Taking down civilization has nothing to do with the One Right Way meme. We need things like clean water and air and soil and a biodiverse world. Indigenous peoples fought to the death to prevent civilization from killing their worlds. Now dead, who is left to stop civilization from doing this? Saying that bringing down civilization stems from the One Right Way meme sounds like not stopping a murderer from poisoning you and your family to death, but on a larger scale. While civilization has a One Right Way meme that has to do with an artificial right and wrong, not the realistic needs of the planet and people. Disallowing an insane person (or culture) from killing the planet does not reflect a One Right Way, but pure sanity and survival.

If you plant to rewild, to undo domestication, than whether you like it or not you will inevitably come into conflict with the machine that domesticates everything. How do you plan to meet it? If you want to escape the prison, and the prison now encompasses the whole world, you have to destroy the prison. Civilization has the power to kill the whole planet, and in various ways. Should I stand by and watch from the hills with a finger up my nose?

If you have a problem with using violence, (which it sounds like maybe you do?) you’ll probably choose a different role in the battle. Just because civilization has a monopoly on using violence doesn’t make violence “bad.” Living has violence in it. You kill things to eat them. Violence forms a major part in living, obviously. You can disconnect yourself from it and pretend it doesn’t exist, or you can embrace it and choose your terms. Civilizations destructive nature has nothing to do with their use of violence, it has to do with ignoring the rest of the living things on the planet; using violence without respect for the rest of living world (killing and not giving back). Using violence to take down civilization would look like a very respectful thing to the natural world.

I personally do not engage in violence against civilization and I will readily admit I choose not to out of total fear for my life. I have to say that I see this choice as rather selfish, since the whole world faces extinction. To curb the guilt I write about these things and know that regardless of my perspective on violence that a day will come when civilization will no longer have the resources to maintain a monopoly on violence, and that the lower classes will destroy civilization. I know this because we have seen it with many other civilizations. They have shown us the ecological/cultural progression of civilizations. So I can choose to hide right now, and hope that civilization doesn’t kill everything before it reaches the point of diminishing returns, and know that someday I will see lots of violence as civilization goes out with a fight and will kill anyone it feels threatens it. (which will only make it spiral further out of control and power)

See:

Resistance Vs. Rewilding

Isn’t the ground already fertile for rewilding humankind & thus all species, even amidst civilization?

I mean, yer already doing it in the raddest way possible through TrackersNW & yer Sunday School ish. The Adult Immersion deal is the best rewilding/reculturing of modern humans program ever. Yer teaching new skills for a wild life, instead of deriding/attempting to break down/making people forget old skills.

From reading this entry and a few others, I’m curious about what your vision for a rewilded Cascadia looks like… I’d really like to share my vision as well, :1, and hash out something excellent, heh.

Your opinion completely side-tracks the conversation anyway. I never said humans are fucking up the planet, I said Civilization. Don’t conflate the two. Civilization is an unsustainable way of life: read Agriculture Vs. Civilization.

There are people trying to make a change… The ones that focus on tearing down civilization in order to build something new. If you’re not working on that, you’re part of the problem.

And if civilization continues as planned, it most assured won’t look good for the planet.