i'm back! i will hopefully be posting much much more frequently. here is an essay my friend sent to me, i know the feeling, but the state does indeed try to make it impossible as free range organic human blog has pointed out



To be the change we want to see in the world, we are putting effort
towards living life as we see fit. We, as earth, partake in daily
revolution …dramatic, bold, life-changing and cyclical paths around the
sun and we seek a tangible revolution around and in relationship. As we
examine our relationships with each other, other humans, all other
members of the land community and begin to shed the armor of
civilization and feel, again, the actual sensation of being a part and
not apart, we rejoice.

How do we find peace in this world that seems so filled with domination,
fear, dependence and violence? We have learned that peace is not to be
found snug in the confines of our personal fences, in the pages of
magazine, from the flashing lights of the living room box nor in an
empty Coke can, a bottle of Allen’s Coffee Brandy, the last cigarette in
the pack, fast food, the bright lights of the supermarket or the green
fields of a local farm. We have learned to look through, outside of, and
around the edges of ‘this world’. We have seen civilization and
recognize, once and for all, that we are separate from it. Humanity does
not equal civilization. Civilization is our ultimate oppressor and from
within it peace is war and war is peaceful. Woman identified people
become property and dehumanized, demonized and eternally associated with
wildness. The whole of the earth is split, as we are rent from it, and
the left side of the human mind dominates landscapes, ecosystems and
spreads its creations far and wide until we impact it enough that even
we can no longer ignore it. Once this sinks in, this full, tingling
realization that civilization itself is anti-life, one can never be the
same.

As we rewild and return, relearn, unlearn and remember, we heal. We
heal an ancient and forever now relationship. Our sense of self
broadens as we realize we are not our cars, nor the contents of our bank
accounts, we are not our jobs, nor our clothes. And our sense of self
deepens as we realize we are made of wildness. Our hearts are wild; our
bones are wild, self-determining, self-willed, untamed and free. We can
not truly separate ourselves from the ancientness of every atom or the
beat of the drum in our very chests. Mountains and rivers have shaped us
as savannas have too. It is now harder to see where all becomes I and I
becomes all. And thus, we realize we can break ourselves from this
ultimate addiction to civilization and once again, trust earth and trust
ourselves. Letting go of false security and finding true security.
Examining our true human needs and dropping all the ‘but don’t we’
needs. We find peace in community; those direct, buzzing, wild face to
face experiences of a group of others, human and otherwise.
To free ourselves, we see that choosing to move away from the entwined
systems of domination known as domestication is key. Domesticating
others can never be done if we don’t domesticate ourselves. The first
thing colonizers colonize is their own peoples minds. As RedWolfReturns
states “How you get what you need is how you control others and it is
also how you are controlled. Unless this fact is faced and owned,
everything else is self deception.” It becomes possible to even imagine
living without domesticating others, without exploitation, without
control when we see what it does to us, when we see the true cost.
Slaves to wages, gender roles, schools, and hierarchies we can not
imagine life outside of the illusions of success and progress. Sold a
bill of goods that technology and the new priesthood of science will
save us now or in the end. We blindly accept this because we fail to
imagine since our imaginations, which are rooted in the forever wild
-here and now, are stolen from us moment by moment.

Anesthetized by toys, entertainment, drugs and therapy, we spend our
money receiving ultimate lifetime guarantees that we won’t see through
the lie. One fundamental part of the lie is property as freedom. Our
lives are consumed in the service of projects that are not our own in
order to earn money. Since property is defined as a thing and we need
money to purchase it, subsequently freedom lies in things that can be
bought and increases with their accumulation. So, in the lie, we are
free to choose to starve or sell the time of our lives to the highest
bidder. And since we can not move freely, responsible for our own
survival and thriving lives, due to property, we are all slaves in a
system of enclosures. Property creates divisions. It is a social
relationship between things and people and is an institution that could
not exist without the force of the state. This institution makes us work
and pay to reproduce it. We believe, as Wolfi Landstreicher does, that
“All property is ultimately state property since it exists only by
permission and under the protection of the state.” This lie keeps us
from any relationship that is entirely outside of this system of
property or the state. We long for unmediated collaborations,
experiences and connections with others and this includes land.

We seek others, ones…like us… who can never be the same again, to rewild
with, creating community and struggling together to reveal the depth of
our addictions and oppression. And healing from the deepest wounds, laid
bare when we wrench the penetrating claws of civilization from our very
being. In solidarity, with our burning eyes, tearing like from pepper
spray, but truly from opening them for the first time. We seek to
rebuild the inherent trust in ourselves and earth. We seek others who
have armed their desires and are willing to take back their lives moment
by moment.

As freely associating individuals we expect to grow to a size of 35-50
people and not much larger since the potential for direct relationship
will decrease with the abstraction of greater numbers. Self-empowerment
will be the norm rather than the exception. We will have time to share
the wisdom found throughout the real world as we forage and hunt within
an ancient/new relationship, a gifting relationship. Gender roles will
be abandoned as we realize our full potential as whole human beings
forever immersed in all that has recently been separated as feminine and
masculine and judged. Our internalized judge and jury will be banished
as our hearts grow, fed by passionate connections. We will find
compassion for ourselves. Rewilding and healing are two words with
direct relationship. The amazing healing power of our natural bodies
being fed by natural diets and relationships will again become the
central focus of health. No longer will disempowering institutions of
medicine keep us from taking direct responsibility. There will no longer
be experts to rely on. There will be little, if any, distinction
between healer and patient. Our direct, unmediated relationship with
plant allies will be part of our healing.

