Rewilding v. Progress

I have been getting a lot of excellent feedback from the writing I’ve been sending out.

Multiple people want there to be a discussion feature of some sort. I agree with this.

The ideas I’m sharing are jumping off points. They are by no means complete. If we’re going to be successful in applying them, they need developed. We have to continue to build on the narrative and see where it leads.

That is a community effort.

I have not figured out what that discussion forum will look like. I know that I do not want it to be a comments section under the posts. This format rarely leads to community discussion, the commenters rarely end up engaging with each other.

I will work on this. I want to, because some of the things I’ve been sent are too good to leave sitting in my own inbox.

Take this, for example:

Really liked the rewilding explanation. What jumped out at me was the realization that we are in community and because of our potential of dominance over community, we better use that power/knowledge to understand our place (co-creators) to be appropriate stewards of the natural order instead of being selfish and greedy. Just a thought. It would be interesting if you could put links in at the end of article to either comment to you or enter into a blog. Within your article, you could also lead readers to a future podcast where you would further discuss the concepts within the article.

Also, an interesting spinoff article would be to delve into how to balance rewilding and progress. Many times progress which of course denotes positivity when in practice can potentially abuse the natural order.

What is our role as good stewards? Do we permit a domesticated animal its place in rewilding? Meaning, if we appeal to our neighbor to keep his bird dog fed so the dog doesn't raid our flocks; can we remove the dog or do we plan/permit that activity. Margaret, the oldest member of Twin Lakes community gardening was also born and raised on a farm. As the steward of her plot, she applied the 33 % rule. Her efforts provided for her harvest to be divided into thirds. 1/3 to critters, 1/3 to other humans (permission or not / shared or stolen)and 1/3 for your own sustenance.

Also your thoughts lead me to Alfred North Whitehead and process philosophy.

What a great set of thoughts those are! They all come from my dad, and I'm looking forward to discussing them.

Let’s start with the balancing of rewilding and progress.

I see what you are saying about progress abusing the natural order. I think this abuse occurs when the “progress” is the result of managing for a local optimum somewhere downstream from the overall whole that nature is. I have mentioned this before, but when you are managing a complex system, the system suffers if you optimize for the performance of a part of the whole that is the system.

This is a concept that I want to delve into more. To understand what we’re doing, you have to understand the difference between complex and complicated systems, and you have to understand what I mean by managing for local optimums. This really is a whole post though. You should read “The Goal” by Eliyahu Goldratt too, it’s a great book.

In regards to rewilding and progress, I think that rewilding is progress once you shift the paradigm and begin managing for the good of the whole system.

If you more specifically meant technological progress, I do not think that rewilding is anti-technology. I think we need to be very careful about using technology well, and I think that many of the current ways technology is integrated into our lives are sub-optimal - but there are also tons of exciting and good ways to use technology to make our lives better.

I really like Margaret’s philosophy that you shared.

It reminds me of what Jim Rohn taught about the Sower and the Seed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVxA7V3FHII

It’s really a totally different lesson, but it’s a good one none the less. I recommend watching it. I’m glad I just listened. It was a good reminder that sometimes things don’t work out, but trying to make sense of it isn’t a good way to spend time. Keep planting more seeds, and eventually some are going to pay off.

I suppose that’s part of what we’re doing here. Each one of these posts and each one of the things you guys send back is a seed, who knows what it will grow into.

Thank you for all the support so far.

If you’ve read this far and you haven’t subscribed yet, please do that so that you’ll get an automatic email each time I put something out there for thought and discussion.

Oh, and by the way, I can’t wait to dig into and discuss Alfred North Whitehead more. We can add “where Philosophy meets farming” to the masthead soon.

Life is good!

Next: Reversing The Slow Descent of Thought Towards the Inactive Coommonplace