Money

Visions of the Rewilding Renaissance Common Misconceptions
#21

Silver Arrow,

thanks for sharing your story. It made me think. The high school cafeteria angle–it reminds me of a weird stage, like in a dream, where the situation exposes some previously unthought-of aspect of reality to you. The whole coolness phenomenon, where people use cruelty (ok, unkindess, but we’re talking about the whole cruelty family here) to others to protect themselves from their (our? my? whose story do I speak of?) own insecurities–the holes in ourselves that we sometimes try to hide even though everyone can see them anyway. I know I have experienced my own struggles with that, from both sides of it and in between (especially in that particular surreal setting–the high-school cafeteria!).

Anyway, thanks for bringing that up as an aspect of rewilding ourselves, and rethinking how we relate to others.

#22

Ah yes, you gotta love the punk rock royalty. The most fashionable and active kings and queens of the scene, leading the fight against hierarchy. Seattle ended up with our fair share of these folks, that’s for sure.

#23
But...if Scout didn't charge, how's he gonna pay for it? No admission means no Derrick.

I see people falling into this easy fallacy of false choice, one-or-the-other.

It has a lot to do with ‘what I would do’ and because we you don’t fully speak the language of people in the way they would speak it, it’s easy to open yourself up to self-mutilation.

My thoughts are that it was a mistake to engage the concerns of people who aren’t speaking the same language. Let them have their say; their opinions, in all seriousness, had never warranted any amount of fuel to keep the flamewar alive.

Just because their are alternatives to planning an event, doesn’t mean it is necessary to engage in that conversation, even if for the purposes of making sure everyone gets their voice heard.

I’m not on the Portland Indymedia site, and neither should I be, but I would post for them links to get grants for honorariums. The underground world turns on the same axis the above-ground world.

It would be very possible to find benefactors and foundations to support the same kind of event for the cash-strapped.

As a rule of thumb in the non-profit world, a ticketed event should fund one or two things. Directly serving the population you wish to serve, and paying for the event itself.

The non-profit I work for uses volunteers we get from around the world very sparingly around the office for our own operations and workforce needs. We take care a lot of those things ourselves. People come from Montreal and Santa Barbara to help Katrina and Rita victims, not to help us repair our leaky roof or file papers. While perfectly reasoned to be a part of the overall mission, a slice of the meaning is lost for the volunteers. Perhaps this anecdote is something to consider.

Consider that I do believe $15 is reasonable for a national, best-selling author. It’s actually, a little low. I’m impressed you are able to collect money within that $15 to support mythmedia, as well. Personally, I just wouldn’t talk about it. Project management fees, in my world, is assumed.

Tony

#24

Hey folks,

Posted my blog on anarchists vs. rewilding.

http://www.urbanscout.org/anarchists-vs-rewilding/

Thanks Rebecca for the story!

#25

wow man your world is crazy. it kind of makes me glad I never got into those scenes, even though I’m sure at some point I envied how cool they all thought they were. If only I could think I was as cool as those people think they are, I might, oneday, actually be cool.

But I gave up the promise of cool, for something much more fulfilling.

You are total balls, my friend, for allowing your life’s work to be opened up to everyone like this. We get so much trial-and-error that most of us wouldn’t have the balls to try in order to err.

I had no idea those scenes could be so wicked. You guys are a different breed up there, I think. but maybe you’ve just attracted all the kids no one liked that moved away.

My heart was broken up a little bit reading the FNB entry. How in a room of people did not one person see her trying to befriend? How is it that no one brought Zerzan water? I really am a little stunned.

I’ll take anyone in down here in New Orleans, and I’ll show you a scene that shows nothing but love. Maybe you’ll wanna stay for a while…

What’s a scene without love? Paranoid and easily frightened, that’s my guess…

#26

Yeah, you know? Me too. I get to watch Scout go on a emotional roller coaster over it too, wanting to give up, then feeding off the challenge of answering the critics, then feeling overwhelmed, yadda yadda. Ah, Civ. We have cycles of addictions for every taste and persuasion.

The stories don’t end with the anarchist scene, either. In the wilderness skills community I’ve seen former high-muckimucks (a chinook jargon term, by the way, for you trivia buffs) who started whole organizations pushed to the side and considered a nuisance as their perceived utility faded. If you don’t have the Charisma or guru status, you have a fragile future in the neo-counterculture world.

I don’t see it as mean people, just folks raised on secular puritanism who have no idea how to take care of themselves, much less anybody else.

#27

“Secular puritanism” … I like that way of putting it.

You’re very welcome, Scout.

#28

TonyZ. said, “What’s a scene without love? Paranoid and easily frightened, that’s my guess.”

You got that right Brother.

You know, I don’t know a lot of the sources that you folks site when you quote people here in your posts. I haven’t read a lot of the philosophy of rewilding and stuff that you all have read. Never read a Daniel Quinn book or anything by Derrick Jensen. I don’t go to any other rewilding or anarchist web sites. My posts here just come from my own experiences. You can see a lot of them are just about what I have done over the years. It was interesting to read this quote from Derrick Jensen that US put in his blog, and the next one from US himself. They could have been written by me. In fact I wrote something very similar to both of them for this thread a little while ago but never posted it because I thought I came off sounding like I was only in it for the money, had no connection to those with less, and would be largely misunderstood and flamed for it.

“And I’ve said this to my friends, but I’ve not said it here, at least recently, but I’ve found that if I don’t charge for me to come do a talk, the organizers do a shitty job of promotion, and they treat me with disrespect. It happens almost every time. If they’re paying me, then they promote it, and they treat me well. Even when I do benefits now, I force the organizers to pay me something, just to make sure that they don’t forget to promote it.” D.J.

“When people get things for free, they take them for granted. People who put energy into something know just how much it ‘costs.’ People who get things for free have no understanding of it…”US

I travel and teach quite a bit and I have found very similar things to be true. When you put it into words it’s very easy for someone to twist those words and present them to look like something they are not. So it takes some guts, coming from a solid position and hopefully some back up to be able to say that in public. In a way it’s an open invitation for attacks from those who have an axe to grind. If people can read those things with an open mind and remember them later they will learn a lot because that same idea applies to our other endeavors as well.

#29

People, oh that prickly subject of dealing with them.

I find myself overwhelmed by the relationships I have, and so the relationships I don’t have seem like they live in that grand nebula of the things I know I don’t know, alongside brainsurgery and the incantations of Wea medicine folk. And so, perhaps in some ways, being fulfilled, and appreciative, brings me to a point where the only use I have is to be positive, and reap the Karmic repercussions.

It’s hard, but I feel challenged by Willem’s comments, to appreciate even inappreciativeness. I feel like a willingness to cross one’s own lines is important in personal growth. That there are three places a person can be in, for the sake of modeling behavior, not for the sake of exactly describing it.

You can hold the line, you can push the line, and you can retreat. i think in this model, a majority of these ‘secular puritans’ are still retreating the lines of their upbringing. I feel like I move through these behaviors all the time, and that maybe makes me healthy? I would like to think so, I would like to think, given the little model I’m throwing up here, that not moving around your lines makes you a little unhealthy.

I can think of a lot people I have met with really solid lines, who tow around with them, and I think, how can I edge them out of that comfortable place.

I think this conversation has given me a lot to think about, about how to compassionately encourage people to dance. Thanks ya’ll