Neoludism

Neo-Luddism or New Luddism is a philosophical current that opposes the technological and scientific development of modern society. The term is applied to people who reject technological advance, and is associated with the legacy of the British Luddites, active between 1811 and 1817.

It is considered a leaderless movement or unassociated groups, who resist new technologies and demand a return of some or all technologies to a more primitive level.

Neo-Luddishism is based on concerns of negative technological impact on individuals, their communities, and the environment. Neo-Luddishism stipulates the use of the precautionary principle for all new technologies, requiring that those technologies be tested and safe before being adopted by society, due to the unknown effects that its implementation could bring.

Definition of Neo-Luddism, origin and philosophy

Definition of Neo-Luddishism

According to the manifesto drawn up by the Second Luddite Congress in April 1996 in Ohio, USA, neo-Luddishism is

"A movement without passive resistance leaders to consumerism and increasingly strange and threatening technologies of the Computer Age"

Modern Neo-Luddites are characterized by one or more of the following practices:

• Disengagement of use of technology
• Damage to those who produce technology
• To lead a simple life
• Taste technology

Neo-Luddites also fear unknown future effects that new technologies may unleash. The modern neo-Luddite movement has connections with anti-globalization movements, with anarcho-primitivism, with radical environmentalism, and with deep ecology.

Origin of Neo-Luddism

The term is believed to come from a young man named Ned Ludd (which may have been a pseudonym), who, out of discontent over poor working conditions, broke and burned looms in the early 19th century. Influenced by Ned, the workers started a movement called the Luddites, who sent anonymous death threats, invaded factories and destroyed machinery.

These acts occurred at the time due to social discontent among the working class since they attributed the dismissals of workers and poor working conditions to technology, however contemporary Neo Luddite thought has linked these acts with a hatred towards technology, giving way to new believers calling themselves Neo Luddites and successors to the Luddites.

Philosophy of Neo-Luddism

Neoludism promotes slowing or stopping the development of new technologies. He prescribes a lifestyle that abandons technologies, due to his belief that this is the best prospect for the future. As Robert and Webster put it "a return to nature and what is imagined as natural for the community". In place of industrial capitalism, Neo-Luddism prescribes small-scale farming communities such as those of the Amish and the Chipko movement in Nepal and India as models for the future.

Neo-Luddishness denies the ability of any new technology to solve current problems, such as environmental degradation, nuclear warfare, and biological weapons, without creating more potential problems. Neo-Luddishism is generally opposed to Anthropocentrism, Globalization and Capitalism.

Contemporary Neo-Luddites are a broad and diversified loosely associated and non-associated group which includes writers, academics, students, families, environmentalists, idealistic youth seeking a technology-free environment, among others. Some Luddites look to them themselves as victims of technology trying to prevent further victimization (such as citizens against pesticide misuse). Others see themselves as defenders of the natural order and resist environmental degradation caused by technology (eg Earth First!).

A Neo-Luddite assembly was the "Second Neo-Luddite congress" between April 13-15, 1996, at a meeting in the Quaker hall in Barnesville, Ohio. On February 24, 2001, the "Learning about technology and globalization" it was held at Hunter College in New York with the purpose of bringing together critics of technology and globalization. The two figures considered to be founders of the Neo-Luddite movement are Chellis Glendinning and Kirkpatrick Sale. Famous Neo-Luddites include educators like S. D. George, environmentalists like Stephanie Mills, Theodore Roszak, Clifford Stoll, Bill McKibben, Neil Postman, and Wendell Berry.

Activism and attacks

Unabomber

Theodore Kaczynski in 1968 at the age of 25, when he was a teacher at Berkeley School

Theodore John Kaczynski, or known as he was identified by the F.B.I. Unabomber (University and Airline Bomber) is a noted mathematician graduated from Harvard, with a high IQ (167), great track record academic and great contributions to mathematics. However, he dismissed all these qualities to become what we know of him today, as an extremist representative of neo-Luddism, which he embodied in his life when he went to live in the mountains without light, without water and without money.

