For The Wild - MILES OLSON on Making a Life in Wild Places ⧸20

00:00:00.000 It's high on a mountain, the warm winds are blowing, and where the winds are blowing to,

00:00:26.400 There ain't no way of knowing

00:00:29.400 The mountain grass is short

00:00:32.680 It's dry and close to burning

00:00:35.440 Crying out for water

00:00:38.680 As the season's turning

00:00:41.800 Sweet smell the pines

00:00:46.720 Tall western cedar

00:00:48.360 Drifting on the wind

00:00:51.840 Through the mountains like a river

00:00:54.420 I've been too long away from this wild open sky

00:01:05.660 On the concrete trails that whine

00:01:07.820 Through the candles dark and white

00:01:10.580 The sounds of people talking

00:01:13.420 Words of blue and gray

00:01:16.880 Smells of doors and windows

00:01:19.640 Hello, my name is Ayanna Young

00:01:22.380 and I welcome you to Unlearn and Rewild, where we explore radical ideas relating to earth renewal.

00:01:30.740 Today we're talking with the eloquent young visionary Miles Olson, who is living an ongoing

00:01:36.660 experiment in rewilding. Miles has spent the past decade deeply immersed in learning and

00:01:42.680 practicing earth skills. While foraging, hunting, gardening, and gathering for his livelihood,

00:01:49.160 His experiences have given him a unique perspective on rewilding,

00:01:53.340 radical self-reliance, and the impact of civilization on the natural world.

00:01:58.760 With any luck, he'll be taking us through the underpinnings of the existential crisis we are experiencing.

00:02:04.940 It's an honor that the radio show has the same name as Miles' first book, Unlearn, Rewild.

00:02:10.760 Although I wasn't aware of the book while brainstorming the show,

00:02:14.260 synchronicity is not necessarily coincidence.

00:02:17.360 And I think many of us are yearning for something along those lines.

00:02:21.160 There's a deep collective desire to uncondition ourselves

00:02:24.700 from the psychological wounds of civilized captivity

00:02:27.360 and to resurrect a real relationship with nature.

00:02:46.520 hello miles welcome to the show how's it going gosh i'm just excited to finally speak with you

00:02:55.860 about some heavyweight material you know it always comes down to the question of human nature

00:03:02.040 so much rides on what the natural behavior of a homo sapien really is is it pointless to dream of

00:03:10.480 an ecotopian post-civilizational world at this point as we are so deep into this other competitive

00:03:18.520 aggressive model? I mean do you think humanity is inherently destructive or is there an origin

00:03:24.800 to this behavioral pattern that we can speculate about? That's a complicated question because

00:03:30.380 there's so many levels to it but I think that basically the way that we can define human

00:03:35.500 consciousness is it's kind of abstracted from the whole where other animals and plants and fungi

00:03:43.500 and insects and rocks and ocean everything exists in this unified whole human consciousness has got

00:03:52.760 this little schism from it and i think that's existed for a really long time i think that it

00:03:57.580 predates fire and agriculture and those things those are physical manifestations of that kind of

00:04:04.580 deep fractured consciousness that we have that sees you know we see ourselves separate we have

00:04:12.260 this ability to see ourselves as separate and therefore we enforce that physically and that's

00:04:18.540 the world that we have right is is this world where we exist in alienation from the whole

00:04:24.040 a lot of people speak about agriculture as a huge shift and what has created civilization and

00:04:31.920 potentially what created this power struggle which has then caused this type of destruction

00:04:38.060 that we're living in now yeah and i talk about that in in the book fire happened before agriculture

00:04:45.580 and i mean no other other creatures use fire and it's something that completely altered the way

00:04:52.460 that we interact with the environment and and the level of kind of separation from the web of life

00:04:57.960 that we could take but i i would say that those things are are just surface manifestations of an

00:05:04.440 internal process there you know there's a shift in perception and then it manifests you know we

00:05:11.800 start treating the land differently if there's a man that sees women as lacking sentience or

00:05:19.720 whatever and just treats them like a slave the perception informs how their actions manifest

00:05:26.180 so I would say that the first thing that happened is that humans have this shift in their psyche

00:05:33.700 and then slowly we have these interesting behaviors anomalies as far as the rest of

00:05:40.780 nature is concerned like starting fires and starting farming and then all these other

00:05:46.400 things like we started making art along with farming and it's kind of the essential spark

00:05:53.740 that lights us up you know for a lot of people it's like art is something that ignites their

00:06:00.240 curiosity and their questioning and their their path into finding out who they really are but art

00:06:06.620 didn't exist when humans didn't farm and when humans lived like super simple egalitarian hunter

00:06:13.480 gatherer lifestyles and that's because art again follows the shift in consciousness that farming

00:06:21.400 comes out of like a spider doesn't make paintings um because they don't have a broke they're not

00:06:29.720 living in a fractured world where you could separate things and and have art here and then

00:06:35.480 life there they they weave a web and it's this beautiful thing but it's intertwined with their

00:06:39.680 life you know a spider doesn't have a religion but they live a really sacred life

00:06:45.580 the devotion to the to the life force or whatever is unquestionable but uh humans develop religion

