lahermite

i love this post from urban scout. although i lack his experience, i appreciate his mind-set and the work he does that i can learn from. rewilding is imperative as we move forward through the collapse of civilisation. (and, as an aside, the "wildlands project" mentioned here is a wonderful project. wanna donate or get involved, this is a project that needs help: http://www.twp.org)

My Introduction to Rewilding

Rewild, v; To return to a more natural or wild state; the process of undoing domestication.
SYN: uncivilize, undomesticate, feralize.

The first time I saw the word “rewilding” I had browsed to the green anarchy info shop website through a search looking for links to websites that explained primitive skills. The word grabbed me immediately and I could feel something inside of me change. I knew that at long last, I had a word to describe what I do.

For the last decade I have used many words attempting to describe what I do; wilderness survivalist, primitivist, anti-civilizationist, tracker, naturalist, environmentalist, green anarchist… the list goes on and on. Wilderness Survival has connotations of suffering alone in the woods long enough to make it back to civilization or long enough for a search party to find you. Wilderness survival does not encompass a culture; it only encompasses a few parlor tricks. Primitive skills differs from wilderness survival in that it implies a more long-term cultural experience, yet still so many people see primitive skills as merely hand-made tools, and therefore it doesn’t encompass the invisible tools that made people wild. I called myself a Tracker for some time after involving myself in the Tracker School in New Jersey. Though again, the term tracker refers to an ability to read the landscape and does not involve the tool-making or cultural aspects of what I do. Also, the Tracker community carries a lot of Tom Brown dogma that looks to me like Christian guilt. Naturalist usually just refers to someone who studies nature, meaning; Booooring. Environmentalism seems to imply a kind of role within the structure of civilization. It describes a sub-set of politics, not a complete abandonment of the system, but a small corale for people to feel good about themselves for recycling while the world burns. Environmentalists still buy into the civilization system.

Then I came across anarcho-primitivism and things seemed to click a lot more, though anarchy still does not sit with me as its public image simply means chaos, though indigenous people who civilization has labeled anarchists did not live in chaos at all. But really, I don’t like the word anarchy because it describes an organization from civilized terms. “No government” implies a concept of government, and government implies laws, distribution of wealth, etc. Which indigenous peoples had.

Though I did not fit well with anarcho-primitivism, they had adapted the word rewilding to describe what they do. I traced the word further back and found its origins here:

It seems likely that this verb (at least in the sense of returning an area to a more natural or wild state) was coined by the radical environmental group Earth First! back in the late 1980s. That was when they began the Wildlands Project — an ambitious and ongoing plan to join America’s wild places — with the slogan “Reconnect Restore Rewild.”

No other word encompasses the act of abandoning civilization and its root of domestication like the verb rewild. It also struck me because, as a verb, it implies an action, a process, rather than an end point. The hypocrisy found in static belief structures such as anarcho-primitivism do not apply to a process.

In the end, I give all the credit for this word to the pilgrims of the anarcho-primitivist movement who have taken the concept further by giving us a name for ourselves, rather than use nouns that proclaim us as static beings. Thank you for keeping our movement forever in motion, forever a process of staying true to ourselves and the planet we come from. This word has given me a frame, a lens, with which I use to view the world. The following essays, rants and ramblings show what I see when I look at the world through my rewilding eyes.

from here: http://www.urbanscout.org/my-introduction-to-rewilding/#more-142