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We must become barbarians Jellyfish tribes will save humanity

A Marsh Arab, paddling his own canoe. Credit: Nik Wheeler/Corbis via Getty Images

A Marsh Arab, paddling his own canoe. Credit: Nik Wheeler/Corbis via Getty Images


March 27, 2023   10 mins

Call me a cynic or an anarchist, but these days I find it impossible to trust anything which comes to me with a seal of authority stamped upon it. I’m not defending this as a healthy response. But it is an increasingly common one, even — and perhaps especially — among people who were trained from birth to follow the rules.

I was once one of those people. I’m a lower-middle class, suburban British bloke from Generation X, who was brought up to believe that the system broadly worked and was mostly fair, at least for people like me. The government did its best, though sometimes the wrong people got in; the police were here to help; there were career ladders and housing ladders, and if you worked hard and behaved responsibly and paid your taxes, then society would reward you for it.

Of course, this was a partial story, as all stories are. Plenty of people would have cackled cynically at it from the start, while others, including me, disabused themselves of it by degrees. I spent 30 years writing about the degradation of nature and culture by the state-capitalist technocracy that governs us, so I imagined I was a hard-bitten realist. But the last few years taught me that I was still too naive about the mythic “social contract” with the state that I apparently entered into at birth, despite having never signed a thing.

As I say, it’s not just me. The loss of faith across the West in our institutions, leaders and representatives in recent years has been radical. When, I wonder, did that contract expire? Maybe in 2003, when the lies with which the Iraq war was launched were so blatant that even those telling them seemed unconvinced. Or maybe later, in 2016, when Brexit happened and Donald Trump happened and European “populism” happened, and suddenly any opposition to liberal globalism became fascism or bigotry or the work of Russian bots.

But it was the pandemic — or rather, the response to it — that changed everything for me. I hadn’t been prepared see, in my allegedly free and democratic country, a merger of corporate power, state power and media power in the service of constructing a favoured narrative, of the kind which had previously only characterised totalitarian regimes. What the Covid regime brought home to me was that I had not, despite what I believed, really understood the real nature of power until I saw it exercised in its raw form over my life. Specifically, I had not understood the power of the state.

Nothing has the power or reach of a modern state. Its sheer scale and strength gives it the ability to corral, organise, define, measure and control its population in a manner that is unmatched in human history, and that power only grows and deepens. The momentum of a state is always towards the centre, always towards the agglomeration of more power. A state is like a black hole: at a certain point, it begins to suck in everything around it. As it grows, it will tell stories that justify its existence. Democracy, liberty and progress are some of the more recent banners beneath which state power has gathered, but there have been others: racial or ethnic homogeneity, human equality, religious purity. All of these stories have the potential to unite a people around a state core.

What happens, then, when large and powerful states, along with the transnational institutions and corporations they promote and protect, are all driving towards the same goal: the universalisation of an American-style “global economy” and its associated culture? This has been the story of the world since 1945, and the result is the world’s first truly global system. The expansion of this system has created problems — ecological degradation, social unrest, cultural fragmentation, economic interdependence, systemic fragility, institutional breakdown. The system has responded with more expansion and more control, growing bigger, more complex and more controlling.

Modernity can best be seen as a system of enclosure, fuelled by the destruction of self-sufficient lifeways, and their replacement with a system of economic exploitation, guided by states and exercised by corporations. The disempowering of people everywhere, and the deepening of technological control, is the inevitable result, and the pandemic overreach will not be the last example. So what is the correct response to the problem of power, and the reach of the state? Avoid it? Hide from it? Confront it? Ignore it? All of these? Or something else? Can we escape the state and live differently? If so, how?

Jacques Ellul, the great theorist of technocracy, had his own answer to these questions: “The only successful way to attack these features of modern civilisation is to give them the slip, to learn how to live on the edge of this totalitarian society.” Ellul, I think, was right. The state is the chief enemy of human freedom. It cannot be conquered or replaced. But sometimes, under the right circumstances, it can be evaded.

In his 2009 book The Art of Not Being Governed — subtitled, “an anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia” — the historian James C. Scott offers up some historical examples. Scott’s aim is twofold: firstly, to lay out the history of a vast upland region he calls “Zomia”, straddling territories from India to Malaysia, which has managed over centuries to avoid assimilation by encroaching states. And secondly, to rewrite the standard story of historical progress as it applies to the region. The “hill tribes” and “barbarians” living outside civilisation’s walls, he says, are neither “left behind” by “progress”, nor the “remnants” of earlier “backwards” cultures; they are in fact escapees. “Hill peoples are best understood as runaway, fugitive, maroon communities who have, over the course of two millennia, been fleeing the oppression of state-making projects in the valleys — slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labour, epidemics and warfare.”

Scott’s thesis is that throughout history, escaping from the reach of oppressive states has been a popular aim, and that in response, some cultures have developed sophisticated ways of living in hard-to-govern “shatter zones”, which allow them to avoid being assimilated. Standard-issue historical accounts of “development”, he says, are really the history of state-making, written from the state’s point of view: they pay no attention to “the history of deliberate and reactive statelessness”. Yet that history — whether of hill tribes, runaway slaves, gypsies, maroons, sea peoples or Marsh Arabs — is global and ongoing. Taking it into account, says Scott, would “reverse much received wisdom about ‘primitivism’”. Instead, we would read a history of “self-barbarisation”: a process of reactive resistance, of becoming awkward, of making a community into a shape that it is hard for the state to absorb, or even to quite comprehend.

The state, says Scott, is fundamentally a colonial entity. In its youthful vigour, it will institute a process of “internal colonisation”, creating a homogenised “national identity” from the various cultures it governs, flattening language and dialect and telling a story in which loyalty to community or place becomes indistinguishable from loyalty to the state. Later that colonisation process may move beyond its borders, as the state projects its power onto more distant peoples, assimilating them too. This is enclosure at work, and it is never voluntary. Like laissez-faire capitalism, or aristocracy, the state — which has only existed for the last 1% of human history — did not simply “evolve” as some logical phase of human “development”. It was created, by the use of raw power, through land seizures, slavery, enforced labour and taxation.

For this reason, escaping from state power and creating different ways of living in the “shatter zones” was an attractive option. Those zones were usually to be found in hard-to-reach places; in Southeast Asia, this meant the hills and mountains. Their peoples — the “tribals” or “Adivasi” or “savages” — would not, in most cases, be entirely cut off from lowland life; they would often trade with urban centres, for example, and some would raid them, too, if they got the chance. But they would keep their distance, wary of being corralled by the state machinery.

The Asian states, as they expanded, sought to impose the religious, cultural and economic practices of the dominant ethnic group — be it Thai, Burman, Han or Kinh — onto disparate peoples. When European colonists arrived in Asia, they simply continued the process, with a new cultural flavour. The official religion now might be Christianity rather than Buddhism, and “civilisation” might mean British rather than Han manners, but to the peripheral peoples the result was little different. British imperialist Sir Stamford Raffles spoke not only for his Empress, but for the mind of the colonial state across history, when he wrote of Sumatra:

“Here I am the advocate of despotism … Sumatra is, in great measure, peopled by innumerable petty tribes, subject to no general government … At present people are wandering in their habits as the birds of the air, and until they are congregated and organised under something like authority, nothing can be done with them.”

But such localised, potentially dispersed cultures can be tough to conquer. In the 1890s, the British found the conquest of the Kachin and Palaung hill peoples in Zomia almost impossible. Because they had “never submitted to any central control”, complained the chief commissioner responsible for the process, they had to be attacked “hill by hill” to ensure their submission. The historian Malcom Yapp invented a wonderful term for this kind of dispersed culture of refusal: jellyfish tribes. In Scott’s words, jellyfish tribalism is “a process of defending cultural and economic autonomy by scattering” to “make the group invisible or unattractive as object of appropriation”. The Berbers of North Africa, faced with colonisation by the Arabs, had their own way of putting this: divide that ye be not ruled. Lois Beck, who studied tribal culture in Iran, pointed to the same tactic in use there: “Large tribal groups divided into smaller groups to be less visible to the state and escaped its reach.”

All of this points to some potential ways forward for those who fear the continued expansion of the increasingly globalised, technocratic state today. The challenge, it seems to me, is to move beyond pat political formulations of “resistance”, and begin to think instead like the hill tribes of Zomia. To think about becoming barbarians by choice. To begin to build parallel systems — economies and cultures — which are hard to assimilate, and have a robustness to them which can last. To construct “cultures of refusal”.

