Take the metaphor one last step, and you canât wait too long to jump either, because the undertow from the sinking ship will drag you under.
âŚand if the undertoe doesnât get us perhaps being so far from safety will. Land wonât help us if it canât support via more limited resources.
[quote=âAiriqueâ]>The Sinking Ship by DQ>
The ship was sinkingâand sinking fast. The captain told the passengers and crew, âWeâve got to get the lifeboats in the water right away.â
But the crew said, âFirst we have to end capitalist oppression of the working class. Then weâll take care of the lifeboats.â
Then the women said, âFirst we want equal pay for equal work. The lifeboats can wait.â
The racial minorities said, âFirst we need to end racial discrimination. Then seating in the lifeboats will be allotted fairly.â
The captain said, âThese are all important issues, but they wonât matter a damn if we donât survive. Weâve got to lower the lifeboats right away!â
But the religionists said, âFirst we need to bring prayer back into the classroom. This is more important than lifeboats.â
Then the pro-life contingent said, âFirst we must outlaw abortion. Fetuses have just as much right to be in those lifeboats as anyone else.â
The right-to-choose contingent said, âFirst acknowledge our right to abortion, then weâll help with the lifeboats.â
The socialists said, âFirst we must redistribute the wealth. Once thatâs done everyone will work equally hard at lowering the lifeboats.â
The animal-rights activists said, âFirst we must end the use of animals in medical experiments. We canât let this be subordinated to lowering the lifeboats.â
Finally the ship sank, and because none of the lifeboats had been lowered, everyone drowned.
The last thought of more than one of them was, âI never dreamed that solving humanityâs problems would take so longâor that the ship would sink so SUDDENLY.â[/quote]
As follows the above quote altered into e-prime:
The Sinking Ship by DQ>
As the ship sank fast the captain told the passengers and crew, âWeâve got to get the lifeboats in the water right away.â
But the crew said, âFirst we have to end capitalist oppression of the working class. Then weâll take care of the lifeboats.â
Then the women said, âFirst we want equal pay for equal work. The lifeboats can wait.â
The racial minorities said, âFirst we need to end racial discrimination. Then we will have allotted seating in the lifeboats.â
The captain said, âYou have all brought important issues to the table, but they wonât matter a damn if we donât survive. Weâve got to lower the lifeboats right away!â
But the religionists said, âWe need to bring prayer back into the classroom before we get the less important lifeboats.â
The right-to-choose contingent said, âFirst acknowledge our right to abortion, then weâll help with the lifeboats.â
The socialists said, âFirst we must redistribute the wealth so that everyone will work equally hard at lowering the lifeboats.â
The animal-rights activists said, âFirst we must end the use of animals in medical experiments. We canât let this occur subordinative to lowering the lifeboats.â
Finally the ship sank, and because none of the lifeboats abandoned ship, everyone drowned.
More than one of them last thought, âI never dreamed that solving humanityâs problems would take so longâor that the ship would sink so SUDDENLY.â
There is also Teaching Drum which concentrates on the living together part and not so much about skills.
Iâm looking for an apprentice for braintanningâŚdoes that count?
No thanks. I need my brian.
Itâs the only organ that will tell you how fucking important it isâŚ
always remember, every critter has enough brains to tan itâs own hide
that includes you & me, too
not quite. try tanning a deer with that Mcnugget.
Yeah, the only animal that actually has enough brains to tan itâs own hide is humans. Thatâs cause of our big heads and thin skins.
wow, iâm disappointed
(i thought) i had that on good authorityâŚ
jhereg is correct. At least as far as deer go. The reason most of us moderns havenât found that to be true, is we are tanning using ONLY the brain. If you were to use other fatty parts of the deer mixed with the brain, you could indeed tan a deer hide with one brain.
If itâs a thin hide and you have really done your preparation of the hide well, you could even tan a deer using ONLY itâs brain.
This is definitely a tangent though, in relation to âself sufficient primitivist villages in N. Americaâ
Back on topic for this thread, I know of quite a few âprimitivistsâ who are actively and holistically involved in the process of learning to live primitively.
