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Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng (1934-2014) was a philosopher and activist who was deeply opposed to what he termed the Industrial Growth Society – IGS.

We live, he warned in 1993, in “a global robber economy, a systematic plundering of the earth’s last resources at an exponential rate”.

“Like so many of my own generation in Norway, I have experienced a complete transformation of society in one lifetime – from an almost medieval, agricultural self-reliant society to a modern super industrialism, replete with computers, holidays at Mallorca, and complete dependency on world market forces…

“The industrial transformation was slow at first, and throughout the first half of this century people largely went along with the hydroprojects, feeling that electricity and industrialization would compensate for the river losses.

“But after World War II all that changed: the schemes grew out of all reasonable proportions and far beyond the needs of the people. That’s when Norwegian electricity finally became the bridgehead for modern international big industry”. [1]

This imperial pillaging obviously had a destructive impact on Norway’s magnificent landscape: “IGS tries to transform all mountainous areas and river sheds into gigantic cisterns for the production of industrial energy”. [2]

But Kvaløy Setreng also stressed the ill effects on the lives, culture and happiness of the Norwegian people. He wrote: “The deterioration of taste in half a generation coincides strikingly with the industrialization of the country. The state of aesthetic taste must somehow be the fruit of the transition to an IGS society”. [3]

And he added in 2007: “Small-scale farming and fishing is being replaced by a tourist economy where exotic folklore on abandoned farms is taking the place of food production and computer games are replacing real games.

“It should be of interest to note that exactly in parallel with this development the rate of suicides has grown tremendously in Norway, now being one of the highest in the world”. [4]

Kvaløy Setreng described how modern urban society is designed to serve the demands of the rapacious “techno-capitalist economy” which cannot function without treating human beings in a supposedly rational and entirely “quantitative” manner.

Stripped of meaningful work and reduced to the slave-like status of dependent and obedient employees, people “gradually and unnoticeably lose the ability to master their own situation and to take part in a conscious shaping of their society. In other words, we reach a state of affairs where people have to be governed from the outside and above… Society becomes ‘addicted to’ a continuation on the same course”. [5]

“We see today a great drive to centralize people from the rural communities and the small towns into the great metropolis. The planners are at work, creating vast suburbs from scratch, pouring people into the quickly finished product.

“It is not taken into consideration that these people come from different backgrounds and different kinds of communities, and that they arrive with their ‘roots in mother earth’s soil’ torn off…

“The majority inhabiting the bottom sector of the IGS power pyramid cannot be allowed to develop an ego-complexity anywhere nearly as strong as their leaders, because that would mean their effective refusal to function as quantities; then they could not be programmed, and statistical forecasts would break down all the time.

“The most functional citizen of IGS is one with no protruding edges – one who has the slippery shape of a simple disc – well suited to slide through the centrally designed pipe system of modern techno-society”. [6]

In contrast to this dehumanised industrial society, Kvaløy Setreng presented the idea of a “livsnødvendighetssamfunnet (“life necessities society”, LNS) a society characterized by solidarity, autonomous small communities and the production of only the necessities of life. [7]

He explained: “The top of the IGS pyramid, seen as a centralized social organization, may also be compared to the governing station of a machine – the single position from which you start and stop it and control all its functions.

“It is a basic characteristic of a machine to have just one such control center, while a living, organic process has many, or you might say, none: the whole is governing itself”. [8]

This is, of course, very much the vision of green anarchism and what I call organic radicalism – which is why a version of this profile has now been added to that mighty library of thinkers. [9]

Indeed, in his writing Kvaløy Setreng cited the influence of other organic radical inspirations such as E.F. Schumacher, Mohandas Gandhi, [10] Jacques Ellul and Theodore Roszak. [11]

And I see close parallels to my own concept of withness [12] in this passage: “What became clear to me here was that it is a blockage of our understanding of a human being’s personality to draw limits around it as something trapped within the skin of one body.

“It is more fruitful to look upon the person’s full environment – all the things and events that are near to him – as elements that are being integrated into his personality as it matures and unfolds”. [13]

Rootedness was essential to this vision of natural belonging. The philosopher insisted: “A basic, specifically human need is to grow and mature into a specific identity. That again means the living availability of a particular cultural tradition – a pattern of activity, thought and feeling that has emerged over many generations as the complex answer to the specific challenges nature offers in this culture’s place on the earth.

“These local challenges are the main reason why we have a variety of deeply different cultures around the world. A human identity worth the name presupposes an existence that extends in an unbroken manner far beyond an individual lifespan.

“Identity for the individual means a history and an inherited worldview containing everything that is necessary to deal with ‘survival-with-abundance’ in her own place.

“The catch-words here are self-sufficiency and self-reliance. Without identities reflecting the eco-social histories of the many different landscapes that Gaia presents to human beings, there would be no individuals or societies with sufficient moral strength and inspiration to counter difficulties as they arise”. [14]

Kvaløy Setreng’s anti-industrial radicalism was thus combined with what another organic radical thinker, Edward Abbey, described in The Monkey Wrench Gang as “the conservative instinct to keep things not as they are but as they should be… to keep it like it was”. [15]

This kind of outlook is, of course, anathema to the industrial mafia and their fascistic ideological thought police, who regard any objection to their foul imperial megamachine as “reactionary” or even, absurdly, “eco-fascist”.