But how could this actually be done? The modern West is not like Zomia — indeed, as Scott himself points out, modern Zomia is not like Zomia used to be either, with many of its stateless people now being rapidly absorbed into state systems, which new technologies have made more powerful and far-reaching than ever. What hope of any kind of alternative life in a hyper-connected, monitored, digital age? Even if we wanted to retreat to the margins to build our own community, how many of us could do it? And what would make that community more robust than the last counter-cultural wave of “intentional communities”, which sprang up after the Sixties, and failed to create utopia?

This is why I find the notion of the jellyfish tribe so intriguing. Any attempt at building utopia will fail — but utopia should never be a goal. Some form of free survival is the goal; survival in order to uphold the values of a true human life. There is no easy or standardised way to emulate what Scott calls the “state-repelling characteristics” of the Zomians, but there is one question it might be useful for anyone who seeks to evade Leviathan to ask themselves: what kind of barbarian do I want to be?

In ancient China, the state distinguished between two different kinds of barbarian outsider: the raw (sheng) and the cooked (shu). A 12th-century document detailing the relationship of the Li people with the Chinese state speaks of the “cooked Li” as those who have submitted to state authority and the “raw Li” as those who “live in the mountain caves and are not punished by us or do not supply labour”. But while the raw Li were clearly enemies of the state, the cooked Li were not exactly friends either. State officials “suspected them of outward conformity while slyly co-operating with the raw Li”. The raw barbarians lived outside the walls and the cooked lived within, but neither were really to be trusted.

What we see here, then, is two potential escape routes: one outside, one inside. Shatter zones do not have to literally be in the hills: they can be within our homes and even within our hearts. My heart soars whenever I hear of some remote monastery or surviving rooted community with no online access or even electricity, whose people know exactly where they stand: outside the state, the better to see God and experience creation. Such places are the work of the raw barbarians, and we need more of them.

But most people are cooked barbarians. We are, to different degrees, in the state but not of it. Perhaps we look like good citizens on the outside. But if we coalesce as a jellyfish tribe, we can begin to dissociate ourselves from the state, while creating alternatives to it. Plenty of people are already doing this. They create cultures-within-cultures, parallel economies and ways of living. Like small furry mammals running unnoticed beneath the feet of the tyrannosaurs, we can thus build our own little worlds on the margins and wait for the coming of the meteor, which we can already see coming in the very un-sustainability of technological modernity. The mice don’t attack the dinosaurs, and neither do they wait for them to die out: they just avoid them as best they can, and get on with their work.

What Scott’s book shows me above all is that the tension between expanding power centres and free peoples is eternal and never-ending. Throughout history there has been an ongoing flow of assimilation and breakout, consolidation and collapse. There has never been any system as large, as overwhelming, as inhuman, as all-seeing, as technological modernity, and yet Rome and Babylon and Han China operated on the same principles. The shatter zones that rise in response are sometimes geographical, sometimes psychological and spiritual, and often all of these at once. Today, some of those shatter zones are at least partly online; and despite my own instinctive Luddism, I have to accept that such spaces are meeting points for state-repelling people who might never meet in real life. I have to accept, too, that using technology to resist technocracy can be of benefit, even though it can also be a trap.

In the age of Starlink, eyeball scans, AI bots and digital passports, it is getting harder and harder to find anywhere to hide. But humans are creative. There are countless practical ways in which cultural refusal can manifest in our everyday lives. I am a writer, for instance, who is currently watching the publishing industry being taken over by political puritans who are purging incorrect thoughts from the shelves, while rooting around in the past for baddies to cancel. I can whine about this, or I can support or start new publishers on the margins who do things differently. The same might be true for music, art, academia, food-growing. Everything is compromised; nothing is easy. But building anew, retreating to create, being awkward and hard to grasp, finding your allies and establishing your zone of cultural refusal, whether in a mountain community or in your urban home: what else is there?

Whatever culture you come from, it will offer up at least one folk hero who earned his or her status through state-repelling behaviour. In England, we have hundreds of pirates, highwaymen, outlaws and rebels to choose from. You all know the name of the most famous: England’s shadow self, Robyn Hode, who flits through his shatter zone, the English greenwood, with his merry band of refuseniks in tow. We could do worse than to find our own greenwood and take our stand there, beneath the shelter of its great, ancient oaks.

*

A longer version of this essay was first published at the Abbey of Misrule.


Paul Kingsnorth is a novelist and essayist. His latest novel Alexandria is published by Faber. He also has a Substack: The Abbey of Misrule.


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J Bryant
J Bryant
1 year ago

A great essay, imo. Last year, while I ate lunch in a cafe, I overheard a conversation between two retired men. One spent a significant part of each year on the road in a camper van. He described all the tricks he used to obtain a free camping space, to use library facilities without a card, to avoid being taxed if he spent more than a certain number of months in a state. He was a sort of underground retiree who left minimum official trace. He also wasn’t some aged hippy. He looked and sounded like a regular guy who no longer wanted the apparatus of every US state government tracking and regulating him as he moved about the country.
I was heartened by that conversation because, in my very modest way, I try to play the same game as I get older. I subscribe to some news and opinion outlets on the net, such as Unherd, because I think they provide a balanced account of the world. Otherwise, I make a game out of signing up for the fewest possible internet services, products, apps, etc. I own a cell phone with a very cheap plan. It only works when I’m at home and its sole function is to allow my wife to call me at home if she needs something. I live in a semi-rural area and when I go into the mountains I’m untrackable. I’m gradually preparing for retirement, still a few years away, so that when I retire I can minimize my contact with officialdom and with the wider corporate apparatus. There’s only so much I can do but it feels good to do it.
Like the author, I was brought up believing in the system, in the social contract. And like him I have suffered a rude awakening. I suspect those of us who were once the strongest believers are now the most ardent escapees.

Last edited 1 year ago by J Bryant
Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

As you say, different ways to pursue the act of vacating oneself. Good to hear.

Andrew D
Andrew D
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

I use prunes

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew D

100 ‘thumbs up’ for that! Bravo!

Andrew D
Andrew D
1 year ago

Much obliged

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew D

They can only do you good Charlie because you’re full of x’it.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew D

They can only do you good Charlie because you’re full of x’it.

Andrew D
Andrew D
1 year ago

Much obliged

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew D

100 ‘thumbs up’ for that! Bravo!

Andrew D
Andrew D
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

I use prunes

Laura Pritchard
Laura Pritchard
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

I walked past two elderly gentlemen in Venice yesterday. One sounded English, the other Venetian. I overheard the Englishman saying “You can fix this problem very quickly and easily. Just introduce a tax”. The Venetian’s face was a picture to behold.

Andrew Holmes
Andrew Holmes
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

IMHO, this is individualism gone mad, with an underlying contempt for fools who, through their work, contribute to the society.

Frederick Dixon
Frederick Dixon
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Holmes

No. It is how traditional identities can survive.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Holmes

I think your comments are capable of two opposite interpretations.. depends on whether you’re serious about the term “fools” or being ironic.. Since the vast majority of jobs produce nothing of sny real use at best, or are downright harmful at worst, I like the first interpretation better. The ‘contribution’ made to society is therefore grossly exaggerated at best. Indeed the world would be a far better place of many jobs ceased to exist, eg weapons manufacture, soldiering to mention two out of hundreds.

Frederick Dixon
Frederick Dixon
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Holmes

No. It is how traditional identities can survive.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Holmes

I think your comments are capable of two opposite interpretations.. depends on whether you’re serious about the term “fools” or being ironic.. Since the vast majority of jobs produce nothing of sny real use at best, or are downright harmful at worst, I like the first interpretation better. The ‘contribution’ made to society is therefore grossly exaggerated at best. Indeed the world would be a far better place of many jobs ceased to exist, eg weapons manufacture, soldiering to mention two out of hundreds.

Elliott Bjorn
Elliott Bjorn
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Hi, J

I dropped out of school, and out of he system – and never joined it again. Also I have no phone, never even used a smart phone, will not talk to computers, used VPN from the start, no pictures labeled as me – but they know who we are I think.. Never took the Bio-weapon Vax, refused the mask – but as he says – we just exist on the margins – not independent.

There is a big network of us though, through vague channels and community – I would say to watch some ‘Salty Cracker’ on the streaming service ‘Rumble’. You may find him too silly…(‘REeee’) but he is that zeitgeist of the outsiders. Be too serious and get crushed down..

Salty calls all Hollywood and Democrats and Social Media bosses ‘Kid F*-kers’ for their degenerate ways – cheers on any disaster befalling tra ns or Ant ifa or blm… Loves it and crows when some rightwing person beats some woke thing..and is totally a Patriot….

And basically is hyper masculine, ready to fight any reason, for hard work and self reliance – and has a huge fallowing…what is funny is if you link to him on Unherd your post is deleted! Which says a lot of how the world responds to him.

