Rejection of culture/culture of rejection

Visions of the Rewilding Renaissance Common Misconceptions
#1

My rewilding process has undergone a shift. It’s begun to dawn on me that it hurts me to keep on rejecting elements of the culture I grew up with and live within. Each rejection–tv, certain foods, rules/ideas, parenting style, schooling, etc–leaves a gaping hole where it fulfilled a need. This culture meets those needs in unfulfilling and even damaging ways (and often creates needs that don’t really exist), thus I and many others who rewild reject them. But what a negative focus!

I don’t want to keep falling in that hole! I also want to reject the guilt and shame I’ve learned to feel from this culture, and the emptiness that comes from falling in that hole.

Maybe the creation of new culture can overlap and jump the gun on rejection. Maybe sometimes replacing the things that don’t work needs to come before giving them the ax.

I would love to hear examples of how this has played out in all of your lives as you rewild.

#2

I think you are really on to something.

If a person starts doing things that feed their soul and inspire them, they soon don’t have the time to indulge in numbing, addictive BS. And like you say, there is no void left to fill.

Unfortunately the producers and sellers of the BS are really good at making something that is deadening, appear to be stimulating.

#3

Filling and hallowing simultaneously appears to work for me.

For example:

A huge reason why you’ll may find me with an abandonment, “rejection”, and refrain to utilizing “need” and what I call “needs friends." “Need” ways bare too much uncertainty and expression lack for what humans really posses I feel. To me, we never “need”, “have to”, “got to”, "must do”, etc, anything. I have abandoned “need” ways and replaced “need” ways with questions similar to…what impresses you/me? What do I feel? What does my senses really aim at? What do my senses really go for? What do you favor? What gives me happiness? What does my hip feel? Does my hip feel tight? Does my hip say, “warm me, stretch me, play with me.” Etc. These question kind really motivate my existence and ever since I’ve moved away from (rewilded/abandoned) our “have got to do” ways I feel ignited with a laxness (I mean our unneglectful laxness kind), which feels to me more responsive to actually human feelings and existence both past and present. Briefly, I guess I’ve filled gaps caused from my abandoning civ and stuff with affiliating with people just similar to you all and crafting my own crafts. Personally, tending to my feelings, you, and my other affiliates feelings never feels bogus and destructive to me, yet I never doubt that civ feels destroyed and bogus from my abandoning maximum harmful ways.

Lastly, abandoning modern civ products and ways definitely has, to me, aspects and complications far more separate from abandoning modern civ people. I think abandoning product and people have certain separate complication, yet to abandon another person (civ people especially) gives me more sadder and bogus feelings anytime I feel obliged.

#4

i completely agree but building a new culture takes more than one person. sadly, the only people i know that are interested in working on this new culture are miles away from me and the only contact i have with them is through the internet. you can only do so much in the cyber world but forming a “real” community needs to happen in the real world, where people can meet face to face to build healthy relationships and form bonds that are built on much more than just on line chat. that’s not to undermine the power behind this forum to bring like minded people together and develop this rewilding project, but personally i’m really lacking in real relationships with other rewilders and all of the people i know directly have no interest whatsoever in dismantling civilization and building a new culture. that idea is completely ridiculous to them.

how does one build a culture without a community to directly support and in turn support you and when everyone around has no interest in what you’re trying to do? i feel stuck.

on a different note: i often see the “wildness” poking through in friends and family in ways that really surprise me. sometimes it’ll be something someone will say or an action that completely defies theirs civilized nature of being. i think it’s those moments where the wild person inside sticks there head out for me to see. that’s when i have a chance to coax it out, nurture that thought or action in that person and give it stronger being. i try to encourage that wildness within people in kind of a stealthy way so their civilized self won’t be alerted and push the wild back inside. maybe in this way we can build foundations for a rewilding culture in people before they are actually conscious of what rewilding is. kind of like leaving little rewilding embers inside people to ignite into rewilding flames later on.

#5

Socially speaking, taking up rewilding has been really rough for me. I feel lonely surrounded by all these people in a city where the ideas of “green,” “progress,” and “technology” are the fuel that keeps people going. In terms of worldview or future outlook, there is a large gap between me and the vast majority of people I meet. It is nothing short of identity crisis. Because of the loneliness and confusion, I sometimes behave in ways that do not help my cause. A lot of people think my ideas are crazy and hard to comprehend, and then on a day when I’m having a really rough time and behave irrationally or get really moody, those people can then “explain away” my crazy ideas by assuming those ideas just come from a crazy person. This makes me cling to my ideas even tighter to the point where “rewilding/collapse” has been this all-consuming thing that I feel I need to defend. That feeling stands in direct contradiction to a personal value of mine not to “push” my views on anyone, but merely to talk about them, and let other people decide what they want to believe.

All in all, it has been a horrible catch-22 for me, and I have plans to move to a different environment in the near future.

#6

I recently realized that I have to ditch some of my friends. There’s no way that spending time with them will contribute in any way to my own well being. They’re the epitome of all the civilized crap I hate. They callous, uncaring, misogynistic, completely self-absorbed assholes. They spend all their free time playing pointless, mind-numbing video games and consuming pop-culture like it’s candy. They can’t grasp simple concepts like the fact that people don’t need to work at some soul-killing job to live, or that civilization isn’t all that there is.