00:06:57.060 along with agriculture and and humans develop government and social structure and and gender

00:07:04.140 roles and all this stuff there's certain cultures where that stuff didn't exist so much where humans

00:07:11.020 lived more in that sweet balance with the earth and and their psyche or their soul was less

00:07:19.660 fractured and you know there was a there was a culture that still exists that i've read about

00:07:24.840 in the amazon that doesn't even have the concept of time which is amazing to think of right so the

00:07:31.100 human being is obviously capable of that that wholeness um and that interconnection with the

00:07:40.520 living world. So it's not like innate or natural that humans are these destructive monsters

00:07:45.320 is the answer to your question. In the book, I don't have a misanthropic outlook on what's

00:07:52.060 possible for the human being as far as their connection to life and the beauty and integrity

00:07:59.620 with which we can live. And a lot of that is just based on the anthropological facts that humans

00:08:07.420 have lived in balance there are those cultures that haven't even had a time let alone oppressive

00:08:12.740 government and a destructive relationship with the land so from there there's a few different

00:08:18.940 ways you can go okay so humans are not innately destructive does this mean that we should go back

00:08:26.940 to living in that simplicity is that the path towards that wholeness and if so how

00:08:33.940 right because we live in a world that's really eradicated that option a long time ago

00:08:41.280 I spent basically 10 years experimenting with that primitivist impulse to go live

00:08:48.400 as intimately with the land as I could I grew up in an area where there's still

00:08:54.000 big enough chunks of wild space that that's imaginable so my experiment was to live as

00:09:02.440 intimately as possible with the land with a group of friends a group of like-minded people and the

00:09:07.500 idea was that there's this basically spiritual sickness that the entire culture around us has

00:09:14.700 and that simply disengaging from that and reconnecting to nature the process of healing

00:09:21.280 would just naturally ensue because that's what happens i don't know when an animal that's being

00:09:28.060 domesticated is set free that's the journey that informed on learn rewild kind of learning the

00:09:34.840 physical skills that we would need in order to support ourselves and then some of the philosophical

00:09:44.400 insights and i think it makes it kind of a unique book because it was written by like a guy who was

00:09:50.160 squatting in the woods beside the fire and and really diving into it so that was that was the

00:10:00.680 journey and after after many years it became clear and this is why I contradict myself a bunch and

00:10:08.860 unlearned because I I didn't just have a really simple argument it's really easy to have a simple

00:10:13.560 argument when you haven't put your method into practice so to speak if you're just a philosopher

00:10:18.680 for the that hangs out on the campus or whatever it's really easy to hypothesize oh yes hunter

00:10:25.020 gatherers live sustainably and we must all just model their egalitarian social structure blah blah

00:10:31.360 blah oh that sounds good but put it into practice and all of a sudden you have all of these

00:10:35.740 traumatized messed up human beings that have absorbed all of this conditioning and have all

00:10:44.820 these layers of wounds and put them together and all of a sudden you have this really raw human

00:10:52.620 complex situation that is so much more interesting it's more interesting and more challenging

00:11:01.960 I think what I realized over the years of living in a community of people who are all living close

00:11:09.360 to land and dedicated to this and one of the things i noticed was that it wasn't connecting

00:11:15.640 to land through these different skills and practices was not actually inherently transformative

00:11:22.640 because i lived with some people who remained angry upset unhappy individuals despite their

00:11:33.800 connection to the land physically and that was kind of a kick in the gut for me because my whole

00:11:40.040 theory was based on wait a minute but this is supposed to be like the thing you know

00:11:45.660 um there's these kind of two two divergent schools of thought on where our society is headed

00:11:54.680 and what will heal the problems of the individual or the society as a whole one of them is the

00:12:02.660 progress oriented technological optimism which says that there's always naturally going to be

00:12:09.440 challenges that's just the nature of of evolution and growth but we're going to solve them with

00:12:15.260 technology you know right now looking at all the big challenges like global warming this that the

00:12:21.500 other thing technology is going to solve them and we don't really need to worry about anything other

00:12:26.980 than that now the other one is the more back to land or primitivist at a really extreme angle or

00:12:36.220 just more kind of slow food movement ish you know a return to simpler living and that argument says

00:12:45.260 no no no we've got some serious problems here it's not going to work to just keep on

00:12:50.660 building technological complexity we need to radically simplify and totally totally alter

00:12:58.380 the way that we're living in our dependence on technology um now the interesting thing

00:13:04.400 is that i realized that both of these arguments fundamentally revolve around the same center

00:13:12.360 which is technology one just thinks we need more of it one thinks we need less of it and neither

00:13:18.060 is true because it's actually incidental how much of it we have around um that might sound

00:13:25.360 preposterous but imagine suddenly the the wheels of the system grind to a halt completely completely

00:13:36.180 stopped just some magic happens and the wheels grind to a halt you know well there was a time

00:13:42.940 one I thought yes that's exactly what we need that's the answer I'm quite convinced and I don't

00:13:48.800 know if anyone could convince me otherwise that I think a truer analysis of what would happen

