Approach it differently. Living primitively (w/ community) may be about living with less (debatable, imho) but it’s definitely about having more. More time w/ friends & family, more security, more stability, more support, deeper relationships, more fun! ;D
One of the tricks with all this, imo, is getting the community going.
One of the tricks with all this, imo, is getting the community going.
And what a trick it is. We barely have a concept of community. I’m kind of banking on the “post-apocalyptic need for each other to get through the struggle” to jump start that concept for us again.
aye, and being spread apart, and a society that largely does not care or is against this… make it difficult, but hey, would that not be one of the goals of this forum?
would that not be one of the goals of this forum?
hell yeah!
[quote=“Fenriswolfr, post:23, topic:198”][quote author=jhereg link=topic=185.msg2878#msg2878 date=1184764071]
One of the tricks with all this, imo, is getting the community going.
[/quote]
aye, and being spread apart, and a society that largely does not care or is against this… make it difficult, but hey, would that not be one of the goals of this forum?[/quote]
Absolutely. Ditto the many events and meet-ups. In some ways it seems like slow going, but then again, I think I see a pretty strong community growing up, even if it is geographically distributed.
Perhaps being geographically distributed can be beneficial as to help the community grow simultaneously in different areas?
I definitely think so. REWILD provides a place to come and share ideas, learn new concepts, hash out different topics–and then I can take them back to my local group of friends and share/learn/hash with them as well.
That’s certainly why I’m here.
Around here, my burgeoning primitivism is an issue. My wife has been in for a serious shock, because she beleived that I would become more conservative once I got out of college. The family she comes from moved around a lot, traded her between households, and in general gave her absolutely no stability in her formative years. Do to this lack of support and stability growing up, she’s totally afriad of losing the stability we’ve made together. It’s not that she’s against the ideas, it’s just that she isnt in a place emotionally to handle thinking about it. A while ago we had a very serious fight over the family survival gear. She hates it, and she deliberately ignores it’s existence, refusing to use the gear even when camping, and “accidentally” leaving it places where it will get destroyed. She’s also the kind of person who identifies with their job. Her self-esteem when she is unemployed is rock bottom, and she cannot comprehend why I hate work.
How do we deal with it? in short, we don’t. Until such time as civilization fails for us, it’s not a big issue. Learning how to be self-sufficent becomes my “hobby”, and when the time comes, I won’t have to make any arguments because it will be plain as day. Frankly, I’m not going to place my bets on a hard crash anyway. And it’s not worth the stress to the family. After all, tribe is the most important thing in the end.
Although it is part of a larger picture, My beleif in the evils of civilization is also part of why I lost my best friend this last few months. He was (is) a “Roman”, a guy who beleives that imperial rome was the peak of human civilization, and who wishes that things were more like back then.
I don’t know if their are other people in my social network who would even be interested. I’m too afraid to share. It sucks because until I open up about this I can’t really form closer bonds with any of them. I’ll have to risk it, but I’m reasonably sure of a negative outcome.
Fortunately, there is a bright light in all of this. My mother is completely understanding, and she herself is rapidly becoming a permaculturalist. I can talk with her about the practical aspects of living a simpler life, how to cut out consumer thinking and behavior, how to survive with little to no dependancy on the system. She won’t agree with my reasons for doing things, but she does agree with the goals. My little sister is growing up to be a serious anti-capitalist, far more radical than I. She’s still in that cynical teenage area, where apathy prevents alternatives, but I can talk about the theory with her.
I hope to gradually acclimate my wife to the ideas. If I can win over her support, I’ll be able to handle any amount of hostility from anyone else. (I think she knows this, subconciously, and this is why she witholds her support. She beleives that if she was behind me, I’d take risks that she doesn’t want me taking. )
My rewilding definitely fell into the “hobby” category in my household, but now after a year or so of not being able to touch on these issues with my wife, she has started asking questions. It’s not like we talk about them the same way I can with other friends, but she’s not as afraid of them now.
