Hello there! Welcome to the rewild.com forum, an international discussion board for learning more about, participating in, and contributing to, the rewilding renaissance . This site was created in 2006 and is the brain child of Peter Michael Bauer (AKA Urban Scout), Willem Larsen, and Jason Godesky. There is a wealth of conversations here from over the last 10+ years. Please read through this page before becoming a member. If you have trouble creating an account, there are many spam prevention measures in place that can make different browsers not show certain spam windows. Try using a different browser.
When you post:
We have three rules:
- Topics must be related to rewilding. A wide range of subjects relate to rewilding, but please make it clear in your post how your topic relates if it seems like it may not be obvious. Rewilding has a lot of different meanings. We go by a thorough examination of this definition:
Rewild, v; to return to a more wild or self-willed state; the process of undoing domestication. Synonyms: undomesticate, uncivilize, indigenize.
Premises in rewilding:
a. Civilization is unsustainable.
b. We are in the midst of a global social and ecological collapse.
c. Humans are not inherently evil animals hell bent on destroying the planet.
d. Rewilding offers us a path to return to more regenerative ways of being and living.
e. Rewilding is a transition culture—too many barriers prevent full-on rewilding.
f. This forum exists to discuss these barriers and how to dismantle or break through them.
g. Rewilding is for everyone. Our community is strengthened by diversity and inclusion of marginalized and underrepresented perspectives and voices.
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People posting and discussing must follow three communication guidelines: interpret generously, ask questions, and tell your story. We have come to really treasure the kind of community these guidelines create. To elaborate:
a. Interpret generously.
Listen and interpret the words of others generously. In other words, avoid making assumptions. The vast majority of members are thoughtful, insightful, compassionate folks. Diversity of opinions, perspectives, and lifeways are to be expected—but we can learn much from these differences if we communicate respectfully with one another. Our common interests and concerns are what bring us together in this forum. Our differences can and should be opportunities for exploration, learning, and growth.
b. Ask questions.
Give others the benefit of the doubt—ask for elaboration and clarification. Recognize that on the other side of the “screen” are real, flawed human beings with emotions. Differing communication styles and “off” days can be overcome by asking questions. Do this a lot to be certain you really understand what you think others are saying.
c. Tell *your* story.
Share your thoughts, experiences, perspectives, plans, and dreams, and treat those of your online neighbors with the level of respect and consideration you would appreciate receiving when you share your own. Do not tell someone else’s story for them. Debate must be requested by the original poster—otherwise point/rebuttal/point/rebuttal-style commentary is off limits. We’re telling stories here.
- Verbal abuse, personal attacks, racism, hatred, vitriol, deliberate rudeness, or argumentativeness toward anyone in this community will not be tolerated. We all have emotions, and emotions are valid; abusive language is not and does not lead to fruitful dialogue.
If it seems outlandish to assume intelligence and thoughtfulness in others here, this forum may be the wrong place for that particular conversation.
(The credit for this system goes to Willem Larsen. He engineered this long ago for the www.rewild.com forum and it works beautifully. We have seen it work similarly here at the Facebook page for the forum. Thanks to our moderators Willem Larsen, Tracie Moon, Nathan Carlos Rupley, and Bill Maxwell for helping craft this document and keep the tradition going.)
Ban Policy
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Please do not step out of the bounds of these rules and guidelines. Please moderate yourselves. If you see someone else step out of the bounds, please remind them to read and follow these guidelines.
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If a member steps out of the bounds of our guidelines, a moderator or other forum member may jump in and remind them of the forum guidelines.
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If a member continues to not follow the guidelines, this may be cause for an immediate ban (depending on the situation/words exchanged). However, more often the moderators will try to reel in the conversation and bring members back to the guidelines. We recognize there are “off” days, emotionally charged issues, etc. Sometimes people need to be encouraged to step back from the internet. It’s a hard place to have conversations about charged subjects. Our guidelines really do foster great dialogue online if they are followed. That’s why we love them so much!
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If someone continues to ignore the forum guidelines, we will ask them to self-select themselves out, and remove themselves.
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If they do not do this, a moderator will remove them. For the sake of transparency, only under very rare circumstances do we delete posts. We will also always make a post when we remove someone from the group explaining why.
Thank you for reading our guidelines. That’s more or less the gist of it. We highly encourage people to join in the conversations over at the actual website (www.rewild.com), as posting here on Facebook is fleeting (not archived) and Zuckerberg can claim ownership over all the content we create here. Looking forward to everyone’s contributions!
Before you start posting:
Please read the Online Rewilding Primer thread and consider lurking for a while before diving into posting.
We designed this forum to provide a forum for discussing rewilding and how to create rewilding communities. To learn how the members here conceptualize this, skim the boards, read past threads, and you’ll get the general idea.
If something falls outside of the rough (and perhaps a bit ambiguous) purview of Rewilding, please find another forum to post it in.
Posts with poorly matched subject matter, or that seem mean-spirited or ignorant of folks humanity here, moderators will shunt into the Humanure Bucket under House-keeping.
Your first Post:
You’ll need to introduce yourself in the introductions thread before posting elsewhere on the board.
A proper introduction should include your name, age, location, and a brief history. This site makes itself through your stories. Please share them. Tell us: what got you into rewilding? How did you find this site? How long ago did you begin to study these subjects? Etc. A good introduction, after a period of lurking the forum and reading the all of the links in the Online Rewilding Primer will really set you up for getting the most from this community, and contributing the most to it.
Ban Policy
This site does not exist for everyone. It exists for those who have begun the reading/mental change work and wish to contribute to rewilding. If someone begins posting and it becomes obvious they’ve ignored the guidelines above and post offensive/off topic comments, we will move their comments to the “humanure bucket” category and ban them. We do not have time to walk everyone through our policies or our philosophy on a case-by-case basis. If the writing and conversations don’t speak for themselves, or you just feel too lazy to read everything in the Online Rewilding Primer, than please find another site that fits you.
[for those too challenged by adult conversations, newbies who just don’t “get it”, all the “free speech-ers” (quoting the US Constitution? I thought you called yourself an anarchist!), and those who just have very poor social skills:]
Hello.
You don’t belong here. Don’t worry, it happens all the time. You don’t realize you’ve now entered the “other internet” - the one where we actually have conversations rather than arguments, feel excited about fully informing ourselves before typing, and enjoy supporting each other, rather than swaggering digitally.
