#self-willed

[evokit-notes]

To me the best definition of what is wild is what is self-willed. In early Teutonic and Norse languages the root of ‘wild’ is in ‘will’, something wild is self-willed, uncontrollable: the will and the wild are connected right from the beginning.

Jay Griffiths

[evokit-notes]

What do we value about the Amazon forest? Do people seek to protect it because they believe it is 'pristine' and 'pre-human'? Clearly not, since it's inhabited and harvested by large numbers of tribal people, some of whom have been there for millennia. The Amazon is not important because it is 'untouched'; it's important because it is wild, in the sense that it is self-willed. It is lived in and from by humans, but it is not created or controlled by them. It teems with a great shifting, complex diversity of both human and non-human life, and no species dominates the mix. It is a complex, working eco-system which is also a human-culture system, because in any kind of worthwhile world, the two are linked.

Paul Kingsnorth | Dark Mountain - Issue 3 | p18

[evokit-notes]

The wildest things and people are the most self-willed, self-governing, anarchic. .... Anarchy refuses to impose one's will on another. In this is kindness. By contrast, cruelty and the abuse of power always involve imposing one's will on another. My Will Be Done, the Christian god thunders at the self-willed world, which thrives—so kindly—without him.

Wild: An Elemental Journey | Jay Griffiths (p. 122)