From Ego-Wilding to Eco-Wilding and Re-Wilding

Although in the USA today, many residents are ego-wilding (see prior post), this is not humanity’s heritage. Eco-wilding is our heritage.

Eco-wilding deeply contrasts with ego-wilding.

People often misunderstand “wildness,” as if it refers to ego-wildness—unfettered impulsive or planned antisociality. But we are not born to be ego-wild.

Ego-wildness comes from undercare (unnestedness), inherited epigenetic dysregulation from our ancestors’ trauma, and related psychic breaks.

The first thing to realize is that on Earth, wildness is the rule. Domestication is the exception. All humans are born to be wild in the ecological sense—to fit into our ecological landscape of animals, plants and other entities, where everything is wild. We learn the skills needed through immersion and imitation of those around us.

Most humans have lost their full eco-wildness and have become domesticated. Their wildness has been killed or suppressed. This is what civilized European culture has long expected parents to do. Spare the rod, spoil the child (a misunderstanding of Proverbs 13: 24). But historically, civilized European culture is confused about wildness. After the ancient people of Europe were eradicated or assimilated in the last millennia, civilized European culture feared ego-wildness which, again, comes from undercare and the unresolved trauma that parents pass on through epigenetic inheritance.

Western Christian wisdom traditions fear what they think is the inner animal nature—the ego-wildness brought about by an undercaring culture. The ego gets big and wild (as in many USians today) from unnestedness.

Indigenous wisdom, in contrast, fears losing the inner animal nature—the instincts and nascent capacity to grow receptive, intuitive intelligence about living well on Earth: Wildness that honors wildness in others.

The knowhow for raising a healthy, peaceful child was lost over generations traumatized by plague, war, burnings of wise old women (‘witches’). Myths and Biblical misinterpretations about spoiling babies justified the ignorance and mistreatment.

The goal of coercive parenting and the neglect of babies is taming the will to obey the outside authority, whether parents, teacher, or authoritarian leader. Domestication.

Hierarchical civilization emerged a few thousand years ago in some parts of the world, breaking our species’ wildness over 95%, timewise, of our existence (300,000 years). However, ecocentric societies, with minimal or no domestication were the majority of societies until recently. Miles Olson (2012) writes:

“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. (Olson, 2012, p. 5).

Domestication is like brain washing. You don’t remember your wildness and you misunderstand it and hate it in others. Wildness needs to be controlled so as not to upset things. (“I will have order,” says Dolores Umbridge of Harry Potter fame). You are part of the megamachine destroying wildness—i.e., Life.

We did not evolve to be domesticated, to suppress the wills and freedom of others, to dominate and control. These are signals of babyhood undercare, unnestedness in childhood and adolescence, and the dysregulation and ego-wilding that result. We become ill from inequality, from unnestedness. Olson says we have collectively gone insane from domestication.

To be eco-wild, we must re-wild: unlearn our conditioning of domestication that slants our worldview, our aims, our behavior. It means “coming to know an unmediated reality, based on real life interaction, empathy and experience” (Olson, 2012, p. 11).

Eco-wilding or re-wilding refers to the return to our human propensities—to be eco-centric and fully potentiated. Urban Scout (2015) gives us a definition:

“Rewilding refers to the action of participating in the social and economic renaissance of humans who use the preexisting social and economic models of our hunter-gatherer-gardener ancestors to recreate the sustainable relationship that humans had with their ecosystems and relatives for millions of years before the recent advent of agriculture, empire, and civilization. (Scout, 2015, p. 4)

But then he revises the definition:

“Rewild, verb: to foster and maintain a sustainable way of life through hunter-gatherer-gardener social and economic systems, including but not limited to the encouragement of social, physical, spiritual, mental, and environmental biodiversity and the prevention and undoing of social, physical, spiritual, mental, and environmental domestication and enslavement.” (Scout, 2015, p. 6)

Lest you have a positive view of civilization as a human advancement, this is his definition of civilization:

“A catastrophe created when a human culture practices full-time agriculture, causing their populations to spiral into a cycle of exponential growth, social hierarchy, soil depletion, and genocidal expansion that leads to an eventual collapse of ecosystems, biological diversity, and culture” (Scout, 2015, p. 37).

Urban Scout tells us that empire forces people into domestication and prevents rewilding. A critical challenge is recognizing the prison the system puts us in:

“As soon as you begin to act outside the system, you are breaking its rules. Being somewhere you do not own or have permission to be is “trespassing,” eating food without paying for it is “stealing,” hunting without the proper license and above the state-sanctioned amount is “poaching,” simply sleeping somewhere is “vagrancy” or “squatting.” Planting a garden in useable, unused space is vandalism as well as trespassing” (Scout, 2015, p. 34).

Prior to the implementation of “private property” in the last millennium, such actions were rarely illegal in the world. In fact, Jesus of Nazareth ‘broke’ all these ‘rules,’ as he was anti-empire.

Civilization keeps going because its myths and structures go largely unchallenged, even in the face of collapse. Technologies trap us with their efficient power while disconnecting from relationship and understanding. From plow to cart, to car to jet. Technology destroys autonomy, making us slaves to the technology and its owners. We could say that technology makes us stupid. “More power plus less understanding equals a world of super-powered, infantile rednecks” (Scout, 2015, p. 28).

We forget how to wander on Earth. We forget how to respond to the allurements of Nature. We forget how to make a living as Earth’s partner instead of dominator. We forget our wild nature.

Civilization believes in ‘eat or be eaten’ but Scout points out that in reality one must nurture the entities on which you rely, or you will die when they die. We have symbiotic relationships with the other-than-humans so we need to learn to tend their lives. On the land we watch over, we encourage the insects with native plants, no-mow May, and song.

Re-wilding is not optional if humans (and many other creatures) are to have a future. We must re-wild, reversing the ongoing onslaught of civilization to domesticate everything. E.O. Wilson wrote that we should set aside half of Earth to remain wild. Certainly, one must learn how to live outside of empire.

As we untether ourselves from domestication, we must realize that our eco-wildness has been underdeveloped. We may feel instead the urges of ego-wildness. That is why we need wise elders to guide us on re-wilding. The elders are all around us in Nature. Finding a sit spot to return to day after day to get acquainted with the life there starts to open us up to re-wilding. Go barefoot. Hug or lean against a tree. Say hello. Listen.

“While industrial society has the collective momentum of nearly seven billion humans, wild aliveness has the collective momentum of everything else in the universe. Tap into that.” (ibid, p. 38)

 

REFERENCES

Bourgeault, C. (2003). The wisdom way of knowing: Reclaiming an ancient tradition to awaken the heart. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

deMause, L. (1995). The history of childhood.: The untold story of child abuse New York, NY: Psychohistory Press.

Loorz, V. (2021). Church of the wild: How Nature invites us into the sacred. Broadleaf Books.

Narvaez, D. (2014). Neurobiology and the development of human morality: Evolution, culture and wisdom. Norton.

Olson, M. (2012). Unlearn, rewild: Earth skills, ideas and inspiration for the future primitive. New Society Publishers.

Olson, M. (2012). Unlearn, rewild: Earth skills, ideas and inspiration for the future primitive. New Society Publishers.

Scout, U. (a.k.a., Peter Bauer) (2015). Rewild or die. Self-published.

Wilson, E.O. (2017). Half earth: Our planet’s fight for life. New York: Liveright.