Blue Heron, I totally agree, I want to have real experiences, and I try as much as I can, but the fact is that civilization does exist and we do have to have money (or good grades in my case, to get money later :)) and so can’t just go out and have all the experiences we want to have. In these kind of situations, books are important, as you say, to point us in the right direction and allow us to get some feel as opposed to none at all.
(Sorry, I just don't have the energy to participate in this discussion anymore--it seems to come up in our circles as regularly as the full moon!)
I actually feel glad that you don’t want to discuss this - I think it would come to close to ‘defending’ yourself.
Before we go any further, as far as I can tell, I want to point out that this conversation now only involves observers of this thread, not the originator (billy/heyvictor).
i try to understand what you wrote but it just makes me confused... What echo you speak of?
Just to clear this up, Jason meant that he has heard this before, and though this thread did not name him specifically, we understood it to indicate him as a person who finds value in books and academic life. I suppose it could also indicate me, because I’ve received amazing learnings from books too, along with more physicalized experiences.
So, for Miles and new.orangutang (and any other curious folks)…
it makes me kind of sad and surprised that this forum must be so closed. i really dont want this to be an argument or debate, but if there is only one accepted philosophy here, if people are unwelcome to express any views that are outside of the one box that you accept, well that sucks. i appreciate diversity.
First of all, it may help for you to review this thread: http://www.rewild.info/conversations/index.php?topic=523.0
TonyZ, a member here, kindly entered a dialogue with me about these very issues in that thread. In any case, we have set a precedent that creates the exact community that you experience now. If you enjoy that community, you enjoy it because of this precedent, these guidelines.
Additionally, I think you may have confused content and process.
I made a comment on process - ‘please, do not challenge or give advice’.
You made a comment on content - ‘i want other points of view, including this one’
Process vs. content. The structure of the conversation, versus the stories told in the conversation.
These do not intersect or contradict each other. They mutually exist in a place where we ask for each other’s stories, and tell our own. If you’ve come here to have folks challenge you, or other people, on your experiences, you’ve simply come to the wrong forum.
The internet has many, many, many other forums on the very topics we discuss often, and filled with challenges and diversity. When you want someone to challenge you, please go to them for it. Here, I prioritize a safe space, and feel very happy with the results. You may not. I then encourage you to get your debate fix somewhere else.
I hope this clarifies this forum for everybody. I continue to welcome any story you’d like to tell about your life, or the lives of people you know. I will continue to discourage commentary about how other people live their lives (or at least, the ones that come here as members…you can complain about off-line family and friends all you want 
).
This feels very simple and straightforward to me. I think if you really think it through, that you will come to a similar conclusion.
I basically agree with timeLESS, that debate serves one purpose, and storytelling another. I moderate here because I get to protect a place for people to tell their stories about rewilding. And I love 'em all.
Oh shacka. (and yes I really do swear like that in real life) I think I’m just going to leave this now. I am really happy with what I find here, at re-wild. I find a place to vent, to say what i really feel about issues that matter with like minded people. However, i also find a place to debate and discuss - rewilding is nothing if not a celebration of a diversity of viewpoints (I just can’t leave it, can I 
- just give me two lines. - I think that challenging and giving advice can be done respectfully or done in a provocative, horrible way, as it ways in thread you linked to. I think that we need, desperately, that respectful from of challenge and advice expand us - we don’t always ask for advice we need.
mm, I don’t know how much of this all has to do with this thread, but I feel like throwing in my two cents with experience of internet forum culture.
I’ve noticed that a forum without strong enforced guidelines/culture tends to turn to a chaotic flame war and off topic disintegration. So especially for the purposes of communicating over a forum, I support the guidelines and culture as moderated.
But hey, find out for yourself, just my experience.
Despite the so-called hypocritical pitfalls of reading about rewilding, I would be NOWHERE without the books, essays and internet literature on the nature of rewilding. God only knows how in the dark I would be about our situation without Anthropik, Derrick Jensen, etc.
