Hunter-Gatherer Wannabe With A Blog
“Federal officials have called for killing about 30 sea lions near Bonneville Dam each year to keep them from gobbling a rising share of Northwest salmon that the government spends millions of dollars to protect.”
- The Oregonian Friday, January 18, 2008
Dear salmon. I have a confession to make. When I worked as a production assistant for television commercials, a friend called me for a job… on a political campaign advertisement.
People have called me many names:
Self-serving new-age nihilistic pseudo-hippie/yuppie quack-opportunist poseur-hipster-douchebag green-capitalist-bastard egotistical-celebrity-anarchist tool that gives everyone douchechills with a BS agenda, a trust fund from granny, and an obsession with publicity.
A poster of Meta-filter asked the question: Urban Scout, sincere crusader for sustainability or poseur-hipster-douchebag?
Much of what I do involves performance art, so you could label me a poseur. I dress in (what I think look like) hip clothes, so you could call me a hipster. I often make egotistical jokes about myself and others, I could see why someone would call me a douchebag. On top of that I sincerely teach rewilding skills to people and educate people on the ills of agriculture. My life revolves around teaching sustainability. So you could call me a sincere crusader for sustainability. Can’t I have all of these qualities simultaneously? This “one or the other” mentality reflects back to artistotles “is” of identity; you can only “be” A or B, not both.
This question (although intellectually incoherent) haunts me because of the sheer number of people who attack me using this aristolian logic. Most often people say that I “talk” more than I “walk” without thinking about the importance and need for talking about things. People need to understand this stuff. I sacrifice my own relationship with nature by sitting inside thinking and writing so that people will learn why civilization doesn’t work and what does work. I get off on thinking about this stuff and writing so I don’t think of myself as a martyr. It just really upsets me when people don’t see the value of talking about things. I keep talking because of the shit I see in the media projecting a fucked up world view.
George Bush Jr. said during his State of the Union Address:
America is leading the fight against global hunger. Today, more than half the world’s food aid comes from the United States. And tonight, I ask Congress to support an innovative proposal to provide food assistance by purchasing crops directly from farmers in the developing world, so we can build up local agriculture and help break the cycle of famine. (Audience Applause.) [emphasis added]
I owe almost everything I know about rewilding language to my friend, author and teacher Willem Larsen from the College of Mythic Cartography, from the day he introduced me to “ePrime” to more currently as his obsession with animist languages sends reverberations through the rewilding community with his invention of “ePrimitive” an even further in depth attempt at rewilding English. No one has done a more thorough investigation and experimentation into this than Willem Larsen. No one. We all owe him a great deal of gratitude. I feel honored to have helped Willem get his thoughts in this first ever accumulated work.
Continue reading ‘E-primitive: Rewilding the English Language’
You heard right folks, the next installment of Urban Scout’s anti-vegan brigade! Inspiration for the following tirade came from, once again, the Willamette Week in which they interviewed an animal rights activist in the “hot seat.”
One day my friend Tony and I decided to see if we could make a bow-drill from scratch at a local park we traveled to often. We played around in the log jam for a few minutes and gathered up all the pieces we needed. All but cordage, which would involve more labor. I knew where a small patch of nettle grew and we decided to venture over to the patch, since nettle bark makes great cordage. However, just at the end of the log jam I saw an unfamiliar weed growing up through the rotten limbs.
The following stories about so-called anarchists come from completely subjective experiences that I have had (and a few others), with particular anarchists over a period of time. I do not mean to insult all those who label themselves as anarchists, but question the label when I have seen the culture or scene of “anarchists” act thusly.
Since its inception civilization has created a value system of good vs. evil. The concept of good and evil (or the more scientific “right” and “wrong,” seems to permeate so much of our thought, that we have projected it onto indigenous mythologies as well. “Surely the notion of good and evil comes from human nature, not culture!” Perhaps if we look deeper, we may see that the notion of good and evil live and die with a culture of destruction.
In our culture, the young and the elderly experience perhaps the worst amount of prejudice and abuse. Living with abusive parents, families and forced into schooling where the system coerces us to do what it tells us than dumped in nursing homes and forgotten. Oppression among the young and old happens so often and looks so normal to us, most people don’t even see it as oppression. Of course, children and old people don’t get a voice in this culture. As you age you see a positive progression up the hierarchy; as an adult you forget the oppression as you accept the benefits that come with growing older. Once you reach a certain age, you once again receive oppression as a senior citizen.
When I think of “resistance movements” I envision a small group of people resisting against a much larger and all-powerful militarized machine. To think of civilization as an all-powerful death machine, the idea of resisting makes me feel small and paralyzed. But when viewed through the eyes of rewilding, resistance looks and feels very different.
