Centuries from now, our tribal descendants will likely celebrate annual fairs, just as our ancestors did in the Paleolithic. Tribes will converge to trade stories, exotic resources, art and mates in week-long festivals that will combine religious holidays with country fairs and an annual market. Shamans will perform important rituals in deep caves; craftsmen will trade exotic seashells, statuettes, and other ornaments; storytellers will exchange ideas to revitalize their repertoire; there will be boisterous days of celebration, and long nights of dance and music. I believe one of those fairs will undoubtedly take place in the ruins of what was once called Richmond, IN, where our descendants may pause to remember that weekend in 2005 when the great breakthrough was made, and the New Tribal Revolution united.

My own pilgrimage did not go as I had planned, as if to underscore Daniel Quinn’s theme of “living in the hands of the gods.” Our trip to North Carolina ended up sapping our resources even more than I had expected. We had been in touch with Wildroots, but a conspiracy of economic forces and email flukes prevented the visit Giuli and I had so anticipated. Though we couldn’t visit them, we did end up circulating some handbills for “Feral Visions” later this year, though I fear it’s unlikely that the Tribe of Anthropik will be represented there. We had planned to hike through the backcountry of the Great Smoky Mountains, and visit the Hopewell mounds near Chillicothe before we headed in. But our meager funds would not allow it. By the time we made our way back to Pittsburgh, we had discvoered that our funds were even more meager than that–we wouldn’t even be able to afford gas.

As it happened, Pittsburgh had become a major convergence point for people heading east. One from Boston and another from D.C. would meet up in the Steel City, and proceed in one car across Ohio to Richmond, IN. They happened to have two more seats open. I needed support, and they gave it; on the way back, I repaid them with Ishmael’s “coin of the revolution“–they had a stopping off point in my apartment where they could eat, sleep and refresh themselves for free, before continuing their long journeys.

So for us, IshCon began hours before it was scheduled–as our companions met us in the ‘Burgh. It was a 6 hour drive down I-70, but we arrived faster than I had expected (or was it merely my trips to New York and North Carolina setting a higher standard?), ending up among the first to arrive. I was grateful for that–it meant I would miss as little as possible.

Rather than depend on memory, malleable as it is, I’ll quote what I wrote down during the first two days:

28 May 2005, 6:02. First full day. Yesterday, Pittsburgh became the convergence point for IshConners heading west into Richmond, and I was with them. The ride in was quicker than I had expected, and we ended up being among the first people here. I’m glad; I’d feared that we would be late, and I would miss some of the experience. The first night is usually the roughest, with administrativa, meet-and-greet, and so forth. All the same, the experience is already everything I’d hoped for. Getting to see all my old friends again is great. Right now, it’s the bright and very early morning of the conference’s first full day, and people are beginning to emerge for the trail hike. I took advantage of my early rising to fill in the entry questionnaire, and as I type this, a groaning, half-asleep Matt Kabwe is talking to Janene, who walked in as I began typing this very sentence. Not that I went to sleep so early last night; quite the opposite. One of my trip-mates mysteriously exited last night to the hospital, and since the conference center is locked at night, I remained awake, waiting for him to let him in, until 3 AM. Luckily, I took off all last week, and slept quite a bit–I should be fine foregoing it this weekend. Who would waste precious IshCon time sleeping of all things? I’ll sleep when I’m dead!

28 May 2005, 13:58. This morning, we had a field trip to the Cope Environmental Center. It’s a showcase for alternative energy and environmentally-friendly living. Apparently, Chris helped install their wind turbine. It was a very interesting, hands-on experience with the pragmatic elements of sustainable living. When we came back, we had a group discussion on framing and George Lakoff. We had a delicious lunch, after a delicious breakfast, and now there’s a momentary lull before Mark and Howard make their presentation on Emergent Associates. Most are outside, involved to one degree or another in a game of ultimate frisbee. The weather is turning windier, and the clouds are becoming darker, and Giuli had already come inside to read, so I decided to update my journal of these events. As I did, I was privy to the composition of the first ever IshCon original song, produced right here by Mark and Roxy. I’m sure we’ll all be hearing it soon, in its entirety, and I’m sure I will be quite impressed.

28 May 2005, 19:32. I suppose the hippie drum circle was inevitable, and here it is before me. Myself, I have the rhythm of a white boy, so I’ll continue my account of this afternoon’s events. After the post-lunch festivities, Mark and Howard made their presentation about Emergent Associates. I was already familiar with most of their discussion about appreciative inquiry, psychology, and other elements, but it was a nice talk all the same. My doubts remain about specialized tribal businesses, but those are more the domain of my own talk tomorrow afternoon. After the Emergent Associates talk, Giuli ran for the bed. She apparently didn’t believe me when I told her sleep was something she’d see little of here, and tried to stay up with me last night despite my warnings for her to go to sleep. She slept through the small group discussions (I joined Matt, Janene, Jim, Tyler and Felix for a discussion on how to form tribes), only to be woken immediately after for the group photographs. She got another hour or so of sleep during “show and tell”–missing Cory’s gory details on how to make biodiesel and run a car with it for 47 miles on a gallon made for a few cents, Matt’s description of his movie “The Crime,” and Roxy reading us a funny little story from The New Yorker about “the Guerrilla Girls“–before I had to wake her up for dinner. Dinner just ended, the drum circle is going into another round, and I think Giuli has given up on sleep, and plans to join us for an airing of “The Corporation” and Matt’s movie tonight.

