[permaculture] designing societies

Stella stella at finca-luna.com
Mon Dec 3 08:39:42 EST 2007


this is in reply to what Krystle wrote (below)

PC textbooks very clearly state that good PC design is the beneficial 
assembly of all types of components, not just site or energy / 
technology components, but abstract and social components too.

The problem is that there are so few examples of successful designs 
that really do all  that, and so many great examples of great designs 
that just take into account the 'earth' stuff, that the overwhelming 
impression is still that PC design is about gardening techniques, or 
designing 'things' like buildings and such.

 From what I can see the majority of our designs that fail do so mostly 
on forgetting to include and / or skillfully design with the social 
components (which include laws, political realities, people, cultures, 
economics, etc.).  And what Mollison calls the 'abstract' components 
which are ETHICS, data, timings, sequence, etc.

Overall this does seem to be our weak point, but it´s not at all 
surprising: it's difficult enough to design good systems with just the 
first two types of components - and we can touch and see those directly 
at least.
Even at this level what happens a lot is not really designing with all 
local factors, from first principles, but a kind of "copying & pasting" 
other's designs.

Really good holistic design involves moving on to incorporating the 
other two successfully, requires a real grasp of the underlying models 
used in designing just earth-based systems or / & a hugely 
multifunctioning mind & / or really well communicated design groups (a 
good 'group mind', where people cooperate instead of compete, in 
figuring out how to design with a stunning variety of components and 
situations).

I love that B. Fuller quote you gave Krystle, and believe that he would 
agree with this because he did a lot of good permaculture, which  
requires real direct learning from Nature: learning, applying, 
perfecting and re-inventing the MODELS we can under-stand from Her 
designs.  (Just copying can work, but doesn't get you very far, 
especially with very complex systems).

the quote ."...  To change something, you have to create a new MODEL 
that makes the old models obsolete."   is simply a statement of the 
overall pattern of evolution, and what he is saying is that it is such 
an important basic patterns that it applies at all scales.

Nature abhors a vacuum, so just as new noses, limb adaptations and even 
species come about because they are better models than the previous 
ones, so do new laws, new social structures, new tribes ...

Daniel Quinn made an impassioned plea in a great lecture he gave to 
commercial designers  to think of politics and society as DESIGNERS.
http://www.ishmael.org/Education/Writings/environdesign/

- I think it might have been more productive to have given that lecture 
at a permaculture design conference, but hopefully enough that enough 
of us read this transcript.  It´s very very good.

He ends by saying "For the sake of the human future, don't take your 
designer's hat off when you leave the office. Don't limit your work or 
your thinking to the objects and physical structures that people need 
and want. Look at everything that's going on here with designer's eyes. 
For the sake of the human future, go after it all like designers."

I agree with what Tommy says  in "Fuller was right.  But someone has to 
keep existing reality from destroying the resiliency that allows for 
new models. "

A very crucial component in the 'invisibles' sections we have to take 
into account (or die),  are the great forces set against the kind of 
evolution that is in the interests of Life,  by a hyper-privileged 
class of humans, who  have their own - man-made - definition of 
"better" and (SO FAR) have simply been better designers, strategizers 
and organizers than ourselves.

But only because we've failed to truly learn and understand the 
patterns of their greed and organizing structures, and deal with those 
in our designs AS WELL.
They DO design using the 'intangible components' (especially myth, 
psychology, fear, etc.), and extreemly well: good design (in terms of 
THEIR ethics, visions, principles, etc.) is how they control the 
planet, according to their patterns.

The first and most crucial thing for us to learn would be that those 
same patterns - although we don´t agree with them or don´t´like them - 
exist also within ourselves, and are very effectively used to get us 
acting against each other and against our own interests, whenever 
required (like when we're 'too threatening' to the system).  The Matrix 
modelled this very well.

  .. but this is still a little too advanced and perhaps we're somewhere 
between 1 & 2  with this one, on the natural succession for truly 
revolutionary ideas, which goes something like

1) ignore them ...
if they don´t go away..
2) ridicule them  ...
if that doesn't shut them up
3) try to kill them (first try their reputation and if that doesn't 
work, their bodies)
if u start suspecting they might have a point .. (often after they're 
dead or discredited)
4) attribute the ideas to some more 'respectable' person or institution
then eventually
5) integrate them and say we all knew this anyway.

of course even though this succession is observably true not everything 
that is ignored or ridiculed is revolutionary.  You have to make your 
own  mind up ... and if it´s a good designers mind it learns lots even 
from ridiculous things.

I haven´t heard much about the Zeitgeist movie amongst permies and am 
wondering if it´s being ignored or  it´s just ridiculed  at the 
moment... I´ve no idea when it came out so it could be that i missed 
the comments, but if you havne´t seen it you really should:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dmPchuXIXQ
(this is the part on money design, which is particularly crucial for 
permies I think)


politics IS design too.
anything that humans create is through design... or de-fault (lack of 
conscious design)


El 03/12/2007, a las 1:36, Krystle Chung escribió:

> I'm just learning about permaculture, but so far I'm under the 
> impression
> that permaculture is more about design than politics (although they're 
> not
> mutually exclusive; simply a different emphasis). I associate 
> permaculture
> with Buckminster Fuller's belief that "You never change things by 
> fighting
> the existing reality. To change things, build a new model that makes 
> the
> existing model obsolete."
>
> Best,
>
> Krystle
>
> Notes/research - http://selfmadefarmer.wordpress.com/
> About me - http://www.selfmadefarmer.com
>




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