So there is a world out there outside the real one still….unless they are just ‘Controlled Opposition’, which may well be. The security State is 100% without ethics and is corrupt to its very heart.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Good on ye mate! Buck the system at every hand’s turn amap..

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

As you say, different ways to pursue the act of vacating oneself. Good to hear.

Laura Pritchard
Laura Pritchard
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

I walked past two elderly gentlemen in Venice yesterday. One sounded English, the other Venetian. I overheard the Englishman saying “You can fix this problem very quickly and easily. Just introduce a tax”. The Venetian’s face was a picture to behold.

Andrew Holmes
Andrew Holmes
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

IMHO, this is individualism gone mad, with an underlying contempt for fools who, through their work, contribute to the society.

Elliott Bjorn
Elliott Bjorn
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Hi, J

I dropped out of school, and out of he system – and never joined it again. Also I have no phone, never even used a smart phone, will not talk to computers, used VPN from the start, no pictures labeled as me – but they know who we are I think.. Never took the Bio-weapon Vax, refused the mask – but as he says – we just exist on the margins – not independent.

There is a big network of us though, through vague channels and community – I would say to watch some ‘Salty Cracker’ on the streaming service ‘Rumble’. You may find him too silly…(‘REeee’) but he is that zeitgeist of the outsiders. Be too serious and get crushed down..

Salty calls all Hollywood and Democrats and Social Media bosses ‘Kid F*-kers’ for their degenerate ways – cheers on any disaster befalling tra ns or Ant ifa or blm… Loves it and crows when some rightwing person beats some woke thing..and is totally a Patriot….

And basically is hyper masculine, ready to fight any reason, for hard work and self reliance – and has a huge fallowing…what is funny is if you link to him on Unherd your post is deleted! Which says a lot of how the world responds to him.

So there is a world out there outside the real one still….unless they are just ‘Controlled Opposition’, which may well be. The security State is 100% without ethics and is corrupt to its very heart.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Good on ye mate! Buck the system at every hand’s turn amap..

J Bryant
J Bryant
1 year ago

A great essay, imo. Last year, while I ate lunch in a cafe, I overheard a conversation between two retired men. One spent a significant part of each year on the road in a camper van. He described all the tricks he used to obtain a free camping space, to use library facilities without a card, to avoid being taxed if he spent more than a certain number of months in a state. He was a sort of underground retiree who left minimum official trace. He also wasn’t some aged hippy. He looked and sounded like a regular guy who no longer wanted the apparatus of every US state government tracking and regulating him as he moved about the country.
I was heartened by that conversation because, in my very modest way, I try to play the same game as I get older. I subscribe to some news and opinion outlets on the net, such as Unherd, because I think they provide a balanced account of the world. Otherwise, I make a game out of signing up for the fewest possible internet services, products, apps, etc. I own a cell phone with a very cheap plan. It only works when I’m at home and its sole function is to allow my wife to call me at home if she needs something. I live in a semi-rural area and when I go into the mountains I’m untrackable. I’m gradually preparing for retirement, still a few years away, so that when I retire I can minimize my contact with officialdom and with the wider corporate apparatus. There’s only so much I can do but it feels good to do it.
Like the author, I was brought up believing in the system, in the social contract. And like him I have suffered a rude awakening. I suspect those of us who were once the strongest believers are now the most ardent escapees.

Last edited 1 year ago by J Bryant
Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
1 year ago

Thoroughly enjoyable, thought-provoking essay. I can see a lot of myself in Kingsworth. I too came from a lower-middle class background and was brought up to believe the system worked, with hiccups now and then.

I too have utterly lost faith in the system. I guess where I differ is I’m not longing to escape the state. I want the state to be better. I have zero issues being ruled by institutions of money and power – if they are competent.

That’s the big if. The people controlling the institutions are no longer competent. The dream of a home and decent job, so very attainable for older generations, no longer seems viable for younger generations.

Maybe it’s not the fault of those running the institutions. Maybe society has become too complex. I don’t know. But unless things change, unless our institutional leaders become more competent and accountable, I see nothing but pain and misery for the younger generations.

Elliott Bjorn
Elliott Bjorn
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

I came from Upper-Middle Class…. from a very interesting world, populated with exceptional personalities. But I still dropped out – Pity though, the Upper-Middle is much more exciting than the lower-middle, which I just barely reach up to…..and lower-class, whom I move in a lot, they are really pretty dull……

Haha, if you drop out mostly you drop down….But such is life…

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Elliott Bjorn

You hang around with the wrong kind if dropouts..

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Elliott Bjorn

Until I moved to my current and I hope future home- Only the second home in my life. Im not into moving house – I’d never met ‘da poor people’ but I am acquainted with a few now and they are a far more varied bunch than the bland term “the poor” suggests. Several of the ones I know,am friendly with but not too close,they have been homeless,alcoholic,one told me about the fierceness and forcefulness with which you have to defend your bed in the night shelter if you were a lucky one in that queue that night. But they’re well spoken,went to posh school,far more IQ than me,so none of that keeps you safe. One of them has got some “secret’ source of money and once or twice tried to shock me with the expensive watch he’d just bought,a homeless beggar. But as I was busy at the time and his friend already told me he had private money,the liar,and as he liked playing mind games and winding people up I never got involved there. Just saying that the world of poor people,the edge of our society,the bits we do see and don’t see,it’s stranger than we know.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Elliott Bjorn

You hang around with the wrong kind if dropouts..

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Elliott Bjorn

Until I moved to my current and I hope future home- Only the second home in my life. Im not into moving house – I’d never met ‘da poor people’ but I am acquainted with a few now and they are a far more varied bunch than the bland term “the poor” suggests. Several of the ones I know,am friendly with but not too close,they have been homeless,alcoholic,one told me about the fierceness and forcefulness with which you have to defend your bed in the night shelter if you were a lucky one in that queue that night. But they’re well spoken,went to posh school,far more IQ than me,so none of that keeps you safe. One of them has got some “secret’ source of money and once or twice tried to shock me with the expensive watch he’d just bought,a homeless beggar. But as I was busy at the time and his friend already told me he had private money,the liar,and as he liked playing mind games and winding people up I never got involved there. Just saying that the world of poor people,the edge of our society,the bits we do see and don’t see,it’s stranger than we know.

Elliott Bjorn
Elliott Bjorn
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

I came from Upper-Middle Class…. from a very interesting world, populated with exceptional personalities. But I still dropped out – Pity though, the Upper-Middle is much more exciting than the lower-middle, which I just barely reach up to…..and lower-class, whom I move in a lot, they are really pretty dull……

Haha, if you drop out mostly you drop down….But such is life…

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
1 year ago

Thoroughly enjoyable, thought-provoking essay. I can see a lot of myself in Kingsworth. I too came from a lower-middle class background and was brought up to believe the system worked, with hiccups now and then.

I too have utterly lost faith in the system. I guess where I differ is I’m not longing to escape the state. I want the state to be better. I have zero issues being ruled by institutions of money and power – if they are competent.

That’s the big if. The people controlling the institutions are no longer competent. The dream of a home and decent job, so very attainable for older generations, no longer seems viable for younger generations.

Maybe it’s not the fault of those running the institutions. Maybe society has become too complex. I don’t know. But unless things change, unless our institutional leaders become more competent and accountable, I see nothing but pain and misery for the younger generations.

Peter Johnson
Peter Johnson
1 year ago

An interesting essay. Here in Canada there really still is a frontier and the further north you go the less government and more irregular people you find. There are lots of tiny towns with little to no functioning government – no police – etc. I think the convoy protests made dissenters realize that they are a substantial minority. Disparate groups are starting to coalesce politically under the general banner of freedom from the system. They won’t win elections – but they create an official voice of protest. One of the best things I saw at the height of Covid technocratic censorship was people using stickers as a form of protest. It just showed that even if they control the internet – they can’t control the real world. Finally there is France. I love their fierce resistance to things they don’t like. Their protesters repeatedly remind the authorities that there are more of us then there are of you.

T Bone
T Bone
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter Johnson

When you refer to “dissenters” are you referring to the Establishment or the actual dissenters?

T Bone
T Bone
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter Johnson

When you refer to “dissenters” are you referring to the Establishment or the actual dissenters?

Peter Johnson
Peter Johnson
1 year ago

An interesting essay. Here in Canada there really still is a frontier and the further north you go the less government and more irregular people you find. There are lots of tiny towns with little to no functioning government – no police – etc. I think the convoy protests made dissenters realize that they are a substantial minority. Disparate groups are starting to coalesce politically under the general banner of freedom from the system. They won’t win elections – but they create an official voice of protest. One of the best things I saw at the height of Covid technocratic censorship was people using stickers as a form of protest. It just showed that even if they control the internet – they can’t control the real world. Finally there is France. I love their fierce resistance to things they don’t like. Their protesters repeatedly remind the authorities that there are more of us then there are of you.