00:13:55.060 in such a case of collapse or or a revolution is is that you know by noon of the day after

00:14:05.420 the revolution people will be all back at work building the same you know they would be in the

00:14:11.500 same oppressive patterns it would be rebuilding the same structures unconsciously but it would

00:14:17.240 be the same because what really builds the the the oppressive structures that we're surrounded by

00:14:23.300 is it a programming it's internalized right like it's it's all stuff that we carry with us

00:14:29.680 internally so it's really incidental how much or how little technology you have

00:14:34.860 Sunrise

00:14:44.860 Surprise 0.99

00:14:49.860 Civilized man

00:14:57.860 You were a keeper 0.99

00:15:04.860 To me, now your animal is free, you're free to die, you're old and your hands are grey, you're old go home and pray. 1.00

00:15:27.860 We've all heard your dirty stories, 2,000 years, 2,000 years, 2,000 years of your goddamn glory. 0.99

00:15:48.660 it's an interesting question to ask what humanity would do in the face of collapse 0.98

00:16:00.500 and whether that would be enough to change our habits you know technology capitalism empire

00:16:08.740 they're all just manifestations of the patterns that are memetically coded in our culture and

00:16:15.320 our collective consciousness we could see this as an addiction to the lifestyle and convenience of

00:16:21.400 being able to buy whatever our mouths crave or whatever our fantasies crave and our addiction

00:16:28.620 blinds us from seeing the true cost of our consumption you know we're able to turn away

00:16:35.060 from the slave labor of humans animals and the earth and cave into that voice that just wants

00:16:42.320 what it wants no matter the hidden suffering or the future suffering that today's decisions

00:16:48.400 will end up creating so so what do you feel addicted to in civilization well or what do you

00:16:57.240 see as as people being addicted to if you don't oh gosh i mean i'm sure i'm addicted to more than

00:17:04.820 I'm even conscious of but you know moreover I'm reliant on things I'm reliant on being able to

00:17:13.480 jump in the car and get places and you know although I live in a tent in a forest I I'm

00:17:19.500 still reliant on running to town and getting supplies that I haven't been able to grow or

00:17:23.880 make myself or just technology and civilization they enable me to continue my habits whether

00:17:30.800 that's communication devices to stay in touch with people or i mean i'm addicted to information

00:17:36.040 the internet i mean i might be a couple steps removed from the the normal consumerist

00:17:44.780 experience but not not tons you know i have grown up in north america and even though i've lived in

00:17:50.800 the woods i've still always kind of you know being in the world if not of it or whatever you

00:17:58.000 You know, like I've maintained a level of connection, understanding to mass consciousness.

00:18:04.920 It seems like a lot of consumption is just unconsciousness.

00:18:10.580 If you don't push on the walls of the box and push on the lid of the box to look out of it,

00:18:17.500 it seems like in this world it can be you're just stuck in the box.

00:18:21.800 And the amount of information in that box is not that plentiful about the nature of the things that drop into it.

00:18:29.880 When I think about food and stuff, I feel like it's just humans are we're just born into this complicated scenario, you know, like for the most of people,

00:18:40.120 They're just born into this really bizarre situation where they don't have and they're not required to have any understanding of where of where things come from that they need in order to survive.

00:18:58.360 And that's just like the situation they've landed in.

00:19:02.020 It's really quite fascinating.

00:19:03.780 um the people who who rebel against that and and totally want to like confront the brutal truth

00:19:13.460 of what's going on and are just hungry for that for that understanding and that the depth and

00:19:20.500 honesty that comes along with that the irony is having lived in the woods all those years and

00:19:26.180 everyone around me and myself kind of idealizing um tribal life at the time um i think we all

00:19:35.340 would have sucked at tribal life because because the people who just go along with the status quo

00:19:42.480 in this culture those are the people who are good at tribal life because that's the tribal

00:19:46.840 life that we've got right now whereas for me i remember a friend once uh it was she was she was

00:19:55.680 moving. She had been living in the woods where I was living for a few years and she was leaving

00:19:59.720 and she was just broken inside because she felt like the community we had tried to build had

00:20:04.540 failed. And she felt, you know, this world is so broken. It's so impossible for any of us to build

00:20:09.880 community. Everything's just so messed up. And she was really feeling bad at this moment.

00:20:15.640 And she's like, ah, Miles, I just wish, you know, I wish I was born 500 years ago. I wish,

00:20:21.620 i wish i was alive before all this craziness happened and i just thought you know 500 years

00:20:29.420 ago if we were living in this valley where we're living 500 years ago we would be doing exactly

00:20:35.880 what we're doing right now squatting up in the hills away from the ridiculous village and all 0.97

00:20:40.480 of its dogma and stupidity because i think that in a lot of areas that to go find truth you've 0.99

00:20:48.800 had to leave the village for a really long time if not physically at least psychologically 0.99

00:20:53.800 I think that that process that I as a teenager I went and lived on an island by myself for a

00:21:01.560 summer and I didn't know that I was getting myself into some kind of rights of passage

00:21:06.180 I never would have went if I knew that was going to happen I just thought I was going to have fun

