Rewilding without wild nature?

Hm, right.

I've got to say, I'm pretty sceptical about this whole rewilding scene. I don't have any qualms with the ideal. But the rewilding enthusiasts are leaving something out: the Wild.

From the perspective of an animist or deep ecologist, we have to remember that humans belong in Nature, but also that what we now conceive of as "nature" is nothing compared to what Nature is outside of the restrictive bounds of civilisation's sterilising touch. That is--the Wild is mostly dead. The rewilder has very little to turn to, and will (must?) always remain non-native. Not to say one cannot be, eventually, "Naturalised", but I think that the time and conditions necessary are going to be afforded very, very few of us.

What, then, do I see as feasible? Honestly, I think there IS one form of technology that is going to rescue us from this mess: permaculture.

Well, okay, "rescue" is a very strong term. That sentence should probably read more like, "there is one form of technology that is likely to be able to turn the complete collapse of the world into something relatively survivable by a decent number of people who might even be able to have a decent quality of life afterward: permaculture."

Still--I think that's the idea. I have been trying to imagine my ideal future. It's a pretty one; I would like to see land, perhaps recovered from prolonged agricultural rape, restored in a permacultural/forest gardening context: humans using our ability to engineer to help Wild Nature restore herself, and, of course, what is good for mama is good for us.

So, I don't see the collapse being complete and immediate. There are still a lot of resources and a fair bit of knowledge, and a lot of people desperate to avoid starving. Jason at anthropik, believes that, after the crash, our agricultural bases will have been so destroyed that any level of complexity "above" foraging is unlikely. I'm not sure how soon this will happen, but I tend to imagine that there will be an interim with a strong focus on more permacultural techniques--but whether that will start now and provide us with a rough water landing, or whether it will only really begin too late (if ever) and really just give those of us who manage it a chance to bounce a bit and maybe survive when we hit bottom. (And, of course, we could give ourselves headaches distinguishing between horticulture as practised by hunter-gatherers and the exact techniques of permaculture.)

Still, I think it's how we are likeliest to feed ourselves and our children while giving back to Gaea. Which means that, while rewilding is a goal, it's an unlikely thing to see realised, but we must be careful not to adopt an agricultural mindset and mythos. We must be careful to realise we are simply acting as the planet's healers, perhaps accelerating what she would do with time anyway. We must also remember that Wild Nature is our bosom, to be in exchange with, not to exploit. I think permaculture lends itself to this mindset--although we must still be careful.

I suspect this is where the modern paganisms could come in handy--providing us a new symbol set that can replace the old (nature abhors a vaccuum) and avoids the vilainisation and fear of Nature common to the civilised.

I read most of a book once, "The Urban Primitive", a Craft book to help city Witches treat the city like their countryside. Aside from the fact that a city is simply different from Nature, it was executed in a clumsy fashion--contrived Urban gods and totems, trite ideas for magic spells and tools. I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea (and the willingness to constantly recieve new inspiration in developing our own traditions of life and religion), but it MUST be done organically--it must make sense. That is, inspiration is the key as we struggle to live in community on this planet. Not trying to measure up to a paleolithic standard--the conditions are poor for it--but creating, from the same animist understanding, a new world view and approach that will help us achieve a new stability with the planet. I sometimes wonder if a utopian confederation of ecovillages is possible, but I tend to expect we will wind up, long-term, restabilising in a functional but not quite idyllic foraging lifestlye, and that is plenty good enough for me.