Andrew D
Andrew D
1 year ago

Great essay. Raw and cooked barbarians is a very useful distinction. I think C S Lewis had either or both in mind when he wrote about the condemned hedgerow folk:
The Condemned
There is a wildness still in England that will not feed
In cages; it shrinks away from the touch of the trainer’s hand,
Easy to kill, not easy to tame. It will never breed
In a zoo for the public pleasure. It will not be planned.
Do not blame us too much if we that are hedgerow folk
Cannot swell the rejoicings at this new world you make –
We, hedge-hogged as Johnson or Borrow, strange to the yoke
As Landor, surly as Cobbett (that badger), birdlike as Blake.
A new scent troubles the air – to you, friendly perhaps –
But we with animal wisdom have understood that smell.
To all our kind its message is Guns, Ferrets, and Traps,
And a Ministry gassing the little holes in which we dwell.

Last edited 1 year ago by Andrew D
Elliott Bjorn
Elliott Bjorn
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew D

I was thinking of the hedgerow folk who lived cutting, training, working them with their fields to have their hard and simple life of a small farmer since the Middle Ages. They had a hard and unyielding quality that was not changed by some nose ring wearing, rainbow flag waving, fools.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Elliott Bjorn

Sadly, many of them built their own zoos and caged themselves in with a narrowminded, xenophobic and hatred of all but themselves. Not all by any means but I knew them.. ignorant, fearful they clung to the little they knew and closed the bars of the cage around them, ever tighter in order to feel ever more secure. Stanhope is a bit like that..

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Elliott Bjorn

Sadly, many of them built their own zoos and caged themselves in with a narrowminded, xenophobic and hatred of all but themselves. Not all by any means but I knew them.. ignorant, fearful they clung to the little they knew and closed the bars of the cage around them, ever tighter in order to feel ever more secure. Stanhope is a bit like that..

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew D

Thank you for this poem. I like this. I will find it. I also like the poem Work by Philip Larkin but really only the first verse about not working and he talks about folk who live up lanes and no one actually starves. And it’s true. We need to remember that. This is why they have introduced so many hygiene regulations regarding the care of animals etc,like it’s illegal to feed your bacon pig your own kitchen scraps. It’s not REALLY about animal welfare. It’s to stop folk living up lanes and eating windfall apples.

Elliott Bjorn
Elliott Bjorn
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew D

I was thinking of the hedgerow folk who lived cutting, training, working them with their fields to have their hard and simple life of a small farmer since the Middle Ages. They had a hard and unyielding quality that was not changed by some nose ring wearing, rainbow flag waving, fools.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew D

Thank you for this poem. I like this. I will find it. I also like the poem Work by Philip Larkin but really only the first verse about not working and he talks about folk who live up lanes and no one actually starves. And it’s true. We need to remember that. This is why they have introduced so many hygiene regulations regarding the care of animals etc,like it’s illegal to feed your bacon pig your own kitchen scraps. It’s not REALLY about animal welfare. It’s to stop folk living up lanes and eating windfall apples.

Andrew D
Andrew D
1 year ago

Great essay. Raw and cooked barbarians is a very useful distinction. I think C S Lewis had either or both in mind when he wrote about the condemned hedgerow folk:
The Condemned
There is a wildness still in England that will not feed
In cages; it shrinks away from the touch of the trainer’s hand,
Easy to kill, not easy to tame. It will never breed
In a zoo for the public pleasure. It will not be planned.
Do not blame us too much if we that are hedgerow folk
Cannot swell the rejoicings at this new world you make –
We, hedge-hogged as Johnson or Borrow, strange to the yoke
As Landor, surly as Cobbett (that badger), birdlike as Blake.
A new scent troubles the air – to you, friendly perhaps –
But we with animal wisdom have understood that smell.
To all our kind its message is Guns, Ferrets, and Traps,
And a Ministry gassing the little holes in which we dwell.

Last edited 1 year ago by Andrew D
Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago

I was critical of Pail Kingsnorth’s last contribution to Unherd, so it gave me great pleasure to read this essay. It suggests to me something i’ve felt instinctively: beyond the scope of being a refusenik or contrarian; just being apart. In society, but not of society.

What was fascinating was his delve into deep history, which puts our current era into a perspective that is often all too lacking. Again, i always think of humans as a young species, whereas i see and hear all around me the tired thoughts and actions of world-weariness.

Kingsnorth refers to being a writer, and how that predicates a particular way of looking at the world; he refers to those involved in other creative media too, such as art and music. I couldn’t agree more. One has to stand aside, to be able to see from without. It doesn’t have to be a geographical distance, although he provides good examples of those. It’s primarily a spiritual self-distancing, by which participation in the state is possible whilst not bring subject to it, or to anything which constitutes what i call a “straightjacket”.

I know that people get upset when i criticise their deeply-held beliefs, and i’ve said before, it’s not intended to be hurtful. Kingsnorth suggests the state (whatever form it takes, and i’d include world religions whereas perhaps he doesn’t) will always try to bring everyone into its fold, as if, like a vacuum in nature, it abhors that which resists its embrace. It provides a whole new context and meaning for the term ‘vacuity’, in the sense of having vacated rather than a state of vacancy. It’s also a deeply human way of being.

Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Murray
J Bryant
J Bryant
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

In society, but not of society.
Yes, that’s it. And there’s myriad ways to pursue that goal.

JOSE ANTONIO GARCIA CEBRIAN
JOSE ANTONIO GARCIA CEBRIAN
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

John 17,14. In the world but not of the world. But,get ready for martyrdoom as the world doesn´t stand these peoples.

JOSE ANTONIO GARCIA CEBRIAN
JOSE ANTONIO GARCIA CEBRIAN
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

John 17,14. In the world but not of the world. But,get ready for martyrdoom as the world doesn´t stand these peoples.

ROB GRANO
ROB GRANO
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

Good points. To what extent can we be spiritually/internally “Amish” while living in the midst of the thing? It must be remembered though, that the Machine doesn’t bother the Amish only because they’re not perceived as a threat. So the question is how do we resist without drawing undue attention to ourselves? There’s a tension between wanting to be left alone and wanting to make a difference.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  ROB GRANO

..make a difference only to yourself; ’tis enough. You will then make a real difference to the world around you, without trying.. “To thine own self be true…”

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  ROB GRANO

..make a difference only to yourself; ’tis enough. You will then make a real difference to the world around you, without trying.. “To thine own self be true…”

John Havenhand
John Havenhand
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

“participation in the state is possible whilst not bring subject to it, or to anything which constitutes what i call a “straightjacket”.
it was possibly intentional on your part. Did you mean “statejacket?”

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  John Havenhand

The trick is not to force straight jackets onto the people but to get the people to don them voluntarily to assuage their fears..

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

I’ve recently noticed more people wearing face masks again. Don’t know if this is relevant or racist but it’s true,all black people. Or have they heard something on the grapevine. The last virus in its first most virulent stage did seem designed to attack black and Asian physiognomies worst.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

I’ve recently noticed more people wearing face masks again. Don’t know if this is relevant or racist but it’s true,all black people. Or have they heard something on the grapevine. The last virus in its first most virulent stage did seem designed to attack black and Asian physiognomies worst.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  John Havenhand

The trick is not to force straight jackets onto the people but to get the people to don them voluntarily to assuage their fears..

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

Bear in mind writers and artists are all dropouts of a sort as they comment on ‘ normal’ life rather than ‘participate’.. that is why artists so rarely have a day job.. one runs counter to the other.

J Bryant
J Bryant
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

In society, but not of society.
Yes, that’s it. And there’s myriad ways to pursue that goal.

ROB GRANO
ROB GRANO
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

Good points. To what extent can we be spiritually/internally “Amish” while living in the midst of the thing? It must be remembered though, that the Machine doesn’t bother the Amish only because they’re not perceived as a threat. So the question is how do we resist without drawing undue attention to ourselves? There’s a tension between wanting to be left alone and wanting to make a difference.

John Havenhand
John Havenhand
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

“participation in the state is possible whilst not bring subject to it, or to anything which constitutes what i call a “straightjacket”.
it was possibly intentional on your part. Did you mean “statejacket?”

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

Bear in mind writers and artists are all dropouts of a sort as they comment on ‘ normal’ life rather than ‘participate’.. that is why artists so rarely have a day job.. one runs counter to the other.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago

I was critical of Pail Kingsnorth’s last contribution to Unherd, so it gave me great pleasure to read this essay. It suggests to me something i’ve felt instinctively: beyond the scope of being a refusenik or contrarian; just being apart. In society, but not of society.

What was fascinating was his delve into deep history, which puts our current era into a perspective that is often all too lacking. Again, i always think of humans as a young species, whereas i see and hear all around me the tired thoughts and actions of world-weariness.

