[permaculture] BodyPolictic-Political Humor-Congress Votes to Outsource Pres
Tommy Tolson
healinghawk at earthlink.net
Mon Jun 18 19:12:36 EDT 2007
Primal Parent wrote:
> i promised to avoid Political arguments from now on, but i just had to jump
> in here and say that i feel there were some cheap shots taken at graham
> (especially in attempting to apply the 'Authoritarian' label on him). he
> has done some amazing work and inspired tons of individuals and i dont think
> that should be dismissed with a wave of the hand and the word 'privileged'
> (as if 99% of us on here aren't).
>
> to paraphrase wendell berry, "well, if white men have the most influence on
> the world, then i guess it's good that i am a white man...'cause now i can
> influence people to start living in balance. and besides, if it's not a good
> thing...well it's not like i had any choice in the matter"
>
> you should check out what spiralseed is doing.
>
>
>
My point is that those preaching the non-political path avoid politics
no more than anyone else. You don't avoid politics when you design
Permaculture communities, villages, towns, etc. You don't avoid
politics when you organize Permaculture meetings, groups, guilds,
co-ops, intentional communities, or any other arrangement that contains
more than one person. You don't even avoid politics when you attend to
your own psychology. Politics is not naturally avoidable.
If we want to allow the forces which benefit from undeveloped human
political potentials (recall that there are six human potentials:
physical, emotional, spiritual, social, mental, and volitional, or
political) to continue to oppress life on this planet, then we can
continue to pretend to avoid politics and thus leave them to those who
oppress us. Our oppressors do not avoid politics. What I suggest, and
what I advocate, is a means of utilizing politics as another tool in our
Permaculture design toolkits. I don't know what the monster looks like,
smells like, or what sort of noises it makes in the night. I do know
that the artifice of avoiding the political potential of humans does no
natural person or process any favors. We remain mired in the darkness
of ignorance that way.
If we can't deal with our human political potential on a Permaculture
listserv that, at some level, concerns designs with which to interface
humans with the processes of nature, we are going nowhere good. I want,
and propose, a creative conversation about the elements of politics as
it relates to Permaculture design. Let's avoid oppression in this
conversation, shall we?
Politics concerns who we include in our definition of community. Who do
we include? I'm talking about bringing to reality a Permaculture ethics
that articulates the specifics of "care of the land and care of people."
Let's define oppression, for example, so that oppression is
recognizable, so that resistance/avoidance may be articulated, and so
that we may create some effective strategies to overcome and/or avoid
oppression that we unconsciously design into our work. Is anyone
interested in taking on this creative challenge?
Tommy Tolson
Austin, TX
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