My initial approach to this book was … ambivalent. Putting a finger on what caused that reaction was challenging. I was nearly finished with the book by the time I sorted it out. Before I explain, let me get back to the book for a moment.
Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence is another well-researched and well-written book by Marc Bekoff. The idea of rewilding as a means of conservation has become more popular in recent years, and this book is a good introduction into the concepts and work being done. If nothing else, it has more than 20 pages worth of references to books, journal articles, and other sources of information that would arm a person with the knowledge needed to truly understand what is happening to our planet and to the beings that are residents of it.
Nothing about this book should have been difficult. I am Pagan and take my vows as a steward of the Earth seriously. By no means am I perfect, but I do care, and I continue to make changes to how I live and spend my money. I seek information about the impact that my activities, or proposed activities, have on the Earth and Her residents, in an effort to educate myself. I care. I’m invested. This book should have been an easy read for me.
Bekoff says that rewilding our hearts is about:
…becoming reenchanted with nature. It is about nurturing our sense of wonder. Rewilding is about being nice, kind, compassionate, empathic, and harnessing our own inborn goodness and optimism. In the most basic sense, ‘rewilding’ means ‘to make wilder’ or ‘to make wild once again.’ This means many things, as we will see, but primarily it means opening our hearts and minds to others. It means thinking of others and allowing their needs and perspectives to influence our own.
In contrast, “unwilding” is “the process by which we become alienated from nature and non-human animals; it’s how we deny our impacts and refuse to take responsibility for them; and it’s how we become discouraged and overwhelmed, and thus fail to act despite the problems we see.”
Enter the 10-day break I took from reading. During that time, a broken song lyric began to tease me as I spent some time soul-searching my resistance to Bekoff’s newest publication. It took a while for it to come together enough to pin down but I eventually found it within the words of an Ani Difranco song:
the mighty multinationals have monopolized the oxygen
so it’s as easy as breathing for us all to participate
And therein lies the problem that I had with reading this book. In those words, I found the reason it took me nearly three weeks to finish barely 150 pages of content of which I support. The problems discussed by Bekoff are so big, so pervasive and so ingrained. Is the change that is needed even remotely possible?
Do the small changes really make a difference or am I deluding myself into thinking that those adorable cloth “paper” towel rolls I saw on Pinterest will really save trees, wildlife and the climate on which we all depend? Is my decision to start a vegetable and flower garden for the first time in my life (using heritage varieties of course) really going to make a difference in reducing fossil fuel consumption, improve the health of my family and support healthy environments in which bees can thrive?
Bekoff says small changes help, and he is not alone in this message. Before I picked up this book, I felt comfortable that I was making a contribution, and that my upcoming changes would be increasingly impactful. Now I’m not so sure.
![Fish Creek in Hyder, Alaska. [Photo Credit: Matt Lemmon via Flickr]](https://wildhunt.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/252837908_5879cfbadc_z-500x314.jpg)
Fish Creek in Hyder, Alaska. [Photo Credit: Matt Lemmon via Flickr]
Suppose tonight, while you slept, a miracle occurred. When you awake tomorrow, what would be some of the things you would notice that would tell you life had suddenly gotten better?
In my own practice as a psychotherapist, I have often used this with positive results. It takes the client from being completely mired in their difficult situation to being focused on the things that make them feel better that make their life better that give them a sense of control. People who struggle coping with difficulties often feel powerless and see no way out of their dilemma. Often that powerlessness is an illusion though. As Alice Walker said, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
For the past decade or so, I have lived in a solution-focused way where environmental and conservation issues are concerned. I research ways that I can make a difference and implement lifestyle changes. I focus on what I can do and let go of the details that form the bigger, more dismal, picture. But in doing so, I have lost sight of the enormity and entrenched nature of the problem. Reading Bekoff’s book was like hitting a “zoom out” button and seeing the whole complex tragedy at once. Calling this experience overwhelming and discouraging would be putting it mildly and wholly inadequate.
To be clear and fair, Bekoff’s focus was not on everything that is going wrong. Instead he wanted to offer a solution, or at least a pathway to various solutions. He says:
Rewilding Our Hearts is a positive and inspirational book about what we can do, as individuals within a global community, working in harmony for common goals, to deal with the rampant and wanton destruction of our planet and the innumerable and awe-inspiring residents and their homes. We really do need wild(er) minds and wild(er) hearts to make the changes that need to be made right now, so that we can work toward having a wild(er) planet.
Bekoff goes on to explain how his “Eight Ps of Rewilding” – a social movement that is “proactive, positive, persistent, patient, peaceful, practical, powerful and passionate” – will help us all engage to create a “contagious and long-lasting” movement.
