I was just curious what your thoughts are on the occupy wall street movement and how it relates to rewilding?
I think it helps to erode the dominant paradigm, which keeps the unimaginative trapped in their “this is how it’s always been” rut. The way I understand it, rewilding involves a huge shift in perspective, new mental habits, a breaking out of the concretized reality we’ve always assumed to be the “only way.” For the general population to see others in action, speaking, marching, dreaming, plotting, participating in their own destiny, might inspire a permanent shift away from civilization as we’ve known it.
The Occupy Wall Street movement is quite interesting, it has reached over 80 countries and it seems determined to “change” the system.
However there are some limitations. The movement does not have a defined agenda, most of them agree on the need for minor changes, such as increased taxation on the rich, increased regulamentation of the markets and limits to the power of banks, but there is no agreement on major topics. Some of them dream of a world where the governments can provide wealth and jobs for everyone, some people want to eradicate capitalism entirely and others just want to end financial speculation. Most of them are just angry about the whole situation and they feel like they have no control over what’s going on. But they do not question civilization, they do not even consider it as a part of the problem. In addition, they do not seem to have any idea how to reach their goals.
In my opinion, they will not achieve what they want. However, as MamaLove said, this movement could encourage people to think outside of the boundaries of this culture and maybe some of them will understand that only outside of the civilization they have a chance to realize their dreams.
Yeah totally. It makes me think of that quote from Ishmael about the 1960’s-1970’s vietnam era protests.
A few years ago you must have been a child at the time, so you may not remember it many young people of this country had the same impression. They made an ingenuous and disorganized effort to escape from captivity but ultimately failed, because they were unable to find the bars of the cage.
I feel like it’s just history repeating itself. Although back then, they didn’t have Daniel Quinn’s work or Derrick Jensen’s work. So… At least there are a lot of people who can/have articulated civilization in our era and perhaps enough of that has permeated into activist thought that it will reach a lot of those Wall Street protesters. That’s sort of where I can see the “good” side of it.
Perhaps now is the time to start doing Rewild Camps at the wall street protests in our own towns???
One of the good things I see about the movement is that it’s not hierarchical, yet they’re accomplishing things and they’re set up for the long haul… They have systems in place for food distribution, sanitation, first aid, etc. People can see that you don’t have to have a strong leader in order to organize something. I think the rewild camp thing sounds like a great idea.
That is a great point! re: leaderless organization.
There was a great article about the protests that was talking about how it is like the internet in it’s decentralization and I thought that was very interesting.
I’ve been meaning to go check out the Occupy Portland again, and see if I could do a rewild camp there. That might be really cool, but it might not be. There are loads of vegan activists in this town that hate me and wish to do me harm. We’ll see. 
I like Rewild Camps there. Need something to do in your downtime.
I lean towards thinking this may line up with citizen revolts towards Terminal phases of civilizations. But possibly economically this is only a regular cyclical down period.
Unfortunately, the predominant consciousness of the protesters seems to be “restore the economy (and the American dream) by redistributing the wealth.” Many don’t even go that far, limiting their demands to “give us jobs” (i.e. please let me be a good wage slave). Environmental demands seem to be pretty much nonexistent, and there’s certainly no awareness that improving the economy = death for the planet.
In other words, while people are getting radicalized (compared to the state of complacent ignorance they started with) and starting to challenge the status quo, it seems like their political consciousness is still at an infant stage. For the most part, they have a long long LONG way to go before reaching a point of seriously impeding the destructive trajectory of civilization (before even questioning the existence of it).
The most radical, interesting, and hopeful aspects I see are the police brutality - which seems to do more to expose the true nature of the system and to create true opposition than anything else - and the involvement of indigenous people, who are (the only ones, so far) questioning the legitimacy of society itself.
Yeah, I agree they don’t seem to have a larger historical perspective. But at the same time, the media has given almost exclusive coverage to polarizing ideas to make an easy to understand, if not accurately reported, Left/Right narrative, far as it looks from outside.
Along that line, saw this cool video contrasting official rhetoric on Muslim protests to actions by NYPD:
http://whowhatwhy.com/2011/10/17/speaks-for-itself-us-government-on-rights-of-foreigners…vs-americans/
Derrick Jensen At Occupy DC 10-7-11:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=af75n5DjRis
It seems to me that it may be possible for rewilders to put up sails to catch these “winds of change”. I plan to go to Occupy Los Angeles this Sunday and test the waters by listening to people and perhaps throwing out some ideas and seeing what kinds of reactions emerge. I’ll be sure to post what kind of perspectives I hear.
