The Birds: "A city must rise, to house all the birds; then you must fence in the air, the sky, the earth, and must surround it by walls, like Babylon."" - Meaning and context.">
p. 50
“

Cities and factories are never at base freely chosen by the people inside them; domination keeps them there. Aristophanes put it well in his 414 BC creation The Birds: "A city must rise, to house all the birds; then you must fence in the air, the sky, the earth, and must surround it by walls, like Babylon."

— John Zerzan

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Cities and factories are never at base freely chosen by the people inside them; domination keeps them there. Aristophanes put it well in his 414 BC creation The Birds: "A city must rise, to house all the birds; then you must fence in the air, the sky, the earth, and must surround it by walls, like Babylon."" in the context of "p. 50" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Quote Image
Source: Wikiquote: "John Zerzan" (Quotes, A People's History of Civilization (2018)) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
John Zerzan

About John Zerzan

John Zerzan (born in Salem, 10th August 1943) is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author.