I have always used the term primitive skills to refer to things like making hand-made tools such as the bow and arrow or the the social systems such as tribal organization or educational systems such as mentoring or body skills such as heightening senses or rituals such as giving thanks to the landbase. After spending several days at Rabbitstick Rendezvous (the oldest primitive skills gathering in the country), I figured out why I get a funny feeling when I tell people that I practice “primitive skills.”
An Open Letter to the City Repair Project, from your not-so-friendly, collapse-wary, hard-up Urban Scout.
Dear The City Repair Project,
You don’t really know me, but I know you. I have to say, it took me a while to get up the nerve to write this letter. But after sitting for several months now and seeing your ugly cob structures sit empty of people, and watching my savings go faster than a cup of Stumptown Coffee, I finally feel filled up with an insane jealous rage as to why the fuck you get so much funding for your bullshit cob projects and I can’t seem to scrape up a single penny.
Continue reading ‘Swept Up In “Cob” Mentality’
I get made fun of for looking like a hipster all the time. I care a lot about my image and I feel no guilt or lack of purity for feeling that way. I take showers, I shave, I dress in clothes that I think look cool and match the aesthetic I see as “hip.” Of course, any group of culture or sub-culture has their specific way of dress that allows people to recognize which culture or sub-culture a person belongs to. Image reflects your culture. It does not define it.
I’ve noticed many people, including myself become wrapped up in the idea that because many indigenous cultures had sustainable subsistence strategies that means all of their customs will work for everyone. Though I’ve found it easy to jump to this conclusion as I rewild, I have also found it more and more limiting; just because native cultures did it, doesn’t mean it will work for us people-who-rewild.
I can hear the conversation with my mom in my head. It goes like this:
“Peter, why do you wear that loin cloth, you just look ridiculous in it!”
“Mooooom! I told you, when I wear the loin cloth call me Urban Scout! You’ll embarrass me!”
“Oh, oh… Sorry honey.”
“I wear it because primitive peoples do, and I want to live like them.”
“Okay ‘Scout,’ and if primitive people jumped off a bridge…? I mean what do you plan to practice next, Cannibalism?!?”
“Of course not,” and then under my breath, “…I mean, not yet.”
“What did you say?”
“Huh?”
“That last part? Did you say something else?”
“What? Oh I just mean, yeah totally. No, What?”
“Huh? Oh, Not. Nothing. I thought you said something.”
“Nope.”
“Okay, but do you see what I mean? Just because some primitive people wore a loin cloth doesn’t mean you have to too.”
But seriously, I see this everywhere. It seems many people have begun to generalize indigenous customs, “indigenous peoples did X,” to justify their own. I even found this when I recently read the Crimethinc “Hunter-Gatherer” zine. Don’t get me wrong, I love Crimethinc and I enjoyed the majority of the zine. But I couldn’t help but feel extremely irritated with the following text:
One Million Years of d.i.y. punk!
For over 50,000 years, our ancestors didn’t shave their legs or armpits or wear deodorant. They scavenged food like modern trash-pickers do, traveled like hitchhikers riding rivers and hopping ocean currents around the world, celebrated life with folk music made by their friends, passed down culture they devised. You bet some of them had dreadlocks, some homemade tattoos and scarification, some patches proclaiming their allegiances.
There used to be as many humans as there are punk rockers, now.
“See how cool we… look. See our dreds? Smell our B.O.? See how we “forage” in dumpsters? Don’t we just act sooo indigenous/primitive!” …Hey Crimethinc, you forgot to say 50,000 years of DIY man/boy love! Check this out:
Gilbert Herdt (1981, 1984a, 1987, 1990) and other anthropologists have reported on a pederastic puberty ritual shared by 30 to 50 Melanesian and New Guinea cultures that may be historically related to similar practices that developed among aboriginal Australians some 10,000 years ago. The focus of intense speculation by anthropologists and fierce opposition from Western governments and missionaries, these ritualized homosexual relationships are a necessary part of the coming-of-age training for boys. Their basis is the belief that boys do not produce their own semen and must get it from older men by “drinking semen,” i.e., playing the recipient role in oral-genital sex or anal sex before puberty and during adolescence. This is the opposite of the traditional Western view in which the recipient (insertee) of anal or oral sex is robbed of his manhood.[1]
Oh my God. NAMBLA acts sooo much more indigenous than punk rockers! Since Portland filmmaker Gus Van Sant has drank “man’s milk” and I have not (well, I did taste my own once), does that mean he should have a blog about rewilding and I should shut the fuck up? That makes no fucking sense at all. People all around the world, civilized and not, practice a multitude of customs.
Why does this paragraph frustrate me so much? Two reasons.
