Unlearn, Rewild: Earth Skills, Ideas and Inspiration for the Future Primitive

By Miles Olson

Picture a world where humans exist, like all other living things, in balance. Where there is no separation between "human" and "wild." Unlearn, Rewild boldly envisions such a world, probing deeply into the cultural constraints on our ability to lead truly sustainable lives and offering real, tangible tools to move toward another way of living, seeing, and thinking.

Part philosophical treatise, part hard-core survival guide, this unique and thoroughly unconventional manual blends philosophy with a detailed introduction to a rich assortment of endangered traditional living skills, including:

• Harvesting and preparing unconventional proteins
• Feral food preservation
• Dealing responsibly with waste
• Natural methods of birth control
• Tanning and processing animal skins

Lyrical, humorous, surprising, enlightening, and thought-provoking by turns, Unlearn, Rewild is essential reading for those who wish to heal themselves and the earth, live gracefully into the future primitive and experience their wildest dreams.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781550925173

Book preview

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ideas

CHAPTER1

Sustainability and Wildness

The only war that matters

is the war against wildness.

All other wars are subsumed by it.

Wildness

Everything on this Earth is inherently wild. If it lives and dies, it is part of the wildness that is life. Our word will is rooted in the word wild; the will of a creature, the will of the land—the driving force at its essence is its wildness. In a culture built on denying this truth, we tend to think of wildness as an exception, as something that exists in isolated pockets of wilderness here and there. Wildness is the rule, not the exception. Where it exists, it either lives unhindered in a wild state or is the victim of domestication. The keyboard I type these words on comes from different parts of this wild Earth, tortured and mangled together into the image of a keyboard. Everything has will—a desire for how it wants to exist and express itself. Everything is inherently wild.

Domestication

Domestication is what we are often surrounded by. It is also something that has happened to us, so it’s not surprising that we don’t notice it. Domestication is a pretty, polite word for a violent process. It might be better called killing the wildness since that’s what it means. A domesticated creature is one that lives according to its human master’s will, not its own. The more that creature (plant, land, river, etc.) can be made to forget its own will, its instinctual longings, the easier for its master to maintain control. If the cattle forget that they had ever known anything other than the feedlot, they won’t feel confined.

How is domestication a violent process? A living thing’s wildness is something potent: its strength lies in every cell of the body. Nothing was born to live in captivity, to be tamed, subdued and made submissive, and nothing accepts such a role without being forced. In order for a field of wheat to grow, every other living thing in that space must be eradicated. The field is tilled, loosening up the soil (that it can wash away), chemical fertilizer is applied, irrigation, pesticides, all to keep the field from remembering how it wants to live. Year after year, the field is ploughed, planted and sprayed, consuming enormous amounts of energy, because year after year it wants to go wild, to remember, to heal, and must be beaten into submission.

Once human societies start domesticating each other and their land bases, that is, violating and smothering their will, the process seems to become obsessive; it feeds itself. A look around should prove the point. It may be that humans began domesticating and developing agricultural societies with beautiful intentions, but once the process of taking wild space and turning it into human-designed production begins, things go out of control. Humans are capable of taking forests—home to countless species of plant, animal, bird, insect, mycelium—and after killing their wildness (removing the trees, turning the soil), converting it all into a production space for human food. The possibilities of expansion are limited only by how much suitable earth there is to exploit.

The final dream of civilization is that everything will be controlled, organized, categorized; all wildness and spontaneity will be eradicated. Fish will live in fish farms. Trees will grow in tree farms. Animals for our food will live in feedlots. Humans will live in cities completely isolated from any other creatures (except cute pets), isolated from anything that might remind them of true wild nature. Inferior races will wither in poverty until they vanish. The Earth will be remodeled in the name of production. Any spontaneous, uncontrolled expression of life will be crushed.

Of course, it isn’t really the future I am describing.

Sustainability

How does this relate to sustainability? Is domestication unsustainable? I would say yes, but that isn’t the issue I want to talk about here. There is a lot of buzz in mainstream society right now about who’s going green, about how industrial society is voluntarily making the transition to green energy and thus becoming sustainable.

Let’s look at an example. The Brazilian rainforest is being cleared at an alarming rate to make way for vast plantations of soybeans. Hundreds of thousands of acres of genetically modified monoculture. What if those tractors were powered by biodiesel? What if they were powered by methane trapped from composting human feces, which was then used to fertilize the field? Imagine that picture as an example of sustainability—vegan food being farmed using green fuel and human compost.

But why would anyone want to sustain that?

