The Language of Rewilding
Because of my recent radical change in how I make my living, I have now arrived at the extreme end of the philosophy that I began toying with over a decade now. When I first began learning traditional living skills and native-to-place relationships (at the time, at Tom Brown’s Tracker School, back in 1995), I thought language had little or nothing to do with this path. I saw the work on this path consisting of action, not talk. Skills, not discussion. A knife carving into wood, an antler point twisting flakes off the edge of an obsidian flake, not conversation and reflection (and music, and feasting, but more on that for another time).
Cognitive scientists are more and more confirming the everyday empirical evidence accumulated by anyone paying attention; that how we talk about things drives how we think about things. What you won’t hear from scientists quite yet, but I will happily share, concerns the everyday practicality of language. If we can talk about a thing (say, tracking) easily, we can collaborate on it and improve it easily. If we can only talk about a thing with difficulty, we will collaborate and improve with difficulty. Anyone who has ever improvised a technical jargon for a hobby or past-time knows this.
Yet this understanding doesn’t just apply to new coinings for particular tools or methods for niche activities (say, the equipment and techniques necessary for paragliding). This doesn’t just involve technical jargons, but our ability to talk about the world in useful ways.
How we talk about time, space, agency, roles, and relationships, in modern languages such as Chinese, English, French, Russian – does this support richer lives, on a human (rather than industrial or hierarchical) scale? Does this help us understand root causes of social problems, and move towards healing? How does the Hopi concept of Manifested/Unmanifested time, for example, change the richness of relationships in human/wild communities, as opposed to the Indo-European concept of Past/Present/Future?
When I say “richness”, I mean viable human wealth, not the material kind, but the kind that sustains generations of human beings in a web of relatedness to the living community around them.
You can imagine the implications of losing over half the world’s remaining 7000 languages within the century, as you think about these issues.
A skilled flintknapper can make amazing lithic tools, such as arrowheads, every bit as beautiful as one you would find still anciently lying in the earth. Yet the language for speaking about this act, making that arrowhead, and giving it as a gift for the food of the animal’s body, we cannot reproduce in English, without tremendous insight and effort.
I don’t say it cannot be done (neither Edward Sapir nor Benjamin Lee Whorf proposed the misnamed Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, crafted by linguists in the mid-twentieth century, proposing that language limits thinking; rather they believed that language drives and powerfully influences our ability to think about the world). Instead, I say our language provides an enormous impediment for us to wrestle it into saying something meaningful, against the coding of all its grammar and idiom. It wants us to think (and therefore do) what will perpetuate and generate the world we see – the “civilized world”.
Don’t waste my time. The past is the past. We are all one. Be a winner, don’t be a loser. Let’s evolve to the next stage of human progress.
What on earth do these things even mean? Note how you can barely tell whether a Christian fundamentalist, a Buddhist, or a pagan New-Ager said these things. I stand in awe of the ability of English (and other modern languages) to keep us thinking the same old things, revolution after revolution.
At the very least, we have a tremendous amount to learn from non-Indo-european (and non-”civilized”) languages, in order to wrestle these issues in our modern mother tongues. Indigenous languages represent an unbroken tradition of human brilliance (what did indigenous “rocket scientist”-type minds do 30,000 years ago? or today, in the indigenous communities where they still live? certainly not just build a more effective friction fire kit, or knap a better arrowhead, but far more than our modern minds can imagine).
For this reason, I’ve dedicated my adult life to helping revitalize endangered languages. Along with my partner in this endeavor, I’ve made it my goal to turn around the world endangered language crisis within the decade. I look forward to the day when I can turn my attention to other issues, but for now, I can’t imagine more important work than the work of helping to revitalize the indigenous soul, around the world.
October 26th, 2010 at 4:05 pm
I really don’t know what to say, or how to say this. I shouldn’t come here, but I have to.
Sometimes one just has to speak. But how can I speak since I only speak in the language that you state is a deviation from reality, and cuts me off from a reality I only know? I have also collapsed and fallen apart due to the words that other rewilders have stated, but I cannot name them here because I do not want to upset them or make them mad either.
Your words and ideas have, basically, driven me mad. They have made me unable to function, or to live my life. I have been throwing up food, had migraine headaches, and, possessed by your words, unable to function or do anything. I used to write novels for people with autism, and I used to speak about autism. Yet I cannot speak anymore because you have told me that my language deviates from reality. Yet my language is the only way I can speak, as my autism has made my brain unable to learn or speak any language except modern English. I cannot learn a local pidgin or another jargon any more than I have ever been able to learn Spanish or Latin, two civilized languages I attempted to learn while in school yet failed miserably.
I cannot rewild either. It just does not appeal to me, or make me any happier. I feel as if due to my autism, I could not live anywhere except in civilization. In addition, I live in a family of civilization lovers. They love civilization, and they view all rewilders as psychotic, imblanaced people.
So how can I live? Knowing that I must rewild and learn another language or a way to speak a language, yet due to my disability called autism I cannot, or die. My identity lies within civilization, as a person who works with other people with autism. I used to be a traveler, traveling around the country speaking on autism. Now I cannot speak without falling apart because I cannot speak without using Modern English. Nor can I write due to the claim I have been told that writing inherently deadens.
