Neo-Ruralism and Edenamism: Similarities and Differences

The news stories surrounding the Family in the Woods have sparked interest in neo-ruralism. Let's analyze the relationship: similarities and differences between neo-ruralism and Edenamism, to better understand these two approaches to life.

Neo-ruralism and Edenamism share common ground, but they do not coincide. The similarities are evident; the differences, however, are crucial on a philosophical and anthropological level.

Similarities

1. Rejection of the urban-industrial model

Both arise as a response to the saturation of the city, to abstract labor, to dependence on complex and fragile systems, to consumption as identity.

2. Return to the land and manual skills

Cultivating, raising, building, repairing: concrete action regains dignity, value, and an educational function.

3. Autonomy and resilience

Reduction of induced needs, self-production, short supply chains, recovery of traditional knowledge: these are central elements of both visions.

4. Implicit Critique of Linear Progress

Not everything "new" is better; technology must be selected, not endured.

Substantial Differences

1. Philosophical Depth

Neo-ruralism: It is above all a lifestyle choice or a socio-economic orientation. Often pragmatic, sometimes fashionable, sometimes ideological.

Edenamism: It is a worldview. It does not start from the countryside, but from the human being, from his relationship with limits, desire, time, nature, and power.

👉 Edenamism can exist even without an immediate physical relocation to a rural area; neo-ruralism cannot.

2. Relationship with Utopia

Neo-ruralism: It tends to idealize the "return to the countryside" as a solution.

Edenamism: It is wary of utopias. "Eden" is not a perfect place to be recreated, but a dynamic tension, always imperfect and never concluded.

👉 Edenamism accepts conflict, hardship, and error as structural parts of existence.

3. Inner Dimension

Neo-ruralism: focuses on where and how one lives.

Edenamism: focuses on why one lives a certain way.

👉 Without an inner transformation, for Edenamism, a change of scenery risks being merely a geographical shift of hardship.

4. Relationship with the System

Neo-ruralism: often remains compatible with the dominant system (subsidies, tenders, experiential tourism, "green" branding).

Edenamism: is structurally impervious to the system, because it questions its anthropological assumptions: growth, control, accumulation, delegation.

5. Time and Measure

Neo-ruralism: still tends to organize itself in terms of efficiency, productivity, and profitability.

Edenamism: recovers measure, slowness, qualitative time, even at the cost of sacrificing economic optimization.

In summary

One could say that:

neo-ruralism is often an answer;

Edenamism is a radical question.

The former changes the external landscape; the latter works on the internal landscape and, only consequently, on the external one.

The neo-rural seeks a better place to live.

The Edenamist seeks a truer way of inhabiting the world—which often leads him to the land, but not out of nostalgia: out of existential necessity.