The popular concept of sustainability paints a picture something like this: Humans are burning too much fossil fuel. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with how we live, or how we interact with this Earth, there are just some glitches in the system. Acidifying oceans, ozone holes and, most importantly, global warming. If we can only make a few simple changes—switch to green energy, organic farming, cloth bags instead of plastic, phase out fossil fuels—the Earth won’t burn and industrial civilization will be able to continue indefinitely. I don’t want to argue too much right here over whether it is possible for this culture to become sustainable. I think it is more important that we consider if it is even desirable! In the sustainability movement, there is no discussion on what it is we want to make sustainable, or even what has been sustainable in the past. A culture of hunter-gatherers lived sustainably for thousands of years in the Brazilian rainforest I mentioned above, that is now eradicated and subdued into producing soybeans for the eco-conscious North American. Can a domesticated, modern human have any concept of what is sustainable, being so removed from any real point of reference? Remember, one of the most important parts of being domesticated is forgetting your wild nature, or having those memories erased of who you are and what you need at the most primal level.

The only proven models we have for existing sustainably as humans (the only way humans have ever actually existed sustainably) are hunter-gatherer societies. These cultures did, and do, cultivate their land bases in many subtle ways, the important difference from agricultural society being that they directly depend on the health of their wild land base while agricultural society depends on fighting and destroying it. One way preserves the land, the other rapidly destroys it. Hunter-gatherers are tied to a limited resource base; a culture that kills too many bison will soon starve. This gives them an incentive to not get too big or too greedy. If an agricultural society gets too big or greedy, it just clears more land to plant more grain and so on and on, until...it becomes sustainable?

What do We Want to Make Sustainable?

This is a very important question. Do we want to continue to abuse all life on this planet, making it conform to our twisted visions of what is needed? Do we want to have a sustainable human-engineered Earth, completely ordered and controlled to maximize efficiency? A sustainable world where everyone and everything is tagged, drugged, kept submissive, orderly, tame? Or do we want to give up on the project of controlling all life on Earth? Becoming sustainable does not mean allowing the wildness of living things to flourish, letting blackberries and dandelions grow through the concrete, turning the pavement into soil (and food!).

It doesn’t mean healing our relationship with the land, ourselves or each other. In fact, the popular concept of sustainability, if enacted, would simply mean making the war against wildness perpetual. Domestication is the root of the giant chasm between humans and the non-human world, it is the engine that propels us towards killing the planet. Yet, somehow, it has completely snuck under the radar of the ongoing discussion on going green, probably because it is a much more ancient and deeply rooted problem than burning fossil fuels. It makes the solution much more complex.

The ancient civilization of what is now called Iraq successfully deforested rainforests of giant cedars, planted them with wheat and turned them into desert in just a few centuries using primitive stone, bone and wood tools, as well as farming organically. Phasing out fossil fuels isn’t enough. Going back to a pre-industrial level of technology isn’t enough. There is a sickness at the heart of this culture, something very powerful and destructive that we need to see. We need to enter into a conversation with the land we take from in order to live and allow ourselves to hear its screams. We need to have relationships that aren’t manipulative and abusive, with one another and the Earth. Sustainability is not primary, it might even be a destructive goal. That wild aliveness flourish is what matters.

The only war that matters

is the war against wildness.

All other wars are subsumed by it.

CHAPTER2

What is Rewilding?

PICTURE A VACANT parking lot in a part of town that has been abandoned. After a year or so every crack big enough has given way to dandelions and the young beginnings of blackberry vines. The action of their roots, the wind and rain, water pooling in between tiny nooks, freezing and thawing, slowly crack and crumble the pavement. Fissures split wider making space for more plants, more roots, more cracks. The pavement itself is soon no longer visible under the thick foliage of briars and alder saplings during the summer months. Birds begin nesting in the shrubs, rabbits under the barbed wire protection of the blackberry vines.

After a few decades, the land will have shrugged off much of its cement blanket. Trees will be sending their taproots deep into the soil, and though it will still carry the fresh wounds of having been brutally forced into the shape of a parking lot, it will be well on its way to recovering and returning to a healthy, wild state.

Now picture a human...

Rewilding is not a term commonly applied to humans. The process of a species or ecosystem returning to a natural, untamed state isn’t exactly the direction much of humanity is currently headed in. Rewilding stands opposite to domestication. Where domestication means domination, control, oppression and eradication of what does not submit, rewilding means breaking free from these elements and working against them, enabling others (human and non-human) to escape oppression and live with integrity. At its essence, the wildness, the life force in everything domesticated is fighting to express itself, to find a crack, sprout and grow; to find a hole in the fence and make a break. This includes humans.

Rewild, v: to return to a more natural or wild state; the process of undoing domestication.

Synonyms: undomesticate, uncivilize.

Of course many humans would disagree that we are domesticated. This is not surprising; a true, fully domesticated creature wouldn’t have any idea that things are not normal and natural, that something is off.

I once did a work trade with a bison farmer who lives near me, cutting Scotch broom from his pastures in exchange for meat, fat and bones. Besides being in awe of and somewhat terrified by all the massive, intimidating, beautiful horned beasts casually tromping around me, the most amazing thing I found about the whole experience was the fence that contained these bison. All that kept them contained in the farmer’s fields was lightweight wire deer fencing. The farmer told me proudly one day: Oh ya, those bison could charge right through that fence, no problem. It’s just psychology, you know, ya get ‘em used to something and they don’t even think about it!