Kingsnorth refers to being a writer, and how that predicates a particular way of looking at the world; he refers to those involved in other creative media too, such as art and music. I couldn’t agree more. One has to stand aside, to be able to see from without. It doesn’t have to be a geographical distance, although he provides good examples of those. It’s primarily a spiritual self-distancing, by which participation in the state is possible whilst not bring subject to it, or to anything which constitutes what i call a “straightjacket”.

I know that people get upset when i criticise their deeply-held beliefs, and i’ve said before, it’s not intended to be hurtful. Kingsnorth suggests the state (whatever form it takes, and i’d include world religions whereas perhaps he doesn’t) will always try to bring everyone into its fold, as if, like a vacuum in nature, it abhors that which resists its embrace. It provides a whole new context and meaning for the term ‘vacuity’, in the sense of having vacated rather than a state of vacancy. It’s also a deeply human way of being.

Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Murray
Tony Taylor
Tony Taylor
1 year ago

I reckon this distrust comes from the veneer of polish which coats any public excretion of information. A layer of unctuous slime is liberally applied by publicity departments in all walks of life: politics (obviously), business, sport, entertainment, etc. It no doubt started in politics, but your spinners and professional bullsh!ters have infected the rest, so that everything is run past people whose sole job is to remove any vestige of the controversial, make it palatable to the every-widening ranks of the professionally outraged and reflect the values of the institution in question. And the social contract only extends as far as they know, we know, and they know we know, but they don’t care. Just pass the bread and circus.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Reply to  Tony Taylor

Unctuous phrases:

“It’s right that…”

“…has no place in…”

And the most egregious of all:

“Lessons will be learned.”

Roddy Campbell
Roddy Campbell
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

And the weasel word ‘fair’ which is just window-dressing for a different (usually worse) form of unfairness that the government wishes to impose.

Roddy Campbell
Roddy Campbell
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

And the weasel word ‘fair’ which is just window-dressing for a different (usually worse) form of unfairness that the government wishes to impose.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Reply to  Tony Taylor

Unctuous phrases:

“It’s right that…”

“…has no place in…”

And the most egregious of all:

“Lessons will be learned.”

Tony Taylor
Tony Taylor
1 year ago

I reckon this distrust comes from the veneer of polish which coats any public excretion of information. A layer of unctuous slime is liberally applied by publicity departments in all walks of life: politics (obviously), business, sport, entertainment, etc. It no doubt started in politics, but your spinners and professional bullsh!ters have infected the rest, so that everything is run past people whose sole job is to remove any vestige of the controversial, make it palatable to the every-widening ranks of the professionally outraged and reflect the values of the institution in question. And the social contract only extends as far as they know, we know, and they know we know, but they don’t care. Just pass the bread and circus.

chris sullivan
chris sullivan
1 year ago

excellent essay thanks Paul -which helps to clarify some of my own thinking around being ‘part of the modern world, but not of it”. I would guess that this global community numbers in the many millions – eg the desert communities in the US – and a global census might even make it the dominant ideology ( but for sure not the most powerful one). However most folks feel it safer to accept the contract rather than to question it (way too stressful) – and some will have an OK life with that choice – but that the majority will be in the situation of the frog in slowly heating water – by the time they start to realize reality it will be too late for them. Unfortunately at that point global society will slowly but surely start to break down – as it already is in many countries. Selfishly i think I will have shuffled over the finish line by then and will miss the most distressing manifestations thereof …..

chris sullivan
chris sullivan
1 year ago

excellent essay thanks Paul -which helps to clarify some of my own thinking around being ‘part of the modern world, but not of it”. I would guess that this global community numbers in the many millions – eg the desert communities in the US – and a global census might even make it the dominant ideology ( but for sure not the most powerful one). However most folks feel it safer to accept the contract rather than to question it (way too stressful) – and some will have an OK life with that choice – but that the majority will be in the situation of the frog in slowly heating water – by the time they start to realize reality it will be too late for them. Unfortunately at that point global society will slowly but surely start to break down – as it already is in many countries. Selfishly i think I will have shuffled over the finish line by then and will miss the most distressing manifestations thereof …..

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
1 year ago

This reminded me of a short story written about 40 years ago – it could have been by Garrison Keillor.
The last six terrorists/non-conformists are chased by the police, and then the army, further and further into the wilderness, into the mountains. They hear the helicopters flying overhead and they know that this is the end. They put down their guns, join arms and have their last cigarette. Now there are no cigarettes left in the world. They are the last six smokers.

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
1 year ago

This reminded me of a short story written about 40 years ago – it could have been by Garrison Keillor.
The last six terrorists/non-conformists are chased by the police, and then the army, further and further into the wilderness, into the mountains. They hear the helicopters flying overhead and they know that this is the end. They put down their guns, join arms and have their last cigarette. Now there are no cigarettes left in the world. They are the last six smokers.

T Bone
T Bone
1 year ago

Before anything can be done about the Global Leviathan, it seems liberty minded folks need to address the underlying philosophy driving hyper-statism. If we don’t understand what we’re looking at, how do we respond to it?

The governing philosophy of both Left and Right Progressivism appears to be some kind of Gnostic-Hermetic-Pantheist Oneness with the Universe which can only deciphered and administered by “Experts” or Leaders with “Divine Insight” or esoteric knowledge that the average person supposedly can’t absorb. It seems this philosophy is present in every Statist regime and is especially present in any regime influenced by Hegel’s dialectical mysticism. These people know EVERYTHING. There is zero humility.

But here’s the thing. It’s incoherent nonsense that only justifies the bureacracy it spawns because “intellectuals” acquiesce to the philosophy as a survival method. Karl Marx for ex, makes a few good points and then surrounds it with 400 layers of jibberish and Avante-Garde prose that in actuality says nothing…and he’s a considered an intellectual juggernaut. In actuality, he’s a False Prophet. There are many False Prophets in Academia that have been elevated with their ideas becoming embedded into the system (they claimed to be fighting) as Dogmatic Absolutes.

Social Alchemy is nonsense and so are about 90% of the “Science” fields that hold themselves out as valid epistemic truth claims. Anthropology for instance is treated as a Science. Anthropologists are basically Mytho-history Fiction writers that want to change the world through revisionist history. That’s not to say Anthropology is completely invalid…but let’s be honest…it is HIGHLY SPECULATIVE not pure empiricism.

Likewise, every Social Science field is just blending Science and Politics. It always has but in the past at least their were efforts to promote narratives and history based on clearly documented, credible sources.

None of it is Particle Physics, Biochemistry or high level mathematics but Politics intricately weaved into social fields and then spit out as Science. Even traditional science fields have been polluted by this Gnostic Theology.

I don’t know all the answers about moving forward… but I know this- We’re dealing with BS artists that created and perfected a quasi-intellectual ponzi style bureacracy to justify their own influence.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 year ago
Reply to  T Bone

Marx is only considered an intellectual juggernaut because nobody reads him. Actually he’s quite dim. The Labour Theory of Value, for example, could only be conceived of by a man who has never been shopping as, indeed, he never did. That was Charlotte’s department.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 year ago
Reply to  T Bone

Marx is only considered an intellectual juggernaut because nobody reads him. Actually he’s quite dim. The Labour Theory of Value, for example, could only be conceived of by a man who has never been shopping as, indeed, he never did. That was Charlotte’s department.

T Bone
T Bone
1 year ago

Before anything can be done about the Global Leviathan, it seems liberty minded folks need to address the underlying philosophy driving hyper-statism. If we don’t understand what we’re looking at, how do we respond to it?

The governing philosophy of both Left and Right Progressivism appears to be some kind of Gnostic-Hermetic-Pantheist Oneness with the Universe which can only deciphered and administered by “Experts” or Leaders with “Divine Insight” or esoteric knowledge that the average person supposedly can’t absorb. It seems this philosophy is present in every Statist regime and is especially present in any regime influenced by Hegel’s dialectical mysticism. These people know EVERYTHING. There is zero humility.

But here’s the thing. It’s incoherent nonsense that only justifies the bureacracy it spawns because “intellectuals” acquiesce to the philosophy as a survival method. Karl Marx for ex, makes a few good points and then surrounds it with 400 layers of jibberish and Avante-Garde prose that in actuality says nothing…and he’s a considered an intellectual juggernaut. In actuality, he’s a False Prophet. There are many False Prophets in Academia that have been elevated with their ideas becoming embedded into the system (they claimed to be fighting) as Dogmatic Absolutes.