I guess I’m bringing back a long untouched topic, or so a warning tells me:
My partner and I had a conversation last night, in which she expressed the concern that we want to live different ways. She’s not scared of or opposed to the idea of rewilding per se, but says she doesn’t want to live that way herself. She says she wants to still be able to dress up in fun outfits and not make all of her own clothes, go out to places, eat grains and other food purchased at stores, and other such things. I basically said “Fine, I’ll take care of dinner and you can do that stuff”. Seriously though, I think the big issue with a lot of people is getting them to get over their assumptions that being a forager necessitates living in abject poverty, that you spend all your time doing boring, dirty work, and that they have to give up music, art, literature, and all that fun stuff (I really must get her to read The Thirty Theses). Of course, maybe I wouldn’t even need to convince her if she’d shown up more often when we took a class on hunter-gatherers a few years ago. I totally intend to be a forager with a warm, dry house that has electricity and a cable internet connection. Of course, I know how to build simple turbines for cheap, so that helps.
actually, you may to point her here: Fabulous Forager.
I don’t think I see any reason why living “primitively” necessitates living in abject poverty, tho’ I do think having “the best of both worlds”, so to speak, will require a fair amount of creative and imaginative thinking…
I guess this goes along with the thread I just posted, we should do it anyway]http://www.rewild.info/conversations/index.php?topic=775.msg8623#msg8623]we should do it anyway (Help how do I post links wtf??)
points out that it’s probably best to do this in a positive way
But this is a defensive position. It says we must do this or else. And as scary as the "or else" is, making change in defense is much different than doing it offensively; as a way to gain not as a hedge against ruin. Pat Meadows is responsible for popularizing "The Theory of Anyway," as an early response to those people who are calling for change "or else!" They were and are still right of course. If we don't change we are likely to experience more pain and suffering than need be, but that kind of a defensive motivator isn't always helpful. For one thing it tends to foster resentment. If we feel like we have to do something we're likely to cast about for someone to blame. Or we are likely to do it with a heavy heart and that doesn't promote success. That is, we are less likely to succeed in transforming our own lives and our society in general if we are moping about making change to ward off doom. Likewise we are less likely to experience resistance from ourselves, our family and friends and our community if we can frame the changes as positive in nature and not dreadful sacrifices we must make if we are going to survive!
A lot of people took my case about civilization’s collapse in the Thirty Theses as a motivation for rewilding, and I don’t particularly agree with that argument. Rather, I offered the argument about civilization’s collapse to show that rewilding has become possible. In history, we find no shortage of failed attempts, to one extent or another, to break free of civilization. They all failed. Everyone dreams of rewilding at some point in their life, though nearly everyone ends up abandoning that dream when they realize that civilization makes that impossible. The collapse of civilization means that rewilding becomes possible, it means that the failures of the past will not necessarily set the pattern for our own endeavors today.
You might call me biased as Giuli’s husband, but I think what she’s started to do with the Fabulous Forager cuts into one of the most important challenges to rewilding right now, exactly what Dan ran up against. This marriage in the Western imagination of primitive life and asceticism represents a major misconception that we desperately need to correct. Some people have questioned the use of, as they call it, “glamorizing” primitive life. I object to the question itself; we don’t “glamorize” primitive life, we simply answer the endemic disparaging of it. Just like any other animal, humans in their natural condition enjoy lives of relative ease and comfort. The kinds of hardships we endure only seem normal because we live with them constantly. We shouldn’t feel astounded by the evidence of primitive luxury; rather, we should take that as a reminder of just how pathological our lives have become.
So, to sum up my point: primitive living has nothing to do with Western images of asceticism, and we need to break that association.
Right on, Jason, right on.