The bison could have left, they could have gone on the endless migration their bodies and spirits are meant for instead of being confined to that puny, overgrazed pasture, but their conditioning kept them from ever trying.

To rewild necessarily means understanding and unlearning our conditioning, the cultural programming that determines how we see and interact with the world. If you are reading this, you are literate, meaning you have certainly been enculturated, indoctrinated and assimilated, to some extent, by the dominant culture. You have been trained to see the world through its filters. To believe that humans are not animals; that animals do not think or feel or speak. That humans have intelligence and it is unique to us. That the natural world is separate from the human world and exists as an inexhaustible pool of resources for human consumption. That you work, you pay rent, you buy food. You don’t ask why, that is just how it is. That jobs are good, jobs mean money, and money is good. That we need money to live. Pieces of paper or numbers in a computer system—we need it more than life itself. That we want the economy always to grow. That if the economy (a measure of our physical toll on the natural world) doesn’t grow, we are doomed. That there are many things you need (money, car, job, status) and without them you won’t have any friends. No one will have sex with you. That our bodies and minds are separate. That our bodies are disgusting, our desires also. That women are inferior to men. That it’s you with the problem, it’s you that is insane, not this world—take a pill.

We are trained from a very early age to respond to bells and whistles, to accept this culture’s version of reality as truth without question. The process of rewilding is the process of unlearning all of this, coming to know an unmediated reality based on real life interaction, empathy and experience.

The Human Creature

Humans are extremely adaptable. Our minds quickly adjust to new environments and living situations. We are fundamentally still Stone Age creatures living in an industrial world, our biology having changed very little in the last 10,000 years. If you took a twenty-first century newborn and swapped him or her with a hunter-gatherer newborn, both would learn how to live based on the cultures that surround them and thrive equally.

Our adaptability has allowed us to inhabit the Earth, it has allowed cultures to thrive in desert, high Arctic, temperate rainforest and tropical jungle. It has allowed us to rapidly incorporate new technologies and gracefully adapt to isolating modern living conditions though antidepressants, the Internet, alcohol, pornography and other drugs help ease the void such an industrial life inevitably leaves. Our constant adaptation often leaves us wondering where we come from and who we are; what is the natural way for a human to live? Does that even exist? Do we have inherent needs? Does anything?

I used to hate the saying, Humans are social creatures. I was a loner growing up, and as a teenager fascinated by Buddhism—the ideal of living a solitary, monastic life in pursuit of enlightenment. I didn’t see why people insisted that humans are social creatures; society is awful.

It wasn’t until I was 20 or so that I put it together, by looking at the only examples of healthy humans I was aware of—indigenous people. Humans have always lived in groups. Bison have always lived in herds, seagulls live in flocks, crows live in murders, wolves roam in packs, and for human creatures to be healthy, they need to live in a group, a community, a tribe. They (we) always have. Solitary confinement is used as a form of torture, often driving the victim pathologically insane; meaningful social interaction and community are a biological need.

Industrial society is awful, I just got it and society in general confused, having that as the only visible society to reference. Humans are not industrial creatures, there is no such thing as an industrial creature (with the possible exception of Monsanto’s genetically modified creations), but we absolutely are social creatures. It is how we have evolved; humans have always lived in tribes or extended family units. The fact that it took me 20 years of human life to realize this speaks volumes on how far we have come from something healthy and intact.

Humans, along with all other creatures, have also always lived in intimate physical contact with their life source, the land. This is another inherent need; as much as we need to have healthy, deep interactions with humans, we need to have healthy, deep interactions with non-humans. We have evolved to live meaningful lives, in communities with young and old, harvesting food to eat and share, killing plants and animals to live, watching elders die, building our own homes, keeping them warm, learning the stories of the mountains and rivers and ancestors.

It goes without saying that industrial life lacks all of these; it leaves our lives isolated, disconnected, shallow and meaningless. Humans have not evolved to build a perpetually growing economy (nothing alive on this planet can support that delusion), live in cities, organize ourselves through large centralized power structures, spend our days idle behind desks and screens, repeat mundane tasks, or even farm. We suck at all of these things, actually, and are killing the planet and have collectively gone insane as a result.

Civilization

The house is on fire, what are you going to do?

Add some fuel to the flames and watch to see if something beautiful grows from the ashes.

Civilizations are those cultures based on the domestication of plants, animals and humans. Farming, imperialism, social stratification and the creation of towns and cities are their trademarks. The human sacrifices of the Aztecs, the inquisition bonfires of old Europe and the Nazi holocaust were all the work of civilized peoples; genocide is part of their mode of operations. The perpetrators of genocide have even historically called it the process of civilizing their victims. Though scholars and the religious often pat civilization on the