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]

If we really want to “fight” third world hunger we would leave them the fuck alone! Not teach/force them to practice the very pestilence that brought their culture and landbase to its knees to begin with. If Americans really wanted to stop population growth they would not provide “food aid,” but landbase rejuvenation. (not to mention that initiatives to buy food from 3000 miles away in third world countries makes us more dependent on foreign food sources… so much for the “locavore” movement…)

I can’t help but think… doesn’t everyone know that agriculture causes famine? As time passes and things get worse, I keep forgetting the complete lack of even the most simple ecological understanding making its way up the pyramid. This doesn’t look good for the planet…

The most recent National Geographic contains cover story on the “Black Pharaohs of Egypt.” Throughout the article we see the scary desert scape of Egypt; sand without soil. Does anyone every wonder why? No, because we would rather talk about “Black Pharaohs” than ecological genocide. Then we would have to face what we currently do to the planet. Doesn’t discussing the race of civilizations rulers sound so much more interesting? I mean, imagine a ruler in your head. Now imagine they have black skin.

On one page in the issue we see an advertisement for a special National Geographic television program on “Climate Change.” The page after that contains an advertisement for chips. It depicts three rows of crops; potatoes, corn and wheat.

Next to eat crop we see a particular bag of chips made from the crop. The tag line says, “The Best Snacks On Earth.” Do you see the irony here? An advertisement for agricultural crops that cause deforestation and desertification wedged between photographs of desert landscapes devoid of life created by older civilizations and a special television program on the problems we face because of climate change that we contributed to through deforesting the planet. No doubt many people sit in horror as they watch the ice caps melt before their eyes and the last polar bear drown on their televisions, all the while snacking on a bag of Sun Chips.

No one has any fucking idea why civilization causes a loss of biodiversity, desertification and climate change. They don’t even think about food subsistence. They believe that humans practice agriculture just like we breath the air. We cannot question it because we can’t see the link. Our ability to see through civilization’s agricultural propaganda and rewild will determine whether or not we survive the collapse as individuals, communities and as a species.

What, no applause?

If we want to rewild the planet and create sustainable cultures we need people spreading the ideology of rewilding in order to diffuse the effects of civilization. Marketing the sustainable world view of rewilding fills probably 95% of what I do. If rewilding meant running away to the wilderness, which it doesn’t, it wouldn’t have much of an impact on many people. The more people turned on to rewilding the softer the crash because it means more people focused on dismantling civilization and restoring the biodiversity of their bioregion.

Though marketing rewilding fills 95% of my time, this doesn’t mean that I don’t walk my talk since cultures have many members who serve different functions. Just because I don’t focus on medicinal plants doesn’t mean I don’t walk my talk. Just because some of us people-who-rewild don’t care to know how to tan hides or build bow-drill fires doesn’t mean we don’t walk our talk. It takes a village. It takes people promoting and tending to the culture. It takes people building the boat for the rewilding culture to sail in. Whether you call it ideology, mythology, propaganda, marketing or world view those elements form the frame of the cultural rewilding boat. Understanding ways of living that promote biodiversity and ways of living that don’t forms the foundation of rewilding cultures. You can’t build cultural foundations with your hands, you build it with your words, observations, stories. Some people work as frame builders for the boat, others learn to navigate the oceans once in the boat. Most people focus on one thing but do a little of everything. If you really understand how talking fits into culture building, thinking of people as talkers and walkers makes no sense; talkers and walkers do not exist. People serve different functions, all talkers, all walkers.

You don’t have a culture without stories. If we want a new culture, we need lots of stories. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions. We need to out-compete civilization’s propaganda. When I see hundreds of thousands of people rewilding, telling their own stories, I’ll know that I have done my job well. When I have hundreds of friends rewilding in my bioregion serving their own roles in the culture, I’ll know that I have done my job well and feel happy that I have a culture to support me. Hopefully, they’ll recognize all of the foundational work that I have done to make the culture happen.

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