00:21:10.180 in nature because I'd like read Thoreau or some other classic literature and I was like oh yeah

00:21:15.620 that's what you do um but no it ended up being this well initially terrifying experience where

00:21:23.500 I'd been a teenager just a skateboarder kid I had never gone and been in the woods by myself and

00:21:28.520 faced all of my demons and had all my ugliness bubble up to the surface just for me to experience

00:21:34.900 but I think that process is so important it's so important to to separate to individuate from the

00:21:43.420 heard but i don't think you actually have to physically leave the village so to speak in

00:21:50.100 order to have that experience i think that that can help facilitate it sure did with me because

00:21:56.880 i was stuck on an island i couldn't get off so it turned into this really intense um immersive

00:22:04.240 experience in nature. But yeah, I see it as just a process of dropping away the culturally

00:22:15.640 constructed reality, dropping away the illusion of who you think you are, and finding out a little

00:22:22.020 bit of what actually is. I was wondering what your experience has been with the nuclear fallout

00:22:27.940 from Fukushima. How did it affect your journey? And did you consider leaving Vancouver Island?

00:22:34.240 yeah when it happened three years ago I was devastated everything I was hearing and

00:22:40.380 everything that we were all hearing you were in the northwest too so we were all just hearing like

00:22:44.380 there's this poison in the rain and for me my main source of nourishment and sanity was my

00:22:53.620 connection to the earth and and therefore by extension connection to the rain which was now

00:22:59.820 tainted so it was a real mind for lack of better words my source of nourishment my god basically

00:23:08.380 was ill was sick with you know it was like the sun was burning out or something something so

00:23:14.820 central and so sacred so yeah definitely we thought about should we get out of here you know

00:23:20.640 like the mass media is playing this down blah blah blah but and it quickly became clear that

00:23:26.440 we weren't going anywhere I don't think we had the means to go anywhere we wanted to the people

00:23:33.700 that I was living with at the time in the woods I basically lived in the same watershed for my

00:23:40.180 whole life and so I have a real deep connection to that place and ultimately where I'm at now

00:23:46.580 this is three years down the road so we never left and it was just heartbreaking but just

00:23:51.320 something that needed to be pushed through to accept that there is this unknown looming threat

00:24:01.700 intertwined in the very fabric of the the world we're living in but the truth of the matter is

00:24:10.220 that that's the essence of life anyways like in so much of the fight or fright or flight response

00:24:20.220 to those kind of disasters and apocalyptic scenarios in general psychologically what's

00:24:27.220 going on is a fear of death right it's all fear based right and and the only certainty we have

00:24:33.860 about our lives is death it's the only thing that's certain and it's kind of the wild nature

00:24:41.420 of life itself is that there's this intimate intermarriage between life and death the more

00:24:48.540 that you embrace one, the more that you can experience the other fully. So I feel like where

00:24:55.820 I'm at now is to be afraid of collapse or catastrophe or fallout, like all of it comes

00:25:05.660 back to that instinctive fear of death, which is not really grounded in the more profound

00:25:14.380 infinite nature of wild nature and real reality and to someone who's really freaked out that

00:25:23.420 might be little comfort but to me it's of enormous comfort because you can't escape

00:25:31.140 the unknown and when you say like how do you come to terms with that nuclear reactor is still

00:25:37.420 in some process of disrepair and spewing out toxins and and it's still coming into the ocean

00:25:45.760 and going up into the clouds and how do I come to terms with that it's kind of the same as

00:25:51.760 working through the fear of death and developing a will to death which is just smashing through

00:25:57.140 the intellectual rational egoic part of us that wants to cling cling cling um and it's this kind

00:26:04.600 of roundabout process of embracing the wild nature of life and those experiences you know living

00:26:12.680 alone on the island and going on to form a community in the forests of bc how have they

00:26:19.420 molded what you're doing now um well i more take the imperative and can you and continue with that

00:26:27.200 imperative i mean those experiences just helps me grow and learn and understand what i'm doing

00:26:33.700 more deeply you know going out into the woods and dropping the cultural constructed reality

00:26:39.640 that's the process of stepping out of dogma or stepping into relationship with what actually is

00:26:45.780 and that's something that one has to be vigilant with it's like ongoing because it'll creep in

00:26:51.940 it's not the culture's dogma it's the subculture that you're part of dogma and then it's not the

00:26:57.920 subculture you're part of dogma it's your own dogma and that's the hardest one to beat

00:27:02.320 and it's the most it's the one you can't see because because it's sneaky and insidious

00:27:11.620 yeah I guess you know those chapters were just informed by this deep desire to connect with

00:27:20.580 the the essence you know the life force the thing that I seen as a kid that was just expressing

00:27:26.120 itself in the forest because I always felt so good when I would go into the forest as a teenager

00:27:31.580 I think it was just my own baggage and my own hangups.

00:27:35.420 But whenever I was at school, as a kid, as a teenager and stuff, I always felt so uncomfortable, so out of place.

00:27:42.100 But when I got into a forest, all of a sudden this feeling of ease was around me because I was around living things, just like in the hallways of a school.

