Post-Civilized

I know it’s hard to get the energy to put forth into the unknown, (such as a magazine that has yet to release an issue), but we are still looking for a few more submissions for the first issue of Post-Civilized. We’re aiming for a release date of sometime in the end of summer now.

Industrial civilization is destroying everything we hold dear. Chainsaws are killing the forests, cancer is killing our loved ones, and the workaday life is killing our souls. Every day, the suburbs expand into the desert, every day new sweatshops are put up in developing nations. As we search farther and farther for the last drops of oil to fuel all of this nonsense, a lot more people are thinking: what sort of madness have we made?

And yet, there is no turning back. There are too many people alive today to resume a hunter/gatherer lifestyle, and we won’t be the ones calling for a genocide in the name of some imaginary utopia. We must move forward, apply our intelligence to discover new solutions. If we cannot remain civilized, and we cannot become pre-civilized, then clearly, we will be post-civilized.

It was mostly the defining characteristics of civilization that got us into this mess: centralization and hierarchy come to mind. When we built cities that couldn’t sustain themselves on their own landbase, we made a system that required warfare; when you need a resource, and it isn’t available by trade, you will take it by force.

We cannot know yet entirely what post-civil society will look like, although we’re starting to explore and we’ve got some ideas. The evaluation of technology based on its appropriateness to the environmental and culture conditions, rather than by it’s ability to generate profit: this is to say, sustainability. Decentralization of power and of resources, with power resting in the community and the individual, yet allowing for global networks and federations: this is to say, Anarchism. And we’ve got other words we’d like to throw at you: permaculture, feminism, autonomy.

It’s time that we start to explore these things, here and now. No politician, popular vote, revolution, or apocalypse is going to save us.

We are ready to begin. From the ground up, we are going to build a new society in the shell of this one. And it will be beautiful. Our ideas will spread, and take new forms with each new person and community. We are in the endgame of civilization, everyone knows it. It’s time to present, and to live, solutions.

So yeah, we’re making a journal. Each issue will be a seed to throw to the winds, to hope it will find fertile soil somewhere. We would love your help. We are looking for how-to’s: DIY waterwheels and car-tire gardens, longbows and boatbuilding. We’re looking for journalism: who is living this already? How are they doing it? Where are they? Do they want help, or simply to see others begin elsewhere? We’re looking for screeds about the beauty of the city, about how it could be transformed. We’re looking for screeds about the beauty of nature, about how it could be protected. We’re looking for fictional accounts of the society of our dreams (which will never be named utopia). We’re looking for history lessons, we’re looking for theory, and we’re looking for things we haven’t thought of yet. We’re looking for illustrators and photographers who are willing to show us what is, what was, and what is yet to be. To risk falling into the realm of slogans, we’re looking for you. For what you would like to say.

contribute [a] postcivilized.net

Clearly, this webpage is new. Welcome to postcivilized.net, the home of Post-Civilized, an upcoming journal of, you guessed it, the post-civilization. For more information, there are some pages up already, if you look to that toolbar to your right.