Wild

Wildness is the natural free state of all living entities. The foundations of civilization gave rise to a state of being alternative to wildness: domestication. This is to become enslaved, caged, tamed, or put under the control of others. Human beings not only domesticated plants and animals, but by establishing complex hierarchical social systems such as political states and religions they domesticated themselves. No longer free to forage their food and water needs from the wild, they became dependent on governments and economic systems to fulfill their needs. This mediation between human beings and wild life sacrificed their autonomy and intuitive connections to the world with the rise of artifical environments and landscapes.

Democracy and captialism are currently the most successful manifestations of civilization owing to their deceptiveness. While fascism and monarchies are blatantly oppressive to the masses, democracy and captialism are more subtle. They provide their adherents with the "freedom" to vote between plutocrat A and plutocrat B, the "freedom" to choose between product A and product B, thereby invoking a sense of free will in the citizen. What those who claim to be "free" are overlooking is their utter dependence on this massive unsustainable system for survival. They are dependent on the cash economy for food, clothing, water, shelter, everything. They are free to roam about in their cages changing the decor and occupying themselves with material goods and prescription drugs, but they would not last a week in the wilderness, like a helpless poodle. We see Christianity as the most widespread of the spiritual systems of control due to its emphasis on conversion and acquisition of others into its clutches. Missionaries travel to remote islands because they are convinced that they are saving the souls of heathens. It is the same story as the European conquest of the Americas: the insistence of civilized people that their one way of life is superior to all other lifeways and that they are fit to rule the Earth. Our culture is founded on a vision of homogenization and conquest, currently manifested in globalization. Read the book Ishmael for a terse explanation of how things came to be the way they are.

Civilization

I feel that most people can acknowledge that the global ecosystem is currently overstressed and unhealthy without having to run off the laundry list of environmental problems. The source of this global illness happens to be human civilization. Civilization is a recent trend in the species; humans existed as nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers for some 2 million years (99% of their history) before the domestication of plants and other animals came about just 10,000 years ago. This advent caused drastic changes giving rise to hierarchy and politics, organized religion and warfare, imprisonment and enslavement, advanced technology, and severe environmental degradation. Agriculture (domestication) did not coincide with an advance in human intellect as the civilized culture would have you believe. Rather, it was simply a good adaptation in a few environments where hunting and gathering was marginal. It is not a good adaptation across the globe, as we can see the catastrophic results today. The reason it is so widespread and there are only a scattered handful of h/g's in remote locations today is because it is rooted in domination and control. Therefore, it spreads like a virus. "Civilization is something which was imposed on a resisting majority by a minority which understood how to obtain possession of the means of power and coercion." -Freud. It is not the species Homo sapiens that is out of balance, it is the culture that a select group of Homo sapiens have created and spread across the planet that is responsible for the social and ecological nightmares we see today (genocides, global warming, etc.).

The fundamental problem with this culture is that it is founded in the domination of fellow lifeforms. Its adherents are raised on the perspective that the other 10 million species of life on the planet are not animate beings to be respected but rather lifeless commodities to be utilized for the good of society. It is a culture based on separation, isolation, and alienation from the community of Life which we evolved in for 3 billion years. The problem this culture of arrogance is running into today is that it really is not separate; it is subject to the laws of ecology like everything else on Earth. No matter how alienlike cities and farms appear on the landscape their air, water, and fuel come from the Earth. Homo sapiens is not meant to rule the Earth; no species or deity is. Yet those who cling to "hope" and "faith" in the collapse of civilization actually continue to believe they can run the planet. Here's an interesting video on the subject of collapse.

Life

Greetings. I am an ecologist. I study the interactions of species on Earth. This blog will examine the ecology of one particularly peculiar species that has recently caused profound changes in its habitat. This species, like many other vertebrate animals, possesses a brain that controls a central nervous system. What's interesting about this species' brain is that it has given rise to a mind that enables a very different form of perception. This unique perception allows for very complex processing. I am referring of course to consciousness in the third chimpanzee Homo sapiens. Before I go any further I want to make it clear that consciousness probably isn't all that unique to Homo sapiens. It is almost certain that cousins Pan troglodytes and Pan paniscus possess minds that are similar to human consciousness. Nor is consciousness restricted to this mammalian lineage, it is also present in birds, most notably certain corvids. Furthermore, I want to make it clear that there is nothing about consciousness that entitles those species that possess it to assume superiority over those without it. My reasoning for biotic equality is simple: all species are descendants of a single cell some 3-4 billion years ago, therefore all extant species have technically lived and survived throughout all these billions of years in the form of organisms they evolved from. No single evolutionary mechanism (i.e. photosynthesis, asexual reproduction, digestion, consciousness) can be considered "better" than another. Life is simply an organism's adaptation to its environment, so any given trait (like consciousness) is merely one of the myriad of successful adaptations to a given environment. Also, all Life is connected so that it forms multiple ecosystems comprising the global ecosystem. Ecosystems are extremely complex networks of interaction that depend on diversity. Given that a. No species is superior to another and b. Ecosystems rely on diversity, it follows that whatever disrupts this natural balance is evolutionarily unstable and subject to inevitable collapse.