Kvaløy Setreng defiantly declared: “What we stand for may seem archconservative and at the same time extremely radical. We will therefore strike in both directions, and we will be attacked from all sides”. [16]

One of the key distinctions he made was between the complexity of organic societies and the complication of the industrial world.

He explained: “By ‘complexity’ (CX) I mean the dynamic, irreversible, self-steering, goal-directed, conflict-fertilized manifoldness of nature and – as a particularly refined and intricate version of that – the human body/mind.

“By ‘complication’ (CC) I mean the static, reversible, externally steered, standardizing structure-intricacy of the machine. The computer is a particularly refined and intricate version of that…

“The propaganda of IGS tells us that LNS is a simple, primitive, and even standardized sort of society, while IGS is complex. One of my main points here is to show that it is actually the other way around. And there are many examples that most people will recognize that clarify the opposite view: that the complexity of IGS is just an appearance”. [17]

Here Kvaløy Setreng introduced a third concept to explain how it is that the static and standardising industrial world manages to pass itself off as more complex than the organic richness of “primitive” and natural ways of living.

“‘Pseudocomplexity’ (PCX) mimics CX; it is the human invention of various arrangements and activities designed to keep people occupied in a diverse manner, through mass media, hobbies, tourism, schools, and so on, but on the kind of shallow level that is exemplified by the amusement park – without offering training or development that equips them better for creative interaction with nature or with human society”. [18]

He also made an interesting distinction between organic and mechanical time: “Organic time is concrete; it has no existence separate from material-spiritual events (‘being-processes’ is one tentative word that might be useful to get away from the Cartesian split between matter and spirit). It cannot be ‘objectively’ measured, because any kind of measuring rod would change with it…

“Mechanical time is a human intellectual invention. It was historically prepared through the observation of the rhythmical pulses of day and night and the seasons, but came into consequential being as something different from organic time only with the invention of a reliable mechanical ‘time-keeper’ (a device that conserves time) – the clock.

“It is used to quantify natural time – or, rather, to substitute mechanical co-ordination for rhythmical living in approximation with the sun’s rising and setting, tides in the sea, and various rhythmical body functions.

“Mechanical time is regarded as being the same for all natural processes; it’s ‘objective’ not ‘subjective’, we speak as if we are ‘moving through it’, it is supposed to stretch out into the future (it is actually constituting the concept ‘future’ in Western civilization – a sheet of paper, a map, now a screen, on which the planners trace their lines), as if what has not yet happened is already ‘there’ ‘someplace’”. [19]

This idea of a future that has already been decided, which we are utterly powerless to change or challenge, is central to the industrialist brainwashing which always tells us that the advance of malignant and parasitical “progress” is not only beneficial to us but also inevitable.

Kvaløy Setreng was a bit of an artist (as readers might have noticed) and liked to use pictures to get his message across, including the contrasting images of a pylon and the Mardøla waterfall which he and others fought (and failed) to save from the ravages of the hydroelectric industry.

He commented: “To put it in simple and strong colors: The pylon is a symbol of ‘life frozen to rigid death’; the natural waterfall symbolizes the unfathomable potentialities of the life process itself”. [20]

From the early 1970s, Kvaløy Setreng was heavily involved in the successful fight against Norway joining what is now the European Union – the EUSSR to some of us. [21] At the same time he was involved in non-violent resistance to the industrial empire of which the European entity is so clearly a part.

He was fascinated by the traditional way of life and thinking of the Sherpa people in the Himalayas and this led on to a considerable Buddhist influence on his outlook, but he did not promote the political passivity that often seems to be associated with that religion, at least in its Western form.

He argued: “Instead of that, we should learn the karma-yoga message of Gandhi: You have to step into the stream to be grabbed by something outside your private soul, something you do not control.

“It’s then that you have a chance of being shaken so that you’re changed, and through that already contributing to changing the system. Instead of observing the river ‘scientifically’, from a safe distance, you step into the river, are – surprisingly – grabbed by the current, and are forced to learn how to swim.

“That’s when you learn to accept that nothing is permanent, that everything is time and that time is creativity. Only then will you have the initiative and ability to escape control by the powers above you in the pyramid…

“Gandhi tells us that the most important source of human knowledge is not to be found at some university or in meditation, but at the center of social and political conflict, the fight for Life and for Truth”. [22]

Kvaløy Setreng related how he and his fellow campaigners put Gandhi’s principles into practice in their efforts to defend their land from the empire of greed.

“Innerdalen, ‘The Inner-most Valley’, is (was, I now regret to say) a beautiful, extremely fertile mountain valley in Mid-Norway, that was to be completely inundated as a hydroelectric dam.

