Renowned permaculturist Toby Hemenway discusses the domestication of humans via the spread of large agricultural systems and the re-wilding of modern societies through ecological design and thinking.

Toby discusses the idea that settlements and the need for agriculture came with the birth of symbols that gave rise to religious and spiritual leaders. Religious leaders created the need for temples and religious sites which created the need for large labour forces. As building becomes more intricate, labour becomes more specialised, and large-scale food production is needed to sustain growing populations. With continued growth, populations exceed food supply and more land is cultivated. The result is an entire population dependent on broad-based agriculture to sustain them.

Domesticated humans, removed from nature, come to see the wild place that once sustained them as hostile and nature becomes the enemy. Think of the industrial farmer that wages chemical warfare against weeds, fungus and insects. Killing a huge diversity of organisms that want to live while he pumps artificial nutrients into annual crops just to keep them alive. These disconnections with life can be seen inside most urban homes where people cower at the sight of a spider or see a fly and instantly reach for the bug spray.

It is true that most of us have become completely ignorant of the abundance and sustenance that nature can provide both physically and spiritually. We have set the last of our ‘wild’ places aside in National Parks that can only be properly maintained if the government of the day chooses to allocate funding. This exemplifies the dichotomy of tame and wild as described by Toby.

So can we reconnect? Of course we can because we are, after all, children of the same earth. While much of the old wild might be gone, a new wild is taking place all across the world today. This is a regenerative way of life where we think and act in the interests of the earth and people. We mimic natural systems and design them into our lives. Food producing gardens in our homes, food forests in our parks, we catch our own water and energy and return waste to the earth. We provide for ourselves and our communities closer to the source increasing our resiliency and reducing our dependency on industrial systems that degrade our planet.