In late 2022 I was interviewed by a student of an unnamed Slovenian university for a short documentary that revolved mostly around my calls to dismantle civilization, people’s reactions to primitivist ideas, and the ecological issues we face in these times. The film was never publicly released. The following are translated excerpts of the interview, edited minimally for increased readability.

Interviewer: What is anarcho-primitivism?

Kazimir: Anarcho-primitivism is, essentially, an anarchist critique of civilization and a philosophical current. It’s critical towards all elements that comprise civilization. For instance, the technological system, agriculture, domestication — that of humans, and of non-human animals, plants, too, all of it. Civilization is incompatible with life itself, it’s incompatible with psychological and physical well-being, so we [the primitivists] have decided, based on all these facts, that civilization needs to be dealt away with in order for humans to lead good, free, high-quality lives.

Interviewer: How did you arrive to these conclusions?

K: I spent my entire childhood struggling a great deal in school, for example, because of mathematics. This was due to my dyscalculia — undiagnosed, but plainly obvious —, and it’s fascinating to me that this is considered a disorder, a disability. When you think about it, it’s not an actual hinderence of bodily functions, like an organ failure would be, calling it a disability only makes sense in a set of highly-specific social circumstances: those of life in modern civilization. […] This was one of the things that prodded me to start asking myself what it’s all about.

Something I’ve also noticed. When I was young, I’d go down to the river a lot, and I remember seeing big fish swimming. You barely see any fish these days, but back then they were everywhere. You’re lucky to every see one of the big ones presently. The wild living world is rapidly shrinking. The onslaught of climate change is relentless. And all the while we seem to be completely unwilling to do anything sufficiently radical to halt this process of destruction.

This is happening because we think of ourselves as something isolated. […] The deep ecology approach that’s characteristic of primitivism advocates a conception of the natural environment, wilderness as an instrumentally useful object, but as a part of ourselves in a way.

Interviewer: What’s civilization’s biggest problem?

K: Here’s the thing with civilization: it needs to spread perpetually. We’ve seen this with colonialism, we see it now with all the technological intrusions into nature. Look at how, for example, the Amazon rain forest is being turned into cow farms. It’s never enough due to civilization’s incapacity for self-sufficiency, and ergo cannot stay in one place for long.

Interviewer: What is a primitive society like?

K: A primitive society, a primeval [kind of] human society […] is usually very small, we’re talking some 50 to 100 people. It’s been discovered, in fact, it’s called Dunbar’s number — between 150 and 250 — is a cognitive limit of how many people we can have meaningful, trusting, personal relationships with. For those struggling to imagine such relations: primitive societies are similar to friend groups or to families. Imagine a healthy interpersonal relationship of trust, of connectedness.

In many of these societies we even have things like gender equality. Us, humans, seem to have an innate tendency to dislike rigid hierarchies, we’re creature who strive for equality in social relations. Technological progress is often incompatible with equality, equity. Let’s just compare how the poorest among us live today with how the wealthy do. We’re talking about the largest imbalance of wealth in the entirety of human history. We want to put an end to this, we want people to be able to look each-other in the eyes, so to speak.

Interviewer: Wouldn’t a return to the stone age be too big of a culture shock?

K: […] I firmly believe most people would find it extremely difficult. […] But we’re in a situation similar to when you yank away a heroin addict’s needle away from him, that person, too, would think “Oh, fuck! What now?”

Interviewer: Oh dear, looks like the lights died on us. Quickly, tell me, what might be that one good thing about civilization.

K: Burek.*

* — Burek is a family of pastries or pies found in Ottoman cuisine, very popular in the Balkans, particularly former Yugoslavia. It’s made of thin flaky dough with a variety of fillings, such as meat, cheese, spinach, or potatoes.