1. To make the generalizing statement, “For over 50,000 years our ancestors didn’t shave their legs or wear deodorant,” implies that all indigenous cultures didn’t have beautification rituals that involved hair removal and body scenting. That doesn’t hold true at all, since we know many cultures, i.e. the Iroquois, plucked all of their body hair using clam shells. Also, we know indigenous people scent themselves with things like lavender, rosemary, etc. I guess the statement above probably holds true in one sense; they didn’t use the industrial produced Mach3 razor or Teen Spirit. But the comment, in the context with the other general statements makes it clear the author wants to justify why so many DIY punk kids stink and have hairy bodies.
You know the kids with the hippie “natural” look? In reality it has nothing to do with a “natural” look, since we know that many “natural” human cultures had highly maintained beautification. It really translates to the “no maintenance” look. They stink, have scraggly beards or leg hair, shaggy, nappy hair, with raggedy clothes hanging off their bodies by a thread. They might live on the anarcho-punk end of the spectrum or the pacifist-hippie end, they may wear all black, with dirt smears on their face and have steal-toed boots (how did they pay for those?!?) or they may have patchy, colorful chords with overly-large, tie dye shirts and hemp sandals.
The funniest part to me about the “no maintenance” look involves how much maintenance it actually takes! Seriously, I know because I used to dress that way for a time. It takes a lot of work to look like you don’t care. So why not look like you do care, since you obviously care a lot? Why do you want to look like you do not care? Does looking like you don’t care make you cool or something?
2. The second reason I feel frustrated comes from this misinformation presenting a superficial reason for rewilding. It distracts us from the important reasons we yearn for the indigenous lifestyle; meeting the needs of the environment, culture and individual. What makes the indigenous lifestyle attractive in the most general sense, does not involve their rituals, style of dress, level of cleanliness, sexual practices, etc. By contaminating the mythology and taking us away from the subsistence strategies of indigenous people, to the more superficial layer of image, we find ourselves never fully getting what we need. No number of sweat lodges or dreadlocks or home-made folk songs will give us the subsistence strategy of hunting and gathering that meets the needs of all three elements mentioned above. They may keep those strategies alive once practiced, but they don’t act as the strategies themselves.
Picking trash carries the same spirit as indigenous foragers, (living in the hands of the gods) but not the same function in terms of meeting the needs of the environment; picking trash does not make the ecosystem healthier because the mechanisms that create the trash in the first place come from the larger destructive culture. While it may feel better than working as a slave in the pyramid, it does not help the ecosystem the way a hunter-gatherer culture would.
Both of these irritations create a “radder than thou” personification of those in the anarcho-primitivist-punk scene. “We act sooo much more primitive than you do, with your clean shaven face, pressed slacks, and pop music collection.” Basically it amounts to scenester trash. It only serves to alienate other people to the true ideology of indigenous living because of its falsified, superficial layer of a appearance. If the culture of anarcho-primitivism involves having repugnant dreadlocks and noxious armpits, you can count me out!
Wearing buckskin clothes or a loin cloth doesn’t make you a native. Wearing all black and dreadlocks doesn’t make you more anarcho-primitivist than wearing American Apparel. Rewilding refers to an action like running or climbing, it does not have a specific image; anyone, from any sub-culture can rewild. It works as a cross-cultural activity… Like reading, cooking, or talking. Therefore it may look completely different to one culture or sub-culture to the next. It works better this way because diverisity helps rewilding stay alive and take different shapes.
—
Show your support and appreciation for Urban Scout
I recently joked with Penny Scout about how the term, “scavenger hunt,” sounds like an oxymoron; a scavenger doesn’t hunt… they scavenge. This joke inspired me to write a little about the terms of subsistence strategies.
I recently saw a comic (thanks Anthropik!) that inspired me to articulate some things about the notion of “green-washing,” and other terms floating around in mother cultures myth-space/meme-pool.
John Zerzan did a talk at (The Dreaded) Reed College a while ago. One of the Reed professors accused John of idealizing indigenous peoples, in the age old tradition of the “noble savage.” I hear this one come up often, and it feels just as boring and reactive and lazy every time.
I’ve had a bad week, psychologically. My money has begun to dwindle and I have to face the reality; I live as a slave in a hierarchical system. It makes me terribly depressed to imagine myself behind the counter, serving up another latte to another slave as they head to their slave-job.
As you may imagine, I’ve gotten many e-mails from pissed off vegans after posting, Civilization Found in Vegan Ethics. One person just couldn’t understand the fundamental connection between grain diets and population growth. Others, like the ones I responded to here, live in denial that plants have feelings too. I would like to say that some very nice non-fundamentalist vegans and I had a good dialogue, so thank you guys!
Recent Comments