31 PM
Hi Tyler
I would very much like to be able to show your documentary to our students here at Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand. It is just the right length for a lunch time session. ‘Sustainability is the current buzzword of our institution, and so I’d like to take advantage of that, having read a lot about peak oil and associated issues.
Comment by William Lucas — 1 July 2007 @ 4:38 PM