“In this valley we were finally able to stage a pure Gandhian action, plowing and harvesting crops, keeping cattle, producing milk, butter and cheese. We organized a ‘Green University’ and a ‘green factory workers occupation’, proclaiming the dam workers as ‘strike breakers’. The latter was to provoke discussion with the labor movement”. [23]

And this philosophy made them stronger and more determined in their long-term resistance to industrialism, with its emphasis on not being attached to outcomes, on not striving for the fruit of the action.

“We experienced something unexpected – invulnerability! Even if we lost a kindergarten to a four-lane road or a fishing ground to oil drilling, we didn’t feel beaten down and we didn’t stop acting. Having acted – with all our care and strength – was our success!” [24]

Kvaløy Setreng’s morale must also have been maintained by his conviction that industrial society, IGS, was bound to collapse and that part of the task in hand was to ensure that this happens “as a soft crash and not as a sudden, violent one accelerated by positive feedback”. [25]

His philosophy and his activism represented one seamless whole – the action fuelled the philosophy and the philosophy fuelled the action. He wrote: “Ecophilosophy is a form of activity and a direction of thought that appears as something not freely chosen but as a necessity – a response required by the total system crisis we are experiencing in the world, challenging us to attempt a deep-level revision of the basic notions of our Euro-American civilization.

“In such an extraordinary situation, the limits of the academic tradition – value-neutral and strictly intellectual – must, at least for the present, be broken out of”. [26] For him, as for me, what was required was “a viable new paradigm, a new world picture, or rather a new mode of perceiving, thinking, and living, maybe a new myth”. [27]

Kvaløy Setreng saw the need in our righteous struggle [28] for “people with identity within their own culture, self-assuredness, inventiveness in the practical sphere, originality of approach, and willpower”. [29]

And he stressed the importance of those across the world “whose own skin is burnt by the heat of the industrial growth ovens”, those who find themselves physically in the way as the insatiable imperial bulldozer crashes on and on.

“It is from their angle we must rediscover the world. Their suffering, their anguish, the futility of their effort as long as IGS persists – these facts must tear the veil from our eyes and pull the plugs out of our ears.

“Their struggle to gain freedom must become our own struggle, and their direct, everyday toil to save morsels of soil and keep the earth green to sustain life lastingly must become our own point of departure into a new world”. [30]

[1] Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng, ‘Complexity and Time: Breaking the Pyramid’s Reign’ (1993), https://openairphilosophy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/OAP_Setreng_Complexity.pdf
[2] Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng, ‘Ecophilosophy and Ecopolitics: Thinking and Acting in Response to the Threats of Ecocatastrophe’, (1974), https://openairphilosophy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/OAP_Setreng_Ecophilosophy.pdf
[3] Kvaløy Setreng, ‘Complexity and Time’.
[4] Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng, ‘The Ash-Lad: Classical Figure of Norwegian Ecophilosophy’ (2007), https://openairphilosophy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/OAP_Setreng_Ash-Lad.pdf
[5] Kvaløy Setreng, ‘Ecophilosophy and Ecopolitics’.
[6] Ibid.
[7] ‘Biography of Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng’, https://openairphilosophy.org/sigmund-kvaloy-setreng/
[8] Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng, ‘Norwegian Ecophilosophy and Ecopolitics and Their Influence from Buddhism’ (1987), https://openairphilosophy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/OAP_Setreng_Influence_Buddhism.pdf
[9] https://orgrad.wordpress.com/a-z-of-thinkers/sigmund-kvaloy-setreng/
[10] Kvaløy Setreng, ‘Complexity and Time’.
[11] Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng, ‘Gaia versus Servoglobe’ (2000), https://openairphilosophy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/OAP_Setreng_Gaia_v_Servoglobe.pdf
[12] Paul Cudenec, The Withway, https://winteroak.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/the-withway-paul-cudenec.pdf
[13] Kvaløy Setreng, ‘Complexity and Time’.
[14] Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng, ‘Inside Nature’ (1992), https://openairphilosophy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/OAP_Setreng_Inside_Nature.pdf
[15] Edward Abbey, The Money Wrench Gang (London: Penguin Random House, 2004), p. 20, https://orgrad.wordpress.com/a-z-of-thinkers/edward-abbey
[16] ‘Biography of Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng’.
[17] Kvaløy Setreng, ‘Complexity and Time’.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Kvaløy Setreng, ‘Gaia versus Servoglobe’ (2000),
[20] Kvaløy Setreng, ‘Ecophilosophy’.
[21] ‘Back in the EUSSR’, The Acorn 113, https://winteroak.org.uk/2026/09/25/the-acorn-113/
[22] Kvaløy Setreng, ‘Complexity and Time’.
[23] Kvaløy Setreng, ‘The Universe Within’ (1984), https://openairphilosophy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/OAP_Setreng_Universe.pdf
[24] Kvaløy Setreng, ‘Norwegian Ecophilosophy and Ecopolitics and Their Influence from Buddhism’.
[25] Kvaløy Setreng, ‘Complexity and Time’.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Paul Cudenec, ‘Our righteous struggle’, https://winteroak.org.uk/2026/10/12/our-righteous-struggle/
[29] Kvaløy Setreng, ‘Inside Nature’.
[30] Kvaløy Setreng,’Ecophilosophy and Ecopolitics’.