3 ms·

This viewpoint seems to imply that anything not directly related to biological survival and procreation is a 'surrogate activity' which then includes all of art

This viewpoint seems to imply that anything not directly related to biological survival and procreation is a 'surrogate activity' which then includes all of art, science, literature, etc. Would this author also classify some of the earliest human technologies (controlling fire, making tools, propagating plants from seeds) as 'surrogate activities' as well? It seems like a logical quandry. If the only measure of non-surrogate activity is something like 'does this activity contribute to the survival of the individual, the family, the society, the species', and if science is a surrogate activity, then why isn't learning how to control fire also an unnecessary and frivolous activity?

MichaelCollins 4y ago
> This viewpoint seems to imply that anything not directly related to biological survival and procreation is a 'surrogate activity' which then includes all of art, science, literature, etc. Pretty much yeah. I don't think he's implying it as much as saying that outright. He doesn't condemn all surrogate activities equally though. He has ire specifically for those surrogate activities he believes inevitably restrict the freedom of individuals to go through their own power process, specifically science and industrialization. I'll not dump more large quotations in this thread, but read the section "Restriction of Freedom is Unavoidable in Industrial Society" if you want to hear his reasoning for this. I am not an anarcho-primitivist so the above is not the point I am trying to make. I provided the quotations in my previous comments to answer the question "why would we do this? Just because we can?" I believe the answer is this: "scientists work mainly for the fulfillment they get out of the work itself."