To add another anecdote that I think bears something in common with at least one other, I’ll recount a short and annoying little interaction I had the other day. Those who read my intro know the I’m in a polytheistic church that practices a sort of Pan-Indo-European religion. I was at the weekly meeting for my grove (what we call our local congregations), and one of our prospective members asked why I don’t eat grains, dairy, or processed sugar after I turned down free pastries. I told her that I ate a paleo diet, and explained why to her, and she looked at me as if I had five heads. I explained that humans weren’t adapted to eat these things. Now the annoying part? She’s a graduating anthropology major just like I am. In theory, she should have a decent understanding of foraging cultures, even if she didn’t take a specific course focused on them as I did. I think this goes to show that even people who study something extensively can have huge cultural blind spots that make them miss obvious things.
Oh yea, and she’s a vegetarian, so who the hel is she to think I have a weird diet? Sure, vegetarianism is pretty standard these days (did it myself for 2 1/2 years), but it’s definitely weirder than eating naturally.
(Simulpost w/ Dan!)
Funny, I had an experience yesterday that ties into the bias that you all have mentioned. I was telling a co-worker about the recent Skill Share at the Porcupine Palace. I think the exact conversation was very close to this:
Me: “We did workshops on wilderness living skills. You know, animal tracking, starting fire with a bow drill…”
Him: “Don’t you mean wilderness survival skills?”
Me: “No. Living skills. People in indigenous cultures don’t really scrape by, tooth and nail. They have ample leisure time.”
Him: “Man, I could really go for more leisure time…” (trailing off)
Me: “If you grow up in an indigenous culture, you’ll have finely honed skills from the time you’re a kid for living in nature. It’s only tough when you don’t have those experiences and you’re suddenly thrust into the wilderness. But trust me, there’s a lot to learn.”
Him: “I imagine so.”
Our conversation switched topic after that. I still don’t think he believes that a “primitive” life can be as good (or, ahem, better) than a civilized one. One conversation like that is not gonna convince a person of the bias in that assumption…
While I am sympathetic to the sentiments that Jason is expressing here and for the most part I agree with where he is going with what he is saying, I’d like to bring up a couple of issues.
“In history, we find no shortage of failed attempts, to one extent or another, to break free of civilization. They all failed.”
I just don’t think it’s about success or failure. I think it’s more about realizing that there is more than one way to live a life. I think it’s more about values and a person can carry those values anywhere they go.
I gave up on converting people a long time ago. I just do what I do, some people think it’s cool others think I’m an extremist nut who was a neglectful parent because I deliberately didn’t have TV, playstations, electricity, indoor plumbing, etc. for my kids when they were growing up.
“Just like any other animal, humans in their natural condition enjoy lives of relative ease and comfort. The kinds of hardships we endure only seem normal because we live with them constantly. We shouldn’t feel astounded by the evidence of primitive luxury; rather, we should take that as a reminder of just how pathological our lives have become.”
I think the use of phrases like “ease and comfort” and words like “luxury” are problematic. A person has to already have a totally different value system and be very comfortable and solid in it to really feel like these words accurately describe the lifestyle we are talking about.
When dealing with the day to day requirements of a “primitive” lifestyle those words would be highly subjective. Ease and comfort compared to what? Luxury? compared to what? Looking through the lens of a typical modern N. American lifestyle that is a pretty hard sell. The value system has got to change before that kind of language starts to look realistic.
There is a letting go process that must take place. There is a Bible passage that talks about a person who holds on to the old, has no room for the new. This same idea is repeated in many different forms and I believe it to be true.
In my life I have gone from a fairly mainstream (but very poor) upbringing, to a radical rejection of almost everything mainstream, now to a more compromising place. I’m glad I went out to the edge and lived my ideals to the extreme putting it all to the test. I did that for quite a few years. A lot of people still consider us to be pretty way out there. I can bring the value system that took me to the extreme back with me and live this life with the solid foundation that those experiences gave me. When I meet people who feel trapped, who the mainstream isn’t working for, I can say don’t worry, that’s just one way to live your life. All that stuff you’ve been told growing up is only one way. That’s only one idea of success. That’s only one idea of prosperity.
