I love you, Jason Godesky. I mean, in a platonic way, of course (no worries Penny Scout!). For me, Ishmael felt like enough to change my mind. I didn’t really need to read anthropological text and work through the civilized bullshit. Though, when it comes time to challenge the civilized I often feel at a loss… “Where did you hear those facts?!?” They want to know. For me, the philosophy of rewilding just makes sense from my own observations about the world and civilization. I don’t need to know the hard archeological data to presume that life before civilization felt better and didn’t destroy the planet. A simple course on agriculture and human prehistory did the trick. But when civilizations mythmaking assholes twist the facts to make me look like a dipshit, I never know what to say… But Jason does. And that reveals why I love him so much. Recently civilized assholes went to work in the classic civilized asshole filled rag called “The Economist” to make people like Jason and I into fuck-tards. Jason has spent years debunking the false mythology in the current article and so cut together a rebuttal that hopefully feels like a kick in the nuts to anyone who bought into “The Economists” bullshit.
Modern economics… it’s crazy talk. CRAZY. Don’t even get me started.
People are not machines!
OK, I realize I’ve started… but I’ll end there. 
Awesome read
Just finished reading it. Amazing as usual, Jason, great job. You took concepts I already recognized and expanded them, and showed me a few totally new ones too. Thanks!
The Economist fusses with his very clean suit, and tightens the silk, limp, phallic symbol that, without thinking, he keeps tied around his neck.
The Noble Savage leaps off the cliff in a high arching dive, and strikes the silver surface knifing his way deeper and deeper to the ancient worn rock where he pries loose his meal.
The Economist is fear-driven, and never wakes to a spontaneous, existential intimacy with his own fearlessly naked skin.
The Economist submissively surrenders the sovereignty of his own unique individual path, and instead seeks the security of obedience to hierarchical authority.
The Noble Savage, described by the amazed Amerigo Vespucci, “Obeys NO Lords, For Each Is Lord Unto Himself!â€Â
The Noble Savage is NOT noble because he is NOT savage; the savage is NOBLE because he dares to stride the path of fearless freedom.
If I can’t walk the fearless path of freedom in the face of savagery, then my nobility is not real.
Growing up in the concrete jungle of the inner-city, one knows that one either walks fearlessly with confidence down the darkest, dankest alley, or one will die a thousand deaths, and end up, The Economist.
I kind of like this reply
Which are more different- agcivs and HGers, or humans and other animals?I would like to think there is no division between nature and “western Civilization” or “Modern human conscientiousness”.http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0618057072/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-7383046-8777609#reader-link the dichotomy is the mental step towards the destruction of life on earth. I believe the "Earth Abides"http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0345487133/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-7383046-8777609#reader-link Meaning it will be around after all of us are long gone and it can take care of itself.It seems to me that everything that is bad about agciv-ers is merely an intensification of what was bad about HGers (accompanied by an intensification of the good as well). It’s like saying it was nice and warm when our house was only burning down a little, and that it is a bit scary now that it is fully ablaze. It is easy to say “wouldn’t it be nice to go back to when only the kitchen was on fire†but that overlooks the deep connections between the situation then and the situation now. Without the success (and associated failures) of HGers there wouldnt have been any civilisation. No one has the luxury of saying “enough†when it comes to the evolution of life.
HGers are/were both noble and savage. Ag-civs are both noble and savage. Similar ingredients, similar effects, but on different scales of time and magnitude.
Comment by Shane  15 January 2008 @ 2:11 AM
I not only don’t want to separate man from nature but also hesitate to pass value judgment on civ. It just is and the past cannot be changed. Are there evil people? Depends on how you define it. Were there evil HGs? Not on such a massive scale. It’s power over people(thousands or millions or even billions) that gives a person the power of mass destruction. Even though I do admit in a decentralized libertarian paradise eventually there could be 40 billion rich people living happily while destroying life on Earth. That makes “injustice” and “Mass Murder” forces that have prevented the destruction of species by limiting the population. That is people being starved by their governments in Africa and South Asia is slowing down the destruction of “wildness”. Thats why “evil totalitarian scumbags” are just another part of nature’s corrective measures to maintain the health of the biosphere. The “regular folk” of civ, that is the people “just trying to get along” are also just “forces of nature”.