It sounds lovely. It sounds like something that I would naturally and easily get behind. Except that I see and hear the motives that so many have for money, to maintain their perceived superiority, and to kill animals exclusively for sport without guilt. How could we possibly create a paradigm shift in those people in order “to make compassion, empathy and peaceful coexistence a social value?” Can we even do that in ourselves, let alone others, to make it lasting?
Bekoff provides some suggestions such as, increasing our awareness of how words and media are used to support agendas that “unwild” us; bringing such words to light; working to change our own use of language, photos and videos.
Adding to that, he suggests that children can be raised with less unwilding if we allow more unscheduled, unsupervised, unmanaged play and incorporate “nature time” during school hours. Finally, he also observes that participants in the conservation circles have become more interdisciplinary, creating pathways for professionals in social work and psychology to become more involved. The insights of these professions can shed light on the complex social, economic, and personal issues that act as barriers to change and bring a new perspective on how to rewild humans.
These more tangible interventions felt more manageable to me and helped me remember some of the changes that have already been made. Dam removals, reintroduction of wolves, and the granting of equal rights to nature are just some examples of the changes that have occurred recently. A few days after I completed the book, I searched out hopeful stories about rewilding, conservation, and environmental activism to bring me back to my center; to bring me back to the place where I feel comfortable that my efforts mean something.
Perhaps this is what Bekoff means when he says, “…we know that being positive and hopeful are important for getting people to care and act. Concentrating on successes, on what works, is important for overcoming hopelessness.”
Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence was published in Nov by New World Library. It is available in paperback and electronic formats. Berkoff can found as a regular columnist in Psychology Today and through his regular appearances.
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It was a cascade of small changes that got us, in part, where we are now. A cascade of small changes in the other direction may be a big part of what it takes to make things right. Thanks for the addition to my to-read list.
I agree with Lupa. I think of the daily actions we can take as cumulative,but also contributing towards reaching a tipping point. Think 100th monkey effect.
I know what you mean, and I often think it may be hopeless, because no matter how many small changes some of us make, there are really really BIG things being done in the opposite direction by those with power and money all the time. But frankly, I don’t make those changes because I think it’s really going to make a difference to the large picture (although I do hold out some hope that just maybe, if everyone made similar small changes, it would amount to something). I make those changes so that at the very least, I am not part of the problem. I can go to the nymphs and the landwights and not feel ashamed. To me, that’s enough motivation on its own.
The problems are enormous, but then, too, the planetary biosphere is also enormous and powerful. We just can’t see that fact as clearly as we should because the biosphere reacts far more slowly than our short lives can really take in. The biosphere is really too large and too complex for us to repair it, as if it were some sort of machine. But it is powerful enough and long-lived enough to repair itself, with or without us.
I am very much inclined to think that John Michael Greer is correct in claiming that the next half century will see a truly major world-wide energy and food crisis for the human species. If he is right, it seems likely that within a century or so the number of humans on the planet will have diminished to a billion or two at the very most, and possibly to much fewer than a billion. And this will clear the way for a major rewilding apart from us.
I am fairly old, in my early 70s. Most of my life is over now. But in the course of my 70-odd years I have been a teacher on a small scale, and some of the students whom I have taught have learned a few things that may carry them further through the coming crisis than they might have gotten otherwise. Some of them, in turn, may have a few students of their own, who in turn will make it farther than they might otherwise have made it. And so on.
There will be no utopia, ever! The lion will continue to feed on the lamb forever, not lie down peacefully with it despite its hunger. Pain and suffering is the price all creatures, even microbes, must pay for being alive, always and forever. But amidst all this there is also that which makes this pain and suffering worth while, if not for every individual creature, then for the biosphere as a whole. It is not progress, it is not evolution toward some brighter future. Rather, it is perception of the incandescent “Now!” in all its beauty and all its terror.
“Go, go, go,” said the bird. Human kind cannot bear very much reality.” (T S Eliot)
Ah, but those moments when, despite our fraility, reality crashes in upon one or another of us, like a tsunami …
After one of those moments, you realize that you never before knew what beauty is, what terror is.
And, like the lotus, such a moment is rooted in and nourished by the offal of day-to-day suffering and pain. Without humanity’s inherent depravity (alongside of its inherent core of sublimity), there would be no such moments.
At any rate, this is how the matter seems to this tottery old magician and polytheist / pantheist.
A philosopher, Susanne Langer, takes a similar tack — that focus and discussion around what is “fruitful” will lead to better places than mere wrangling about logic and validity of points made. Focusing on what works, and taking small step that you can see happening IS a better way to live daily than looking at the overwhelmingly large ‘whole picture’ problem. If everyone participated, soon an avalanche of change would occur.
I am a big fan of rewilding. It is a long and slow process that, in the early stages can easily feel counter-productive. But the trick is to accept that the changes being made are not one you or I will see bear fruit.