[permaculture] politics and permies
Stella
stella at finca-luna.com
Mon Dec 3 16:00:16 EST 2007
given what ONE Ghandi was able to do, or one Martin Luther King, in
terms of social change .. I think we should seriously ask ourselves
why, with so many permaculturists loose ... we haven´t re-designed
society yet.
it´s only a revolutionary system of design if some revolution actually
happens.
evaluations are not necessarily excercises in one upmanship, nor
put-downs of anyone.
Maybe they are just evaluations. They can be used to improve the
design, instead of dismissing the people who aren´t feeling served by
the design as emotional, backward or not seeing the 'real' reality
(i.e. yours).
And I really hope we're well beyond the attitudes that if feelings are
involved the people having them must be irrational, or what they say
isn´t ALSO 'real'. In this case the very opposite is very likely
true: centuries of brutal colonization doesn´t make you just angry, it
also makes you very perceptive of the subtleties of the workings of the
system that has your people enslaved.
Maybe we should just listen.
It would be very strange if the opressed and those benefiting from the
opression actually agreed on 'realities'.
El 03/12/2007, a las 19:52, Scott Pittman escribió:
> 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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