I had originally intended to provide blog entries of my adventures through North Carolina, Kentucky, Ohio, and finally daily reports from IshCon, but as I discussed before, that wasn’t going to happen. So I pared my ambitions down to simply blogging IshCon, but there was no internet access. Instead, I resolved to write down my thoughts there, and post them on my return–but in the end, discipline did me in.

We watched “The Corporation,” and afterwards a group of us stayed up talking late into the night. It was a very frustrating conversation for me, as the discussion turned to frames, and “vision,” and how people feel about different ideas–and of course, about how irrelevant, depressing, and negative those people are, talking about civilizational collapse (i.e., me). Though the topic of discussion quickly turned to how wrong I was, others thought I was dominating the conversation too much, and IshCon’s “silverbacks” (with 1,000 posts or more) were required to remain silent for 15 minutes. To me, it seemed most unfair; equal speaking time when all but one agrees means the one will be buried, no matter how right she may be. To be utterly silenced made it seem to take on more the semblance of a memetic lynch mob. I gave up even the appearance of my own defense, and simply submitted. Eventually, the topic of conversation turned to more pleasant matters, and I tried to forget the incident even happened. It was very late when I went to bed, so I didn’t write down my thoughts; and the next day would leave no time for writing.

I actually got a half-way decent night’s sleep, only waking at 8:30 AM for breakfast. There was the phone call with Daniel Quinn, which is always a heady experience. My hero-worship days are behind me, and though I’d love to take the man out to dinner some time and have a long discussion, I don’t have anything in the way of “questions.” His work doesn’t leave too many unresolved trains of thought, and is quite easy to read and accessible. Having enjoyed a similar experience the year before, I wasn’t even surprised by his manner of speaking–I had already realized his talents lay very strongly with writing, not with spontaneous, on-the-spot speaking (hardly a condemnation; it is a rare talent).

After lunch, I was preparing my own speech, entitled, “Civilization, the Apocalypse, and You.” My growing heresy had left me with a bad taste of alienation in my mouth, never felt more strongly than in that conversation the night before. Everyone else is working on “changing minds,” and “vision,” and “memes,” and how to emphasize a positive vision of humanity. I was once the same, until the facts persuaded me that the natural world doesn’t give a damn how we feel, that the collapse will happen no matter how positive or negative we think it is. I do not think an optimist is one who naively ignores unpleasant facts or tries to downplay them; I think an optimist is one who, presented with something bad, always finds the silver lining, who finds the best in every situation. I think that I am an optimist.

I went into my speech with one high ambition: to be understood. To be accepted. For others to understand that the Tribe of Anthropik was another point in the diverse fabric of the New Tribal Revolution; that rewilding is one more way in “the Way of Ten Thousand Ways.” Especially after the previous night’s discussion, though, I was bracing to be heckled through it, and shouted down after. Still, the possibility of finally being understood and accepted was too great to pass. As unlikely as it was, it was worth the risk.

Then the miraculous happened; I was understood.

You could almost hear the click. Matt was jumping up and down with excitement. After months of anguish and millions (if not billions) of letters, face-to-face contact and putting out my entire thought system at once accomplished what all those long missives could not. In the symbolic world of ideas and words, we tend to think critically, like scientists; we break everything down. In the material reality of voices and sounds, with a flesh-and-blood person standing in front of us, we instead try to integrate, and understand things as a whole, rather than in tiny, discrete pieces. We try to relate and understand real, breathing people in front of us, even when we try to dismiss online personas and authors in print–and the real, breathing people behind them.

Then, IshCon exploded in wondrous breakthrough, as our embrace of diversity accrued another level. We had previously considered the idea of a “Tribe of Tribes,” but which would be more likely to survive? A Tribe of Occupational Tribes, a Tribe of Forager Tribes, or a coalition that mixed the two? Naturally, diversity always enhances one’s chances of survival. If there is a collapse, as I believe there will be, then forager tribes will be the best positioned to survive, and occupational tribes will be as unlikely to survive as anyone else dependent on civilization’s infrastructure. If it doesn’t happen (and I don’t see how it couldn’t, but let’s entertain the notion), then it will be occupational tribes in the better position to shape the future.

Why not combine the two?

An alliance between forager and occupational tribes benefits both, in both the short and long terms. In the short term, forager tribes benefit from friends making money inside civilization who can pay for those minimal, ongoing fees like hunting and fishing licenses; in the long term, they provide an umbilical cord to the rest of the species, no matter what happens. Occupational tribes benefit, as well, in the support a forager tribe can provide: an idyllic vacation spot, a living example, perhaps some unique business opportunities, and maybe most of all, knowledge. In the long term, their support for forager tribes is a kind of insurance; if the collapse happens, that support will be repaid with their own survival.

I had started only wanting to be accepted; instead, we created a whole new model for the New Tribal Revolution, another of those 10,000 ways that combined the strengths of occupational and forager tribes in an elegant balance of the utmost revolutionary potential.

I can’t help but think that something very important happened that day–something that our ancestors may remember as a great turning point. Those points are usually only appreciated in retrospect, but the air was heady with import that day. From now on, I will mark the end of one year and the beginning of the next with that pilgrimage to Richmond, and the celebration of IshCon. I will reckon my years by that annual reminder that at those moments we let go of our illusions of control and our delusions of godhood, when we live in the hands of the gods, when we have faith in chaos, when we submit to the power of the unexpected … in those moments, the whole world will transform itself before us, history will change its course, and nothing will ever be the same again.

Note: I’m waiting for video of my presentation. When I get it, I’ll put it online. I’ll also transcribe the text, and place the Keynote file online for download. Other artifacts of the conference will be posted online soon at IshCon.org.