00:27:50.580 But none of them had these eyes on me that were like thinking thoughts and judging.

00:27:56.180 They all just had, you know, you could feel their presence.

00:27:59.420 You could feel their energy, but there's just purity and warmth there.

00:28:29.420 And I have made my bow

00:28:35.280 I take only what I need

00:28:38.860 I am the maker of fire

00:28:42.460 I'm the planter of seed

00:28:46.420 And I have learned an order in things

00:29:01.380 And I teach my children

00:29:03.940 For each seed a star

00:29:07.560 To each son a generation

00:29:16.420 I have no time for freedom 0.98

00:29:25.740 Barefoot I run on the forest leaves

00:29:29.800 There is pain in birth

00:29:32.720 But for the dead I do not grieve

00:29:46.420 I have cut marks on my body

00:29:51.080 There is beauty in pain

00:29:54.860 And the sadness in joy

00:29:58.200 Like death and the sunset

00:30:01.860 I am the willing heathen

00:30:16.900 I worship everything

00:30:19.640 I will add new words to my language

00:30:24.320 But write them on the way

00:30:27.920 I am the maker of music and the reader of the heavens

00:30:45.840 I am the worker of magic and the fearer of stars

00:30:53.440 I am the writer in sand

00:31:07.680 I am the first and last man

00:31:11.540 And if I could read the future

00:31:14.780 I would ask you not to call 1.00

00:31:18.980 There is a classic dilemma of romanticizing indigeneity,

00:31:38.300 the noble savage, the noble hunter-gatherer,

00:31:42.060 and that debate may never be resolved.

00:31:44.820 So the relevant question at this point in history

00:31:47.420 may be, what are the barriers to an earth-based existence in the wake of industrial capitalism

00:31:54.480 in the height of the Anthropocene extinction event? It's so unusual to hear about people

00:32:00.020 who seek out an independent way of life. So I'm anxious to hear more about it. You know,

00:32:06.080 what worked and what didn't work? What were the social dynamics like?

00:32:10.260 well if you measure something in terms of growth and learning then then the experience that me and

00:32:20.120 and a group of other people had was extremely profound because we all came from having grown up

00:32:29.440 and the typical north american family which by default even though this is that's a horrible

00:32:36.540 generalization it's not true but by default it basically means we grew up in environments where

00:32:42.940 there was no clear communication there was all sorts of super social dynamics like you know

00:32:51.600 there was all you know just so much invisible stuff going on that never got talked about

00:32:56.320 and so we all came from those situations and then thrust ourselves into this environment where we

00:33:03.860 were codependent on one another and living really intimately so that you know the codependency

00:33:10.460 just ups ups the ante as far as social strain and especially putting things into a context

00:33:18.540 in the woods then you're again adding to the strain because you're encapsulated separate

00:33:24.660 from the city or where a place where you can go and diffuse depends what you like to do if you're

00:33:32.420 like me, you would just go for a walk in the woods or a bike ride or something. If you're

00:33:35.740 like someone else, you would go to the bar. There's more people to go dissipate all that

00:33:40.300 dysfunction around. But if you're living in the woods, then you've just, you're forced to work

00:33:45.300 through it. You're forced to either bring it up or it just quickly will turn into a pot that boils

00:33:50.760 over. Um, so we all have to learn how to communicate in such a different way. And that

00:33:58.820 was just this amazing huge gift and then we learned you know just so much about compromise

00:34:06.620 and and primarily communication but so some of the reasons it didn't work I think was another

00:34:15.460 part of your question maybe but everyone came for different reasons and everyone came with

00:34:20.500 different wounds and everyone brought these different loads of baggage that we're never

00:34:25.100 aware of you know there are blind spots that's why we carry it around with us unbeknownst

00:34:29.520 and some of the people were there because they had this like genuine kind of like soul connection

00:34:37.940 to what they were doing and just living close to the land it was just this beautiful flowering of

00:34:43.540 their their life's purpose um and then others they were just there because they didn't know

00:34:51.200 what the hell they were doing and and they loved qualities and aspects of the lifestyle we were

00:34:59.940 living and all that but some in some instances people would end up there that actually would

00:35:07.340 have thrived so much better in a very very different environment very different scenario

00:35:11.780 but they had built a philosophy that said oh i should be doing this i should be doing that

00:35:17.120 And so instead of going in and asking themselves and finding out, who am I? What do I need? It was just, oh, I should be doing this. I should be doing that. And I think as far as the process of rewilding, it's interesting because we have all these concepts of what's wild, what's natural, and we should go to that.