The two main things that stand in folks way are #1. Their cultural conditioning as civilized citizens and #2. The fact that living primitively requires a community, so folks have to come together to engage the process.
We should also remember that it takes around 13 years for a fully functional primitive band of hunter-gatherers to raise up a child into a self-sufficient and contributing member of their community, and thatâs for a child who learns faster than any adult and has no civilized adult baggage to unlearn along the way.
For myself, Iâve spent nearly four years out of the last seven living as primitively as possible together with a community of people doing the same. One of those years was spent in the woods with a small group of folks doing the Teaching Drum Outdoor Schoolâs year-long immersion course. Personally, I think four years is just the beginning when it comes to learning what needs to be understood and embodied before one could contribute to a fully functional rewilded band of people.
Anyway, here are the folks I know of who are doing it and can be found on the web:
And Iâll post some insights from these folks next.
Hereâs a website where the writings of Teaching Drum alumni can be found.
http://thedrum.hubraincor.net/
And hereâs an article from the founder of the Teaching Drum on what stands in our way:
Someone recently asked, "How long does it take from knowing nothing about the wilderness to going off and living in it, and when do you know when you are ready? I basically just have a few books I haven't started reading about it."This is a profound question, and I see it is the main theme in various group discussions lately. Not a day goes by that someone does not ask me the same thing, or else a related question, such as, âWhat are the top skills I need to know?â âLearning the Old Ways should be free, like it used to be; why do I have to pay money?â âWhere can I find an elder to teach me?â âIs it even possible anymore, with all the hunting and fishing regulations?â âAll the land is private or restricted, and I canât afford to buy any, is there anywhere can I go to live primitively?â âI want to learn on my own, what steps should I take?â
Iâm going to give you all some straight talk, in hopes that it will help to steer you on to a track might get you somewhere. The reality of the situation is that I have not met, or heard of, a single person in the past 40 years who has used the approaches that we have been talking about, who has been able to return to primitive living. This includes the authors of the popular books. Yeah, they might talk a good talk, but look at what theyâve actually done â a month in the mountains, a solo year in the woods, some time in Alaska â is that really living the Old Way? Where is the clan? Where are the elders? The children? Where is the example and clan memories to learn from?
Why didnât it work for them, and why wonât it work for you? Because they carried civilization with them into the wilderness, and you likely will as well. You can learn all the skills you want, and The Mother will spit you back out just about as fast as you went in. The more stubborn individuals will last a few months or maybe a year, but rest assured, theyâll be back.
Why? Because they didnât do their work. We come from a technological society, so we naturally think that substituting primitive technology for civilized technology is our doorway. The only problem is that Native people are not into technology. They spend only a couple hours a day providing for their simple needs, and they mostly use simple means. Look at their tools â few and crude, and their craftwork â basic and utilitarian. What a Native person excels at is what I call qualitative skills â how to sit in a circle with your clan mates and speak your truth, how to find your special talent so that you can develop it to serve your people, how to use your intuition, the ways of honor and respect, how to live in balance with elders and women and children, how to speak in the language beyond words, how to befriend fear and live love. Without these skills, you will surely die. Or else youâll go back to the life that shuns these skills.
Will a book teach you these qualitative skills? Will a class or a workshop? Is learning firemaking or edible plants going to give them to you? They actually take you further away from what you need to know, because focusing on them reinforces the technological approach, and that 95% of your brain which you donât use, shrivels up even more. We become what we surround ourselves with; the way to learn Truthspeaking is to share with other truthspeakers, the way to bring life back to our dormant brain is to immerse ourselves in the full spectrum of life in which our brain evolved, the way to elder wisdom is to be with wise elders. There are patterns to break â crippling, blinding patterns that take continual, unrelenting attention if we are ever going to see, hear, smell, and feel as fully as we are intended.
That takes guidance, a supportive environment, and example. Otherwise, itâs just another exercise, another class, another walk in the woods, and then itâs back to life as usual, with no end in sight.
