Paul, this is a powerful and grounded piece. You do an excellent job walking the knife-edge between genuine critique of modernity and the false “change” narratives that power always tries to smuggle in. The way you thread anthropology, withness, and the lived misery of industrial life makes the argument felt, not just understood.
What really lands is the contrast between coercive order and natural order—between imposed grids and the self-balancing intelligence of living systems. That framing cuts straight through the progress propaganda and explains why so many people feel alien, misfit, or exhausted without knowing why.
The sections on hunter-gatherer affluence, levelling mechanisms, and society against the State are especially strong. They expose the lie that hierarchy and domination are inevitable, rather than deliberate constructions.
This isn’t nostalgia or romanticism—it’s a sober diagnosis of a civilization that has inverted priorities and declared the inversion “normal.” Clear, humane, and quietly radical work.
“A “primitive” person, says Jean Cazeneuve, “does not see himself as a creature distinct from all beings and things which surround him”.” — This is the heart of the ever-recurring theme: that with respect to connection to “all beings and things”, the “primitive” is far more advanced than the “modern”.
“Kroeber said he [Ishi] was the most patient man he ever knew; that he radiated a deep sense of contentment. Very few Americans, or Westerners in general, fit that description...” — How synchronous: my upcoming poem which, in describing a people similar to Ishi, contains the lines “and filled as few could be filled / with a deep-rooted muted joy / that gringo dough can't buy or kill.”
Highlight: “When we deny the intuition and inspiration we receive from the Whole to which we belong, we are turning our backs on our true potential. We have to stop being bound by the “scientific” thinking that robs us of the life experience which we were born to enjoy.”
Thanks for highlighting the viewpoints of these interesting anthropologists who were able to sharpen their perspective on modern insanity because they had something to compare it to. That's one reason anthropology should be taught in schools along with reading and arithmetic. David Graeber in The Dawn of Everything portrays Amerindian cultures as having experimented with different social forms. This means societal organization is not some simplistic linear progression from 'primitive' to 'advanced' b ut rather a laboratory. He theorizes that when some societies evolved into oppressive structures with elites carrying out crazy practices like enslavement and even cannibalism, people would break away, escape and form new social structures. This is how America ended up with high intelligence societies like the Iroquois or the Hopi, meaning people used their innate creativity to come up with better models of self-governance. It's going to be challenging to 'break away' from a murderous surveillance regimen but we need to start planning.
Thank you for this. A very clear and necessary article that goes a long way to explain the predicament of 21st century civilization. I've been trying to express my own thoughts on 'civilization' and how the more we try to understand the laws of nature through science, and apply those laws to technology and progress, the less civilized we become as a society. And certainly less happy and fulfilled as individuals. What's missing in modern life is clearly a process of connecting our consciousness to a higher order, the order and intelligence that governs life and the universe. Primitive societies largely maintained this connection through their rites and storytelling traditions. The artificiality of modern life has killed those instincts. Is it inevitable that society breaks down completely and we end up back were we started? Or will the technocratic oligarchs who rule over us achieve their ambition of destroying civilization altogether?
Thankyou. I appreciate how you focus positively on withness and working back to lived connectedness, to things we used to know, and avoid the insidious idea of 'growth', merely the concept posited so as to legitimise the Club Of Rome's '*limits* to growth' and all the elites' eugenics and gulag plans, another dialectical trick played on us to prise us away from ancient ways.
I admire the way you are able to create these full and rounded presentations Paul. I barely have the patience to even bother with modern English syntax and vocabulary anymore, no less write entire well-woven essays.
I trust you have read anarchist anthropolgist David Graeber's work including "The Dawn of Everything," which came to mind in reading this piece?