First, I put off replying to this because I had no time. Then, I put it off to gather my thoughts. Then, I simply forgot about it. So, this comes a little late, but…
I just don't think it's about success or failure. I think it's more about realizing that there is more than one way to live a life. I think it's more about values and a person can carry those values anywhere they go.
In some sense, yes. But when you venture forth, saying, “I will go live primitively!” that statement carries a pretty clear fail/succeed proposition. Many people have ventured forth saying that, and none have succeeded. Sure, they expressed their values, and found things of great importance along the way, but as far as succeeding in fulfilling the claim they set out with, no, on that question they clearly failed.
I think the use of phrases like "ease and comfort" and words like "luxury" are problematic. A person has to already have a totally different value system and be very comfortable and solid in it to really feel like these words accurately describe the lifestyle we are talking about.
I could hardly disagree more. The idea that the ease, comfort and luxury of primitive living come from some branch of the enlightened mind unattached to the joys of this world–as Marshall Sahlins put it in “The Original Affluent Society,” following “a Zen road to affluence”–springs at us as the misbegotten bastard from the ill-considered and troubled marriage of primitivism and asceticism. Do you need to have a totally different value system to think that a longer life, a varied diet, feasting and partying with a regularity that only Paris Hilton could keep pace with, dressing always in furs and living entirely by actions that must of us undertake for recreation counts as luxurious? Throughout our own civilization’s history, we have called the class of people most able to emulate the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers elites, nobles and aristocrats. Lescarbot first coined the term “noble savage” in 1609 when he noticed how the Mikmaq enjoyed luxuries restricted only to the nobility in Europe. The lifestyle we talk about, as actually lived (as opposed to as portrayed in our popular imagination), involved preening over hair and clothes, eating a rich and varied diet, living longer and healthier, and yes, ultimately, a life of luxury. It doesn’t require any shift of values. It doesn’t take any “Zen” perspective to worldly goods. Quite the opposite.
In both European and Chinese civilizations, asceticism has a long history as a kind of virtue, and though we may have our issues with the trappings of Western civilization, on the deeper levels–the ones that really matter most–we still keep our domestication near and dear to our hearts, including the value of asceticism. That easily mixes with the Hobbesian image of life beyond civilization as “solitary, nasty, brutish and short.” Why else do so many primitivists and primitive skills enthusiasts talk about solitary “abo-treks,” or running off into the woods alone, despite the centrality of social connectedness in all truly wild societies? I’ve noticed a distinct vitriol in some of the response Giuli’s gotten to the Fabulous Forager, and I strongly believe that it stems in no small part from this message threatening the masculinity of a lot of big, macho primitivists. The connection of asceticism to primitivism makes primitive skills and their mechanical execution manly and hardcore, and by extension, validates their self-image in the domesticated template of the hard-bitten, rugged outdoorsman, all alone in the wilderness. The suggestion that primitive living not only doesn’t have to entail such hardship, but can actually mean a life of luxury, takes away the image of hardships that I think a lot of people use to validate themselves.
But that image comes from some deeply domesticated notions, indeed, from what we might even call the single most domesticated thing of all–the self-contained person, the Roman vir, the impenetrable penetrator. The world as a collection of such objects, each defined by their characteristics, like “hard-bitten” and “rugged.”
I have little interest in such things, myself. I want to rewild, and that means learning from wild cultures, not from domesticated misconceptions of wild cultures. Wild cultures describe themselves as living a luxurious life. It doesn’t take a shift in values to perceive it, it just takes dealing with the ways they actually live, rather than the ways we ascribe to them. Hadza men would spend whole days gambling. Some men never hunted at all, they just gambled and told stories. Haudenosaunee men preened constantly over their luxurious hair and oiled their bodies, to an extent that would likely have gotten them called “dandies” in our society. Hunter-gatherers eat rich diets; your average hunter-gatherer eats more kinds of food in a single day than even a wealthy American today will eat in his entire lifetime. They wear furs, only use fine, hand-crafted tools, and want for nothing. It doesn’t take a shift in values to appreciate the luxury in that.