Roughly 80% of what a Native person eats is not affected by hunting and fishing regulations. There are vast tracts of public and unregulated private land that are available to a hunter-gatherer, with virtually no human competition. If you think there are a lot of people at your favorite state park or national forest just step a few paces off the trail, and they all disappear. Very few people really go âoutâ in the woods anymore. I know a dozen ways to live legally on or adjacent to foraging lands without having to pay big bucks. I can grow fat by living primitively in a farmerâs woodlot or city park. It doesnât take Alaska or the Grand Tetons. It takes shaking off the old preconceptions of what primitive living is and rebecoming the Native person you already are.
It simply canât be done alone. We evolved as social beings, and we literally start going crazy when we spend too much time without company of our fellow creatures. Learning skills alone, buying land alone, is feeding a pipe dream, a romantic fantasy, that will likely only lead to frustration and disillusionment. Virtually everyone I know who has tried it for any period of time, has given up and bought back into the system. Try to look up some of the older people who once had dreams as you do now. Youâll see â they now have mortgages and jobs with benefits they canât let go of, and kidsâ educations they have to worry about. Yeah, they might still be talking about their dreams, and they might practice their skills and head out in the woods now and then, but realistically, when is that dream ever going to become reality?
And then thereâs the cost of your rewilding. Yes, I said cost, because nothing is free. Money is the least of what you are going to be asked to give. There is a world of difference between something for free and something that is freely given. On a stay with one of my elders in Canada, I built her a cabin. 15 years ago another elder asked me to literally lay my life on the line for him. I would gladly give my last dollar, and much more, for the privilege of walking in my ancestorâs footsteps.
The alternative? Sit in the city, whining about how things used to be and ought to be. Or look at the cost of NOT rewilding, and come to realize that one has to give before they can receive. Then youâll be ready to throw away your books, turn your back on the âexperts,â and turn your face to the wind. Youâll start hearing voices that help you walk rather than give you sweet talk. There waiting to greet you will be your clan, your teachers, and your real self. Youâll leave survival behind and walk into the Beauty Way.
âTamarack Song
And hereâs my own account of the year-long at the Teaching Drum.
http://www.rewild.info/conversations/index.php?topic=22.0
(Sorry about the tripple post, btw.)
Cause? What cause?
Thinking in these terms fails to even see what ârewildingâ is.
Exactly. There is no cause. There is nothing to change. We wait for somthing that will happen on its own, without recruits. Probably enough people are on bord now to have someone survive in every major ecosystem. But, many may die in with the crash anyway. The only thing we try to do is get the information out, so whoever has the inclination, can be given a chance (and so we dont die either, from lack of good information).
Our cause is life. Simply Life. We share common cause with every human, every being, every spirit on Earth. Which is to say, yeah, we have no âcauseâ.
To quote olâ Hank David:
âI went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dearâŚâ
this is tranny granny i am not so available as others i spend much of my time on the hoop in efforts to replant native bioms and rewilding people on the hoop.i have found friends that work dilegently to connect me to the larger community and i want to thank them .i am hopeful in finding like minded people who can see the difference between those who would go to the way now rather than waiting for a failure of civilization. i wonder if you can see that you might see that to go now requires a different sort of person than that one who is waiting for afall to bust a move. ifyoufall upon this stone you will be broken if this stone falls upon you ,you will be ground to powder.i am hoping to find those who see themselves as that returning rainbow warrior. i would like to hear from that one and i want to build community with those ones now because we can and should not latter because we have to .check it out at pullingforwildflowers.org lets support each other in this come out of her (babylon) my people
Shemaw Shicheen
this is the tranny granny. i have done and seen done all that the nasayers say is impossable . i would like to take away all of those excuses they are so fond of. i can see no reason in waiting for civilization to fall to bust a move. in fact i see the need to return now to highgrade the human element . who would you be, those who move out now in spite of impires threats andits comforts in the culture of death, or those who will only go when those threats are removed and trhe option of civilization has evaporated? when i am in the way none of you are there to show this to when i am available to you in your world and even in this format you say i have to be a poser with you and i have no credebility. to answer this delema i have been helped to bridge this gap by many of my friends both native and nonnative. let me show you. then do it yourself and build your own clan in it. shemaw shicheen