I have a lot of friends and family. The great majority of them know nothing about rewilding. Many consider themselves Christians, Mormons, Atheists, Democrats, Republicans, etc. I want to make the point here that I don’t base my relationships on whether or not someone has an interest in rewilding or even understands anything about it. Obviously I lean towards rewilding friends, but I don’t require it. Why do I remain friends with these people? Because I don’t act like an insane fundamentalist asshole.
Firstly, no one likes a preacher. Wait, that doesn’t hold true at all. I mean, no one likes a preacher from a different belief preaching to them. I generally don’t preach to friends who don’t share my beliefs. I learned not to do this after scaring away many of my best friends when I started getting into rewilding. I don’t preach to friends who don’t want to hear it. This blog serves as my soapbox and I leave it at that for the most part.
Someone asked me if I would exclude a christian from a rewild camp? No. Why would I? Rewilding refers to a process, and that process can start anywhere. One of my best friends believes she will, or at least her dream involves, someday terra-forming the moon. Yet she supports me and my endeavors and loves to go out into the woods and live simply and all that stuff.
I don’t care what she believes. Because I know several things. That civilization will collapse, and their future and beliefs and dreams will evolve. Finding clean water will have more importance to individuals than their old hopes and dreams. You could argue that Civilization will kill the planet and we need to stop it. I couldn’t agree more, but I also don’t think these friends would ever do that. Obviously not. Do I hate them for it? No. I don’t judge them for it, nor do I hate them for it. I love them because we have a personal relationship. Fundamentalism ruins relationships. We need all the relationships we can get (obviously not with fucked up people though). Not everyone has to encourage the collapse of civilization.
I don’t feel like I have to compromise my beliefs to have a friendship with people not into rewilding because I don’t think see it as necessary to convert everyone. Can’t we just have fun together? Since most of what I do involves rewilding, even if my friends don’t think of themselves as rewilding, I involve them in my rewilding activities because hey, primitive skills, gardening, foraging, martial arts, language games, music, story games… all the stuff involved in rewilding just feels fun as hell. The only thing I wouldn’t do with them, would obviously involve the dismantling civilization part. But of course, I don’t do that stuff anyway so it doesn’t matter.
On some level, I people could still consider me a fundamentalist simply on the stance that I want to undermine the system they all live as part of. It feels weird to simultaneously encourage my friends in their civilized projects (like record release shows) and also work towards dismantling the whole system that creates what they do. Of course, their way of life destroys biodiversity and has caused the largest mass extinction in millions of years, so you know, I don’t sweat it.
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5 responses to “Fundamentalism vs. Rewilding”
Sing it, brother. And here’s the dirty little secret I’ve found out (and one reason you don’t see my preaching, even on the intertubes, all that much anymore): spending an afternoon with a friend engaged in a something fun, like tracking, or gardening, or whatever, sharing that passion, will do more to convince them of rewilding than days of preaching from the pulpit. The biggest moment for me came not from reading any book, but when someone showed me all the things you can do with plantain, and I recognized it as the thing my dad always made me pull out of the cracks in our driveway. That’s why fundamentalism kills. Coming from so many fundamentalist movements crashing against each other, we might tend towards that same pit ourselves. It seems important, at least to me, to avoid that.
when seeking a distraction I prefer my rewilding bloggers to be hardcore fundies.
Your post gives fodder for my thought processes of ‘preaching to the choir’ vs ‘spreading the word’. I’ve settled at ‘Walk the Talk’.
Thank You
To continue the metaphor…
Paul wrote of Christians that “by your fruits you shall be known,” meaning people would be able to spot a Christian by their actions. This is quite often the case, but I don’t think Paul had a lot of what is often done by Christians in mind! Nevertheless, this may be a useful idea for us. I’d probably be a lot more attracted to Christianity if they had less preachers and more anti-war activists or homeless support personnel.
Can one be a fundamentalist rewilder?