My friend sent me this a while back, knowing full well what my views on the environment and humankind’s role in it. I’m too familiar with the writings of Lew Rockwell, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist” who frequently takes jabs at government for denying liberty and human freedom, but leaves other institutions conspicuously absent.
At first, I read this and I was furious. Already deep into the philosophy of rewilding and the critique of civilization, this was basically going against everything I then and still believe. And then I read the article again today and I felt an emotion I didn’t think I’d waylay against Lew Rockwell.
I felt sympathy.
The logic of civilization, industry, agriculture, etc. have most humans (even us) blind-sighted against the meaning of true sustainability and human community. But there’s always, however tiny, the knowledge that this system does not work in our best interests and there is a better way. I believe it to be naturally embedded in all humans. We desire things like nature, community, health and a sense of place and harmony with said place, even if it’s heavily veiled.
Until now, I didn’t believe that those sensations and instinctive desires could ever be completely beaten out of us. That was until I looked at this article without red eyes.
Lew Rockwell is civilized. Fully. I don’t believe he has a feral bone in his body anymore. Some of it was probably self-induced, some of it probably his upbringing or current work environment. He’s completely absorbed by the system. He can look at nature and have pure hatred and a desire to control it. He can look at wild animals and not see any sense of personality. He has an unhealthy love for insecticides and a meticulous need to keep order against the grain of nature.
To me, that’s very sad. Jason Godesky said that every human will have a choice as to either cling on to their destructive and dying culture until it’s last breath or embrace a new one. Even though I knew there were people who would rather die than live differently, I never read any of their testimonies. It’s like a doctor looking at their patient and realizing there’s no hope. The people like Lew Rockwell are going to either die with the ship or painfully mourn it’s loss when they try to rewild.