Social Alchemy is nonsense and so are about 90% of the “Science” fields that hold themselves out as valid epistemic truth claims. Anthropology for instance is treated as a Science. Anthropologists are basically Mytho-history Fiction writers that want to change the world through revisionist history. That’s not to say Anthropology is completely invalid…but let’s be honest…it is HIGHLY SPECULATIVE not pure empiricism.

Likewise, every Social Science field is just blending Science and Politics. It always has but in the past at least their were efforts to promote narratives and history based on clearly documented, credible sources.

None of it is Particle Physics, Biochemistry or high level mathematics but Politics intricately weaved into social fields and then spit out as Science. Even traditional science fields have been polluted by this Gnostic Theology.

I don’t know all the answers about moving forward… but I know this- We’re dealing with BS artists that created and perfected a quasi-intellectual ponzi style bureacracy to justify their own influence.

Daniel Kaye
Daniel Kaye
1 year ago

Just remember, the noble savage was not very noble and a bit savage. The fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves. That’s what religions have been trying to do for centuries, tame our worst impulses. I’m afraid withdrawing from civilization, however imperfect, may be worse.

J Bryant
J Bryant
1 year ago
Reply to  Daniel Kaye

I’m not sure he’s advocating withdrawing from civilization, in the sense of becoming amoral beings, so much as escaping the grasp of the currently dominant civilization that is becoming something many of us didn’t ask for. I view his article as a call for people to form their own principled societies on the fringes of the global uniculture.

Last edited 1 year ago by J Bryant
Robert Hochbaum
Robert Hochbaum
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

I agree with you, here. However, I don’t know if you’ve read much of Paul’s writings, but I find that he always is harkening back to some magical time when all the dispersed tribes of a region minded their own business and lived in their local Zomia version of the Shire. Whether it be early Japanese or European cultures, he romanticizes areas that were dominated by warlords or kings, etc. I find him very frustrating in how he seems to casually forget that whether it was at the hands of samurai or local feudal lords, life could often be tough if you didn’t have power and legal rights were far and few between. It’s a huge blind spot for him.

Were Paul to have been traveling and looking to form his version of Zomia back in pre-colonial North America, he would have found it quite difficult had he wandered into the territory of the Comanche or Apache people (and many others!). Or, had he decided he just wanted to live outside their borders and set up his own Zomia, he would have quickly learned about the importance of being able to repel Comanche raiding parties. You usually didn’t get a second chance to learn the lesson!

I understand much of what Paul says. I feel the point he’s making. But, he’s a fantasist in some ways.

Robert Hochbaum
Robert Hochbaum
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

I agree with you, here. However, I don’t know if you’ve read much of Paul’s writings, but I find that he always is harkening back to some magical time when all the dispersed tribes of a region minded their own business and lived in their local Zomia version of the Shire. Whether it be early Japanese or European cultures, he romanticizes areas that were dominated by warlords or kings, etc. I find him very frustrating in how he seems to casually forget that whether it was at the hands of samurai or local feudal lords, life could often be tough if you didn’t have power and legal rights were far and few between. It’s a huge blind spot for him.

Were Paul to have been traveling and looking to form his version of Zomia back in pre-colonial North America, he would have found it quite difficult had he wandered into the territory of the Comanche or Apache people (and many others!). Or, had he decided he just wanted to live outside their borders and set up his own Zomia, he would have quickly learned about the importance of being able to repel Comanche raiding parties. You usually didn’t get a second chance to learn the lesson!

I understand much of what Paul says. I feel the point he’s making. But, he’s a fantasist in some ways.

Andrew D
Andrew D
1 year ago
Reply to  Daniel Kaye

When the barbarians are within the walls, withdrawing is the only civilised thing to do

J Bryant
J Bryant
1 year ago
Reply to  Daniel Kaye

I’m not sure he’s advocating withdrawing from civilization, in the sense of becoming amoral beings, so much as escaping the grasp of the currently dominant civilization that is becoming something many of us didn’t ask for. I view his article as a call for people to form their own principled societies on the fringes of the global uniculture.

Last edited 1 year ago by J Bryant
Andrew D
Andrew D
1 year ago
Reply to  Daniel Kaye

When the barbarians are within the walls, withdrawing is the only civilised thing to do

Daniel Kaye
Daniel Kaye
1 year ago

Just remember, the noble savage was not very noble and a bit savage. The fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves. That’s what religions have been trying to do for centuries, tame our worst impulses. I’m afraid withdrawing from civilization, however imperfect, may be worse.

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
1 year ago

Charming, but nonsensical.

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
1 year ago

Charming, but nonsensical.

Milton Gibbon
Milton Gibbon
1 year ago

I think the author romanticises tribal life as full of freedom. Struggling for survival is not something that people want to do without some sort of unifying purpose. Freedom is not enough. He admits that what he wants is the hippy communes of the ’60s without the utopianism but that was integral to the formation of those groups. I don’t subscribe to their views but you can’t wish away this core part of their identity. He posits tribalism as opposed to slavery and neglects the worst purveyors of modern day slavery are invariably tribal as they want to be beyond the reach of modern states. Similarly, while he gives a nod to tribes’ predation on settled communities he does not seem to consider it as much of a problem – conscription (in the proper, historic sense of the word) is again something that tribes enforce almost which isn’t paralleled in modern settled societies (Ukraine being a case in point).

A thought-provoking article though. More please Unherd.

Last edited 1 year ago by Milton Gibbon
jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Milton Gibbon

I once read a book about six human societies that did not have “money” . Not in the sense that we know it. Some anthropologists had got very excited by these noble, unmaterialistic people but it was not true . Later studies showed that far from free these societies were based on a system of obligation more binding and suffocating than our society. Maybe that’s what THEY want for us! In those “moneyless” communities the moment a baby is born it is linked into a web of obligation to other community members depending on the relationship close or further off,even who they have to marry is predetermined. Seems that even when people don’t use any sort of made thing or found object as a token to represent money it always exists as an idea.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Milton Gibbon

I once read a book about six human societies that did not have “money” . Not in the sense that we know it. Some anthropologists had got very excited by these noble, unmaterialistic people but it was not true . Later studies showed that far from free these societies were based on a system of obligation more binding and suffocating than our society. Maybe that’s what THEY want for us! In those “moneyless” communities the moment a baby is born it is linked into a web of obligation to other community members depending on the relationship close or further off,even who they have to marry is predetermined. Seems that even when people don’t use any sort of made thing or found object as a token to represent money it always exists as an idea.

Milton Gibbon
Milton Gibbon
1 year ago

I think the author romanticises tribal life as full of freedom. Struggling for survival is not something that people want to do without some sort of unifying purpose. Freedom is not enough. He admits that what he wants is the hippy communes of the ’60s without the utopianism but that was integral to the formation of those groups. I don’t subscribe to their views but you can’t wish away this core part of their identity. He posits tribalism as opposed to slavery and neglects the worst purveyors of modern day slavery are invariably tribal as they want to be beyond the reach of modern states. Similarly, while he gives a nod to tribes’ predation on settled communities he does not seem to consider it as much of a problem – conscription (in the proper, historic sense of the word) is again something that tribes enforce almost which isn’t paralleled in modern settled societies (Ukraine being a case in point).

A thought-provoking article though. More please Unherd.

Last edited 1 year ago by Milton Gibbon
Rachel Taylor
Rachel Taylor
1 year ago

I used to believe that elections were a way for our society to decide, from time to time, on broad directions. I now believe that elections are a way for the directing class in the institutions of the State to get air-cover against public discontent. So yes, we are governed by a State over which we have little control. Unfortunately, the alternatives are not very palatable either.

Rachel Taylor
Rachel Taylor
1 year ago

I used to believe that elections were a way for our society to decide, from time to time, on broad directions. I now believe that elections are a way for the directing class in the institutions of the State to get air-cover against public discontent. So yes, we are governed by a State over which we have little control. Unfortunately, the alternatives are not very palatable either.

Simon Hannaford
Simon Hannaford
1 year ago

They create cultures-within-cultures, parallel economies and ways of living. 
Surely this is how the societies he proposes to escape began? Will they not inevitably grow, and in order to manage themselves create the machinery of state?
Shatter zones are not shrinking only because they are being absorbed by technocratic societies, but also because those societies are attracting members away from these fringe communities. Kingsnorth fails to acknowledge that most of the raw did not choose to be born into them any more than their cooked counterparts. A lot of the raw are rather envious of the cooked. Surely a more sensible (and familiar) path would be to ‘Make the Contract Great Again’?

Last edited 1 year ago by Simon Hannaford
Simon Hannaford
Simon Hannaford
1 year ago

They create cultures-within-cultures, parallel economies and ways of living. 
Surely this is how the societies he proposes to escape began? Will they not inevitably grow, and in order to manage themselves create the machinery of state?
Shatter zones are not shrinking only because they are being absorbed by technocratic societies, but also because those societies are attracting members away from these fringe communities. Kingsnorth fails to acknowledge that most of the raw did not choose to be born into them any more than their cooked counterparts. A lot of the raw are rather envious of the cooked. Surely a more sensible (and familiar) path would be to ‘Make the Contract Great Again’?

