Neo-primitivism
The present process of observable cultural involution toward primitive mass behaviour, a weakening of the cultural memory, and the advent of social savagery.
The signs of this new primitivism are multiple: the rise of illiteracy in the schools, the explosion of drug use, the Afro-Americanisation of popular music, the collapse of social codes, the decline of general culture, knowledge, and historical memory among the young, the dissolution of contemporary art into a brutal, vacuous nihilism, the mass coarsening and deculturation fostered by audio/visual media (the ‘cathodic religion’), the increase of criminality and uncivil behaviour, the decline of civic duty, the accelerated crumbling of social norms and collective disciplines, the deterioration of the language, etc.
The generation of ‘Beur-Black’ youth offers a remarkable example of this neo-primitivism, but they are not the only ones touched by it.
The paradox of this new primitivism, veritable process of ‘decivilisation’, is its association with the dominant devirilised ideology, which advocates civility, the rule of law, altruism, humanitarianism, citizenship, and ‘culture’. But this is eyewash. Neo-primitivism perfectly accommodates social control, domestication by consumerism, and the collective loss of civic spirit. It’s the counterpart of neo-totalitarianism. It serves the short term strategy of the political class, the intellectual-media class, and, above all, the transnational financial powers. If one reasons dialectically, this neo-primitivism could well turn against the civilisation engendering it — to the degree that the present generation of youth will be technologically incapable of performing the functions that make such a civilisation possible.
This generation will offer but the most minimal resistance to active minorities, whoever they may be. What could such a mass of slaves — these ‘last men’ of whom Nietzsche spoke[1] — do in face of a resolute aristocratic minority?
(see deculturation; involution; mass, massification)
- ↑ ‘Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man. “What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?” thus asks the last man, and he blinks. The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the flea-beetle; the last man lives longest.’ From Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (New York: Penguin Books, 1978), p. 5.