I live in the heart of Philadelphia, without so much as an eight-acre of land to even sit on, slaving away as a college student, working part-time to afford rent and tuition. Without those websites, books, essays and podcasts keeping me aware, I come close to forgetting the alternative even exists.
They act as the reminder that I plan to go camping in the summer to immerse and absorb nature. They remind me to get involved in the urban horticultural initiatives. Experiencing real rewild culture? No. But it’s the window I get to stick my head out and breathe in the fresh air away from the stuffy building that is this culture.
[quote=“BlueHeron, post:7, topic:787”]Hey there Yarrow dreamer … What I’ve learned about myself is that a book is only meaningful if I read it when it becomes interesting. I used to force myself to read books I didn’t want to read anymore … I had wanted to read them at some point and I had assumed I would still want to read them later.
Does that sound like something you also struggle with?[/quote]
yowza, this thread’s gone all over town in a day!
anyway, BlueHeron, I don’t exactly see that as what I do, but this thread has made me think a bit about what exactly I do do. Maybe I do what that lady did with the Winchester house, keep building an impossibly high stack of books/tasks for myself to avoid facing the ghosts, the really hard parts of rewilding my life.
In any case, my favorite books so far have included stories, not information presented as facts. In My Name is Chellis the author relates stories from her life, and stories she has heard from others. The last book I finished, Original Wisdom by Robert Wolff, contains story after story.
Whenever you make an argument about something outside of yourself or your feelings, you have to back it up with information or people simply won’t listen to you. If an author wants to make an argument to show people what is wrong with civilization, they’re going to have to do some research and it will come out sounding academic, maybe even with footnotes. I don’t see anything wrong with that.
I got nothing against books or education. I’ve been going to school for the last two years. My post was aimed more at an approach than at people. I don’t have any more to say about it really. I pretty much expressed what I wanted to say in the opening post of this thread.
I hope it can be read with an open mind before defensiveness takes over.
I knew I’d be on thin ice with a lot of people.
Yeah, Blueheron, I guess it is a balance to be struck between making sure that what you say makes sense with the actual world and that it makes sense with your own experience. For the first, you need academic books and for the second you need stories and your own experience.
I haven’t used a toilet in a long time, or even toilet paper. (gonna miss the snow)
That being said OP’s post reminded me of a scene in a movie called “Razors Edge” where Bill Murry’s character staggers to the top of a mountain with books in the Himalayas to go meditate. He’s up there in this little shack, has this moment of clarity, and starts burning his books to stay alive.
I’ve been thinking about this very subject a lot lately after watching yet another movie “Into the Wild”. I had heard many things about the book for years. What I got out of the movie was about a person who had a lot of ideals that he got out of books and when it came time for the rubber to meet the road his intellect blinded him to a lot of different realities, one of which was a half decent knowledge of wild plant. He ends his life being trapped by the very thing he would touch and be one with…well, I guess he got his wish.
I think there’s a difference between reading about the political/social theories behind rewilding and believing that you can just go out and live in the wilderness without learning how first. I don’t think one implies the other.
As for Into the Wild – the impression I get is not that his intellect blinded him to reality, but that his lack of experience and a life in civilization gave him overconfidence that he could survive in the wilderness without much preparation. Another instance of oblivious underestimation of the human-nature relationship…
I think that Blue Heron is spot on in pointing out that most of us probably read with a critical eye towards what matches up with our personal realities and what doesn’t.
Beyond my personal experience, there are 6 billion other people on this planet also validly encountering the world. Why would I not allow myself to learn from them?
When I read something that I wholeheartedly agree with, I invaribaly check the notes for references to counter perspectives. When I read something that I wholeheartedly disagree with, I check the notes to make sure I accept the credibility of the referneces cited. I always learn something.
It’s all just a jumping off point…
Ohhh yes, me too, I’ve learned a lot about the nature of ideology (including my own) that way…