#295 | Congress Of Wills: Rewilding Beyond The Storm Of Collapse w/ Peter Michael Bauer

[Intro: 9:46]

Anthropologist, experimental archaeologist, and historian Peter Michael Bauer joins me to discuss several major subjects of his work, including rewilding, collapse, and humanity's place within these frameworks.

This discussion begins with Peter elaborating on the now often decontextualized and widely misrepresented concept of "rewilding." He contrasts the common, and popular, misunderstanding of this concept to his work with rewilding and its original intended meaning, and whether the term itself should now be abandoned in light of this trend. I then ask Peter to define his understanding of collapse, comparing his earlier understanding of that process to how he conceptualizes it currently — not as an event, but as an iterative, often gradual, process. His interest lies not in “weathering the storm” of collapse, but to allow this ecocidal civilization to recede and decline into irrelevance, and then foster the growth of ways of living and being that place humanity within its proper ecological role once again.

Peter Michael Bauer is an anthropologist, experimental archaeologist, and historian. His work focuses on the social and environmental impacts of the neolithic revolution, and how understanding these impacts can provide us with solutions to the sixth mass extinction. Since the early 2000’s, he has been an integral catalyst in the human rewilding movement. Rewilding is a principle, or a lens, that helps us see and move through the world in terms of regeneration and reciprocity. It is not the “one right way”—it is a million ways to live in the flow of natural cycles. It recognizes that humans are not above those flows, and that it is actually more beneficial to our ecosystems when we acknowledge and become part of them. This movement works to create resilience through the return to place-based, regenerative subsistence strategies, inspired by those that exist outside of–and those that existed prior to–the formation of agrarian states. He created the first international online rewilding forum (now archived at discuss.rewild.com), wrote a book on rewilding called Rewild or Die, founded the organization Rewild Portland (where he teaches classes), and created the Annual North American Rewilding Conference.

Episode Notes:

- Learn more about Peter and his work: https://www.petermichaelbauer.com

- Listen and subscribe to The Rewilding Podcast: https://www.petermichaelbauer.com/the-rewilding-podcast

- Purchase his book ‘Rewild or Die’ from Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/a/24168/9781621069720

- The music in the episode was produced by InsaneBeatz.

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