The coming world changes can paralyze us with fear and despair, but, as
someone has said, the antidote for despair is action. The life of our
desires just so happens to provide us with the adaptability to survive.
Since no intertwined multi-layered human created and controlled systems
of extraction, production, consumption, exploitation and domination are
necessary to meet our needs, technology can be replaced by tools. Tools
are created and maintained by an individual or a small group of
individuals with materials found at hand, used and then dropped out of
hand to return fully to the totality of creation.
As we remember what it is exactly to be human, one among many, never
again will we romanticize the misanthropy of civilization and we will
not forget that it is red in tooth and claw and that within it our lives
are nasty, brutish and short.

The vision for this community both excites me and scares me. I am
excited because if this vision comes to fruition I will have been a part
of something big, something life changing, Earth-changing and
relationship changing. I know that in this experience I will “come
home,” that scattered pieces of me will collect themselves, reconnect,
and I will feel completely whole again. I know that I have been missing
my tribe for so long-lifetimes long and my soul has mourned for its loss
of connection to the whole, as my mind has lived the life I have been
told is “normal.” This “normal” life never fulfilled me, not even for a
moment, there has always been something missing.
I filled this void with the same things my family did, with food,
school, clothes, toys, gifts, television, and with the hopes of
financial freedom so that I can lead a “decent” life. It’s all an
illusion though. I was taught to value things and have dreams that
didn’t contribute to a life of communion with the Earth that I am made
up of. I was taught that technology was the way. I was told not to get
dirty. Eventually as I got older I just wanted to stay inside and watch
life happen on TV, even though it only portrayed an illusion of life, I
didn’t question much. I was a good slave, a servant, and a consumer for
the bill of goods the advertisers sold me. I allowed them to take away
my dignity and I believed their lies that told me that I am not good
enough just the way I am. I sold myself, no questions asked. My
lifestyle also helped to sell out the Earth.
I have taken more than I have given to the Earth. I know this now but
I used to be asleep. It was easier to be asleep, or to think I was the
truth is that I was in denial of my participation on this Earth. I was
aware of changes occurring in the environment but I wasn’t honestly
looking at how I contributed to them. I thought it was someone else’s
problem but now I realize how my negligence has helped to create massive
dis-ease to this planet, and my soul.
Now I see the Earth, my home, my creator, crumbling before my eyes. I
realize that I’ve brought two children into the world and that we may
all be suffering due to low oxygen, polluted water, lack of food and
competing with others for these needs to be met someday. I cannot
change what has been done but I can make better choices now. It isn’t
easy though because I am sick. I have been bitten and partially
devoured by civilization. I have been tainted and I’ve passed my
addictions down to my children. I feel scared to face the truth, to
change because the claws of civilization are so deep in my flesh that it
hurts to move.
Every moment that I look away from the materialistic world that tells me
I am not good enough unless I buy their products, I get a little
stronger. The addictions are so powerful though that thinking of giving
them all up and living with the contents of my backpack, the clothes and
shoes on my body and the knowledge of how to make the things I need to
survive scares me so much.
I will be giving up the illusion that I had a position of value in
society, I will become one who is truly different. Instead of looking
clean in decent clothing with my hair and face well kept, I will come to
town in buckskin clothing that I made myself, and my valuables for trade
in my handmade birchbark basket. I will smell like an animal because I
won’t smell like perfume or deodorant, I will smell like me. My smell,
my hairy legs and armpits and my buckskins will divide me from the
onlookers but I will feel unified with my natural world. As the
onlookers talk of me on their cell phones and get into their plastic and
metal cars I will walk away to go tell my friends, my tribe, in person
what I saw that day. As those same onlookers go to the grocery store to
purchase their products wrapped in plastic and cardboard made in who
knows where and drink their Pepsi’s I will re-enter the woods. I will
stop along my walk home to occasionally eat wild edibles and drink my
lovely water. As they go home to cook their supper on their electric
stoves, wash their dishes with instant hot water, turn on their lights,
and settle down for their evening shows I will cook wild caught or
roadkill meat, and dumpstered veggies over the fire and clean up with
water we heated in a clay pot we made. Then I will relax into the
evening as the sky turns gently from light to dark and feel the rapture
of the firelight in front of me. I will feel joy with my tribe near me
as we tell tales and make music, real, live music. I will have been a
part of my world and not just a spectator oblivious to the resources I
could have used without a care.
This is the life I want to live. Am I there yet? No. How long until I
get there? I don’t know. I know that I feel sick at my daily
participation in the ills of this Earth and yet I feel some fear at
changing myself. I have always had a position of acceptance in my
society because I have followed the normal expectations and I feel
nervous to step into new territory even though I believe it is the way
for me. I face rejection from my family, my friends, my children,
society and on the other hand I face a freedom that I know will feel so
sweet. I will not ignore the delicious consequences of a life lived in
community. Besides, there are others like me who are leading very
different lives. I will be creating a new family. I will be helping to
create a community with shared values and the intention to support each
other while also supporting the Earth, our mother, our life force, us,
me. I will have come home.