“I gave several talks at a local high school on my version of rewilding on Wednesday and Thursday.
On thing that kept coming up; the students wanted to know what I thought they “should do”. What position I advocated.
I kept having to repeat: “I don’t know. What do you NEED to do? If you use what I’ve offered you today as tools for looking at your life, what new things do YOU see? And what changes then does that inspire you to make?”
Over and over. They felt pretty certain I had some agenda, as surely most everybody in their life does when acting like they want to “help” them.
It finally clicked for most of them that I didn’t give a shit.
Then they got excited.
REAL excited.”
Holy shite! I just got back from a week without email. Apologies for not responding sooner. I still have a lot of new Rewild.info posts to wade through, but I thought I’d hope on this.
Under what guise were you allowed to do that?
Hah hah. Just me. My third year of doing it! I actually don’t know what guise the teachers who invited me use; they get away with ridiculously controversial topics. The teachers who run the classes brought their highschool students to Derrick Jensen’s talk (when Scouty brought him to PDX)!!! Yes, DJ asked the audience who had AK-47’s. Yikes!
You know, the more I get out of my hole and talk to other people, the more I smell change in the wind. I keep running into closet collapse-niks (to use Dmitry Orlov’s term). You know, folks who feel embarrassed about, or who keep secret, their understanding of Peak Oil, cultural collapse, and other issues.
My job now: to find all the other rewilders. If I could find every rewilder, screaming out alone for a community, not knowing we exist - if I could find every last one, I wouldn’t care about everyone else.
I don’t want to convert believers; I just want to rescue my peeps from drowning in a sea of civvies.
Hah hah. Just me. My third year of doing it! I actually don't know what guise the teachers who invited me use; they get away with ridiculously controversial topics.
Did you present the Rewilding 101 class that Urban Scout talked about in one of the Wilderness School threads? If it was or wasn’t, I still want to learn more about the structure of the presentation that you presented for the past three years. I would like to do something similar with homeschooling groups, high schools, and so on in my community.
Personally, I think there are kids and young adults who really want to know more about this. It takes me back to this small section out of My Ishmael:
I said, "I would have thought you would endorse the teaching of history."
“I do very much endorse it. I endorse the teaching of everything, because everything is what children want to know. What children very deeply want to know of history is how things got to be this way–but no one in your culture would think of teaching them that. Instead they’re overwhelmed with ten million names, dates, and facts they ‘should’ know, but that vanish from their heads the moment they’re no longer needed to pass a test. It’s like handing a thousand-page medical text to a four-year-old who wants to know where babies come from.” pg. 143
For the first twenty years of his career, Adolf Hitler was almost universally dismissed as "just talk" -- especially when he emphatically stated his intention of getting rid of the Jews. But ultimately Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein -- all "just talk" as well -- have had a more fundamental and lasting effect on the world than the architect of the Third Reich. --[b]Daniel Quinn [/b]
[quote=“Brangus, post:1, topic:1184”]Do any of you plan actually to go out on the Hoop, or just talk about it forever? Doesn’t your intuition tell you that the shit is currently hitting the fan?
The time for “getting out” is almost over. If you’re not out by yesterday, with the ability and spirit to last a year feeding and being fed by Mother Dirt and Father Sunburn, you’re totally fucked. You see, you have to be Skin Walked. You can only be Skin Walked on the Hoop. If you haven’t already been Skin Walked by the time the full dump hits the rotary blades, then you won’t make it. The time for that “one last thing” or that “one last doubt” is over, truly over. Hoop Law emerges. Getting along with others? What the fuck does that mean? Don’t be concerned with that. You will get along, and you won’t get along. You are civilized, and cannot escape your domesticated mind. You must be Skin Walked, and it’ll be REALLY scary. That little twinge of fear you feel now, that little apprehension, that tingle down your spine all the way to your taint? Heh heh he, ha hmm.[/quote]
This borders on hate speach. Please stop. We are all at different places and shouldnt be yelled at because we dont “measure up”. My experience of Mother Earth tells me that she is much more forgiving than the moderators here. Please read the forum guidlines.
No, I didn’t. In the Theories of Knowledge class they spend a whole year getting them used to such ideas. They mostly bring me in to talk about indigenous language issues; I still end up encapsulating the whole civ thing, as groundwork, but not as thoroughly as Rewilding 101.
The structure of my presentation:
the teachers pick three or so blog entries from mythic-cartography.org and have the students read them the night before, each preparing questions to ask me based on them. This year they chose “Animism and Quantum Linguistics”, “I Stand With You Against the Disorder” (Jeanette Armstrong’s piece, the Okanogan activist), and “Culture Means the Game We Play”. Then I came in and said, “Ask me any question you like about what you read.” So they did, and I answered them.
I think it comes down to more of a “the medium communicates more strongly than the message itself” issue. My rewilding means that I don’t see anyone as an expert (much less myself), that any sincere question opens up worthwhile exploration, and though I have experiences and confidence in my conclusions based on them, I have no answers.
So the rhythm of the sessions typically look like a bunch of high schoolers trying to figure out why I won’t tell them how to live, or claim I have the final answer about anything, while I explain my worldview (and that of indigenous languages) to them.
You probably would have to see me do it to really get my method, though perhaps you can understand it intuitively from what I’ve written here. I’ll tell you one thing; the Quantum Linguistics article didn’t help the dialogue much, so in later classes I asked them to stick to the other pieces in our discussion.
The familiar signature of this newcomer Brangus is all over his/her post in the words, tone and style.
To weed out the disrespectful spammers and flamers, how about requiring them to first read and agree to the posting guidelines and then post a descriptive introduction before they are allowed to make any further posts in the forum?
I’ve banned Brangus for 30 days. I like your suggestions, I think we need to pack that all into a welcome message when new members sign up. Currently, we ask for the things you suggest, but we’ve scattered them over several threads in the “About Rewild.Info” section.
The teachers who run the classes brought their highschool students to Derrick Jensen’s talk (when Scouty brought him to PDX)!!! Yes, DJ asked the audience who had AK-47’s. Yikes!