Beautiful Men in Buckskin: 2

So I thought I'd start off this entry by maybe explaining a little about why I'm so into the whole rewilding thing. I've been checking out videos on YouTube and MySpace about rewilding and the majority are men ranting about the fall of civilization and how we need to be prepared for that, and how those who have these skills will be able to live, while those who don't will perish. I think this is a big bunch of who-ha.

Civilization, or at least Western Civilization, as we know it, is definately on it's way out. This seems obvious to me. Oil is all but gone, we haven't built replacement technology fast enough to have another energy source, we are headed towards a terrible food crisis, clean water is all but gone, even forests are all but gone. Basically, we've used everything up.

But the way I see it, it isn't going to be like one day people who've learned rewilding are gonna see all of this happening and move out into what is left of the woods and live happily ever after, while everyone else starves and/or becomes cannibals. No, saying this is foolish-talk. I think, the way things are gonna go down is sorta like this:

1) At first, people will do their best to adapt to the oil/food/water crisis; they will develop a village mindset and travel by bike and eat locally and stop mowing their yards, and grow foods in their yards instead. Things will still be bearable, despite the lack of toxin-free water (I mean, this is already a reality,) and people will say "whew, despite the oil crash and the global stock-market crash, we're ok..." All of this is starting to happen as we speak.

2) As the water supply issue grows, and cities have less and less money to repair sewage systems, water lines, etc, epidemic diseases will start running rampid. Disease will kill lots and lots of people, regardless of whether they learned rewilding or not. This too, is starting to happen, even in Portland, where old sewage systems are too expensive to replace in this economy, so sewage regularly contaminates groundwater. Portland certainly isn't the only city on earth where this has become a major issue.

3) As more and more people die of epidemic disease, the economy will decline even further, since there will no longer be the manpower to work the factories, mines, farms, schools, universities, plants, etc that are necessary to keep an economy going. Nothing will be maintained anymore; roads and buildings will be abandoned and falling apart as the population declines. This is the point where rewilding might be useful to the remaining folks....but even living in the woods will not be a joyful Garden-of-Eden experience at this point; polluted water and lack of natural habitat will make it really hard to survive.

So yes, rewilding is a useful tool, but only to those who manage to survive all of the coming chaos. I am certainly not one of those rewilders who gleefully looks forward to the crash of civilization; I see it as being a very dark, unpleasant part of human history. I don't look forward to the bad water, the chaos, the looting, the violence, the possible cannibalism. I don't look forward to losing my creature-comforts, such as safety, security and a full belly at the end of the day, much less the loss of showers, libraries, pizza, paved roads, being able to travel to the East Coast from time to time to see my family, vaccines, emergency rooms and things like that. I think we are perched on the edge of a very scary and dangerous time and I'm very apprehensive. I think, however, this is the only way the earth is going to recover from the damage we've caused. So there is no point in whining; we need to learn to be adaptable and do the best we can in the situations we are given.

Love,
Carrot