"Silvaticus Mundus..."

...of the wild world

The core conviction of Silvaticus Mundus is that we need not relinquish our wild, instinctual nature in order to be human (as has featured centrally in the "mechanization" of human mind and society). Instead, to be fully human is to embrace and put to intelligent use this ineradicable dimension of our being. Just because we live in cities and are surrounded by machines and computers doesn't mean that the ancient, untamed elements of our evolutionary ancestry have faded away - they are still as much a part of us as our "highest" reasoning capabilities and conceptual cognition. In fact, all our best sciences are converging on the same basic truth: 99% of cognition is non-conceptual: it is sensory, qualitative, somatic, instinctual, and spontaneous. All the so-called "higher" and more "refined" aspects of human intelligence are ultimately dependent on, and emergent from, these more primary dimensions of a wild, untamed, undomesticated cognitive realm that operates independently of linear, conceptual logic.

Silvaticus is Latin for "wild, woodland;" literally "of the woods." It is the etymological root of the modern English term "savage," which for a time was used pejoratively to label people and cultures who maintained a working, integrated, sustainable relationship with the ecosystems surrounding them. Among other meanings, mundus is Latin for "world, universe, earthly." I created this name Silvaticus Mundus as a way of reclaiming our "savage" nature as belonging to the wild Earth. It is a celebration of our being as much a part of nature as birds, bees, floods, and viruses, rather than a shaming, denying, or escaping from this natural identity.

It is an affirmation of the vast intelligent inherent in life -- in all living forms and flavors, not just in the linear, conceptual, symbol-based logic characteristic of modern industrial society. For 99% of human existence on Earth, we thought, dreamed, spoke, and moved like/as/with/in nature, which is to say mythologically, poetically, narratively, qualitatively, artistically, musically, and aesthetically. Only in the tiny proportion of human history characterized by what Lewis Mumford calls the "myth of the machine" have humans shifted to thinking primarily in linear, logico-deductive and quantitative terms. This, quite literally, is highly unnatural. And, this program of social mind has reached its nadir.

It has been estimated that in the past 50 years, humans have generated more data and information that what was produced in the entire previous history of humankind. And yet -- is the world really that much better off? By any robust measure of the question, we're not. In industrialized societies today -- where there are vastly more machines and computers than in any society, ever -- the large majority of people are chronically depressed, anxious, and metabolically diseased. The global industrial consumer economy has destroyed thousands of ecosystems in its relentless demand to produce more -- more of anything that can be commodified, sold and consumed, regardless of its impact on planetary or social health. Species diversity has plummeted in many ecosystems around the world, and an estimated one third of available agricultural land has been degraded from soil to dirt. In short, the civilizational project of society has failed. There is no conceivable way to continue this manner of living and expect to solve our individual and collective challenges.

It is the driving conviction of this project, Silvaticus Mundus, that the only path forward for humans is to reclaim and reestablish our place within the larger community of life, as partners and stewards of life shared with our more-than-human kin, rather than as dominators and conquerors. The civilizational project of humankind was premised on humans trying to take control of nature, to subdue and put in order a supposedly "red in tooth and claw" world of chaotic competition among more "primitive" beasts. And we've seen where that has led us. Moreover, the sciences themselves have revealed that we are not, in fact, the most intelligent form of life on Earth. Life as such is intelligence, and we are part of that intelligence. To be maximally intelligent, then, is not to battle nature but to work and live with Her, as component parts of a holistically integrated biosphere, which is to say a planetary organism - Earth, Gaia.

Much of the individual and collective ills we face today can be traced to a root cause of the repression of instinctual energies. Temporarily, this can be adaptive. But, sustained over time, this will wreck havoc on our bodies and on the body of Earth. To recover from this, we must relearn to embrace and intelligently embody our wild, instinctual nature, rather than continue to repress and deny it. For more about what this looks like practically, check out the Articles page, and/or contact me directly.