Sometimes we need to cut out these unhealthy things, as painful as it can be. I don’t have many friends, really, and this decision has basically gotten rid of half of them. But it goes along with the decision to actively encourage a positive community, and I’ve already made headway in getting new “replacement” friends. Hopefully, these decisions will work out, instead of isolating me.

#7

Or don’t want to grasp it. I really think a lot of people would see it if they could, and gladly embrace the idea of living a life that nourishes them (and all around them) far more without sucking their life away, but just haven’t yet bumped into their own personal skull-cracking experience that makes the excruciating pain of change seem worth it.

I echo Dan & BlueHeron on the friends thing. Ironically, as I rewild and the importance of tribe becomes more glaringly apparent to me, it seems my own tribe has shrunken rather than grown. I’ve drifted away from many of my old friends, who I probably never felt very close to in the first place because shopping and pop culture never really grabbed me–they just grab me even less now. What can you talk about and do together when deeply held values fall so far apart? I sometimes it feels like talking to a zombie, someone completely under the thrall of a different dream.

#8

Friendships that pull people away from their true feelings lead to hate and discontent, often without either party being aware of the cause.
As time has passed I have come to find that while rewilding is my ultimate goal, it is something that the vast majority of society find repulsive in the extreme and strange in the least. By putting forward ideas that promote a more natural way of living while still maintaining some of the “civilized” trappings, the greater number of people are willing to listen without immediately rejecting the ideas as coming from a crazy person.
Perhaps the coming “Doomsday Countdown” will begin to show people that rewilding is coming weather they are ready or not.

#9

[quote=“thunder thighs, post:4, topic:967”][quote author=yarrow dreamer link=topic=1022.msg11056#msg11056 date=1214841300]

Maybe the creation of new culture can overlap and jump the gun on rejection. Maybe sometimes replacing the things that don’t work needs to come before giving them the ax.

[/quote]

i completely agree but building a new culture takes more than one person. sadly, the only people i know that are interested in working on this new culture are miles away from me and the only contact i have with them is through the internet. you can only do so much in the cyber world but forming a “real” community needs to happen in the real world, where people can meet face to face to build healthy relationships and form bonds that are built on much more than just on line chat. that’s not to undermine the power behind this forum to bring like minded people together and develop this rewilding project, but personally i’m really lacking in real relationships with other rewilders and all of the people i know directly have no interest whatsoever in dismantling civilization and building a new culture. that idea is completely ridiculous to them.

how does one build a culture without a community to directly support and in turn support you and when everyone around has no interest in what you’re trying to do? i feel stuck.[/quote]

I’m in the same place. Right now, the only option for me is to focus on rejection of this culture, exactly because I can’t magically create the kind of real community and lifestyle that I dream of on my own, isolated from anyone else who feels the same way.

If anyone else here would like to get together to start forming such a community in the coast Salish region (coastal BC), please let me know!!! I’m considering the possibility of buying land (I have some means), and I wouldn’t require anyone else to “invest” $$ the way “ecovillages” do (I would want to live in a very wild way, requiring extremely limited resources). But without other people to join with, my options are extremely limited. I have no desire to go the “lone mountain woman” route, and I don’t think that’s a healthy or feasible option anyway.

Jessica

#10

And to think, these are your friends. I’m not sure I want to hear about the kinds of jerks you hate. ;D

I wrote about this a couple years ago, saying that people who drop an old culture are left adrift. The true rebel should be able to pick and choose through the old culture and keep the pieces that still work for them. Everything else has to be replaced. Maybe the same thing will work for this that works when starting on the paleodiet. Figure what you really miss and replace that until your body and mind catch up. If you want rice crispy treats you want sugar, you want energy. Have an apple to kill the craving. Eventually your body will simply ask for the apple.

-Benjamin Shender

#11

Rewilding Havens

I just had a thought. It will probably sound like a new way of saying an old idea. But as I’ve mentioned before I have struggled with the whole “ecovillage” thing, yet also know we need to support each other some how.

People with land need people to help them rewild in partnership with the Land. In the Coyote Camp/pulling-for-wildflowers language, “plant the wilderness”, both in themselves and in their place.

What if we just needed to think of things differently - so many of us struggle with finding community, and indeed I see it as the number one purpose for Rewild.info. As you may have seen moderators like myself do so many times, composting the “i disagree with rewilding” type posts, and nurturing the “help! i want to rewild but don’t know how!” type posts.

What if we started to see this site as helping to organize a web of Rewilding Havens? All across the continents.

This would break the “old-mind” model of static ecovillages. In fact, I must say, ecovillages operate this way anyway, with lots of coming and going according to the needs and soap operas of the moment.

This would also break the need somewhat (in a good way) for “residential wilderness schools”. They would have their place, but no longer serve as the main option.

I may have jumped the gun here; and I certainly think I’ve threadjacked. But whatever. I had to say it. :slight_smile:

Just think. An unwritten, everexpanding map of Rewilding Havens, passed from one rewilding person to another.

