Disclaimer: I am not an an-prim, and in fact I am far from one, though I do agree with an-prims to some extent on critiquing the role technology plays in human society. I'm going to try to not sound like a dismissive asshole or someone who is deliberately misrepresenting primitivism.
That being said, one thing I've always wondered about an-prims is how they view people outside the primitivist "scene" for lack of a better word. The critique I hear all the time for example is that primtivists would let a huge portion of the population die who depend on medical technologies to stay alive, because they just want to destroy all civilization and technology no matter what. That sounds to me like a hyperbolic characterization of primitivists and seems like it would defy some basic anarchist principles. So more generally speaking, I guess what I'm asking is: Do primitivists expect everyone under anarchy to give up technology and become hunter-gatherers? Would people who didn't want to become hunter-gatherers be forced in some way to give up technology anyways? Would primitivists be breaking into my house and smashing my computers?
Again, I know that this sounds like an unfair characterization of primitivism and like it would violate some basic anarchist principles, but I really know very little about primitivism so I'm just being upfront about my questions. I've always thought that under anarchy, primitivists would want the freedom to go be hunter-gatherers and would militantly defend the destruction of the environment - all things I'm down with as long as people like me are also allowed to do our own thing (of course without forcing technology onto primitivists, or anyone else for that matter, as happens very often in our society). Or is there an inherent, possibly insurmountable tension between the primitivist position and non-primitivists that would ultimately mean one side would have to win out in the end?
To add to that: Do you think that there is any potential for cooperation and dialogue - I'm talking especially in terms of theory, since we both want to destroy the State and capitalism and hierarchy and so on - between primitivists and techie type anarchists? Does primitivism have anything to offer us techie types? Though I should add to that, that cyber-anarchism or whatever label you'd want to call it has to itself bring something to the table, since the tech world is dominated mostly by "anarcho"-capitalists and lolbertarians. The only thing close to a techie anarchism that I know of is "anarcho-transhumanism", whose theory seems to consist mostly of a single website steeped in Old Left ideas, and Deus Ex game manuals.
