If, during early European colonization of the Americas, a European baby was taken in by a native tribe and raised the same way as all other native children, wouldn't the European become indistinguishable from the other people in the tribe?
Nope. He’d still always have that 10% reduction in cranial capacity, for instance. There are some parts of domestication that just can’t be undone. That’s why you can never exactly go “back,” there’s really only “forward.” The same thing won’t work anymore; we’ve got a lot to learn from what worked before, but we can’t just copy it. We’ve got to find a new way forward.
What's the real difference between them? Does the European behave or think differently?
Yes. We will never again be able to fully think or behave as wild humans once did. For one thing, we need to deal with a world where domestication exists. That’s not something that any wild human ever had to do. Even once there are no more domesticated people, we’ll still have to deal with the fact that we went through it.
What exactly constitutes "wild"?
“Wild” only makes sense in a world with domestication, because it’s the default state of everything. Only once you have domestication can you speak of “wild.”
If the European didn't think or behave differently, and was basically the same as his/her fellow natives, then why are we playing with words like "feral" or "wild" if it really doesn't matter?
Because they did think and behave differently, because it does matter.
Think about the dingos of Australia. Descended from domesticated dogs that went feral. They are still, apparently, biologically domesticated dogs who have retained their smaller brain size. But the interesting thing is, dingos are very difficult to domesticate or tame, much like "wild" wolves.
The dingos are actually one of my prime examples. They’ve been feral for quite some time. They share some things in common with wild wolves, just like all feral animals share some things in common with their wild ancestors, but they’ve had a different history, and it’s changed them behaviorally and sometimes physically. Going feral is not the same as being domesticated, but it’s not the same as being wild, either. It’s the third way, something new that humans haven’t tried before.
So doesn't "feral" mean "to go wild"? If you "go wild", then I guess that means you're wild. Right?
But you’ve been domesticated before, and you’ll always have some amount of that legacy with you. No feral animal is quite like its wild ancestor. Going feral is never as simple as just doing what used to work, because what used to work worked in a world without domestication, and we don’t have that anymore. Feral is a third thing, a new thing. It’s a creative, syncretic way forward.
The idea that "we can never go fully wild again" doesn't do much for me, as a rewilder. On the one hand, it puts my mind/heart in a space of looking through a window at a holiday dinner that I wish I could join in - a feeling of disconnectedness.
I think that view neglects the promise of what being feral could be. We all have times when we look back at the past and wish we could be there again, but that’s the nature of the past–it’s gone. But what of the promise of the future? That, to me, is the difference between feral and wild, in a nutshell–trying to recreate the past, vs. trying to create something new.
Also, since I see rewilding as a process in any case, I don't recognize a state of "fully wild". Additionally, since traditional animists don't believe they can ever arrive at a place of "fully traditional", the idea seems even less relevant.
By the same token, becoming feral is also a lifelong process. It’s not a matter of failing to become “fully wild,” but the fact that we can’t be wild again at all. We can’t change our past, and we can’t make the things we’ve experienced so they never happened. We can’t just ignore all of that. It comes along with us. The experience of domestication will always be part of us; that’s not something we can change. Dingos never became wolves again, but they didn’t stay dogs; they became dingos. Humans can never become wild again, but we don’t have to stay domesticated; we can go feral.
The word 'Feral', for me, points to a direction, a returning back to "wild", what I call 'rewilding'. In some ways, domestication also refers to an ongoing process, of keeping someone addicted or controlled in relation to civilized structures.
That’s true, but do you think we’ll ever fit into a spectrum with the !Kung, or the M’Buti, or the Inuit? Perhaps superficially, from the “they all look alike” ignorant viewpoint of the domesticated human, but I don’t think we’ll ever fully reconstruct the wild way of living. How could we? We’ve experienced domestication, something they never did. We’ve even been changed physically, in some ways irrevocably. There is no “back” to go to; forward, creating something new, even from the shreds of civilization at times, is the only way we can go. When I think of “going wild,” I think of atavism. When I think of going feral, I think of syncretism.
As humans, I believe we have an infinite road ahead of us, along which we can rewild ever more and more deeply. We can also take domesticating steps backwards. The moment we believe we've arrived at the end of our journey, we've stopped living in the moment, and we've stopped rewilding.
I think it’s a little more complex than that, because you’re talking about just one road, and you can move towards wild or domesticated. But what about taking that path that bracnhes off and heads off in a new direction? That’s what I mean by “feral.” I don’t think we can go back where we came from, we’ve been through too much for that. But that doesn’t mean we have to keep on following Domestication Road.
I think domestication gives us this sense of "just wanting to get to the end of the journey", for only civilization promises a life where we don't have to pay attention, think, feel pain or discomfort, etc. By its very nature, rewilding says we can rest on the path, but the star bright point towards which we travel only orients us to the compass, only shows us this way. If we could actually reach it, we'd lose our orientation, and no longer stand at the center of the four directions.
I think that’s something wild and feral have in common (and they do have a good deal in common); like going wild, you’re never finished becoming feral.
It occurs to me, this might be a function of bioregionalism. Here we are, both singing the songs of our lands. You’re from the Pacific Northwest, full of old growth forest, so of course you can see the potential to go wild. My own forest is regrowing from devastation; it has a different mix of trees and plants, it has coyotes becoming wolves, it has a whole ecology trying to find its feet again. They’re all painfully aware that the past is gone forever, but that’s OK; they’re not trying to recreate the past, they’re trying to find a new way forward. That’s a song that sings in my heart, too, and that’s probably why I’m here talking about “feral” instead of “wild.” Heh, that’s an interesting thought, isn’t it?