Also, are you aware of Lila June Johnston's (and others') work, describing the amazing abundance of what she calls Indigenous Regenerative Ecological Design? This traditional ecological knowledge was responsible for much of the ecological abundance found in the supposed wilderness of Turtle Island when Europeans arrived. But it was also all over the world - traditional practices rooted in relational approaches to Life on Earth. They are the root of the more abstract principles called "permaculture." While often powerful in themselves, the latter approach is derivative from the old ways, and so more like kindergarten compared with the simultaneous wholeness, magnificence and simplicity of the older practices. The old ways themselves have been preserved at great cost, and are now being rewoven, hopefully to support a post-colonial human civilization. They dovetail hugely with the reclamation of the Commons you have written about also.
Thanks Michael. I know a fair bit about Graeber and his work, mainly via Crow Qu'Appelle and others, but have only actually read the odd article of his. His books are definitely on my ever-expanding should-read list! Hadn't heard of Lila June Johnston - thanks.
Àbout permaculture ànd food forests, I’ve been working on mine with àbout 1/4 of àn acre in my suburban backyard!
And have recently read ànd believe it rhat all over the rainforests of Brazil are food productions area probably started over a thousand years ago in tribes.
I very much appreciate your digging up the treasures of critical, insightful, and wise thoughts and ideas, which you then share with your devoted readers. Here are a couple of contributions that came to mind on theme of this wonderful article, bot of which are excerpts form messages attributed to Avatar Meher Baba:
"The most practical thing to DO in the world is to BE spiritually-minded. It needs no special time, place, or circumstance, and is not necessarily concerned with anything out of the way in anyone's daily life and day to day routine."
"Do whatever needs to be done, but do it as a spiritual being, as one who knows he is divine by nature and unlimited with the whole of life in essence."
I just got a strange substack message that claimed that i have un-subscribed from your channel. I never did this. Perhaps the Winter Oak Wordpress identical message was the reason because i have not subscribed to Wordpress i.e. Winter Oak. Sorry, i see absolutely no reason to un subscribe to your great channel. Keep going Paul.
“While addressing the root causes of war and environmental destruction is entirely laudable, the inclusion of “population control” in her vision of “building a new world”, [8] is a bit of a red flag”.
Yes, who would not agree with this ? Not sooo quick i say because almost all leaders in Power with the aim to rule the World also came to this conclusion. Why ? Well mankind has proven to be incapable to take care of itself so the murderous killings , exploitations everything evil simply started when mankind started to live in communities. Our relative short lifespan has simply blocked any sort of advancing. Look at Gaza, Ukraine, the Epsteins and other Perverts.. it all has never stopped but simply changed the label.
I thought about this issue for a very long time and started to get some sympathy for the HAL9000 Artificial Intelligent Board Computer featured in Odyseey 2001. When the remaining crew planned to disable the Board Computer from accomplishing it’s final mission the Board Computer simply locked out the remaining Crew Member who commanded access to the giant Spaceship by simply saying; I can’t do that and you know very well why !
2:56
Now playing
HAL 9000: "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"
So when i look around me i see a lot of total Ignorance, often accompanied by Hate and absolutely no will to work on the main Mission to create an enviroment in which all Life on the Planet could thrive, not only mankind or a specific race, religion or ethnithity.
So as long as there is absolute no chance Humans could manipulate this AI which lets start with 10 commands on which all humans can agree and see if we can elevate us from the Now and the historically known.
Our connection to Gaia à living organism that loves all of us. We are her children
We are just misbehaving really badly and have been for a while.
We need to get back to nature as much as we can, walk in the forests, ground ourselves, hug a tree!!!
I’ve subscribed and you can too.
Heres my latest post
But I invite you to go check out the corporate grid article that would help you get the various overlays of control that have been used against us for well over a thousand years!!!
"Shver tsu zayn a yid," goes an old Yiddish saying: "It’s hard to be a Jew."
That's the crux of all Jews, even those like Beman. That Jewish Supremacy, even in these thinkers who still try and interpret the uninterpretable, is something else.