00:35:40.900 but wild wildness is something it's not a thing it's a state it's this energetic state it's like

00:35:49.780 a relationship state as opposed to being a thing or some kind of destination or something that can

00:35:57.560 be distilled easily it's it's it's like spontaneous that's what wildness is it's spontaneity

00:36:04.300 it's it's untameable it's completely just a product of the expression of this this life

00:36:12.980 force that's in everything and there's no way of understanding how it will express itself or

00:36:17.660 knowing how to express itself because it defies that kind of logical imprisonment and so what

00:36:24.640 i'm really interested in is how does that want to express itself in each of us and that might

00:36:30.900 sound too airy-fairy or whatever but it's it's there's there's no other real path as far as

00:36:38.620 rewilding is concerned to really engage that is to to engage with that wild essence inside oneself

00:36:45.360 and there's this quote that i heard a couple months ago i forget who said it it just stuck

00:36:51.060 with me it was this woman and she said the difference between art and propaganda is that

00:36:56.540 propaganda seeks to move its audience towards a specific action you know like if it's political

00:37:05.000 propaganda it's seeking to move its audience to vote for whoever signed this ballot or whatever

00:37:10.280 whereas art seeks to to move its audience to grow in whatever natural way they're already innately

00:37:22.600 going to you know it just seeks to inspire and catalyze that movement that's already

00:37:27.840 dormant inside somebody and just ready to explode open and and I think that art or propaganda you

00:37:35.120 can use any medium to create those two effects but I think it's a really cool distinction to

00:37:41.900 make and I think it's something that um it's like kind of one of the one of the fundamental

00:37:50.280 foibles that we make is getting trapped in that logical kind of lazy thinking or maybe just

00:37:59.340 getting too stuck up in the head and and having a idea of what one should be doing as opposed to

00:38:09.040 an openness for for aliveness to kind of spill through anyhow so the people who were living in

00:38:18.480 that community that were there because they were basically listening to some propaganda either

00:38:26.360 that came from outside or came from inside themselves that was never going to work and

00:38:32.460 and it was a really interesting process to see really close friends come to the understanding

00:38:38.820 that whoa I have this belief system and and I realized that it never was me and so as far as

00:38:47.280 building community real beautiful community which i think is something that a lot of people are

00:38:54.380 really really desiring and yeah i i totally agree in that that beautiful desire for for

00:39:03.920 community with people but but that's like the second step i think the first step is connecting

00:39:11.420 to that essence that i was talking about you know that process of unlearning and rewilding

00:39:16.940 you know and the community just like comes in as part of that you know once you're doing that work

00:39:23.220 then all of a sudden community can show up but not just some some contrived dysfunctional thing

00:39:30.220 of all these people who are trying to meet their needs in the wrong place you know yeah you know

00:39:37.600 then then it can actually organically spontaneously evolve with with uh this real

00:39:45.120 power inside of it you know but there's this thing in north america ever since people started

00:39:52.720 the movement towards intentional community like 40 or 50 years ago when when the counterculture

00:39:59.520 of the 60s started and there's been this movement towards that well there it hasn't been like

00:40:05.080 enormously successful you know right and i think it's because it has to start with that

00:40:14.500 that first fundamental step which is it's again that process that i talked about of individuation

00:40:21.040 really it's ironic because like in order for wholeness we have to go through this process

00:40:28.840 of individuation but it's you know that's this that's the the process of stepping away from

00:40:36.540 all the things you were talking about stepping away from that kind of mass consumer mentality

00:40:42.680 that doesn't question, doesn't challenge, you know, that's the beginning of a process

00:40:46.600 of individuation and stepping away from the herd, away from mass consciousness and finding out

00:40:54.820 what's for real and entering that process of unlearning what isn't real and then rewilding,

00:41:02.500 reconnecting. You talk about rewilding as a dynamic process and a relationship with civilization

00:41:09.460 as opposed to an endpoint or a substitute for living and civilization. It is a state of mind

00:41:16.980 as much as it is physical, but not a rigid ideology. You know, I love that you emphasize

00:41:22.780 the spontaneity and the adventure and the individual investigation of these questions.

00:41:29.680 There are all these stages of severance from the dominant culture and all these emotions that

00:41:35.380 accompany them it's you know a bit of a roller coaster when i first started feeling this way

00:41:41.740 i wanted to rebel against everything because nothing seemed to align with my outlook i was

00:41:49.360 in the quandary of not finding a path that was pure untainted um free from the organized crime

00:41:56.980 of capitalism. So listening to your ideas, I feel a weight lifted because you showed that

00:42:06.520 this kind of ideological thinking artificially removes us from the reality of the Anthropocene.

00:42:13.940 Living in a purity bubble is impossible if we see life as an interconnected whole.

00:42:19.620 You know, the illness or the demise of another person or another species is the pain of everyone.

00:42:26.980 So rewilding, in a way, is becoming more aware of your captivity and your dependency on the system, regardless of to what degree you renounce the system, right?

00:42:39.360 Yes. And then I'll qualify that answer now.