#12

Willem, what a great idea!!! Thank you! This would be exactly what I have been looking for. So, how to go about this? Just post in the Communities section?

Jessica

#13

Yes, for now you could just go ahead and post your interest in the communities section. Maybe also I’ll start a thread so we can develop the idea of Rewilding Havens further.

#14

Yarrow, I feel that you are very courageous.

What you are talking about is Spirit. Our Spirit is starved in this culture.

#15

I struggled deeply with this for a long time. I tried to reject everything, and eventually I lost the battle. It took to much of my mental effort to “do the right thing.” I dropped into despair. I felt alone and lost in this fucked up world. I thought the problem was me. I was helplessly broken. I contemplated suicide with more than just a passing consideration. Eventually I hit bottom and had a great revelation. For most of my life I had been “trying to be.” Trying to be good. Trying to be what my friends thought of me. Trying to be what I wanted to be. Somehow my trueself was able to reach me in this dark time. It reached out and said THIS IS WHO YOU ARE! You are not a person, some sort of abstract idea of what a human is supposed to be. You are a human wild and alive! From that moment on my life has changed. I feel wild and alive, even in my civilized life. I now listen to my heart. I listen to my feelings, and follow them with trust. I run towards every fear. If I feel like doing something, and then become afraid (If you do this people will think this about you. If you do this you will feel foolish. Doing this is wrong.) When ever I feel that little bit of fear I imediatly do that thing. I have never been disapointed. There is no bigger rush than finding out that you really are free. “Civ” is an illusion, and a very powerful one at that. It makes these human monkies do all sorts of things against how they feel in thier heart. WE DON"T HAVE TO LIVE LIKE THAT. We are always wild and free, it is the illusion that we are not that keeps it from us.

This sort of life does have it’s consequenses. I can no longer work a job. I cannot enslave myself. Instead I make money by cultivating medicinal plants some consider illegal. This to has it’s risks, but freedom isn’t free in our civilized world.

If what I said speaks to you, I recommend reading the poem I posted in the arts section. http://www.rewild.info/conversations/index.php?topic=665.0

#16

I struggle to quit resisting myself. No more self destruction, no more self neglect. I don’t really pay attention to other things.

Yet.

Then again, I don’t think I need much other than myself. Act really selfishly right now so later on, if I have the pleasure of such a luxury, I can act selflessly.

I suppose I’m slowly prying away at that tiny luminous crack in the ego.

quote: blueheron

A lot of people think my ideas are crazy and hard to comprehend

Tell me about it. I struggle to find a way to ‘bridge the gap’ between wounded worlds, but as my fluency increases it becomes less of a struggle and more of the kind of duty, duty born of intrinisic motivation not authority whipped obligation, I always sought when I didn’t have anything to believe in, when I didn’t know anything I deemed important.

I hear the crazy word alot too.

#17

:slight_smile: yeah, see this is the kind of thing that I usually think about when I read threads about social isolation. I inevitably feel remarkably lucky. Not because I’m surrounded by fellow rewilders (I’m not), but because people that matter (most of them anyway) accept me even tho I do rewild (and they don’t) and also because I can see their “wild selves” pop out every so often. I really do think it’s just a matter of time before I am surrounded by rewilders… even if I’m the only one who realizes it.

#18

[quote=“This One, post:15, topic:967”]I struggled deeply with this for a long time. I tried to reject everything, and eventually I lost the battle. It took to much of my mental effort to “do the right thing.” I dropped into despair. I felt alone and lost in this fucked up world. I thought the problem was me. I was helplessly broken. I contemplated suicide with more than just a passing consideration. Eventually I hit bottom and had a great revelation. For most of my life I had been “trying to be.” Trying to be good. Trying to be what my friends thought of me. Trying to be what I wanted to be. Somehow my trueself was able to reach me in this dark time. It reached out and said THIS IS WHO YOU ARE! You are not a person, some sort of abstract idea of what a human is supposed to be. You are a human wild and alive! From that moment on my life has changed. I feel wild and alive, even in my civilized life. I now listen to my heart. I listen to my feelings, and follow them with trust. I run towards every fear. If I feel like doing something, and then become afraid (If you do this people will think this about you. If you do this you will feel foolish. Doing this is wrong.) When ever I feel that little bit of fear I imediatly do that thing. I have never been disapointed. There is no bigger rush than finding out that you really are free. “Civ” is an illusion, and a very powerful one at that. It makes these human monkies do all sorts of things against how they feel in thier heart. WE DON"T HAVE TO LIVE LIKE THAT. We are always wild and free, it is the illusion that we are not that keeps it from us.

This sort of life does have it’s consequenses. I can no longer work a job. I cannot enslave myself. Instead I make money by cultivating medicinal plants some consider illegal. This to has it’s risks, but freedom isn’t free in our civilized world.

If what I said speaks to you, I recommend reading the poem I posted in the arts section. http://www.rewild.info/conversations/index.php?topic=665.0[/quote]

Yes, this absolutely speaks to me. And this, I think, it what our struggle really comes down to: ourselves…

#19

This One, I really liked those words. What a great story. You made my day!