The Jews and the Irrational Paperback – December 12, 2024 by Morris Berman
Listen up, from Lakota:
Here, Tiokasin repeats this statement on the radio and in conferences and during his talks:
“I come from outside the anthropocentric view. We see an egalitarianism in nature. Everything in nature has consciousness, everything is in balance. The Western view ignores this. The concept of domination isn’t even in the original Lakota language.”
I went to an article he penned: Indigenous Languages As Cures of the Earth:
“We all rush in like fools to find more solutions, better remedies, fix-its from the profit makers, and fuzzy warm language to comfort the addicted aspects of ourselves. We make films, Facebook pages, petitions, we ask politicians to do our bidding, we cast votes virtually because we have to save our country, save the world, save the Earth, save the whales, save anything, but our own sanity.”
+--+
Language of Domination — First Contact and Tiokasin Ghosthorse’s Intuitive Language
Paul, this is a powerful and grounded piece. You do an excellent job walking the knife-edge between genuine critique of modernity and the false “change” narratives that power always tries to smuggle in. The way you thread anthropology, withness, and the lived misery of industrial life makes the argument felt, not just understood.
What really lands is the contrast between coercive order and natural order—between imposed grids and the self-balancing intelligence of living systems. That framing cuts straight through the progress propaganda and explains why so many people feel alien, misfit, or exhausted without knowing why.
The sections on hunter-gatherer affluence, levelling mechanisms, and society against the State are especially strong. They expose the lie that hierarchy and domination are inevitable, rather than deliberate constructions.
This isn’t nostalgia or romanticism—it’s a sober diagnosis of a civilization that has inverted priorities and declared the inversion “normal.” Clear, humane, and quietly radical work.
“A “primitive” person, says Jean Cazeneuve, “does not see himself as a creature distinct from all beings and things which surround him”.” — This is the heart of the ever-recurring theme: that with respect to connection to “all beings and things”, the “primitive” is far more advanced than the “modern”.
“Kroeber said he [Ishi] was the most patient man he ever knew; that he radiated a deep sense of contentment. Very few Americans, or Westerners in general, fit that description...” — How synchronous: my upcoming poem which, in describing a people similar to Ishi, contains the lines “and filled as few could be filled / with a deep-rooted muted joy / that gringo dough can't buy or kill.”
Highlight: “When we deny the intuition and inspiration we receive from the Whole to which we belong, we are turning our backs on our true potential. We have to stop being bound by the “scientific” thinking that robs us of the life experience which we were born to enjoy.”
Thanks for highlighting the viewpoints of these interesting anthropologists who were able to sharpen their perspective on modern insanity because they had something to compare it to. That's one reason anthropology should be taught in schools along with reading and arithmetic. David Graeber in The Dawn of Everything portrays Amerindian cultures as having experimented with different social forms. This means societal organization is not some simplistic linear progression from 'primitive' to 'advanced' b ut rather a laboratory. He theorizes that when some societies evolved into oppressive structures with elites carrying out crazy practices like enslavement and even cannibalism, people would break away, escape and form new social structures. This is how America ended up with high intelligence societies like the Iroquois or the Hopi, meaning people used their innate creativity to come up with better models of self-governance. It's going to be challenging to 'break away' from a murderous surveillance regimen but we need to start planning.
Thank you for this. A very clear and necessary article that goes a long way to explain the predicament of 21st century civilization. I've been trying to express my own thoughts on 'civilization' and how the more we try to understand the laws of nature through science, and apply those laws to technology and progress, the less civilized we become as a society. And certainly less happy and fulfilled as individuals. What's missing in modern life is clearly a process of connecting our consciousness to a higher order, the order and intelligence that governs life and the universe. Primitive societies largely maintained this connection through their rites and storytelling traditions. The artificiality of modern life has killed those instincts. Is it inevitable that society breaks down completely and we end up back were we started? Or will the technocratic oligarchs who rule over us achieve their ambition of destroying civilization altogether?
