filmed at JesusRadicals Conference, Memphis, Tennessee on 15 Aug ‘09

The current civilized and globalized model of parenting stems from the model of civilization and its methods of domestication. As Pavlov, the famous Russian animal “psychologist” observed, if you deny dogs access to food, you can train them to do anything you like by promising to give them a little bit. Of course, Pavlov was no revolutionary, for, civilization has been using these dressage methods from the beginning of “totalitarian agriculture”, where in order for it to work, food, forests, land, and water had to be taken away from living beings and their ability to know the world had to be stomped out; i.e. they had to be alienated from their own pain, from the pain of their children and from the suffering of the world and those who couldn’t adapt or be “educated” were exterminated. Today, daycare and school begin this dressing as early as at one month of age and drum it in continuously throughout our lives. Regaining our ability to feel and to empathize with what the others feel is vital for the process of unschooling or undressing ourselves in order to gain the knowledge of what and how the world endures so as to transmit to future generations this ability to know how the other feels so that the world and our children may live

John Zerzan is an anarchist and philosopher whose critique of civilization and call for a non-domesticated form of life has been described as “primitivist”. Zerzan has analyzed agricultural and industrial society in detail and has drawn on anthropological research on prehistoric and other “primitive” societies in describing egalitarian and non-alienated ways of communal life. Zerzan has contributed to anarchist theory for decades, especially on topics of ecology, anti-technology, post-leftism and postmodernity. He is the author of several books, including Against Civilization, Running On Emptiness and Twilight of the Machines. He has also served as editor of Green Anarchy: A Journal of Anti-Civilization Theory and Practice since 2001.