divide between nature and culture is an abstraction, a tentativegrab of truth where nothing can be finally established. To state that agriculture is at the beginningof culture is scientifically flawed and reductionist (remember that Zerzandislikes science but still uses it). Culture cannot also be reduced to a Durkheimian discourse, as coerciononly (the old sociological perspective). Surely, cultural acts have always had reasons of power, which does notmean they have all been conscious to people, or that all reasons of power canbe. Would it be so, Zerzan would notspeak to, as he does many times, the contradiction of speaking againsttechnology, culture, language and industry, and still be using all of these tomake himself known.ButZerzan cant really decide if time, language, number and art broughtagriculture about, or if agriculture brought them about. As with all of his arguments on origins, theorigin of agriculture is a mix-up of the origins of everything else hecritiques. His important and relevantcritiques for today are of conventional agriculture, however shallow theyare. The standardization of thelandscape, cutting off from it the biological diversity necessary for thecontinuous flux of energy, material, and life, is now an established ecologicalknowledge. The problem with caring forthe environment now has been mostly how to apply knowledge, how to proposealternatives, and how to act on ecological problems that differ from place toplace and society to society. Clearly,Zerzan wants nothing to do with this because he is too busy waiting for aprimitivist revolution that will never come. With division of labor, certainly there were new forms of domination ofnature and of women. Modern farmingbrought with it an unprecedented devastation of forest and green areas, soildepletion, and pollution. Zerzan isaware of this, but so are a great number of school children worldwide nowadays.Hebelieves that technology supposedly began withagriculture. He regards technology asinherently oppressive. However, he alsocontradicts himself when he accepts Permaculture for example as a collection ofsimple techniques to live as in a garden.[58] Surely there is somehow in Zerzan the sensethat humans might have a need for techniques to make life easier and better,and Permaculture has certainly been proving worldwide that it is an interestingand ecological conjunction of techniques. But most of the time he asserts that technology, and all forms of technique aswell, is perverse because it reproduces the values of society/culture. However, societies cannot refrain fromvalues. All societies have values, andall technology is imbued with them, which does not mean that they always actagainst life or in oppressive ways. Sure,technology can be regarded as external to things and to people at least thereis no magical way to impede this thought. Sometimes this character of externality gets over-signified,particularly when an authoritarian or problematic component is claimed to bepresent in technology. Technological advancement is surely to blame for a greatpart of environmental degradation, pollution, loss of contact with naturalsurroundings in all urban centers of the globe. Zerzan does not exaggerate inhis analysis of environmental destruction. The market, commoditization, the making of everything into a medium ofexchange: all enhance consumerism and production not based on actual needs ofpeople. Natural energy and material things are given quantitative andutilitarian value.