NEWS/COLUMN
Production Zomia
Don't need to rely on anything to survive.
This is a ‘word’ said by a local fisherman on the Oshika Peninsula.
The flowing breath of the Kami, a small spirit. His word has the power of words given by it.
There are still fragments of statelessness from the landscape of the mountains, seas and coastal areas which give us a deep-rooted essence of Zomia within the Peninsula.
The rugged terrain on Indochina Peninsula is a home for Zomia,
The Zomi, meaning highlander, coexist there along with the Kami.
They have lived in nature which conducts both its blessings and disasters onto humans.
Thus, their common sense is to eschew exclusion and refinement, never creating a single centrum.
Their Animistic wisdom creates harmonious relationships between animals, plants, inorganic substances and even spirits.
From the Anarcho-Animist perspective,
They reject slavery, conscription, taxes, warefare, etc., and
They leave no written records behind that would control their own mobility/dispersal.
The Zomis not only migrate and reside in the mountains and forests.
But rivers and oceans as well serve as places to retreat–they become Water Zomia.
One wonders if the Zomi were driven from the plains to the open sea and eventually drifted to the Oshika Peninsula via what is now Indonesia, Taiwan, Okinawa and even the Kii Peninsula.
“The sedimentation of civilisation” and “a life ungoverned”
In contrast, our civilized societies are inundated with fabricated labor that places us far from our ideal livelihood.
Our world is dominated, and we are dwarfed, by institutions and technology.
The materialistic society of homo economicus, where people believe only in finite money and materials— “capital” -
The more civilization absorbs, the more people cling to illusive stories and principles.
From the shadows of an obsoleting civilization, the Zomis, adherents of Anarcho-Animism, emerge.
They know that humans, flora and fauna, inorganic matter and the flowing Kami are intertwined.
This entanglement of life goes beyond 'symbiosis' and 'altruism'.
It is the coincidental co-existence between opposing entities living on different principles.
The life of the self-governed resists silently
While maintaining mutual autonomy unreliant upon state actors.
Today too, they keep their freedom to utterly embrace their ephemeral human lives.
