International Rewilding Discussion Forum

What do you plan to give in the giving season?

Does anyone have any wild stories of making wild crafts into bonafide presents?

Is anyone doing anything wild and crazy, like sharing skills rather than goods?

Voodoo,

DO you see the US Treasury as the first being ransacked?This is the actual collapse, we are in it now! Have you ever had collapse visions where humanity endures?

Bereal(Jessica),

Have you ever experienced someone who went berserk in an organized way? I have always seen this happen at the individual level, and from what I see in places like New Orleans and Detroit, people tend to recede into their toxic memetic depression as the onset of immaterialism eclipses their previous worldview. New Orleans in it's collapse is a center of revirth of new earthy values. I see that in the dispatches I hear form Detroit, as well.

I find that mental health counseling and the support of loved ones are the greatest resource for those in a personal collapse. What other resources do you feel we need in order to move towards a healing society?

To be fair to the topic at hand, the question is not whether or not to defend ourselves and to what extent, but to what degree of isolation can we/must we endure in these tough times?

I see isolation negatively for social approaches and while achieves many ends, sustainability isn't one of them.

Alone, one cannot reproduce and sustain one's genetic lineage that so many of our ancestors have sacrificed so much to ensure we are here today to have this discussion, so while Isolation is a keen survival strategy, thrival, from day one, today, I feel is a more responsible goal for those looking to rewild an entire family or community.

Survival strategies aren't of much used discussed. You learn as many as you can and hope the ones you've learn will apply to your situation. One or two will work very well, the rest will be discarded.

Learning many thrival strategies will give you multiple options to employ at once, as one berry bush or another may fail, having 14 varieties has no diminishing returns...

And where many thrival strategies can coexist at one time, survival strategies can only be employed one or two at a time. Having 14 masteries of creating fire doesn't help when you can only employ one at a time.

If one creates such a horde of food on one's own that feasably is raid-worthy, then, perhaps, you deserve to have that abundance you've capitalized form the earth forcibly shared with those who perceive themselves as in need.

If you have stores of crops while your neighbor goes hungry, I would call that sinful behavior; in need of Karmic balancing.

If you have a bunch of berrybushes your neighbors can freely pick from in season, then you don't have a richness in your life so easily stolen, do you?

If you have a few cans of preserves and a few jars of jerky, having that stolen or forcibly 'taxed' won't hurt your family with multiple thrival options.

We have a choice. Choose to trust in the goodness of self-preservation, or choose to trust in the selfishness of self-preservation. In any regards, it requires a conscious choice as to what you trust in humanity. I choose to trust in the goodness of self-preservation, I have seen enough in New Orleans to see that no good deed goes unpunished, coming from both the generational poverty of the wallet and of the mind, and yet I still believe in the goodness of people with whom together we have a stake.

If someone today can find a better way to make a friend than break bread, I'm all ears, as it takes time, courage, and resilience to bond those to you with food you've wildly provided. Okay, I admit, drugs are pretty awesome for making friends, too. Sharing a joint has begun many friendships for me.

But then how do you begin to make friends you can trust enough to spar with? Friends enough to share your fears? Friends enough to join the cause of self-discovery and knowledge? Food, glorious food, that how!

'should' always sounds like a dirty word to me.

we will all fail and succeed in varying amounts. I can guarantee your failure in isolation.

if there existed fail-proof strategies of safety, civilization would have adopted them long ago....

civilization didn't form to oppress more and more people in different, more cruel ways, it simply doesn't care to what ends it secures the safety of those nearer and nearer the top of the pyramid scheme.

I think prudence calls for ways to avoid threatening the safety of the pyramid scheme.

Prudence may call you to organize your land into a CSA, or to have other appearances or actualities of social benefit.

Remember, 'the man' doesn't exist to fuck you, but he will if it makes him feel safe.

You are in the collapse now, are you being threatened?

Why do you anticipate 'crazy marauders'?

Do you have something that will make 'them' feel safe?

Perhaps, if you were a source of safety in your community, together you will all have a reason to defend each other, thus ensuring your personal safety through providing safety to others.

Or, I guess you can set motorcycle traps? Build Mad Max walls of pain?

What are you interested in talking about?

Perhaps, not being cynical about the transformative power of community food?

First you must experience it. Then you must recreate it. Then you must sustain it. The experience will give you courage to move forward. The recreation will give you the knowledge lost as a born consumer, and sustaining the transformative power of food means sharing it with others so they too may have the courage to join you.

Let's see more on the difference between transformation and information!

Very Esoteric!


This guy, or the other guy: a very old remnant of binary thinking

Neither teachers solves problems, they point to their observations as they create them.

Let's explore this honestly. Not many Jensen readers who then go on and discover Quinn and transform their worldview. But many read Quinn, then Jensen, and the transformation varies, but it occurs!

