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anarchism: a beginner’s guide
lift-off. Nonetheless, Mollie is optimistic about the possibilities of
replacing ‘metal alloys and ceramics’ in space. Tom embraces both
the ease of life and the technology that supports it. Still, Alex,
Mollie’s companion, is keen to defend Bear City’s reliance on
‘use-tools’:
‘How can we escape technology? The boomerang, the bulldozer and
the botanochemical are just different technologies for different
times or places, all of which are equally sophisticated in their own
way. The tool is a defining feature of our species and without it we
would not be human. The two important things are not to become
entrapped by a particular technology and to acknowledge that any
tool which damages the environment can no longer be used as a
use-tool. A tool is by definition something that is useful. I suppose
that a tool may be harmful in one instance and a use-tool in
another, but that is beside the point’. In any case it takes years to
learn how to make a perfect arrow from a flint-stone ... To say that
stone-age people did not have tools or technology is to insult them
and to misrepresent the complexity and dexterity of their life and
culture. Have you ever tried to make a boomerang come back? 34
Not everyone Tom meets likes Bear City. Aristotle’s friend Jack
lives in the wilderness of Bear Forest and does not want to be part of
a bio-organism, even though the wilderness is only an hour away
from the city centre. Mollie and Alex are fed up with urban life and
are considering retreating with their children to a less artificial environment
but they can do this easily because Bear City is not typical.
After the revolution, the inhabitants of each bio-region decided how
to ‘re-integrate their life-styles, towns and cities with the regional
ecology of their area’. Some areas opted for ‘low-technology’
solutions, relying on traditional ‘rural land usages’. In contrast, Bear
City’s adjoining neighbourhoods, Cat Creek and the Bullawara
Desert region, are both technology-averse. Aristotle tells Tom that
the people of Cat Creek have an ‘ideological commitment to the
horse and cart’. When Tom visits the area at the end of his journey he
finds himself ‘confronted by ... romantic scenes from painters like ...
Millet or Pissaro’. He is also reminded of William Morris but
Aristotle tells him that the area has been modelled on ideas elaborated
by the ‘social-environmental geographer’ Kropotkin: ‘small
scale simple technologies ... lighten the hard work associated with
traditional peasant life’. The peoples of Bullawara are still further