Orion-
Thanks for that! It didn’t feel long winded at all. That helped me understand Finisia’s goals and how she sees her work.
I have a personal story to tell, in response to something that you brought up, the idea of “willing enslavement to civilization”.
I think that putting it that way reveals something interesting about our situation. As they say in the noir movies, “everyone has their price”. What does it mean to “willingly enslave” yourself? This reminds me of addictive relationships. Addiction still plays a big role in my life, but in a topsy-turvy way. I realized something not too long ago, that I don’t shy away from the classic image of the rewilding life (wearing buckskins, living in the mountains, sitting round the campfire, etc.) because of my addictions, I have addictions because I don’t live a holistically rewilded life. My addictions help me to cope with life in civilization, they don’t keep me there (once again, telling just my story here). They dope the anguish of living in the city.
Now, why do I live in the city?
Family. Meaning. Culture. Story. Community.
I can’t imagine abandoning my mother, father, brother (and his fiancee), sister (and her loving boyfriend), my friends Peter, Lisa, Tony (both Tonys), Mike, and so on. Some of these people would consider relocating to a healthier space if I asked them; most wouldn’t. Some would, but can’t do it quite yet, stuck in the cycle of debt and figuring out their own life goals.
I spent two years bumping around from commune to commune, playing at adopting strangers as family, trying to get the same meaning out of relationships with people I’d just met, as with the ones I’d left behind and who, in their own way, know me inside and out.
This didn’t work out at all. Not only that, but the Story we lived together didn’t feel satisfying; the culture we enacted together resembled secular puritanism (good/bad, right/wrong, judgment, blame, shame) just like in the city.
I suspect this happens to a lot of folks, who want to rewild in the way Finisia offers, but simply don’t know how to get their needs met for deep family connections, meaningful story, and satisfying community.
In large part because of these experiences, I went from obsessing over wilderness survival to obsessing over the more invisible aspects of indigenous life, family and story. How do we revitalize them?
Anymore, I see everyone as doing their own unique “rewilding”, because of issues like this; each of us has needs, some unique and others common, that only we know how to address. For some, their inner nature means they may never leave the city (at least not until they figure out how to meet its needs away from the city); for others, they have an inner nature that matches well this generation of rewilding-away-from-the-city. I believe everyone, including you Orion, heroically struggles with discovering themselves and staying honest with what rewilding means for them.
Hmph. Talk about long-winded!
My personal goal: (for those who need it for their rewilding), to help members of the culture of rewilding figure out how to think no longer in terms of “individuals fleeing civilization”, but in terms of “families renewing together”. To me this means a great renewal and rebirthing of nourishing family traditions, so that those of us with family members who don’t rewild, suddenly they may see us in a new light, not as freaks or members of a “counter-culture”, but as loving family, supporting and enlivening them.
I could go on and on about this, but suffice to say: we desperately need Finisia. We desperately need you. We desperately need the gutter punks. And the academics. And the primitivists. All of them! We have a lot of things to put back together. I don’t personally think in terms of “why folks won’t leave civ” anymore, but rather “what nest-building remains so that folks can leave civ and live in a new, nourishing culture?”.