Last edited 1 year ago by Simon Hannaford
N Satori
N Satori
1 year ago

Paul Kingsnorth: UnHerd’s very own symptom of the Monbiot/Hallam/Thunberg affliction. 
I’m sure Kingsnorth’s advocation of some kind of inward looking ‘refusenik’ lifestyle will appeal to those keyboard warriors and armchair rebels who despair at the modern world. Though they’re clueless about how to fight the relentless tide of Woke, Kingsnorth tells them that aloofness and disdain amount to a heroic resistance. And we wonder why the ‘long march through the institutions’ was such a walkover!

Last edited 1 year ago by N Satori
N Satori
N Satori
1 year ago

Paul Kingsnorth: UnHerd’s very own symptom of the Monbiot/Hallam/Thunberg affliction. 
I’m sure Kingsnorth’s advocation of some kind of inward looking ‘refusenik’ lifestyle will appeal to those keyboard warriors and armchair rebels who despair at the modern world. Though they’re clueless about how to fight the relentless tide of Woke, Kingsnorth tells them that aloofness and disdain amount to a heroic resistance. And we wonder why the ‘long march through the institutions’ was such a walkover!

Last edited 1 year ago by N Satori
michael stanwick
michael stanwick
1 year ago

When, I wonder, did that contract expire? 
When the entryism of identity marxism came into institutions and reached a societal critical mass?

michael stanwick
michael stanwick
1 year ago

When, I wonder, did that contract expire? 
When the entryism of identity marxism came into institutions and reached a societal critical mass?

Kelly Madden
Kelly Madden
1 year ago

We vote.

That is the missing “to be sure” paragraph.

“Yes!” to everything here.

But we still have the power—and responsibility—of the ballot box, diminished though it may be, in our condition of advanced state technopoly.

Last edited 1 year ago by Kelly Madden
jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Kelly Madden

Voting. I don’t think so. Hope I’m wrong.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Kelly Madden

Voting. I don’t think so. Hope I’m wrong.

Kelly Madden
Kelly Madden
1 year ago

We vote.

That is the missing “to be sure” paragraph.

“Yes!” to everything here.

But we still have the power—and responsibility—of the ballot box, diminished though it may be, in our condition of advanced state technopoly.

Last edited 1 year ago by Kelly Madden
Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 year ago

The other alternative is democracy, by which I don’t mean social democracy, but genuine democracy, a system in which taxes are decided, collected and spent locally, nothing that can be done by the commune is done by the canton, and nothing that can be done by the canton is done by the state.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 year ago

The other alternative is democracy, by which I don’t mean social democracy, but genuine democracy, a system in which taxes are decided, collected and spent locally, nothing that can be done by the commune is done by the canton, and nothing that can be done by the canton is done by the state.

Jack Martin Leith
Jack Martin Leith
1 year ago

Great work.
Recently, I discovered this gem, by Euvie Ivanova, co-founder of Future Thinkers, and added it to my website:

What if instead of taming people, we trained them to be more skillful at being wild?

N Satori
N Satori
1 year ago

Just another half-baked one-liner. Might make a good slogan for a camping and outdoor activities store.
What wild people? Where are they? If they exist how wild are they? Who is doing the taming?

N Satori
N Satori
1 year ago

Just another half-baked one-liner. Might make a good slogan for a camping and outdoor activities store.
What wild people? Where are they? If they exist how wild are they? Who is doing the taming?

Jack Martin Leith
Jack Martin Leith
1 year ago

Great work.
Recently, I discovered this gem, by Euvie Ivanova, co-founder of Future Thinkers, and added it to my website:

What if instead of taming people, we trained them to be more skillful at being wild?

Su Mac
Su Mac
1 year ago

I do love articles from Mr Kingsnorth – I think of him as a most marvellously well-read, spiritual minded prepper. I now need to decide whether to think of myself as a mouse, a jellyfish or a cooked Li!

Su Mac
Su Mac
1 year ago

I do love articles from Mr Kingsnorth – I think of him as a most marvellously well-read, spiritual minded prepper. I now need to decide whether to think of myself as a mouse, a jellyfish or a cooked Li!

Kerie Receveur
Kerie Receveur
1 year ago

More power to the small, furry jellyfish, I say!

Kerie Receveur
Kerie Receveur
1 year ago

More power to the small, furry jellyfish, I say!

Laura Pritchard
Laura Pritchard
1 year ago

Firstly, the marginal worlds the writer describes already exist in Europe. Welcome to Italy. Secondly, this article is saturated with anxiety. Apocalyptic anxiety. I think, instead of pretending not to be trying to create utopia whilst trying to create utopia, the writer could benefit from looking into why the upbringing he describes has left him with so many fears that control his thoughts and feelings much more than any state structure ever could. I wish him all the best

Laura Pritchard
Laura Pritchard
1 year ago

Firstly, the marginal worlds the writer describes already exist in Europe. Welcome to Italy. Secondly, this article is saturated with anxiety. Apocalyptic anxiety. I think, instead of pretending not to be trying to create utopia whilst trying to create utopia, the writer could benefit from looking into why the upbringing he describes has left him with so many fears that control his thoughts and feelings much more than any state structure ever could. I wish him all the best

Peter Grajczak
Peter Grajczak
1 year ago

The most fundamental characteristic of homo sapiens is self interest. This is why regardless of a method of governing a society or community is subjected to the best place is near the top. Now, while the leaders may have some coloration of an idealistic narrative from time to time, most of the lower echelon is there for the ride and the spoils. Most politicians will do almost anything to get elected and then to stay elected, and if that requires subscribing, or creating new ideals, so be it. Trade equality for equity, adopt selective racism so we kind fight the other one, free speech for the right one. The politicians and governments will always pledge to save us from dangers of the world, real or imagined, and specially from ourselves and justify their existence and expansion.
Which is why fighting for personal liberties in a democratic society must the top value. Not wealth and income inequality, not the plethora of new “rights”, not nationalism.

Peter Grajczak
Peter Grajczak
1 year ago

The most fundamental characteristic of homo sapiens is self interest. This is why regardless of a method of governing a society or community is subjected to the best place is near the top. Now, while the leaders may have some coloration of an idealistic narrative from time to time, most of the lower echelon is there for the ride and the spoils. Most politicians will do almost anything to get elected and then to stay elected, and if that requires subscribing, or creating new ideals, so be it. Trade equality for equity, adopt selective racism so we kind fight the other one, free speech for the right one. The politicians and governments will always pledge to save us from dangers of the world, real or imagined, and specially from ourselves and justify their existence and expansion.
Which is why fighting for personal liberties in a democratic society must the top value. Not wealth and income inequality, not the plethora of new “rights”, not nationalism.

ROB GRANO
ROB GRANO
1 year ago

One manifestation of cultural refusal that everyone can participate in is what Wendell Berry called “the joy of sales resistance.” Opt out of consumerism as much as you possibly can. Ignore advertising; where it’s unavoidable, consciously choose against it. Buy small and local when you can. This isn’t easy at first because we’ve all been trained to take the route of the cheap and/or the convenient. Eventually, however, a habitus is formed whereby sales resistance starts to occur automatically, and you actually develop a sort of allergy to consumerism.

ROB GRANO
ROB GRANO
1 year ago

One manifestation of cultural refusal that everyone can participate in is what Wendell Berry called “the joy of sales resistance.” Opt out of consumerism as much as you possibly can. Ignore advertising; where it’s unavoidable, consciously choose against it. Buy small and local when you can. This isn’t easy at first because we’ve all been trained to take the route of the cheap and/or the convenient. Eventually, however, a habitus is formed whereby sales resistance starts to occur automatically, and you actually develop a sort of allergy to consumerism.

N Satori
N Satori
1 year ago

Oh jeez! It’s him again. UnHerd’s very own symptom of the Monbiot/Hallam/Thunberg affliction. And if this lesson doesn’t satisfy you can find an even longer version at something called the Abbey of Misrule! Is that the home of some sort of latterday Hippy cult?
I’m sure Kingsnorth’s advocation of some kind of inward looking ‘refusenik’ lifestyle will appeal to those keyboard warriors and armchair rebels who despair at the modern world. Though they’re clueless about how to fight the relentless tide of Woke, Kingsnorth tells them that aloofness and disdain are heroic. And we wonder why the ‘long march through the institutions’ was such a walkover!