Actually, I’ve gotten more a feeling that this mimics early stages of riots against the elites described by Jared Diamond in Collapse. They end with elites creating makeshift barricades, and angry masses bursting through.
But I also have felt like, when it comes to publications detailing unsustainability of civilization the last 40 years, only us and the elites have listened. Our reaction includes rewilding. Theirs appears an effort to trigger a controlled collapse with them as the rulers of an 80% reduced “useless eaters” society inspired by George Orwell’s 1984.
It is a conspiracy theory, but the elite became elites using conspiracies, by definition, so not entirely unreasonable. Al Gore called for an American Arab Spring a few weeks before OWS started and Adbusters magazine, which had the OWS idea, apparently did Elite bidding in other cases (not sure for myself about that). It does feel early for peasant revolts to start - food still plenty available from donation sources, etc. Though there is more anger (also in part from dwindling personal rights when the TSA hasn’t yet caught one terrorist) than “tribal” team sports can dissipate now.
So from the elites’ perspective OWS is dangerous, but relatively controllable compared to if it started a few months later, when the announcement of a double dip “recession” we know is coming, comes.
Edit: btw, if elites get a Big Brother state in place, “holes in the map” should still appear because of lower energy and resources. Unless Alaska has Saudi Arabia size unannounced oil reserves as a few people think. But that sounds to me more like optimism of people who can’t imagine something as uncivilized as rewilding.
Hmmmm.... I wonder what would happen if that double-dip took place while the protesters were still out there. And, on the Alaska note, I don't think such oil could be easily extracted. Imagine how easy it would be for "ecoterrorists" or angry indigenous groups to blow holes in a 1,000+ mile pipeline....While obviously there is SOME diversity in this “movement”, so far I haven’t seen much actual radicalizing. It just feels like the liberal version of the Tea Party. This whole “99%” thing is ridiculous. Know how many bankers/cops/politicians/etc. are a part of that “99%”? Most of them, and I don’t consider them any kind of part of my team. I’ve also seen far too much dogmatic pacifism, and accusations of “provacateur” for anyone who strays from that line. The only thing I can see these rallys being good for is propagandizing. It would be great for people to be exposing people to more actually radical ideas. I’ve decided that I’m actually part of the other 1%, the 1% that doesn’t identify with the other 99% of the population.
Occupy Wall Street doesn’t have a specific agenda… rewilders do.
They’re protesting symptoms and not causes. If they’d demand that the Fed Gov end the practice of fractional reserve lending, the Fed Gov would have to retake real control of the money supply again, which it has not had since 1913. That and only that would return the country to the place where the OWS people want to put it. But it’ll never happen because there is too much imaginary money behind the status quo. Well, that and the fear… no, abject terror - of any major changes to the debt economy. It’s just another “me too” movement that will peter out without ever affecting any real changes, just like the hippy movement was.
I could go on a rant here, but I won’t. But I will say that it’s like taking nylon shit and a GPS into the woods with you with the word “rewilder” stamped into your forehead. It’s just not gonna get it done.
If they ALL wore loincloths and marched covered in mud with spear in their hands, oh yeah, that’d rock like Dokken.
–GC
[quote=“GC, post:16, topic:1573”]Occupy Wall Street doesn’t have a specific agenda… rewilders do.
They’re protesting symptoms and not causes.[/quote]
Nice way to put it!
I think they have at least a small detail improved from the days of the sit-in hippie protests: namely the reclaiming of land as the property of the People, rather than government or corporations. If only they combined this with another notion of the hippie days - “back to the land” and today’s transition towns. OK, so it would probably still fail miserably. :
So, some people are advocating an escalation of tactics away from symbolic protest and towards “flash mob” style occupations that directly impede business’ ability to continue the status quo. Starhawk was advocating those types of tactics, at least in regards to marches (occupying streets), and my sister heard someone on left-wing radio pushing for this kind of escalation (literal occupation vs. symbolic). The movement Deep Green Resistance has also put out an open letter to the occupy movement that clearly spells out the form this escalation would take, and what it could potentially achieve. http://deepgreenresistance.org/occupythemachine/
Quote from the DGR letter: "We invite you to imagine, as many of you already probably have, if thousands of people occupied local refineries, roads, ports, oil and mining extraction sites, etc. – in other words, imagine if people occupied the locations where the 1% destroy the land and exploit humans, all for profit.
Imagine their stock prices falling, their cash flow being interrupted, their ability to get loans and/or expand “production†– a euphemism for converting living beings into dead products – finished."
Folks, this is nuts. If they even did succeed in interrupting the economy, they’d go to full out war on us. And since they have most of the weapons…
We need guerrilla tactics, not this suicidal head-on stuff Jensen recommends.