 They build the same gateway, and Jensen builds his wider. One could conceivable use the books themselves as weapons of the revolution!

One problem with both authors; even if you started listing off the others, like hemingway, and molison, and prechtel and ruiz, the gateway STILL doesn't open wide enough for the first human to pass through.

It takes personal experience, widening the channels of local, honest living, and narrowing the channels of materialistic, unsustainable living for others to pass through with us.

Writing can only inspire, it cannot do the deed itself.

A pacifist must insist that 'the pen is mighter than the sword' because of the obviousness of the pen's second-tier might when applied against the first-tier aggressiveness of the sword.

The '-ist' must change all around them in order to acheive. A rewilder only simply needs to change personal patterns of behavior in order to achieve.

I voted for Change, and I sparred with my martial arts group. I did both, and more... Because I freed myself of civilized shackles, because voting isn't my only option, and war my only other option, I was able to hear the voice of Timothy Leary, "Overt rebellion is a part of the game."

And so I rebel by becoming more traditional. To go to war, I would have to set the battlefield. I would have to draw up allies, understand my enemies fighting techniques (not just why I want my enemy dead). A very large door would have to open for me, indeed, to go to war. Maybe you grew up in a militia family and this door could be pried open with little effort...

So instead, a much smaller door, for me, is personal victories. I replanted 4 acres of disappearing Mississippi river delta in 2008. And that door was already opened, I just walked through it. And yet, I train, become more focused for battle....

For I am a warrior, but a warrior of this earth, I fight for this earth, but not against her enemies... because these are my opportunities, and the guidance and wisdom of the spirits in us and around us.

I was filled with anger and rage until V Day, V to the 10th:

http://picasaweb.google.com/tonyzeb/VDay#

Then I was given a mission to heal all the vaginas of the world (the wetlands). And I accepted.

Now I may still live with doubt and judgment, but now I have the spiritual energy and tools to win the fight without ever bringing it to the front lines.

"I am the bearded, cow-like sea beast!!!"

Very interesting conversation, I think a person can accomplish a lot by keeping several sheepskins hanging in the political closet. I think it is most wise and most prudent for anyone entering the world of politics to start at the bottom and work their way up. I think capital-L Libertarians have been the most successful in appealing to a wide range of people at a local-government level, as well has many Greens. I think libertarian for me is a philosophy that gives me and my community a choice in government, and I'm perfectly fine if some people choose to opt-out of social responsibility and buy-in to burning their wealth off having others serve them.

It is those who choose to govern themselves who for me will win the tug-of-war. For those who choose to be catered to will go broke or die trying. Those who give support and get support are choosing wise for many generations to come.

I feel as though anarchy was a 19th-century reaction to a particular set of problems. I feel like libertarianism is a 20th century reaction to a particular set of problems. And I like to be a person of current events, and so am still in the market for a response to 21st century problems.

I continue to support those who are in the process of becoming more wild. But then where to go once one has achieved peace of mind and strength of will and knowledge of the world? I think any community approach, given that one community respects the next community, is resonant of the response I'm still looking for.

I'm less concerned about hierarchy even because I have to respect that there are people who can only, psychologically, respond to that. I have to respect anarchy, because there are people who can only respond to that.

And so I feel any historic response, given their mutations and similarities, is a part of history and a smaller part of this great wide unknown we've dared ourselves to step towards.

I think there are opportunities in many communities to run on an entirely unabashed recreate-the-human-opportunity platform where one of us could get some serious traction and accomplish a lot once elected.

When I think of the precolumbian experience in america, and I think of those 1200 language groups, I think of all these people voting with their feet, setting out towards their own vision of community and freedom from their previous community. I think in postcolumbian america, a similar vision can be enacted.

I would say on a regular basis I tolerate passive-aggressive questions from New Orlineans like 'are you from HERE?', which leads to acceptance, as I use wit to get me out of standard language patterns which encourage real conversation, beyond small talk. Through wit, I have gained acceptance, and can begin to share my love with the person who originally made the tolerance check. I think in New Orleans, the tolerance check oftentimes happens because it is a small city, many people know each other, and because of the transiency of relief workers, they don't want to spend time making a new best friend that is only going to last a new weeks. Hence, my acceptance and tolerance of the tolerance check, one, because I recognize my northern European height and beard, as well as a traveler's accent contrast with the Creole and Cajun facial hair, height, and language patterns.

Many people consider the question 'are you FROM here?; to be rude and condescending, but because I have chosen to empathize with the emotions of others, rather than react from my own experiences, I have made a lot more friends and created more business relationships than some of my less socially agile coworkers and cohorts.

