Seriously, topics like this bore the shit out of me and I shouldn’t even have to write about this. But because it happens so frequently, I thought I should. The other day some asshole posted a few comments on my blog calling me a hypocrite (among other things) for watching television. I deleted their comments. A little later they started posting comments about how I had “censored” them.
I got into a fight with a friend who plays music. He thought I had judged him as a musician, thinking that I would eventually “put music under the long list of ‘everything vs. rewilding.’” In a sense, I could see how he (and others) think that by putting something up against rewilding, I mean that rewilding does not include it. I see how people could easily make the assumption that I think everything but rewilding, sucks. By now you too, might have had the thought, “this ‘vs.’ shit has really started to bug me.” Let me explain…
*this is an out-dated version of this concept. I’ve revised it off the web and will repost it later.*
In the same vain as Primitive Skills Vs. Rewilding, permaculture does not encompass a world view change away from civilization. In fact, I see permaculture more often than not used as an example of how to save civilization from collapse. As much as it may seem like this essay means to attack permaculture, I actually think permaculture works great as a starting point for learning indigenous horticultural practices and preparing yourself for the collapse of civilization by disconnecting yourself from the industrial food economy. I read and practice permacultural principles and base my garden plans from them! I have a copy of Toby Hemenway’s Gaia’s Garden on my shelf. [/disclaimer]
Philosophically I loathe pacifism, because instinctively, I would never even consider it. Yet, reflexively I enact pacifism when attacked, threatened or intimidated. After practicing something long enough, you can re-train your reflexes. I have pacifist values, not because I want to or chose to, but because of my training from early childhood in civilization and specifically, in school. We learn to never fight back or we will receive worse than what we gave. This training needs to stop, now. We need to rewild our relationship to violence.
For the most part, I consider myself an optimist. I find it funny that a lot of people label me as a pessimist because I advocate for the collapse of civilization. When I say “civilization will collapse no matter what we do,” rather than see that as an opportunity for something new, they file it away under “doom and gloom.” I think these people have it all backwards.
Depression ain’t just for the economy. It sucks. I haven’t felt this depressed since age 20. At least, I haven’t felt noticeably this depressed since age 20. Age 21-24 I self-medicated using alcohol and cigarettes so I can’t clearly say what I felt during that time. But now, I don’t medicate at all, legal, illegal, prescribed or otherwise. I drink coffee for the occasional boost, like right now, in order to write this.
Humans have a long history of teaching social taboos through jokes irony, sarcasm, and mockery showing us what we do not find as acceptable behavior. Such comic geniuses as Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David know this too well, their narcissistic characters always breaking social taboos and looking like assholes. In Farley Mowats “People of the Deer” I recall a moment where he drew a picture of a deer smoking a pipe, to which the intuits laughed hysterically! I think this kind of ridiculousness encapsulates the humor in irony and mockery. It has a kind of innocence to it; it looks silly for a deer to do human things, just as it looks silly for a human to mimic deer things. We laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation, whether we see a deer smoking a pipe or Larry David not bringing a gift to Ben Stiller’s birthday party.
No one knows what the future will bring, but this we know: Civilizations destroy the land. Our civilization won’t last much longer. A movement known as rewilding has started against civilization. This movement has a frontier and we live in it.
Do hunter-gatherers have religion? That question makes about as much sense as asking if hunter-gatherers had language, science or art. Of course they did. Although their religions looked vastly different than the religions (and science & art) that we see today in civilization.
I can’t help but feel like many people still have purist values when it comes down to understanding rewilding. I often hear people say “if you want to rewild, shouldn’t you go live out in the wilderness!?” Rewilding means un-doing domestication. Cities mark the most domesticated places in the world. Rewilding in the city has no contradictory values; it just means more work in some ways, less in others.
Guilt refers to the feeling we have when we make decisions that go against personal, cultural and mythological pressures. It feels like not doing what you “should” do. It works as one of the most powerful tools of social and cultural renewal. I do not think of guilt as a “bad” thing. I see it as a tool we need to understand. Rewilding goes against all of our life-long civilized programming. Anything we do to rewild could make us feel guilty. Of course, the culture of rewilding creates a new paradigm in which continuing to live in civilization would make us feel guilty since we know that civilization kills biodiversity. In a sense, rewilding involves crossing a threshold into two worlds. This creates a split cultural psyche, leaving us with weird schizophrenic behaviors; feeling both guilty for leaving civilization and guilty for not having left enough.
