If you have ever watched a show based in pre-Christian Europe, or some other setting where people are living off the land in pre-feudal organizations such as tribes or clans and thought, “This is how people should be living. Why did we abandon this?” then you might be drawn to primitive living. It may sound insane, but so many forms of entertainment such as games, movies, or books have themes of surviving off the land in various settings. Games about farming, building bases in forests to survive monsters during the night, or even games about surviving in a destroyed world after an apocalypse. There is clearly a type of allure for that kind of existence.

I should clarify that I am not advocating a return to pre-industrial society. I think the Unabomber may have had some ideas that touched on how humans benefit from primitive and pre-industrial living, but his ideology was engendered by rightism and fundamentally incompatible with Marxism, so I have no option but to reject most of it. Instead, I think I should point out the specific benefits of primitive societies while not overlooking the hardships of such a lifestyle.

Modern people work in jobs that would seem pointless to our ancestors. Being on computers all day, working in retail shops or stores, or even banking would be foreign concepts to hunter-gatherer ancestors who bartered and mostly cooperated with each other for survival. They might have spent a lot of time hunting or gathering for food, but when they were finished they would literally consume the fruits of their labor. The most basic comforts such as pillows, clothing, light, and entertainment would be laborious to produce, but they were made by hand by the person themself or members of their community. Similar to a commune, everything was a product of labor from individuals the person knew and they had good relationships with the objects they owned relative to modern people, who constantly buy useless things and see them as soulless, replaceable objects if not junk. Primitive people did not have junk, and everything had a use.

To add to the last point, their food was not processed and they most likely ate food prepared with better quality ingredients than what we would eat now. A lifestyle centered around schedules, deadlines, and lunch breaks means we are eating heavily processed food that would feel completely fake to our ancestors who prepared everything with natural ingredients. Diabetes was unheard of, obesity was rare, and sugar was not the main ingredient in everything they ate.

The best part about the whole situation is probably the environmental sustainability and their ability to live in nature without destroying it. The world was heavily forested during most of humanity’s existence and this meant they did not suffer the effects of a changing climate. If there is any part of primitive living we should emulate, it is definitely learning to live with renewable resources, without harm to the flora and fauna of the places we live, and without polluting our environments.