. In a traditional society, this is the least developed type: it arises later than the first two types and plays a minor role. Since primitive meanings are the result of cultural selection, not choice, and their main content is stability and not change, the need for self-expression remains inessential and sometimes harmful to the self-reproduction of traditional societies. Dreamers and inventors are ignored or even persecuted.
For anarcho-primitivists like John Zerzan, the reason for the slow progress of primitive societies makes no mystery. The answer for him is that the primitive dreamers could not think of anything better than their simple life.
“During the vast time-span of the Paleolithic, there were remarkably few changes in technology. Innovation, ‘over 2½ million years measured in stone tool development was practically nil,’ according to Gerhard Kraus. Seen in the light of what we now know of prehistoric intelligence, such ‘stagnation’ is especially vexing to many social scientists. ‘It is difficult to comprehend such slow development,’ in the judgment of Wymer. It strikes me as very plausible that intelligence, informed by the success and satisfaction of a gatherer-hunter existence, is the very reason for the pronounced absence of ‘progress.’ Division of labor, domestication, symbolic culture—these were evidently refused until very recently” (Zerzan 2012, p. 7).
Rather, the reason for the lack of “progress” was not intelligence, but its subordinate position: the intellect was suppressed by tradition. Practice, not the intellect, was the main source of the most effective causal models. Increasing the degree of adaptation in a simple society meant bringing the causal models closer to reality and thus strengthening man in his relationship with nature. The unfolding of needs, motives and activities requires an expansion of choices, but under cultural selection and traditional choice this expansion advanced extremely slowly.