[lbo-talk] beaches, erosion, etc.

[Eric Beck]

On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 10:22 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> That's an interesting point. I always suspected something like that was
> going on with a certain kind of environmental purist, but I didn't have
> enough empirical data to back it up.
>
> Also, I'm wondering if it's not just doom, but the longing for some sort of
> irresistible ecological compulsion towards neoprimitivism. We *can't* have a
> materially abundant society - we *have* to go back to the land, etc. etc. Of
> course, we'd have to dispense with several billion people, but you know,
> details, details.

I don't think so. In my (nonquantifiable) experience, primitivism is
nearly always a subset of doom and only gets called out rhetorically,
when the speaker knows that it will boast his case for the
irreversible existence of the handbasket we're going to hell in. Say
what you want (and there's a lot) about the odiousness of primitivist
demands, but at least they posit/imagine (however poorly) modes of
living that are different from current arrangements. Doomsayers can
only imagine the eternal continuation of the present.