Image Vs. Rewilding

I get made fun of for looking like a hipster all the time. I care a lot about my image and I feel no guilt or lack of purity for feeling that way. I take showers, I shave, I dress in clothes that I think look cool and match the aesthetic I see as “hip.” Of course, any group of culture or sub-culture has their specific way of dress that allows people to recognize which culture or sub-culture a person belongs to. Image reflects your culture. It does not define it.

I’ve noticed many people, including myself become wrapped up in the idea that because many indigenous cultures had sustainable subsistence strategies that means all of their customs will work for everyone. Though I’ve found it easy to jump to this conclusion as I rewild, I have also found it more and more limiting; just because native cultures did it, doesn’t mean it will work for us people-who-rewild.

I can hear the conversation with my mom in my head. It goes like this:

“Peter, why do you wear that loin cloth, you just look ridiculous in it!”

“Mooooom! I told you, when I wear the loin cloth call me Urban Scout! You’ll embarrass me!”

“Oh, oh… Sorry honey.”

“I wear it because primitive peoples do, and I want to live like them.”

“Okay ‘Scout,’ and if primitive people jumped off a bridge…? I mean what do you plan to practice next, Cannibalism?!?”

“Of course not,” and then under my breath, “…I mean, not yet.”

“What did you say?”

“Huh?”

“That last part? Did you say something else?”

“What? Oh I just mean, yeah totally. No, What?”

“Huh? Oh, Not. Nothing. I thought you said something.”

“Nope.”

“Okay, but do you see what I mean? Just because some primitive people wore a loin cloth doesn’t mean you have to too.”

But seriously, I see this everywhere. It seems many people have begun to generalize indigenous customs, “indigenous peoples did X,” to justify their own. I even found this when I recently read the Crimethinc “Hunter-Gatherer” zine. Don’t get me wrong, I love Crimethinc and I enjoyed the majority of the zine. But I couldn’t help but feel extremely irritated with the following text:

One Million Years of d.i.y. punk!

For over 50,000 years, our ancestors didn’t shave their legs or armpits or wear deodorant. They scavenged food like modern trash-pickers do, traveled like hitchhikers riding rivers and hopping ocean currents around the world, celebrated life with folk music made by their friends, passed down culture they devised. You bet some of them had dreadlocks, some homemade tattoos and scarification, some patches proclaiming their allegiances.

There used to be as many humans as there are punk rockers, now.

“See how cool we… look. See our dreds? Smell our B.O.? See how we “forage” in dumpsters? Don’t we just act sooo indigenous/primitive!”

Why does this paragraph frustrate me so much? Two reasons.

1. To make the generalizing statement, “For over 50,000 years our ancestors didn’t shave their legs or wear deodorant,” implies that all indigenous cultures didn’t have beautification rituals that involved hair removal and body scenting. That doesn’t hold true at all, since we know many cultures, i.e. the Iroquois, plucked all of their body hair using clam shells. Also, we know indigenous people scent themselves with things like lavender, rosemary, etc. I guess the statement above probably holds true in one sense; they didn’t use the industrial produced Mach3 razor or Teen Spirit. But the comment, in the context with the other general statements makes it clear the author wants to justify why so many DIY punk kids stink and have hairy bodies.

You know the kids with the hippie “natural” look? In reality it has nothing to do with a “natural” look, since we know that many “natural” human cultures had highly maintained beautification. It really translates to the “no maintenance” look. They stink, have scraggly beards or leg hair, shaggy, nappy hair, with raggedy clothes hanging off their bodies by a thread. They might live on the anarcho-punk end of the spectrum or the pacifist-hippie end, they may wear all black, with dirt smears on their face and have steal-toed boots (how did they pay for those?!?) or they may have patchy, colorful chords with overly-large, tie dye shirts and hemp sandals.

The funniest part to me about the “no maintenance” look involves how much maintenance it actually takes! Seriously, I know because I used to dress that way for a time. It takes a lot of work to look like you don’t care. So why not look like you do care, since you obviously care a lot? Why do you want to look like you do not care? Does looking like you don’t care make you cool or something?

2. The second reason I feel frustrated comes from this misinformation presenting a superficial reason for rewilding. It distracts us from the important reasons we yearn for the indigenous lifestyle; meeting the needs of the environment, culture and individual. What makes the indigenous lifestyle attractive in the most general sense, does not involve their rituals, style of dress, level of cleanliness, sexual practices, etc. By contaminating the mythology and taking us away from the subsistence strategies of indigenous people, to the more superficial layer of image, we find ourselves never fully getting what we need. No number of sweat lodges or dreadlocks or home-made folk songs will give us the subsistence strategy of hunting and gathering that meets the needs of all three elements mentioned above. They may keep those strategies alive once practiced, but they don’t act as the strategies themselves.

Picking trash carries the same spirit as indigenous foragers, (living in the hands of the gods) but not the same function in terms of meeting the needs of the environment; picking trash does not make the ecosystem healthier because the mechanisms that create the trash in the first place come from the larger destructive culture. While it may feel better than working as a slave in the pyramid, it does not help the ecosystem the way a hunter-gatherer culture would.

Both of these irritations create a “radder than thou” personification of those in the anarcho-primitivist-punk scene. “We act sooo much more primitive than you do, with your clean shaven face, pressed slacks, and pop music collection.” Basically it amounts to scenester trash. It only serves to alienate other people to the true ideology of indigenous living because of its falsified, superficial layer of a appearance. If the culture of anarcho-primitivism involves having repugnant dreadlocks and noxious armpits, you can count me out!

Wearing buckskin clothes or a loin cloth doesn’t make you a native. Wearing all black and dreadlocks doesn’t make you more anarcho-primitivist than wearing American Apparel. Rewilding refers to an action like running or climbing, it does not have a specific image; anyone, from any sub-culture can rewild. It works as a cross-cultural activity… Like reading, cooking, or talking. Therefore it may look completely different to one culture or sub-culture to the next. It works better this way because diverisity helps rewilding stay alive and take different shapes.

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