by
Jaye B.
(editor’s note: I have to laugh at some of the phraseology I employed in the review below such as: negentropic unguent. When it first came out in 2002, one reader got offended by my ‘anarchy is a euphemism for impotence’ comment, but it’s true because it’s Anarchy LTD these days. I can’t remember what publication I wrote the following for, but recall enjoying doing so. )
At a time when I've been regarding anarchy as a mere euphemism for impotence, John Zerzan's Running on Emptiness has come across my desk. One of the more articulate of marginalized writers on the counterculture scene today, Zerzan encourages us to embrace the present, our connectedness to the earth and to nature itself. He suggests that we wean our hyper-dependence on technology to do this for starters. While Zerzan fluently cites examples of our current plight of apathy/ alienation via a kind of incendiary deftness that has earned him the 'most important philosopher of our time' kind of lavish praise from Derrick Jensen, I'm still not completely won over when it comes to abandoning my computer and making a dash to nature like some 21st Century Schizoid Rousseau.
However, I enjoy the challenge John poses of soberly looking at whatever banal assumptions I may make about how convenient and carefree technology has made my life. The more insidious effects of PCs, the Internet, cell phones, even call waiting, on our consciousness, on our potentials for deeper sentience, can really only be gauged by someone like Zerzan, who has resolutely resisted the all too powerful seductions and promises of the digital age. Such freedom from technological spell casting is evident in Zerzan's obvious command of philosophy, the depth and breadth of his research and in his ability to breathe vitality into such stolid behemoths as dialectical State apologist Kant, the 'Crypto-Aryan' Heidegger, the Frankfurt Schoolboys Adorno, Walter Benjamin and others. More important than his obvious pansophical exuberance is the author's honest ease which is very rare in a world currently colonized by morbid intellectuals. I suggest reading the New York Review of Books if you need to be reminded of just how moribund the (com)postmodern intelligentsia have become, fingering their well worn copies of Lyotard, Derrida, Baudrillard and other not so Free Radicals who only serve to accelerate the breakdown of what remains of our culture, offering nothing redeeming in return whatsoever other than their perpetually cynical excrescences.
Zerzan doesn't hesitate to take on such Sacred Cows of the left as Noam Chomsky, challenging the MIT professor's views on the origins of language making capabilities in humans as being crassly reductionistic and dehumanizing. He also confronts Hakim 'King of the Anarchists' Bey and aptly dissects the Temporary Autonomous Zone mystique the author surrounds himself with and entrances his many vulnerable, if not gullible readers with. (see the writings of Luther Blisset for further elaboration on this.)
Running on Emptiness is the perfect negentropic unguent to the various pathologies at large, helping us ground out rather than abandon our intellectual, philosophical and cultural heritage in a way that may very well facilitate our connection with nature instead of creating further detachment from it. It is in this regard that I may reassess my views on anarchy's implicate impotence and hope that something viably intelligent comes from that wayward camp, at least enough for me to join their cause. Zerzan makes such a possibility more and more likely.
(C)2002 Jaye B.
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Jaye B. is a writer, musician and artist. His art criticism has appeared in Art Paper, New North Artscape, Art Muscle, Northfield Magazine and elsewhere. His articles have also appeared in City Pages, Twin Cities Reader, Mysteries Magazine, Fahrenheit San Diego, High Plains Reader, New Dawn and Rain Taxi. He has appeared on BBC Radio, WGN Chicago, WLW Cincinnati and elsewhere in the mediasphere to discuss his work. Please help support Reset News @ Paypal, Cash App , Ko-fi or contact the author for other options @ jayeb444@protonmail.com
I know Zerzan personally, have stayed with him, but have fallen out of contact for some time now. He was a big defender of Ted Kaczynski, the Jewish mathematician also known as the Unabomber, who was an agent outted in one of Mathis‘s papers. Zerzan claims to have made a special trip to visit Kaczynski in prison in Colorado in the early 2000s. Whether Zerzan is an agent himself, which I tend not to think, or whether the authorities simply produced Kaczynski for him as part of the make believe that he was in prison to convince Zerzan that he was a real prisoner, I can’t say with any certainty. One other oddity about Zerzan was that while he was writing about connecting with nature he never once left the comfort of his quasi suburban setting in Eugene, Oregon to visit the land down by Tiller. He was also not afraid to criticize feminism as an ideology, in the radical scene in Eugene. He is also credited with being the mastermind behind the property attackers during the anti-WTO protests in Seattle in the late 90s.
I too would love the challenge of disconnecting completely from the digital age. As a bus driver I met numerous people who never drove a car, didn’t have a license.