They won’t succeed as we are organizing a cosmic breakout!
Check that article for more
https://paulcudenec.substack.com/p/breaking-free-from-this-modern-hell/comment/195400317?r=b8pvb&utm_medium=ios
I've started reading Paul's article but have yet to finish it.
Thankyou. I appreciate how you focus positively on withness and working back to lived connectedness, to things we used to know, and avoid the insidious idea of 'growth', merely the concept posited so as to legitimise the Club Of Rome's '*limits* to growth' and all the elites' eugenics and gulag plans, another dialectical trick played on us to prise us away from ancient ways.
I admire the way you are able to create these full and rounded presentations Paul. I barely have the patience to even bother with modern English syntax and vocabulary anymore, no less write entire well-woven essays.
I trust you have read anarchist anthropolgist David Graeber's work including "The Dawn of Everything," which came to mind in reading this piece?
Also, are you aware of Lila June Johnston's (and others') work, describing the amazing abundance of what she calls Indigenous Regenerative Ecological Design? This traditional ecological knowledge was responsible for much of the ecological abundance found in the supposed wilderness of Turtle Island when Europeans arrived. But it was also all over the world - traditional practices rooted in relational approaches to Life on Earth. They are the root of the more abstract principles called "permaculture." While often powerful in themselves, the latter approach is derivative from the old ways, and so more like kindergarten compared with the simultaneous wholeness, magnificence and simplicity of the older practices. The old ways themselves have been preserved at great cost, and are now being rewoven, hopefully to support a post-colonial human civilization. They dovetail hugely with the reclamation of the Commons you have written about also.
Thank you for your ongoing efforts!
Thanks Michael. I know a fair bit about Graeber and his work, mainly via Crow Qu'Appelle and others, but have only actually read the odd article of his. His books are definitely on my ever-expanding should-read list! Hadn't heard of Lila June Johnston - thanks.
Àbout permaculture ànd food forests, I’ve been working on mine with àbout 1/4 of àn acre in my suburban backyard!
And have recently read ànd believe it rhat all over the rainforests of Brazil are food productions area probably started over a thousand years ago in tribes.
https://paulcudenec.substack.com/p/breaking-free-from-this-modern-hell/comment/195400317?r=b8pvb&utm_medium=ios
Thank you for this thorough thoughtful review essay. Berman has done much useful work and i am happy to see he is still working. 🙏🏻❤️
I very much appreciate your digging up the treasures of critical, insightful, and wise thoughts and ideas, which you then share with your devoted readers. Here are a couple of contributions that came to mind on theme of this wonderful article, bot of which are excerpts form messages attributed to Avatar Meher Baba:
"The most practical thing to DO in the world is to BE spiritually-minded. It needs no special time, place, or circumstance, and is not necessarily concerned with anything out of the way in anyone's daily life and day to day routine."
"Do whatever needs to be done, but do it as a spiritual being, as one who knows he is divine by nature and unlimited with the whole of life in essence."
Yes. Therein lies our power, inaccessible to those who cannot rise above the sordid material plain. Thanks Ron!
Excellent article, I found similar views in this book
https://elizabethmarshallthomas.net/books/the-old-way-a-story-of-the-first-people/
Thanks
I just got a strange substack message that claimed that i have un-subscribed from your channel. I never did this. Perhaps the Winter Oak Wordpress identical message was the reason because i have not subscribed to Wordpress i.e. Winter Oak. Sorry, i see absolutely no reason to un subscribe to your great channel. Keep going Paul.
Thanks. That's a bit sinister! I wonder if others have had the same thing happening.
I’ll start with your comment on Margaret Mead:
“While addressing the root causes of war and environmental destruction is entirely laudable, the inclusion of “population control” in her vision of “building a new world”, [8] is a bit of a red flag”.
