excerpt

March 17th, 2026

Hey All,

Thanks to my friend Austin I’m going to start posting excerpts from my work again. I’ll do one a week but we have a little backlog. So here is the first.

 

Civilizations are ways of life characterized by the growth of cities.. Cities destroy natural habitat and create environments inimical to the survival of many wild creatures. By definition cities separate their human inhabitants from nonhumans, depriving them of routine, daily, neighborly contact with wild creatures, which until the onset of civilizations—for 99 percent of our existence—was central to the lives of all humans, and to this day remains central to the lives of the noncivilized.

If it can be said that we are the relationships we share, or at least that relationships form us, or at the very least that they influence who we are, how we act, and how we perceive, then the absence of this fundamental daily bond with wild nonhuman others will change who we are, how we perceive wild creatures, how we perceive our role in the world around us, and how we treat ourselves, other humans, and those who are still wild.

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