00:42:43.180 um yeah i do and but that's because i you know that only works because i'm accepting my definition

00:42:54.920 that i gave of rewilding which is not it's not that literal hunter-gatherer versus civilization

00:43:04.580 definition um and that's the definition that i've found useful and i still think it's useful but i

00:43:11.980 think it's more useful as a metaphor um because what the hunter gathers like that's a terrible

00:43:18.960 word kind of because i don't think anyone would refer to themselves as a hunter gatherer but i'll

00:43:22.840 just use it but what a culture of hunter gatherers is doing is in daniel quinn's words they're living

00:43:30.740 in the hands of the gods you know it was quite a beautiful concept of of quinn's when he put it

00:43:37.480 that way because um basically you know if you look at the hunter-gatherer's relationship to

00:43:45.400 the land and to life they're not they're not kind of dissecting it and twisting it and conforming it

00:43:53.500 and and regurgitating it into into what they think it should be they're just living in the hands of

00:43:59.800 gods whereas the civilization of course doesn't do that they assume the uh role of a creator and

00:44:09.780 destroyer they assume that they know what's best for the land and and and of course i would say

00:44:19.400 that more fundamental than the physical process of going and living in the woods or doing any of that

00:44:26.260 there's something way more fundamental than that because that's again just superficial stuff

00:44:31.540 happening on the surface um it's reconnecting to that that rewilding what is rewilding what's

00:44:39.520 wildness right i'll just call in my book i just call it wildness there's a whole lot of different

00:44:45.200 words that you could use for it i'll just call it a spark or the essence or wildness or whatever

00:44:49.760 but it's that how how is that going inside of you is my question to anyone who wants to rewild

00:44:56.100 because that thing in us it wants to be expressed it wants to grow it's you think of it like a plant

00:45:03.600 that wants to grow and unfold and think of it like a plant like an oak tree you know how an acorn

00:45:08.500 already has the blueprint of what the oak tree that it will grow into is going to be and a

00:45:14.580 dandelion seed already carries this code for its its imperative yeah we've all got that inside of

00:45:21.580 us and it's different for each person and to connect with that and see how it's going to unfold

00:45:27.540 so do you need to go live in the woods no you don't that might if you think that's all you need

00:45:33.460 to do then you're uh you know gonna not really hit the nail on the head so so in the book what

00:45:41.340 i realized through writing just through the experience of writing it by the last chapter

00:45:45.980 there's two sections of ideas the chapter succession i kind of realized as i was writing

00:45:51.480 because i was just going through a process and i had that revelation that if there was a revolution

00:45:57.360 nothing would change because what really needs to shift is not political it's not technological

00:46:06.240 it's not any of this surface stuff it's it's deeper much deeper than that it's not purely

00:46:13.420 cerebral either it's deeper than that and so it's this like really rich amazing thing that's always

00:46:21.340 there it's always waiting to be engaged with and it speaks to us all the time it speaks to us in

00:46:26.700 our dreams you know our dreams are these they're wild it's funny it's kind of ironic but dreams

00:46:32.140 are probably like one of the most uh potent kind of experiences of wild nature that a lot of urban

00:46:39.840 people have right because because they are so explicit and so common in regards of who you are

00:46:49.500 how you spend your days um but they they're another aspect of wild nature because they

00:46:55.700 carry that spontaneous quality of wildness you know who who makes a dream and how is it constructed

00:47:02.120 and that's the that's the genius and the mystery of wild nature and life itself there's this

00:47:09.100 intelligence is organizing forest that's making everything around us happen and be how it is

00:47:14.420 there's a big giant kernel of it inside of us that wants to be engaged with and connecting to

00:47:20.180 nature like for me connecting to nature has always been a way of like going to a vast reservoir of

00:47:26.880 that because when you go into a forest everything's just expressing the you know it's just a pure

00:47:34.780 expression of that energy it's unhindered and and so to me connecting to that is always I think

00:47:43.880 you know most people even if you're not a hippie or whatever even if most people who go for a walk

00:47:50.760 in the woods for half an hour who are paying attention they feel a little bit more calm

00:47:56.380 afterwards or their eyes brighten or whatever it has a physiological effect and to me that's

00:48:01.400 always been an incredible draw

00:48:31.400 It's so cold outside

00:48:36.120 Why don't you spend the day there

00:48:40.140 If you keep this day

00:48:43.840 For yourself no one will care

00:48:47.780 When the alarm clock rings

00:48:51.060 Time to wake up

00:48:52.620 Well the day it brings

00:48:54.720 Time to wake up

00:48:56.340 A day of nowhere things

00:48:58.480 Time to wake up

00:49:00.120 Your value's sorted out

00:49:02.500 And if you're still in doubt

00:49:05.980 Realize there's no use thinking

00:49:09.880 You've got to go

00:49:13.820 There's no use caring

00:49:17.500 Your boss will know

00:49:21.660 No use doing

00:49:25.360 Things you don't believe, believe, believe, believe in.

00:49:43.860 So as you rewild, how do you handle your previous relationships with family and friends

00:49:52.800 who might not share the same values yeah well that's interesting because

00:49:59.000 because like friends can change right and if you're on a process where you're jumping into

00:50:06.920 this path or becoming who you are or whatever you know then your friends will usually change

00:50:13.040 unless they're really really specific individuals who want to jump on in that process with you

00:50:20.100 family of course is the interesting one my family has been fairly supportive I mean I got a book

00:50:29.000 published and then and then my parents were like oh wow that's kind of cool before that I think

00:50:34.960 they're wondering what the hell is Miles doing you know um and you know they never could stop me

00:50:43.720 from doing whatever I was going to do,

00:50:46.860 but I didn't feel super supported.

