[permaculture] politics and permies

Scott Pittman scott at permaculture.org
Mon Dec 3 13:52:37 EST 2007


I have to disagree with most of the posts on pc and politics, including the
quoted comments of my Australian/Brazilian friend Lucy.

To my mind the very act of enrolling for a permaculture design course is one
of the most political acts most people ever engage in.  Since I have
certified over 3,000 people I feel that I have helped create a small village
of active, engaged and aware folks who now have the tools to change the
reality around them - and many of them are very busy doing just that.

The very act of reading "Permaculture - A Design Manual" is extremely
radical and political as the information and realizations sink in of the
ultimate outcome of following the pc path.  The beauty of permaculture has
always meant, to me, that I can travel all over the world in some of the
most brutal dictatorships espousing a revolutionary system of design and I
am considered harmless by the powers that be.  That is an incredible
advantage folks, in a world that has become increasingly polarized by the
paranoia of rampant capitalism and lack of ethical guidance.

To state that pc practitioners in the first world are any less political
than any other place is an exercise in one up man ship that may describe the
feeling but not the reality.  It would be something else to say that
permaculture in the third (developing - what ever) world is more relevant
for survival than in the first then I would be the first to agree, if we are
talking in the short term, but if we are talking in the not to distant
future I think it will be equally needed for survival in the whole world
with the third world having a slight edge, just because they are a couple of
generations closer to the land.

The effect of Permaculture worldwide is certainly more profoundly political
than Students for a Democratic Society of which I was a proud member for
several years.  The primary difference being SDS was fighting against
something while permaculture is fighting for something.  Within the ethical
guideposts of permaculture are contained all the political guidance one
could need.  While changing laws and ordinances is good and necessary work
it is extremely time consuming and deadening of spirit and I only resort to
it when I see a real chance of succeeding otherwise I begin to feel a little
bit like Don Quixote.

Most of what we understand to be politics, Democrat, Republican, Labor,
Communist, etc. are games that have been developed to keep us thinking that
we can make a difference by staying in the cultural/economic system and that
we are involved in "democracy".  It is an incredible demonic and clever way
of controlling an increasingly disenfranchised populace. For the most part I
don't play except for the occasional trip to the polls in an attempt to ease
the painful descent into the inevitable change that must come. 


Scott Pittman
Director
Permaculture Institute
www.permaculture.org

-----Original Message-----
From: Stella [mailto:stella at finca-luna.com] 
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2007 1:43 PM
To: permaculture
Subject: [permaculture] politics and permies

hi Jim,

thanks for your post, i liked your letter .. and hearing what u did 
after your pc course - good on you :)

wanted to comment on this bit you wrote:


> If there is one critique I'd make of permaculture, I would say that it
> is too anti-political; that it doesn't think about how the things it
> wants need political change.


i´d say that fortunately the permaculture movement is so eclectic, that 
it´s really not possible to say "it" thinks one thing or another - what 
we all have in common is that we share ethics, principles, a try for a 
systemic form of thinking .. what you learned in your PDC.   But people 
hear and apply all this in very different ways and - especially - 
within very different political realities.

One highlight of the last international convergence (IPC8) for me was 
hearing Lucy Legan (a founder member of IPEC, where we were staying) 
say that although for us in the west permaculture is still mostly a 
passtime and a fashion, for them in Brasil, PC is Political.

She's an australian who has lived in Brasil for a long time and it is 
perhaps her double identity that gave her 'permission' to be so blunt 
in public, but infact speaking privately with many south american 
permaculturists, I came away with the distinct impression that they are 
pretty disgusted with how feebly we apply permaculture in the west.
ie. mostly to get more confortable ourselves, or build up & show off 
our 'expertise'  (then try to 'sell it back to them')   instead of 
really using it to shift OUR society, and DO political change with it.
This they see as doubly outrageous given how much  privilege we have in 
the west and how much leverage we COULD do with it.

I´ve been collecting interviews of permaculture pioneers since 2003 
now, and my impression is that mostly they are very politically aware 
people, who do work directly on this level when it makes sense.   And 
are pretty clear about the fact that any good permie design is ALWAYS 
working also on a political level.

The latest interviews I did  in IPC8 with permaculture pioneers from 
Argentina, Guatemala, ElSalvador & Colombia, and  what is interesting 
is that most of them also infact came to permaculture through their 
political activism.   Starhawk in the US is now a permaculture teacher, 
and she definately came to PC through her political activism work.   So 
did I, so perhaps I just notice these people more.

Yet other pioneers here in Europe are also busy changing laws: eg. 
Margrit Kennedy in Germany is working at central governament level to 
change the law around community currencies, as she figured out a long 
time ago that monetary change is essential to making any type of 
permaculture project really viable - and has been patiently and 
constantly building that movement for decades now (with very impressive 
results).

In England there are permies working to change the law around land 
rights, also from decades back (I don´t live there anymore so am not up 
to date with the successes so far, but I believe there have been some 
important ones), and in Spain we had the law change around strawbale 
building a few years ago - because of permies working at it I believe.

And I gather there are now permies in australia working to get a 
permaculture political party together.

and that is just considering 'permies' those who have done a PDC.  But 
as I believe that the great majority of those who sit through a PDC 
don´t really understand how far reaching these ethics & design tools 
really are, I mostly work a 'backwards' and consider good 'permies' 
those people who actually DO permaculture, whether they have officially 
studied it or not.

And so I would say that for eg. Brudtland is a great permie - because 
she led perhaps the biggest political shift the planet has ever seen.  
What the Brudtland comission did was a SUBLIME and unparalleled 
achievement in terms of design for sustainability, precisely because it 
took well into account the whole political situation at the time (as 
well as the ecological, the social, the economic...).  PC textbook 
stuff.

The fact that a lot of people in the PC movement didn´t read or value 
this work (and so have been unable to use this to move permaculture 
forward) is tragic.
But perhaps it has more to do with lack of understanding of design than 
distrust of politics.
I´ve heard for eg. many a pc colleague say that "sustainable 
development" is a contradiction in terms and so it´s meaningless ... or 
some such dismissal of the whole thing.
Yet that pardox that Brudtland launched with that exact combination of 
words was the piece de resistance of the thing!   We just didn´t get 
it.
Political naiveté?  Perhaps.

PC's birth had a lot to do with taking a pro-active stance, which is 
sometimes changed to just "anti-protest" & so might be interpreted as 
anti-political by some.  By those who want to hear it that way tho.

It is also definately true I think that in most 'first world' countries 
PC is deeply tinged by the privilege & middle-class patterns of the 
people who have adopted it and been very good at 'spreading the word' 
(and make believe that their stance is the 'right' or indeed only one). 
   Dont´be fooled.

If you look beyond appearances and adjust for privilege & 'divulging 
power' (eg. consciously focus more on the edge species and what the 
lower class people, the women, the young people, the ethnic minorities 
are saying and doing), the picture is a LOT more interesting.

In the wide world as well as (sadly perhaps) within the PC movement.







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