I have been unable to write anything successfully in E-Prime. I rely on the verb “to be” to communicate the messages I wish to speak, as well as with nouns. Without nouns, I feel like I am doing something blindlessly because someone has told me I must to live, yet my soul and self uses nouns.
Likewise, I have done research on Native American languages and discovered that in fact, many of them have nouns, and many languages you have stated here that supposedly are all verb-based seem to have a collection of nouns distinguishes as “animate” and “inanimate” nouns. Likewsie, many languages also have familial terms, despite the claim you make. And why wouldn’t they. In a place that values Family, as you speak, why is it, as you once pointed out, pointless for a “mother” to identify her child as a “son” or “daughter?” Would that not more important in a place that values Family?
My self lies within what you call “domestication.” What you call being domestication, I call my soul and my self. Why must it be such a bad thing? Rewilding to me does not free me from anything, it just separates me from my Family, a Family that loves me and cares for me, a Family I love, a Family that gives me my food, clothing and shelter, as I cannot live independently, despite being in my twenties, due to my autism. It also suspends me from my self. To rewild would sever me from my Family, as they would not join me in any endeavors to live in any form of wilderness. They believe in civilization, and believe the unsustainability of civilization as mere bullshit. I personally choose not to believe in the unsustainability of anything, or that nouns, or “to be” refer to bad things, as to believe in the unsustainability of something seems to close your mind.to a possiblity that the truth might differ.
If I believed in the unsustainability of civilization, then I would close my mind to the possibility of its sustainability, believe myself to have Cosmic, unchanging Fact. Besides, I would sever all ties with Family, and even my Community.
I have written enough. I must cough and collapse in bed, waiting for what must be said.
October 29th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
James,
Your new comment surprises me as I was under the impression that you found a lot of relief and clarity in the “observational” mode, as opposed to the “factual” mode.
Though I feel passionate and confident about my experiences, I am not an authority on anyone else’s, including yours. I encourage you to make the decisions that will give you the richest life possible.
I’ve appreciated your thoughts here, and it sounds like this is no longer a healthy place for you. I wish you the best of luck in choosing the life that’s in accord with what you need and with your values of family.
yrs,
Willem
October 30th, 2010 at 9:52 am
Thanks, Willem.
I did feel comfortable. And it was precisely for this reason that I suffered this ailment. See, the “observational” mode that I went under put me through a paradox in that it made me no longer able to understand clearly what was being written here. You see, although I have read on many websites the arguments of primitivists, my observations always were totally the opposite than what primtivists told me. I would hear stories about civilization’s inherent unsustainability, yet shut the computer off, go into my community, and find no evidence based on my sensual experience. My town prospers despite the ills of this world and the ills of domestication. My observational mode also tells me that the environmental damage I hear so much in the world doesn’t exist as well, and that my approach toward language is to redefine my words, rather than change them. This is also the mode of my Family. That is my reality–living in civilization, hearing about the unsustainability of it yet not experiencing it myself. Hearing about the perceptions of indigenous societies and their abilities to communicate with plants and animals, yet not experiencing that myself in my own observational mode.
This website told me that my language was domesticating and unrealistic to the world, which is your observation–an observation that I understand your passion toawrds and respect. Truthfully, I value the “observational” mode so much. Thank you so much for being understanding of me. However, this mode has shown me that I see a world totally different than yours, or other primitivists such as Jason, Ran, Urban Scout, and others. I respect your confidence and passion–my autism takes me onto passionate things as well!
Please erase the two comments on the other post–they were posted due to a glitch on a public computer, if you can. I’m not here to troll or anything–I’m just a young man trying to figure things out.
I must live my life the way I see fit. Albus Dumbeldore once said in Harry Potter, “A parting of the ways must occur in which two people need to act as they see fit, but agree to disagree.” Thank you so much for understanding what I’m going through.
November 1st, 2010 at 6:13 pm
James,
If I had the experiences that I hear you having, I think I might arrive at the same conclusion as you! I feel very glad that you have come to a clearer sense of the most satisfying life for you.
I would feel very disappointed in myself if I judged you based on whether or not we agree, rather than respecting your decision to walk the unique path that belongs you. Good luck with everything.
yrs,
Willem
November 2nd, 2010 at 9:51 am
Good luck with you too, Willem. Thanks. I think primarily what caused me this despair was reading primitivists who were adamant about defending their ideas, yet having totally different experiences. I’m not going to name any names, though, since I know you’re friends with many of them and respect them too, and they don’t just refer to Jason or David Abram or Ran Prieur, I’ve had to deal with the cognitive dissonance of reading others as well.
Thank you for your respect.
November 4th, 2010 at 7:20 am
One more thing–with your guidance, I now enjoy and love the time I spend with my Family. My Family, whether or not they enjoy civilization and disagree with what you and other primitivists like Ran, Jason, Derrick Jensen, and others say, but they still are my Family, and they love and care for me.
November 4th, 2010 at 8:29 am
And, another thing, sorry for not putting this into one comment, but–I will say, just as many would die to protect their family, as you’ve said, I realize that if I must die in civilization to stay with my Family, I would, as I do love them very much.