|
|
Post by wombat on Feb 24, 2015 13:42:01 GMT -5
For me, rewilding can take many forms. In recent times, the rising fad of Rewilding™ can confuse what this means.
While I'm not perfect, I feel that opening a primitive skills school may hurt more than help. It turns rewilding into a recreational hobby pursuit. It can be or already is another thing where you can complete courses, win a certificate and just go back to normal relations, with the added bonus of knowing a few extra things.
On the flip side, John Zerzan's practice of rewilding IIRC is to expose domestication, agriculture, technology, industrialism, mass society, etc. while knowledge expanding, leaves one with a want to rebel in some other way, but without necessitating a primitive living, primitive skills and/or wilderness knowledge approach be tied to it.
For me, I practice by expanding my critique of civilization while co-learning skills and knowledges by leaving the city a couple times a month for a night or two with friends and associates that are also interested in learning these things, but not necessarily for the same reasons I have. Since I don't have anyone in my life that I regularly interact with that knows these things more than I, I've taken to exploring Internet videos and reading online material to get ideas on what I'd like to try out.
I am also saving up to try a semi-nomadic living approach, living in a trailer, hopping around to national and state parks and forests among other locations, occasionally picking up work to take care of expenses that can't be handled by my gear or the wilderness. Maybe eventually getting a piece of land after some time traveling to know what is out there. But this is all in the future stuff.
So what is your way to rewild? Any thoughts on commercialized rewilding and/or rewilding as a critique and analysis of civilization? |
|
|
|
Post by KT on Feb 24, 2015 23:17:31 GMT -5
I think one of the more irritating aspects of the commercialization of rewilding is that it is treated as a commodity, a tangible thing. Rewilding is a process of undoing domestication. I don't think buying vials of elk urine will help with that, but it just goes to show how vile schemers really can be.
For me, that process of rewilding begins with a LOT of observation and follows up through integration into the community of wildness. We have a lot of baggage that we bring with us and it takes a lot of humility to really begin to see where it all even comes in. These are things that can't be taught. It's about trusting and learning from your senses. But I call that process of really stupefying yourself by failingly attempting to apply the scientific method to understanding things like the interconnectedness of ecosystems and symbiosis of life cycles the process of "radical humility". We might know things, but we aren't seeing them for what they are. Our vision is fogged by the sum-of-all-parts that we've inherited from our much lauded Scientific Rationality. It's not that every thing scientists or biologists have said is wrong, it's just that even when they are right, they often took the longest route there and missed the bigger picture in the process.
So a LOT of observation.
Personally, my ideas about rewilding were formed like many of us, basically having a checklist of skills and strange notion about memorizing field guides. There's a lot to be said for those hopes, but again it can carry on that sum-of-all-parts approach. One thing that separates rewilding from survivalism in my eyes is learning how to live and not merely finding a new platform for bare survival.
It all comes back to that radical humility and just getting your ass handed to you figuratively and literally.
What that looks like in practice can be a whole other thing.
As far as rewilding as a critique, that's where the Certified Rewilding Instructors and Gurus have derailed the train (and not in a good way). Rewilding for them is like Yoga, it's not disruptive or resisting. The kernels of a critique are there, but the result is some blended New Age crapola where you can mix worlds. In short, rewilding is an escape, not a process. It's a retreat.
I don't think rewilding can exist without a critique of civilization. At least not in any true sense. We're ultimately talking about building relationships, so if that relationship ends in commodification or just going back and forth between worlds without the crushing agony of seeing the places you're learning to see be destroyed and threatened, well it's hard to say you've learned anything other than how to feel good about yourself and I don't see much value in that.
|
|