Kaczynski fights for the “wild life” through the total destruction of modern industrial society, this he did by sending letter bombs or planting a bomb on an airplane. For this reason he was searched for and captured by the F.B.I, without first publishing his manifesto Industrial society and its future, which today is the reference text for any Neo-Luddist. Comprehensive as it is in this manifesto, Kaczynski explains the criteria he used to kill people: "In order to get our message before people with any hope of leaving a lasting impression, we had to kill people." Theodore Kaczynski.

This manifesto, known as the "Unabomber Manifesto", analyzes the errors of the technology-based system and proposes a whole line to end it.

In the manifesto, among others, the following problems that give technology are analyzed:

• The "Industrial Revolution and its Consequences have meant a disaster for humanity."
• People are forced to behave in a way that is more and more distant from the natural patterns of human behavior.
• Technology and society around it generate a loss of human freedom.
• Lack of autonomy in having real goals, this is reflected in substitute activities that are goals in which people are never satisfied, such as getting a correct body, wealth, self-realization, etc. These goals have been imposed by market society and do not meet a vital goal for people, which is reflected in the fact that many people do not find a sense of their lives or are in constant pursuit of a consecrational goal.
• People live in an industrial society that creates artificial needs, which meet with technology for greater efficiency or comfort. This occurs in the short term but in the long term these needs become social needs, which the person cannot leave as well as technology (attacked to a technology).
• Industrial society cannot be reformed to increase freedom, this as it is an integrated system, where the evil of technology cannot be separated from the good of it.
• Excessive population density.
• The restriction of freedom is inevitable in industrial society as man is trapped in rules and regulations and his fates depend on actions of people who are far from them, so they cannot influence them.
• Man's isolation from nature.
• It is not possible to strike a balance between technology and freedom, as the first is more powerful and continually restricts the freedom of individuals.
• Disappearance of small communities as villages or tribes.

All of these claims and rulings are fully explained in the manifesto, which was published to prevent further explosions in 1995 by the New York Times and Washington Post.

Other attacks

In 2011, a self-styled terrorist group called Individualists Tending to the Wild (ITS) carried out a series of attacks with explosive devices on researchers and research centers on Mexican campuses. This group defined itself as eco-extremists who accuse progress scientific and technological of being responsible for the devastation of ecosystems and an urban hypercivilization that distances itself from nature. The methodology and ideology of this group is partially inspired by that developed by Ted Kaczinsky and they acknowledge being influenced by him and his manifesto The industrial society and its future. However, ITS faced other groups neo-Luddists or anarcho-primitivists and Kaczinsky himself wrote a letter in 2012 in which he bitterly criticized ITS for a proposal for revolutionary action and an unrealistic and naive interpretation of history. As of 2014 ITS announces an increase in its activity terrorist, internationalizing, but most of their claimed terrorist actions are proven false and their verifiable activity turns out to be non-existent.

Criticism of Neo-Luddism

As well as Luddism, the main critics of neo-Luddism consider that jobs that are not dignified due to their characteristics (painful, repetitive, dangerous, precarious, slaves, etc.) should be eliminated, improved or performed by machines or any other electrical mechanism or electronic since it is the way to avoid the degradation of the worker who performs it. That they continue to exist and that economic conditions make it necessary to continue occupying them does not indicate that they should continue to exist.

The Marxist Theory of Alienation (in German: Entfremdung) considers that the worker, from the capitalist point of view, is not a person in himself but a commodity —called labor power— that can be represented in its monetary equivalent, that is, the worker is a certain amount of money that can be used, as labor, for its multiplication. Alienation is defined as “the process by which people become alienated from the world in which they live” and, therefore, eliminating jobs where the worker is a commodity—labor, labor power—is to liberate the worker. of the alienation of his false consciousness.