International Rewilding Discussion Forum

To continue the open source theme, I ran across the following at globalguerrillas via some rhizome reading at jeffvail.net. I apologize beforehand for the "war" metaphor - I categorically do not see the rewilding rennaissance as any kind of "war", but I think we can easily apply the philosophy to our collective project of innovating afterculture and surviving collapse. In any case, it gives another way of saying something we probably already know. To wit:

...a pattern in the open source software community. I call this pattern the bazaar. The bazaar solves the problem: how do small, potentially antagonistic networks combine to conduct war? Lessons from Eric Raymond's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" provides a starting point for further analysis. Here are the factors that apply (from the perspective of the guerrillas):

    * Release early and often. Try new forms of attacks against different types of targets early and often. Don’t wait for a perfect plan.
    * Given a large enough pool of co-developers, any difficult problem will be seen as obvious by someone, and solved. Eventually some participant of the bazaar will find a way to disrupt a particularly difficult target. All you need to do is copy the process they used.
    * Your co-developers (beta-testers) are your most valuable resource. The other guerrilla networks in the bazaar are your most valuable allies. They will innovate on your plans, swarm on weaknesses you identify, and protect you by creating system noise.
    * Recognize good ideas from your co-developers. Simple attacks that have immediate and far-reaching impact should be adopted.
    * Perfection is achieved when there is nothing left to take away (simplicity). The easier the attack is, the more easily it will be adopted. Complexity prevents swarming that both amplifies and protects.
    * Tools are often used in unexpected ways. An attack method can often find reuse in unexpected ways.

I call you insane, if you haven't seen:

'the Great Dance: a Hunter's Story"
bushman trackers
'the Labyrinth'
young woman's coming of age
'the adventures of urban scout'
ditto
'Princess Mononoke'
civilization vs. the wild
'the Dark Crystal'
a young gelfling's coming of age (and the apocalypse!)
'Rabbit Proof Fence'
indigenous freedom
'Spirited Away'
a young girl's introduction to the animist world
'Pom Poko'
cute japanese raccoon dogs kill housing construction workers

I sent an email to my mom today, and then thought i should post in on my blog, and now I think everybody here should know about it too...

http://www.mythic-cartography.org/2007/03/16/a-vision-of-the-future-khabarovsk-in-collapse/

We need a special introductions section.

We also need a "get to know the REWILD forum" section/FAQ, perhaps locked, that explains the purpose of this forum, rewilding, and also about getting info ready here for the wiki section. The best of this forum should end up right on the wiki, after getting hashed out over here.

I know the wiki has a discussion page for each wiki page, but I'd reserve that for fine-tuning/editing.

Just some thoughts.

Alright. This touches on one thing that most/all the primitivists I meet seem to not have worked on.

You have to rewild your movement, not just for hunting, but the simple fact that wilderness travel EXHAUSTS the modern human body. The ground in the woods has holes and bumps in it, working your ankles in bizarre new ways, trees/logs/brush make certain areas seem impassable, sitting on the ground can kill your back, you need to climb trees without low limbs to get views of an area at times, crossing rivers by jumping from unstable rock to unstable rock, etc. If you track animals, going where they go requires movement on all fours at times, which can work your knees all to hell. All this without even starting to talk about "stalking" for the hunt. So how the hell do you resolves this shit?

You can either join us here in Portland for SHIFT (we'd love to have you), or get Tom Brown Jr's guide to Nature Observation and Tracking and flip right to the stalking and movement section. Also look up "parkour" (street/outdoor gymnastics) on youtube and google to see if you have a group near you. Take a Tai Chi class if you have limited options - actually, an 8 week Tai Chi class that I took at a community college 12 years ago (I got an F. Whoops.) started me on a track of personal experimentation that vastly improved my basic skills.

So don't snub the Tai Chi...it works. Any other slow-moving art that works your core/thighs/calves/ankles will make a difference. Capoeira could work. Which reminds me.

Get some drums and get a hippie circle going and move in the middle of it. We started doing this for SHIFT, inspired by Capoeira, and it fucking rocks!! Old cultures obviously figured this shit out first.

Check out "the New World" DVD (that pocahontas movie) , and watch all the special features till you get to the part where they have footage of a native american dancer and movement specialist who came in and put the native actors/warriors through several weeks of training. It looks remarkably like what we do at SHIFT, which makes me think we've gotten on the right track here.

You can also go to Tom Brown's school, who in his Awareness and Scout classes drills lots of wilderness movement exercises.

To sum up: screw fire making, shelter buildling, edible plants, etc. Just standing in the woods takes an enormous amount of focus. Consider making it one of your primary focus areas. Getting good at that will revolutionalize your fire making, shelter building, and plant harvesting skills.