00:50:50.940 The thing is, for a lot of years,

00:50:52.840 I felt that civilization,

00:50:55.400 like you described basically a state of mind

00:50:59.440 that I've experienced a lot,

00:51:01.380 feeling like Western civilization,

00:51:03.540 however you want to define it,

00:51:04.620 is kind of the monolithic structure

00:51:07.600 and evil that we need to recuperate from

00:51:13.220 and disengage from and and i think there's pieces of truth to that but as far as the individual and

00:51:22.600 like where our conditioning and where our wounds come from most of it comes from family way more

00:51:28.760 comes from family than comes from society as a whole because those are the people that are around

00:51:34.700 us during the purity of our innocent childhood or whatever right those are the people that kind of

00:51:39.520 like give us our core wounds um and and when you go deeper into the process of rewilding or whatever

00:51:47.740 when you go deeper into that that can you know that that voyage into who you really are and

00:51:57.180 reconnecting and and unlearning i mean a lot of the things that we unlearn a lot of the things

00:52:04.380 that were big roadblocks to our communication and community or our ability to yeah like kind of

00:52:12.660 conduct ourselves around other people those were things that we got straight from our parents

00:52:17.620 or straight from our family or uncles or aunts or whatever like these wounds come in like pretty

00:52:23.480 close to home I feel like it's an area that most of the writers who I've talked to who I've read

00:52:30.180 and stuff on rewilding don't really talk about it ever and i don't mention it i don't mention it in

00:52:34.840 my book um but it is such a core area of our domestication so to speak and domestication

00:52:43.160 i mean it's a word that's usually obviously used in reference to non-humans it's used

00:52:49.560 you know there's domesticated livestock there's domesticated plants and those are just

00:52:53.360 plants or animals that have been kind of uh deformed by the human hand they're usually not

00:53:02.000 as strong as their wild counterparts yeah they've just been conditioned by humanity

00:53:06.980 and so i think of domestication for for us as humans is the same thing basically and there's

00:53:16.700 other terms for it like conditioning or wounding or trauma and yeah one of the primary places that

00:53:22.880 happens is with family, of course.

00:53:52.880 i really appreciate where you are now miles and the whole outlook you have on rewilding

00:54:03.680 you know really allowing the openness and the spontaneity of life in and not judging the

00:54:10.240 process of rewilding because it's messy and it's also easy to get burnt out on the destruction

00:54:17.300 and focusing only on the rage and if we can move away from that you know move away from all the

00:54:25.780 analyzing and to actually experience life and to be able to find that wild spark inside all of us

00:54:34.300 and follow that intuition it's a really beautiful path so yeah i mean that's that's a big shift

00:54:41.400 that's happened in me for sure my entire cosmology has basically shifted around all that stuff

00:54:46.460 and you know just my my understanding of the world and reality has changed a lot um and

00:54:53.900 and yeah i mean not only does it feel more alive and better to connect to that spark in oneself

00:55:05.480 but it's also more authentic it's more truth because connecting you know remaining connected

00:55:12.200 that part of oneself is not all just a walk in the park it's comes with a lot of challenge and

00:55:16.660 you know it's it's in a lot of cases it's very much easy to shut down and disconnect right um

00:55:24.540 so it's it's not like it's a hedonistic path or whatever it's uh more difficult than just

00:55:34.280 getting angry and pointing the finger at some external demon you know but yeah so much of that

00:55:40.580 doom and gloom is based around fear and anger and and anger can be authentic but fear is not

00:55:50.200 yeah anger can be one of it can be really uh an amazing thing but but fear is a pretty limiting

00:55:58.560 and illusion-based thing that sucks us in and can be an addiction itself tragedy turns into

00:56:07.020 life or you know death and death and life just blend into each other if there was like a big

00:56:11.900 tsunami then or if there was a forest fire or whatever would like it would give rise to the

00:56:19.220 next phase of trend of a succession and it would be part of a process of transformation and there's

00:56:24.800 nothing that's really outside of that that's how it works so we we have this we're clinging and

00:56:31.340 clinging and clinging to some ideal, but life inevitably smears that into dust.

00:56:41.640 Oh, thank you again, Miles. This has been an incredible journey of the mind,

00:56:46.860 and I feel like I'm floating out the window right now on top of the trees.

00:56:53.100 But yeah, no, this has been a really fun conversation. It's been great talking to you,

00:56:56.620 and I really appreciate your engagement

00:56:59.260 and your intelligence and your openness.

00:57:06.560 Thanks so much for listening to Unlearn and Rewild

00:57:09.960 with Ayanna Young, speaking today with Miles Olson.

00:57:13.920 The first song you heard was an acoustic demo

00:57:17.240 by Grace Slick called Sunrise,

00:57:20.780 followed by Ralph McTel with First and Last Man.

00:57:25.020 Then, When the Alarm Clock Rings by Blossom Toes

00:57:29.660 And finally, Rainforest, an instrumental by Sandy Bull

00:57:34.680 Our theme music is Like a River by Kate Wolfe

00:57:38.640 And I'm March Young

00:57:55.020 Thank you.

For The Wild - May 15, 2015

MILES OLSON on Making a Life in Wild Places ⧸20

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