Last edited 1 year ago by N Satori
N Satori
N Satori
1 year ago

Oh jeez! It’s him again. UnHerd’s very own symptom of the Monbiot/Hallam/Thunberg affliction. And if this lesson doesn’t satisfy you can find an even longer version at something called the Abbey of Misrule! Is that the home of some sort of latterday Hippy cult?
I’m sure Kingsnorth’s advocation of some kind of inward looking ‘refusenik’ lifestyle will appeal to those keyboard warriors and armchair rebels who despair at the modern world. Though they’re clueless about how to fight the relentless tide of Woke, Kingsnorth tells them that aloofness and disdain are heroic. And we wonder why the ‘long march through the institutions’ was such a walkover!

Last edited 1 year ago by N Satori
Tom Lewis
Tom Lewis
1 year ago

The first paragraph sounds like me, the life and expectations I was brought up with and my journey into doubt.
Was Brexit this fracturing, writ large, an enormous ‘upwelling’, from the bottom, who’s stink lingers on, wrinkling the noses, in disgust, of authority ?

Is not the reality, for all this essays romantic pretensions, not closer to C.H.A.Z rather than Shanghri-la ?

Tom Lewis
Tom Lewis
1 year ago

The first paragraph sounds like me, the life and expectations I was brought up with and my journey into doubt.
Was Brexit this fracturing, writ large, an enormous ‘upwelling’, from the bottom, who’s stink lingers on, wrinkling the noses, in disgust, of authority ?

Is not the reality, for all this essays romantic pretensions, not closer to C.H.A.Z rather than Shanghri-la ?

R Wright
R Wright
1 year ago

“Industrial society and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.”

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 year ago
Reply to  R Wright

People who come out with nonsense like that should be compelled to depend for medical treatment on a Department of Tribal Medicine established in every hospital specifically to cater for them. No MRI or CAT scans or keyhole surgery for you, old chum. Think of the money that would save?

ROB GRANO
ROB GRANO
1 year ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Variations of the “Ah, so you’re against modern dentistry and indoor plumbing!” argument are as legion as they are lame. I can only imagine how many times Wendell Berry has had to answer this “criticism” in the past 50 years.
Every critic of industrialism worth his salt, including PK, has answered this challenge. By continuing to argue as if they have not is demonstration that you are doing so in bad faith.

ROB GRANO
ROB GRANO
1 year ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Variations of the “Ah, so you’re against modern dentistry and indoor plumbing!” argument are as legion as they are lame. I can only imagine how many times Wendell Berry has had to answer this “criticism” in the past 50 years.
Every critic of industrialism worth his salt, including PK, has answered this challenge. By continuing to argue as if they have not is demonstration that you are doing so in bad faith.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 year ago
Reply to  R Wright

People who come out with nonsense like that should be compelled to depend for medical treatment on a Department of Tribal Medicine established in every hospital specifically to cater for them. No MRI or CAT scans or keyhole surgery for you, old chum. Think of the money that would save?

R Wright
R Wright
1 year ago

“Industrial society and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.”

G. Kaminskas
G. Kaminskas
1 year ago

Lots of verbiage, all leading nowhere. You should have gone fishing instead.

G. Kaminskas
G. Kaminskas
1 year ago

Lots of verbiage, all leading nowhere. You should have gone fishing instead.

Gordon Arta
Gordon Arta
1 year ago

Tony Hancock said it rather better in ‘The wild man of the woods’, 60 years ago. For a synopsis of Kingsnorth’s philosophy, with a dose of realism, you can’t beat the line ‘I will find myself a lonely mountain peak, a blunt one, and sit on it’.

Jonny Stud
Jonny Stud
1 year ago
Reply to  Gordon Arta

from Zomia to East Cheam……

Jonny Stud
Jonny Stud
1 year ago
Reply to  Gordon Arta

from Zomia to East Cheam……

Gordon Arta
Gordon Arta
1 year ago

Tony Hancock said it rather better in ‘The wild man of the woods’, 60 years ago. For a synopsis of Kingsnorth’s philosophy, with a dose of realism, you can’t beat the line ‘I will find myself a lonely mountain peak, a blunt one, and sit on it’.

philip thompson
philip thompson
1 year ago

“The modern West is not like Zomia — indeed, as Scott himself points out, modern Zomia is not like Zomia used to be either, with many of its stateless people now being rapidly absorbed into state systems“. This highlights a problem with Paul’s historical comparison between historical empires and kingdoms, and present day states. The former were scary conquering forces whereas the latter are actually quite attractive to many jellyfish tribes – and many other peoples. Many modern states offer a social safety net, education, security, potential material wealth. Hence mass migration to Europe and the west. In the past, those outside the states borders resisted being assimilated whereas now we have an epidemic of citizens wanting out but with no out to go to.

philip thompson
philip thompson
1 year ago

“The modern West is not like Zomia — indeed, as Scott himself points out, modern Zomia is not like Zomia used to be either, with many of its stateless people now being rapidly absorbed into state systems“. This highlights a problem with Paul’s historical comparison between historical empires and kingdoms, and present day states. The former were scary conquering forces whereas the latter are actually quite attractive to many jellyfish tribes – and many other peoples. Many modern states offer a social safety net, education, security, potential material wealth. Hence mass migration to Europe and the west. In the past, those outside the states borders resisted being assimilated whereas now we have an epidemic of citizens wanting out but with no out to go to.

B Timothy
B Timothy
1 year ago

Brigham Young has entered the chat…

Although of course the great ugly city they built next to a dead lake has now been overrun by refugees escaping the Desolation wrought by Liberal Progress. This influx has reached a critical mass which will likely see the character of the Deseret subsumed into the post-modern nothingness of the tradition-less bores. The terrain that was once unforgiving enough to discourage all but the chosen has been tamed by the faithful to the point ever growing families will soon be priced out of the Kingdom they built for that purpose.

Time to load up the handcarts!

B Timothy
B Timothy
1 year ago

Brigham Young has entered the chat…

Although of course the great ugly city they built next to a dead lake has now been overrun by refugees escaping the Desolation wrought by Liberal Progress. This influx has reached a critical mass which will likely see the character of the Deseret subsumed into the post-modern nothingness of the tradition-less bores. The terrain that was once unforgiving enough to discourage all but the chosen has been tamed by the faithful to the point ever growing families will soon be priced out of the Kingdom they built for that purpose.

Time to load up the handcarts!

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
1 year ago

Okay Paul you go be a jellyfish while the rest of us pay for you to live.

Paul K
Paul K
1 year ago

The jellyfish pay for you to type your imprtant opinions in comfort. Where do you think the cobalt comes from?

Last edited 1 year ago by Paul K
Paul K
Paul K
1 year ago

The jellyfish pay for you to type your imprtant opinions in comfort. Where do you think the cobalt comes from?

Last edited 1 year ago by Paul K
Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
1 year ago

Okay Paul you go be a jellyfish while the rest of us pay for you to live.

Alan Gore
Alan Gore
1 year ago

This is a person who left the Green movement because he considered it too optimistic. If he wants to live in a van down by the river, that should be his own business. But watch that he doesn’t start mailing bombs to computer shops and academics, like his US counterpart.

ROB GRANO
ROB GRANO
1 year ago
Reply to  Alan Gore

I was once talking to a woman at a bar about modernity and such, and at some point she laughed and said, “You sound like the Unabomber.” I said, “Yeah, except I’m against killing people and blowing shit up.”
Kaczynski got most of his philosophy from Jacques Ellul, but as far as I know the latter never advocated violence. There’s a lesson there.

ROB GRANO
ROB GRANO
1 year ago
Reply to  Alan Gore

I was once talking to a woman at a bar about modernity and such, and at some point she laughed and said, “You sound like the Unabomber.” I said, “Yeah, except I’m against killing people and blowing shit up.”
Kaczynski got most of his philosophy from Jacques Ellul, but as far as I know the latter never advocated violence. There’s a lesson there.

Alan Gore
Alan Gore
1 year ago

This is a person who left the Green movement because he considered it too optimistic. If he wants to live in a van down by the river, that should be his own business. But watch that he doesn’t start mailing bombs to computer shops and academics, like his US counterpart.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago

Calgacus’s* speech says it all! And he LOST! BIG TIME!

(*Tacitus, Agricola 29-32.)

Last edited 1 year ago by CHARLES STANHOPE
Cho Jinn
Cho Jinn
1 year ago

Enjoyable read.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago

A satisfying piece as I count myself among the refusniks.. the numbers who have taken to the road and left addresses and even countries behind are growing. The mayhem in Dover is perhaps an indication of this need to escape the lunacy, lies and suicide ideation of the modern state..

leonard o'reilly
leonard o'reilly
1 year ago

Paul Kingsnorth is an apocalyptic fantasist at heart, and, I suspect, not bad with a hammer and plumb line and dealing with the animals, so he’ll be all right.