When dealing with the day to day requirements of a "primitive" lifestyle those words would be highly subjective. Ease and comfort compared to what? Luxury? compared to what? Looking through the lens of a typical modern N. American lifestyle that is a pretty hard sell. The value system has got to change before that kind of language starts to look realistic.
Ease and comfort compared to the way your average Westerner lives now. Luxury compared to the same. Most of us camp, fish or hunt as a recreational activity. That constituted their only work, and only then when they felt like it. A few hours of hunting or fishing compared to 8-10 hours in a cubicle. Wearing genuine animal furs compared to button-down shirts and khakis. Feasting and partying a few times a week compared to maybe going to the movies on Saturday if you’re really well off. Having the time for everyone to dote over their hair or the way they look, compared to just the pampered rich. What part of this do you think makes a hard sell? What part of this requires a change in value system to appreciate?
All that stuff you've been told growing up is only one way. That's only one idea of success. That's only one idea of prosperity.
Sure, that remains as true in our society as in any other, but you’ve gotten a lot deeper than the level I meant to deal with. On the most superficial level, without any reference to different values or perspectives, just from the conventional view of prosperity, hunting and gathering means a life of luxury, comfort and ease.
I do think that a value difference exists, and I think most communes and other groups trying to “get away from it all” implode for a very important value differential-
privacy/anonymity vs. family/support.
Much like small towns, in our indigenous family-style living origins, people knew so much about you, they knew the color of your piss before it hit the ground. you have almost no privacy, unlike the absolute ECSTASY of anonymity we experience in the city. Imagine the Bushman famliy groups of the kalahari, so familiar with each other’s tracks, nobody could steal or have affairs without EVERYONE knowing.
privacy vs. security
All the skills in native life, involve relating to each other, making decisions together, highly social give-support/get-support type stuff.
Although no one can deny the kinesthetic and gustatory rewards (ha! big words) of native life, few people (unless homeless) will cast their lot in with family and friends, sinking or swimming together.
We all know this, too, don’t we? Otherwise we’d have a massive and noisy revival of rewilded small business and tribal organizations, making their living together.
People fear each other, in our culture, and they have the resources to make their urban hermitage work.
For now, of course.
Exactly. My claims about luxury just point out them big words of yours, which I don’t think a lot of people even know. Once you understand that, the question of how emerges, and with it, the central problem of rewilding, the one that gets lost in discussions about primitive skills and what have you: those precious skills of how to relate.
OH yes, very much like small towns! In my childhood, I grew so accustomed to having everybody know my business that I kind of miss it, in the city. I definitely don’t like anonymity. When I lived in a small town, I had an individual identity; everyone did. When people saw me they knew me by name and they knew something of my personal history. In the city, people know nothing of my personal details, and I know nothing of theirs, and this bothers me immensely. (However, small towns still contain civilized problems such as social/economic stratification, non-animist religion, and expectations of conformity. Not to mention domestic abuse, sexism, racism, and other very destructive prejudices.)
People in small towns share extremely cohesive sets of values. I imagine that tribes work in a similar way. But it seems that while small towns have prescriptive social values, hunter-gatherer tribes have permissive social values. It makes sense if you think about it: if you honor nature and permit it to exist on its own terms, then you can (actually, must) extend that permission to the people around you (after all, people belong in nature).
In tribes, these values enjoy an ongoing tradition. And that makes sense, too: it seems crazy that anyone would question any kind of teaching that ensured them group acceptance and a freedom to explore/express their inner nature. In fact I wonder if hunter-gatherers have to be “taught” permissive values at all. If those values match people’s behavior, then the values become an implicit part of culture, just like Billy was talking about – a culture that you can only understand by living it.