I detest the word "Noble". I prefer the word "Proud" or better yet "Dignified"
Woe!!! Was that a tangent or what? Anywho my point was supposed to be something about my view on civ being a natural force like a caldera or comet strike just part of “what is” that has to be dealt with. In other words “Artificial” is just part of “natural” just a part with little appeal to me.
Grog-
I worry whenever I hear this kind of thing, so make sure to correct me in case I project my past experiences on you, ok? The level of emotional distance that the words “it will be around after all of us are long gone…it can take care of itself” imply really unnerves me. What about that songbird, there, right now? What about that river, that you drink out of, right now? When we talk about our Mother Earth, we mean her children and fellow non-human family members too. I care about them. So I fight to keep them in my life (and to affirm my ability to have a full life).
Civilization, as a cultural organism, loves it when we abstract our relationship with flesh-and-blood things we care about, because it can then go ahead destroy them without resistance or weeping on our part.
I not only don't want to separate man from nature but also hesitate to pass value judgment on civ.
I hate what civilization has done to those I care about, and to the Land I love. Where does a value judgement enter into it? Good, bad, evil, who cares? I live right now, today, and feel what I feel, and fight for a world where my favorite river doesn’t flow with dead fish and sewage.
It just is and the past cannot be changed.
Who wants to change the past? I want to fully live in the present, and care for those I love.
Are there evil people? Depends on how you define it.
The issue of evil never once comes up in Jason’s article. Some folks who rewild may find this a useful way of talking about civilization, but I don’t, because it encourages this kind of abstraction.
What relevance does good or evil have to applying a tourniquet to a friends injury, to telling someone of a gift you see in them, to stewarding a land so that it grows even more diverse and full of life?
Where did you see this word ‘evil’ used, grog?
Willem, in the main, I really like what you just said, but I just want to point out - emphasize - that the planet does not have a sex, and I think that when we assign a sex to the Earth, even metaphorically, the discussion can become loaded with preconceptions…
(Sorry, personal pet peeve…)
[quote=“SilverArrow, post:8, topic:622”]Willem, in the main, I really like what you just said, but I just want to point out - emphasize - that the planet does not have a sex, and I think that when we assign a sex to the Earth, even metaphorically, the discussion can become loaded with preconceptions…
(Sorry, personal pet peeve…)[/quote]
SilverArrow-
Thanks for appreciating my comment. As for the ‘Mother Earth’ part:
I feel very nourished when I relate to the Earth as a mothering being. It strengthens and clarifies my bond to my Land.
Could you tell me more about your experiences, where you have observed or felt something different? Also, what you mean by ‘loaded with preconceptions’?
I feel the earth as mother as well, this does not really mean female to me, but feminine and mothering in characteristics, it’s the same as how I would refer a creator God (or the sky) as Father, which does not really mean male to me, but does have more masculine characteristics.
I feel abandoning and not seeing this leaves out for me the mythical basis of the family.
Put it this way, I was born out from the earth, not from the sky/heavens.
I think we may find less of a problem here (assigning of a sex) if English didn’t have the he/she pronouns… but that doesn’t mean I’d change the mother part.
I guess the problem for me is that when the Earth is referred to as “mother” it seems to imply that maleness is more separate from nature than femaleness. Is a human female more inclined to feel connected to the Earth than a human male? I hope not. I hope that we would all want to live in intimacy with the world.
At the same time, I can see how the biological role of carrying a baby in the womb is analogous to Earth’s sustaining nourishment. But I think the similarities end there. The sexes are more like one another in their humanness, and in the Earth-human relationship, than femaleness is like the Earth.