The tolerance check is something we all use. We ask things like 'how are you?', to test the tolerance of our being upon others. Those who don't have the time or the space to tolerate, curtly or politely answer and go on their way. People who do tolerate the initial question are then set into motion for acceptance. If someone says something witty like 'I'd be doing a lot better if this civilization would collapse already', then you move into acceptance, and the various shades of love, filial, brotherly, matronly, romantic, and agape, to name a few...

And so I have through my observations been able to give myself a choice. Do I give into language of hostility towards outsiders and accept my own conditions for listening, or do I extend my personal conditions and allow my deeper needs, like love and building relationship, triumph over segregationist speaking patterns?

It's obvious what I have chosen, and now I am involved in facilitating work projects all with twists on sustainability for an entire school system. I was in the pattern of saying 'fuck the man' for a long time, but once I got to know 'the man' I realized he was simply not listening to himself, not realizing how his words were causing negative reactions to people he genuinely wanted to share with but didn't trust.

Through tolerance, through letting go of my carefully crafted righteousness, I became empowered to fully listen, and therefore, be able to fully engage, and create a street of two-way acceptance.

But I had to yield tolerance, I had to be the one to ask for this dance, I had the plan to love and build relationships, it was up to me to be the first one to tolerate.

Because one cannot make one's enemy change their behavior, one must then not work on winning the war against one's enemy, because the willing always lose to the unwilling. One must drop the enemy-enemy relationship, and learn tolerance than will blossom into friendship.

When turning the cheek, so to speak, on tolerance, it is a very humbling experience.

When gaining acceptance, the gratitude I feel can be overwhelming

When I am finally able to love, and be in a relationship with someone I was formerly in dispute, I literally feel the grace of god.

and so, one could take my three steps and turn them into three values, grace, humility, and gratitude.

Grace is what prevents the gods from destroying this world in this very moment as we have violated their wishes time and again. On a smaller scale, as above, so below, we must also extend grace to those reason and accountability would punish or destroy. Finding the grace of the gods in our own heart is simply a matter of listening, one hears it or they don't

Humility is what ingratiates us to those which we are suspect. By accepting ourselves as humans who must all work together, not gods in isolation, not wolves who hunt in packs, we see our situation for what it really is: Master and slave both locked into roles where righteousness is the largest building block of the wall that prevents us from being brother and sister. We can only get out of the master-slave story by telling a new story, not by uprooting 'the man', but by honoring the rootsystems of each individual. Humility is a place of truth and honor, not deception and miscommunication.

Gratitude is what keeps the conversation going and helps fight away negativity and zero-sum behavior. Having created the intention for oneself to be gracious and full of humility, the only thing left is for one to be grateful for every experience you have the chance to have. If one has the chance to share these core values with someone telling the master-slave story, then one has the chance to rewrite that story. If one has a chance to share these values with someone who has no story at all, then one has the chance to inspire them to write their own. By being grateful of every present moment, love of all things, living and not appearing to be alive, is simple to extend to those who we have written off as the unlistening, the deafened ear, the impossibly stubborn.

Navigation is key. Steer too hard, and your passengers will get sick, steer too softly, and the wind will blow you off course.

Only the unprepared brush off genuine outreaches to make a friend.

thank you both for the support.

I personally have an open-door policy; I appreciate all advice, asked for or not asked for, because I think even my response to something I don't like is a chance to learn and grow. I consider my responses fairly carefully now that I have committed to paying attention to indirect communication; of course, it has made me an even trickier coyote, as well I think the story we tell ourselves is so very apparent in every communication, and it's great to be free from the small slights so that the deeper insight about a person place or thing can come to fruition.

I'm glad I am inspiring to your inner poet Billy, as I try to inspire my own inner poet. I feel like your humility at every step is such a deep compliment because you do seem to hear me, if the signal doesn't come in clearly. It honors me that I am heard by someone with your caliber of listening, and it honors me that you are willing to try and understand me. I benefit from your attempts because you are one of the few people who I feel like are able to discern the shape of my speaking, and I am able to get really useful feedback from you that really does impact my daily life, So thank you!

There was a moment at an IshCon once that defined my whole life for me. I was showing a few people how to take apart a disposable camera, and the various "toys" there were to play with, light the flash capacitor as a metal engraver. well, after melting a chunk off a spoon, and shocking myself, a few people wanted me to touch the capacitor again and see how much it would shock me. there was a tense five minutes of 'touch it tony' and I really let the anticipation build. I touched the capacitor. nothing happened. I had already discharged the capacitor.  and that to me, was the story of my life, hinting at some sort of amazing possibility in life, but when asked to perform the magic trick of transformation....

I like missing the mark, I like the process of continually trying, and I love the process of continually improving, continually firing way off base, and hitting the jackpot from time to time is rewarding, too

There's just something in my makeup that seems to get off on trying, on reaching, on extension...

I do have a tendency to eat, shoot, & leave, don't I ? (semi-obtuse literary world joke...)