Anarchists in Cache Valley?

I went to a cousin’s marriage today, one of the few events in which I see another cousin (groom’s brother) who lives in Denver. It generally only takes us a few minutes to go deep. Normally we start talking books or movies and then bump up against some friction or tension. Today I mentioned the PBS special of Jared Diamond’s, IMHO, amazing Guns, Germs and Steel (a book my cousin had recommended a few years back). My cousin said he wasn’t too interested in the PBS special since he’d read the book, plus he disagreed with some of Diamond's work, especially his new book on civilization. He then went on to explain that he is anti-civilization (I had to resist pointing out that he had just given a toast to celebrate his brother’s wedding, THE ritual of civilization) and doesn’t believe we can reform away our problems. His idea is that we must save the planet first and then figure out our own society. A familiar argument, he argues that society has built layers of consciousness thus removing the individual from direct experience with survival and the earth.

After going out to my car to get a phone number (I was in the middle of trying to set up a pick-up for my new bike rack—talk about layers of constructed consciousness and experience), I sought my cousin out again. I still had some fight:

“So, if you are against civilization and believe we have deceived ourselves with self-conscious layers of ‘thinking about life’ then how can you be sure that your anarchist platform is not just another layer, just another feeble human attempt to abstract its way from direct contact with the earth? Do you know what I’m saying?”

“I do. The idea that by telling everyone they need to live in a certain way the anarchist becomes some sort of elitist.”

“Yeah, in part.”

“Well, it’s different than that. What I’m saying is we go back to our individual roots. I mean did you know that in some hunter gather societies people worked for 3-4 hours a day? So are we progressing?”

“I have heard of this before, but still how can this new idea, these ideas of anarchism, pull themselves out of society, outside of consciousness? This sounds like another sort of ‘false consciousness’ move to me.”

“It’s not about telling people what to do but about each individual getting closer to this unmitigated experience. It’s not the group.”

So is my cousin an anarchist? I do respect him. He does, by and large, live his creed. He has turned down full-time and long-term employment so that he isn’t tied to a job. And he uses his time wisely. He’s been to Italy a number of times and to Japan. This next semester he is going to volunteer two weeks in Costa Rica to help out with sea turtles. Also, he will help put on his second play in January, a political satire, run by a very small yet progressive and participatory theatre group in Denver.

And this is amazing. He grew up in Cache Valley; his mom was 15 when she got pregnant with him. Growing up he didn’t seem that interested in academics. He was, though, a very fine wrestler but also, as seems to accompany success in sports, quite cocky and full of himself. I still remember how he told me he could become a better skier than I was after skiing 3 or 4 times (I’d been skiing, taking lessons and racing some for about 6 or 7 years). And now he’s an anarchist. How did he extricate himself from such a masculine small-town mentality?

I’m fairly cynical about society’s ability to reform itself; nonetheless, I think the effort to reform, whether it leads to an absolute reformation, is still worthy of something. I guess I’m a bit of an existentialist in that way—rolling the rock up the hill, even though we know it will come back down, must count for something. And I think our layers of ritual and society do create authentic, albeit imperfect, meaning in our lives. Still, it seems too simplistic to say my cousin is wrong and I’m right. I guess I’m more concerned with how he lives his beliefs and from that perspective he really is a true anarchist.