Can I isolate any specific experiences in my life that might have informed my opinion? Reading The Feminine Mystique is probably a big one. The author, Betty Friedan, rails against the conception of women as mothers above all other possible identities. (That’s not to say that motherhood isn’t important when it happens.) But the “feminine mystique,” which says that women are born to identify as mothers because of a “closer communion” they have with nature, only closes women off from exploring other social roles they can take, as well as denying men the connection that they have to the planet (the last bit about men is not Friedan’s idea; it’s my own expansion on her work).
i’ve just begun reading Nature and Madness by Paul Shepard, and one of the fascinating things he says is that the notion of the Earth as gendered, particularly as ‘Mother’ arrives at the beginnings of the agricultural revolution. He says it arrived from the settling down of folks and the drawing of boundaries on the Earth, where the Earth becomes a body that one lives in. I imagine it has something to do with the conception of “Earth” or “Nature” as a whole concept apart from us that he’s talking about. The idea that we can name something so complex in its totality and then have a relationship with that abstraction.
That said, I have often found the Earth Mother symbol to be helpful to me, but I am interested in recognizing its limits. It’s a possible metaphor for escape from the present civilized psyche into a different way of relating, but maybe once we’re (not me, but humans, our descendants) past this civilization business, we’ll have no need of the Earth-Mother symbol.
SiverArrow, wildeyes, what does your relationship with earth feel like? To me that is more relevent than intellectual examinations of historical myths and paradigms.
I have in a way seen this, well, mainly because I had many Wiccan female friends in HS…
Because of identifying with the earth as ‘mother’? Or…?
I don’t think male/female has much difference on intimacy toward their mother…?
I do see however, that a mother/child relationship has more natural intimacy than a father…
but perhaps we may find a problem with the reciprocal, but then, the sky does rain.
btw as I said before, I mark a large difference between male/female and masculine/feminine.
At the same time, I can see how the biological role of carrying a baby in the womb is analogous to Earth's sustaining nourishment. But I think the similarities end there.A seed planted in the earth, watered, grows out of the earth, etc.
Remembering those moments when I’ve felt closest to the Earth, the idea of the land as having a gender or a “mother” quality was never there. For me, nature did have some qualities that were shared with humans, though. I view it as very, very emotive and creative. Every texture is a new expression.
Thank you for explaining further your own story with this.
I’ve heard this idea before. I think I used to understand it more, ironically, when I felt more disconnected from the Land. Having related to the Land as a Mother, and a member of my family (and me her child) for many years now, I continue to notice that feeling the Mothering being that animates the Land doesn’t disconnect me as a male. In fact my rewilding maleness, as a natural force that belongs in the lap of a great mothering being, now makes more sense and feels more “oomph” than it ever has.
Intellectually, I have to heartily disagree that agricultural peoples invented the notion of “mother earth” (as suggested elsewhere in this thread). I have seen, heard, and read much evidence to the contrary. Agricultural peoples actually seemed to have invented human-formed gods “of” things, rather than beings embodied by things. For example, The God of the Harvest, rather than Sister Corn. The God of Thunder, rather than the Brothers Lightning and Thunder and their Rain Mother. The Goddess of Spiders and Weaving, rather than Grandmother Spider who will teach you how to weave if you ask.
Agriculture encouraged abstraction of natural forces, not further and deeper intimacy, which a kinship term (like Mother) provides in my case, and for many of my native mentors, though I understand it may not provide that for you.
For something I feel rather proud of that relates directly to this, check out Lovesick Gods of Heaven and Earth, if you haven’t already.
silver arrow, i like this question you raise about mother earth and gender. now I feel curious what my experiences tell me.
i think my direct experiences feel genderless–that is, as i go about my daily life of living on this earth, i feel certain gestures from the earth towards me and from me back to the earth, but i don’t think i “categorize” them with a gender at the time.
but then later, in “digesting” those experiences, I think i sort of sort them out. for example, i have kept this ever-evolving gratitude practice–eww, i wish i had a better name for it, that sounds so new agey. thanksgiving?–that i end and sometimes start my day with. it consists of some thoughts, some feelings, some gestures of my body, and focusing my attention on what i appreciate in my life and its source. thus the sorting begins. i focus for a bit on how the earth nourished me today (directly and indirectly), and all that stuff feels “motherly”–like providing food, water, a place to rest, an interacting community of people, plants, animals, places–my physical needs and support system.
