Rewilding Ourselves as a Response to Collapse

Humans like to think of ourselves as separate from the animal world—as if, by evolving to walk on two legs and write, invent, build, that we are somehow a higher life form than other animals. That our  use of machines somehow separates us, elevates us. The agricultural and the industrial revolutions, both arising as a result of the booming population of earth, the gathered people in cities, the invention of modern civilization—did move us further away from our natural roots, all the way up to the Information Age and the present—but that’s not our final destination. The very nature of modern civilization is to tame, to enslave, to control—and therefore to go against the primitive, the instinctive, and the wild aspects of humans and our symbiotic co-existence with nature as a whole.

Before a child enters school age, they are firmly rooted in their wildest versions of themselves; they talk to trees, animals and imaginary friends. They climb, somersault, run and laugh until they are too exhausted to continue. At this age, they often have a hard time listening to rules, are endlessly creative and curious, and can’t understand why you would ever hate anyone, especially people that you don’t know. This deep and true state of wildness is soon interrupted, though. They now must learn how to be part of society. School serves as a way for the government (one of the main keepers of civilization) to begin chipping away at our natural wildness as primitive beings, and make us submissive and domesticated.

Parents, out of a desire to see the child either assimilate into society successfully or to simply “do as I say’, also often deny the child the right to be their true, wild, imaginative selves. And when we get out of primary school there’s secondary (high school), and then either college or a job. College graduates then go on to create their own careers, and then the next step is money- making it, spending it, putting it back into the system, anything to grease the wheels of capitalism. Those who don’t go to college simply start the process earlier. it is a timeline followed religiously, as if it were a simple rite of passage and not a societal tool of oppression. It is almost as though we are cattle, being herded by an unseen force to uphold and maintain the precious status quo.

And now, in the Anthropocene (an unofficial period of time starting from the 1950s), many of us are beginning to see the reality of what distancing ourselves from what (and who) we are at the root has done to us and to the planet as a whole. Not like the horizontal  “back to the land” movements  of the 60’s and 70’s, this is more of a vertical drop, a drastic coming home to the wild. As if we are stepping off of skyscrapers and shaking off all of the computerized armor we wear, to land, feet first, on the earth that we forgot how to connect to. This is a call to rediscover the wild in us, and if we do this, it is much more likely that we will be able to change with the new seasons, to work to live in harmony with earth and increase our resilience to the future that lies ahead.

The Society for Conservation Biology defines “Rewilding” as:

“…the process of rebuilding (following major human disturbance) a natural ecosystem by restoring natural processes and the complete or near complete food web at all trophic levels as a self-sustaining and resilient ecosystem with biota that would have been present had the disturbance not occurred."

In other words, restoring a natural area to what it was before we messed with it, before we poisoned it and made it unsafe and toxic—not just for the other animals living there, but for humankind as well. But this raises the question—how do we return to the wild? And no, I don’t mean grabbing your gear, jumping into your gas-guzzling SUV or Subaru and going on a backpacking trip—what I am suggesting is a true and radical shift in how we view the concept of being human.

I propose a rewilding of humankind, a return to the simple ways of our hunter-gatherer ancestors (and of remaining hunter-gatherer tribes in different parts of the world now). It will look different at first—most of us live in a cities and towns, a far cry from the small, intimate tribes of paleolithic times. We have jobs, bills to pay, and a seemingly endless line of ads, tech and tasks and waiting to devour our time and attention. We will need to give some of these up to make room for the tools of our evolution. We will need to start gardens to feed ourselves (or community gardens if we have a lack of space). We will need to connect with others on the path and begin to recreate our tribes. We will need to allow ourselves and our minds true quiet, despite the fear of boredom, the addiction to constant busyness. Most of all, the rewilding of our current society will require us to accept that we are not some superior species, but destructive animals who developed a god complex.

In the years to come (most likely sooner rather than later), as our current way of life becomes first more unsustainable and then impossible,  we will be pushed towards a different way of living, simply as a result of things that are beyond our control. Supply chains will break down, natural disasters will cause  problems that the government won’t (or can’t ) fix,  food will become too expensive, and economies will fail. Our choice, then, is to change as a result of hardship and pain or to change now, as a conscious choice, with the chance to become more resilient over time. Either way, change will come.

"The fish will find their way home. And so will the wolves and bears and spotted owls and sharks and tuna and Port Orford cedars. So will the great apes and the tigers. So will the shad and the seabass. So will the bison and prarie dogs.

And so will we."

—Derrick Jensen