Hey peeps. I wrote this for my blog but I thought i’d post it here for discussion:
Resistance Vs. Rewilding
When I think of “resistance movements" I envision a small group of people resisting against a much larger and all-powerful militarized machine. To think of civilization as an all-powerful death machine, the idea of resisting makes me feel small and paralyzed. But when viewed through the eyes of rewilding, resistance looks and feels very different.
Civilization works as way of life that attempts to domesticate, to tame, to make dependent (read: enslave) the whole world. Most basically it fuels its population growth through the domestication of plants. It cannot exist without domestication. It also must work constantly to make its domesticated members so; brain washing people through television and schooling, genetically engineering plants, growing meat in petri dishes, etc. Civilization does so much work to keep the world domesticated because domestication works as a form of resistance against the natural flow of the world, which always wants to rewild.
When a tree’s roots slowly tear up concrete, the tree does not resist the concrete, the concrete resists the tree. The tree just lives its life the way all wild things do. Plants do what they can with their resources to keep the world wild. Dams resist the natural flow of a river. Over many thousands of years, if left alone, the water would whittle the dam down to nothing. The water never resisted the dam. It only did what water does to keep the world wild.
Populations of wild plants and animals that wild humans could eat for food have nearly disappeared through civilization’s domestication. Wild humans, as elements integral to the landscape, require an undomesticated land in order to live. If we mean to rewild, it implies that like the water and trees doing what they can to rewild the planet, rewilding humans need to use the our unique, in-born tools to rewild the world.
For example; civilization has domesticated the Columbia River and all her tributaries killing nearly all of the wild salmon who once lived there. If Cascadians want to live as wild humans, they will need to rewild the Columbia River. Of course, the river itself works as fast as its water can to break away the dam. Unfortunately for the fish and other members of Cascadia, the water alone cannot work fast enough to rewild the river. But rewilding humans, whose ability to make tools comes as naturally as a trees ability to grow roots, can work much faster to undomesticate that river.
Resistance or Rewilding? Same actions, different perspectives. Some may argue that this merely sounds like semantics and that may prove true. Some people may feel empowered by the resistance paradigm, and others may not. I see it as a paradigm shift due to the different emotional responses I personally experience with these words. When I turn the resistance paradigm on its head and see civilization working as a small resistance movement against the much larger and more powerful natural world, I feel empowered; civilization does not have the power to resist the flow of the wild world.
Many argue over whether or not actions like blowing up a dam will bring civilization down or merely strengthen it. To wild humans, an argument like that makes no sense. Like arguing over whether or not the tree whose roots tear up the sidewalk will bring down civilization or strengthen it. Yes, the tree may get cut down and the street repaved. But civilization will never have the power to cut them all down, to repave all of those streets. A dandelion growing in a suburban lawn, a tree ripping apart the street, an earthquake tearing down buildings, and rewilding humans dismantling logging equipment seems as natural a process as taking out the trash feels to the civilized. I don’t see a rewilding human blowing up a dam as resistance, but as the natural world going about its daily routines… with a little tenacity.
Many of the proponents who argue against such actions say that “civilization will just rebuild." The idea that civilization will go on resisting the roots of a tree, cut it down and pave another road, does not stop the tree from growing roots. Similarly, whether or not civilization will continue to resist the flow of water and build another dam does not stop the actions of rewilding humans. The forces of nature at work, whether we mean trees growing roots, water rushing to the ocean or wild humans caretaking the land, will continue to undomesticate the world regardless of civilization’s growing or diminishing resistance to them.
The mythologists of civilization use the actions of rewilding humans to further their own destruction and may hunt down and kill rewilding humans, but they will never kill them all. Deep down we all have the genetic code to live wild lives, despite the external memetic system of domestication that most of us currently subscribe to. As civilization collapses more people will realize the need to rewild and will have more and more success rewilding body, mind, river, country, forest, farm and city.
When we join up with the wild forces of the world, when we rewild, we become unstoppable.