How can we define wild? Now understanding that hunter-gatherers greatly manipulated the environment, than where do we draw the line between wild and domestic? If rewilding means the process of un-doing domestication than we must examine and look at the words; wild, natural, unnatural and domestication as we have come to know them and their context in civilization.
I owe almost everything I know about rewilding language to my friend, author and teacher Willem Larsen from the College of Mythic Cartography, from the day he introduced me to “ePrime” to more currently as his obsession with animist languages sends reverberations through the rewilding community with his invention of “ePrimitive” an even further in depth attempt at rewilding English. No one has done a more thorough investigation and experimentation into this than Willem Larsen. No one. We all owe him a great deal of gratitude. I feel honored to have helped Willem get his thoughts in this first ever accumulated work.
One day my friend Tony and I decided to see if we could make a bow-drill from scratch at a local park we traveled to often. We played around in the log jam for a few minutes and gathered up all the pieces we needed. All but cordage, which would involve more labor. I knew where a small patch of nettle grew and we decided to venture over to the patch, since nettle bark makes great cordage. However, just at the end of the log jam I saw an unfamiliar weed growing up through the rotten limbs.
The following stories about so-called anarchists come from completely subjective experiences that I have had (and a few others), with particular anarchists over a period of time. I do not mean to insult all those who label themselves as anarchists, but question the label when I have seen the culture or scene of “anarchists” act thusly.
I have always tried to speak neutrally when discussing the problems with the vegan ethical system… Until today. You heard me right folks, I finally feel fed-the-fuck-up with the all the veganism bullshit. The truth comes out! Enter the following rant at your own risk…
In order to understand the destructive nature of agriculture you must understand the phases of ecological succession. Ecological succession refers to the phases of growth from barren rock to a climax forest. The loss of biodiversity that creates a blank slate generally occurs through a disturbance such as fire, flood, volcanic eruptions, etc.
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Voting, the last bastion of mind control that civilization keeps on many of us anti-civilizationists. I mean, why not vote? All you have to do involves scribbling in a few bubbles and dropping the paper in a box. Voting can’t hurt, right? …Wrong!
Since its inception civilization has created a value system of good vs. evil. The concept of good and evil (or the more scientific “right” and “wrong,” seems to permeate so much of our thought, that we have projected it onto indigenous mythologies as well. “Surely the notion of good and evil comes from human nature, not culture!” Perhaps if we look deeper, we may see that the notion of good and evil live and die with a culture of destruction.
In our culture, the young and the elderly experience perhaps the worst amount of prejudice and abuse. Living with abusive parents, families and forced into schooling where the system coerces us to do what it tells us than dumped in nursing homes and forgotten. Oppression among the young and old happens so often and looks so normal to us, most people don’t even see it as oppression. Of course, children and old people don’t get a voice in this culture. As you age you see a positive progression up the hierarchy; as an adult you forget the oppression as you accept the benefits that come with growing older. Once you reach a certain age, you once again receive oppression as a senior citizen.
When I think of “resistance movements” I envision a small group of people resisting against a much larger and all-powerful militarized machine. To think of civilization as an all-powerful death machine, the idea of resisting makes me feel small and paralyzed. But when viewed through the eyes of rewilding, resistance looks and feels very different.
I can personally remember feeling ill at the thought of libraries, full of books containing knowledge gained through science, burning down during the collapse of civilization. All that knowledge… lost forever… I used to believe that despite all the terrible things civilization has created, science still felt worth saving. For some reason I saw science as “pure,” something even civilizations mythology could not ruin. I don’t feel that way anymore. In fact, these days a wry smile forms on my face and my eyes begin to sparkle when I envision of a world without science.
Rarely do I think about money, let alone write about it. Money seems like one of the most trite subjects anyone could write about. Never the less, what began as a lament about money turned into a rant, which then turned into my first (and hopefully last) philosophical examination of my feelings about money, which bared some uneaten fruit… at least by me.