Yes, who would not agree with this ? Not sooo quick i say because almost all leaders in Power with the aim to rule the World also came to this conclusion. Why ? Well mankind has proven to be incapable to take care of itself so the murderous killings , exploitations everything evil simply started when mankind started to live in communities. Our relative short lifespan has simply blocked any sort of advancing. Look at Gaza, Ukraine, the Epsteins and other Perverts.. it all has never stopped but simply changed the label.
I thought about this issue for a very long time and started to get some sympathy for the HAL9000 Artificial Intelligent Board Computer featured in Odyseey 2001. When the remaining crew planned to disable the Board Computer from accomplishing it’s final mission the Board Computer simply locked out the remaining Crew Member who commanded access to the giant Spaceship by simply saying; I can’t do that and you know very well why !
2:56
Now playing
HAL 9000: "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARJ8cAGm6JE
So when i look around me i see a lot of total Ignorance, often accompanied by Hate and absolutely no will to work on the main Mission to create an enviroment in which all Life on the Planet could thrive, not only mankind or a specific race, religion or ethnithity.
So as long as there is absolute no chance Humans could manipulate this AI which lets start with 10 commands on which all humans can agree and see if we can elevate us from the Now and the historically known.
I write about the control systems history ànd how to break free
Check out my posts
https://paulcudenec.substack.com/p/breaking-free-from-this-modern-hell/comment/195400317?r=b8pvb&utm_medium=ios
Dear Mr. Cudenec, Excellent article. You should research philosopher Paul Zerzan in this respect.
Thank you. I think you mean John Zerzan? If so, he was a big influence on me a while back. I wrote this about his work - https://orgrad.wordpress.com/a-z-of-thinkers/john-zerzan/
Very good article
But I think you forgot the most important thing
Our connection to Gaia à living organism that loves all of us. We are her children
We are just misbehaving really badly and have been for a while.
We need to get back to nature as much as we can, walk in the forests, ground ourselves, hug a tree!!!
I’ve subscribed and you can too.
Heres my latest post
But I invite you to go check out the corporate grid article that would help you get the various overlays of control that have been used against us for well over a thousand years!!!
https://substack.com/profile/18882551-shift-happens-steph-peters/note/c-195387751?r=b8pvb&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
"Shver tsu zayn a yid," goes an old Yiddish saying: "It’s hard to be a Jew."
That's the crux of all Jews, even those like Beman. That Jewish Supremacy, even in these thinkers who still try and interpret the uninterpretable, is something else.
The Jews and the Irrational Paperback – December 12, 2024 by Morris Berman
Listen up, from Lakota:
Here, Tiokasin repeats this statement on the radio and in conferences and during his talks:
“I come from outside the anthropocentric view. We see an egalitarianism in nature. Everything in nature has consciousness, everything is in balance. The Western view ignores this. The concept of domination isn’t even in the original Lakota language.”
I went to an article he penned: Indigenous Languages As Cures of the Earth:
“We all rush in like fools to find more solutions, better remedies, fix-its from the profit makers, and fuzzy warm language to comfort the addicted aspects of ourselves. We make films, Facebook pages, petitions, we ask politicians to do our bidding, we cast votes virtually because we have to save our country, save the world, save the Earth, save the whales, save anything, but our own sanity.”
+--+
Language of Domination — First Contact and Tiokasin Ghosthorse’s Intuitive Language
https://dissidentvoice.org/2025/07/language-of-domination-first-contact-and-tiokasin-ghosthorses-intuitive-language/
I thought there was going to be something on William Blake given the picture; does he get a mention?
Only the briefest mention - I just like the image! I myself have written about Blake here, if it is of any interest... https://orgrad.wordpress.com/a-z-of-thinkers/william-blake/
How did you find bunhill field
Never visited, unfortunately.
I can't resist sharing Van The Man doing Blake, Four Zoas / The Price Of Experience. 🙂
https://youtu.be/leY99PDxJJI