The Psychology of Rewilding Means Getting Over Ourselves

Personal rewilding means letting our feelings lead to compassionate action.

Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

Key points

• It’s essential to rewild the world before it’s too late.
• Compassionate conservation mandates that all individuals are stakeholders.
• “Rewilding” is a mindset.

"Rewilding is largely a matter of humans getting out of the way and letting nature take charge."–Graham Lawton

It’s common knowledge that we are losing species and habitats at an unprecedented rate in a geological epoch known as the “Anthropocene”—the "age of humanity." All in all, it’s essential to rewild the world before it’s too late. What does it mean to say "before it’s too late"? Generally speaking, as a species, humans don’t do well with “points of no return.” We counsel ourselves that even if things don’t work out today, we always have tomorrow. But what happens when the promise of tomorrow is undone by the inaction of today? This essay was written by Dr. Marc Bekoff and Marlon H. Reis, First Gentleman of Colorado.

As it turns out, removing ourselves from this tapestry is less an emancipation from nature and more a manipulation of variables—a complex puzzle—that are simply too numerous and too complex for us to successfully take apart and put back together. To make this understandable to a broad audience, we can call this the “Humpty-Dumpty” phenomenon. Nature is the greatest architect, and to pretend otherwise is hubris, pure and simple. Rather than view the natural world as a problem to be solved, we should view it as the lifeboat keeping us afloat.

Yet, on we press, in a seemingly never-ending quest to extricate ourselves from the wild, animated by the misguided belief that we must dominate or be dominated. And this quest—this so-called "age of humanity"—is anything but humane. In fact, it’s extremely violent, and would be better termed the "rage of inhumanity.”

Indeed, as wild animals enter urban areas—places that were once their homes—there is more to celebrate than fear. With hope, these individuals will help people bridge the empathy gap and learn to apply the same caring and compassion they feel for their companion animals (aka pets) to their new wild neighbors (aka wildlife), who are as rightfully deserving of being here as any of us. The growing interdisciplinary and international field of compassionate conservation mandates that all individuals are stakeholders, and is based on the principles of: (i) First, do no harm, (ii) All individuals matter, and (iii) We must strive for peaceful coexistence among all of Earth's residents.¹

Developing and nurturing a "rewilding" mindset based on empathy, feelings, thoughts, and compassionate action

In Rewilding Our Hearts, Marc asked people to become re-enchanted with the natural world, to act from the inside out, and to allow their hearts to guide them in dissolving false boundaries so they could truly connect with both nature and themselves. By personally rewilding, undoing the unwilding brought about by our obsessive need to dominate, and reconnecting, people will become re-enchanted with nature, overcome negativity, and see the world in more positive ways.

Personal rewilding means rehabilitating our hearts and tapping into our biophilic instincts. Reawakening these long-dormant parts of ourselves can lead to an emotional affinity for and reconnection to nature.

We envision rewilding our hearts as a dynamic, intimate process that fosters corridors of coexistence and compassion for animals and their homes while facilitating corridors in ourselves that connect our hearts and minds, our caring and awareness. In turn, these connections, or reconnections, can help us make wiser choices and pursue heartfelt actions that improve the lives of all beings.

Rewilding demands humility in how we interact with other animals and the places they call home. We need to be humble in the face what the Romantic poets of the late eighteenth century referred to as nature’s “sublimity”—its awesomeness. We should treat nature as we would a dear friend whose welfare matters for its own sake and even more so because it matters for our sake, too.

Personal rewilding also is about nurturing our sense of wonder and tapping into our biophilic tendencies. It's about being nice, kind, compassionate, empathic, and harnessing our inborn goodness and optimism. It also is a guide for action, using our hearts (feelings), heads (thoughts), and hands and bodies to do something greater than ourselves. As a social movement, it tells us to be proactive, positive, persistent, patient, peaceful, practical, powerful, passionate, playful, present, principled, proud, and polite, what we call the 13 P’s of rewilding.

As much as we do to safeguard and preserve our home and its dazzling inhabitants, now is no time for self-congratulation and patting ourselves on the back for a job well-done. We need to take action to right our many wrongs before it is too late for other animals and ourselves. How we choose to live our lives decides how all other species get to live theirs.

To sum up, “rewilding” is a mindset. It reflects the desire to (re)connect intimately with all animals and landscapes in ways that dissolve borders. Rewilding means appreciating, respecting, and accepting other beings and landscapes for who or what they are, not for who or what we want them to be. It means rejoicing in the personal connections we establish and need so desperately need. It's the inarguable realization that if we are going to make the world a better place now and for future generations, personal rewilding is the way to get there.

If we allow it to be so, these shared feelings can serve as a “social super glue” that will keep us together and move us forward and allow us to increase our compassion footprint. This broader view of rewilding brings us all together.

One of our favorite bumper stickers is “Nature Bats Last.” We can try to outrun and outsmart nature, but in the end, she always wins. Will we go to bat for nature or allow ourselves to become a casualty of our own hubris? Worse yet, will we continue to be the one species whose all-consuming and self-centered ways of life dooms all others species and individuals to perish? We certainly hope not. As such, we call for a “rewilding manifesto” based on compassion and biophilia—our innate drive to connect with (M)other Nature—that will help to foster hope for the future.

It's time to make personal rewilding all the rage. Let's get youngsters involved. Let's foster widespread empathy. We're all intimately interconnected and can and must work together as a united community to reconnect with nature and rewild our hearts.

One easy way to begin is to eavesdrop on the sights, sounds, and scents and combinations to which we're sensitive and imagine how much would be lost if they disappeared. Wild "chatter" can rewild our hearts and souls. The silent springs and other times about which Rachel Carson wrote and singer, songwriter, and artist Joan Baez drew would be worse than we ever could imagine.