then on how the sky nourished me–all this ephemeral stuff like light, motion (wind), the influence and pull of moon and stars, the sounds I hear (birds, rain, voices. . .), the ideas that came to me, the places and things that pulled my attention. the events that affect me. the forces. the invisible energies running through everything. by contrast, intellectually, you could call this stuff yang or masculine, but i never think of it that way.
then I connect the two and fill in the blanks, and to describe this part kinda defies words since it happens in my head and heart with thoughts and feelings.
so in looking back at what i just said, what do i see? a “mother” who encompasses both masculine and feminine aspects/energies/influences? a solid earth and vibrational universe too intertwined to separate?
maybe we say mother earth b/c the nurturing qualities, the physical, make themselves most obvious to us and the rest just ride along wearing the mother disguise.
Heyvictor,
To answer your question. On my wall, I have a little cardboard plaque with a few lines that read:
Earth is my Mother,
Our Heart breaks together.
Earth is my Home,
I am a tyrant.
Earth is my Healer,
We can be whole.
I do feel very at home with Mother Earth as nurturer and caretaker.
Willem,
I began writing something, but I think it helped only me. I tend to process what I read by writing, so that’s why I brought Shepard and the Mother Earth stuff up. I think the most important part of Shepard’s writing on the subject of the psychological shift that accompanied agriculture was not necessarily his conjectures about the “Mother” symbol so much as the notion of an abstracted “Earth” or “Nature” concept that would be the object of sentiments, rather than a world of partners in relationship.
in good heart,
~wild eyes
The Noble Savage, like it or not, does possess an innate nobility that transcends the behavioral motivations of civilization.
That’s understandable, because,
The Noble Savage is an uncomfortable archetype that challenges the common reality we call normality.
The Noble Savage is AWAKE to a more powerful state of consciousness that we the civilized don’t like to think about.
What more powerful state?
The Noble Savage is born into a community whose intensified physical connection to the earth sharply hones their senses to a more powerful awareness that heightens their experience of existence.
The Noble Savage is intensely awake to the energy radiating in every landscape and in every breath.
What???
Ever experience the releasing of the repressed Kundalini?
Releasing one’s breath from the repressed grasp of chronic oral and anal fixations, and allow the energy of that breath to ignite the spirit, and lift, straight up the chakra-chain, one’s consciousness into the crown of the third eye.
What???
How about this,
Compare the Noble Savage’s heightened awareness to one’s experiences with Crystal Meth.
Analogous, in that one experiences a similar heightened sense of awareness, a more intensified ability to focus, an unhesitating confidence that allows one to move in a rhythm of unrepressed natural cat-like grace.
Ok, some may be more familiar with this analogous experience,
Ever play basketball all day and so late into the night, that one comes into that special zone called “the second wind�
That Zone where breath fills one’s lungs, and lifts one into a spontaneous rhythm with the game-flow that can only be called sublime.
Yes, civilization is the natural psycho-dynamic of repressed men neurotically preoccupied with chronic fear and insecurity.
Simply, the natural biological determinism of evolution, or in our civilized case, de-evolution.
Ron Paul’s Libertarianism, like Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, are the slavish oral and anal impulses of the Queer-Market and Queer-Enterprise-System’s latent homo-sexuality.
[i]"Compare the Noble Savage’s heightened awareness to one’s experiences with Crystal Meth.
Analogous, in that one experiences a similar heightened sense of awareness, a more intensified ability to focus, an unhesitating confidence that allows one to move in a rhythm of unrepressed natural cat-like grace."[/i]
Wha,Huh?? That might be what you think you are doing on meth but in reality you can’t focus on shit and your “heightened sense of awareness” is making you itch all over so your scratching yourself like your covered in fleas. Your “unhesitating confidence” is gonna get your ass kicked by a bunch of bikers, put you through a plate glass window, and / or land your ass in jail.
“Ron Paul’s Libertarianism, like Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, are the slavish oral and anal impulses of the Queer-Market and Queer-Enterprise-System’s latent homo-sexuality.”
Ahhh the old “anal impulses” again. Damn them anyhow.