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  • From: Tommy Tolson <healinghawk@earthlink.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] A Global Cultural Revolution
  • Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 14:59:22 -0500

"The fact is that our own comfort is based on the rape of planetary wealth, depriving other people (and future generations) of their own local resources. Our own 'hard work' and the so-called 'creativity' of our economy and 'fairness' of our system of government are all secondary factors in creating our privilege. Once we understand the massive structural inequities between rich and poor nations, urban and rural communities, and human resources and natural resources, the emphasis on providing for one's own needs first is seen in a different light.

As we reduce our dependence on the global economy and replace it with household and local economies, we reduce the demand that drives the current inequities. Thus 'look after yourself first' is not an invitation to greed but a challenge to grow up through self-reliance and personal responsibility."

This is from Holmgren's book, /Permaculture: Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability/. Published in 2002, it may or may not have full control of the rate at which global ecological disaster approaches. In the past year, diverse sources have observed the ecological crisis as accelerating. I'm uncertain where we abandon individual efforts in favor of collective efforts but I fear that time lies somewhere in the past.
No one who I know of tries to make the case for the long-term survival prospects of individual-oriented Permaculture designs. Community is required for long-term (multi-generational) survival.
Holmgren writes:
"The process of providing for people's needs within ecological limits requires a cultural revolution. Inevitably such a revolution is fraught with many confusions, false leads, risks, and inefficiencies. We appear to have little time to achieve this revolution.

I offer my thoughts in the belief that discomfort, especially ethical discomfort, is a healthy alternative to ideological certainty."

Holmgren admits to resistance to his ideas from within the Permaculture community. I agree with his call for a cultural revolution. Liberation from corporate rule is required to survive the corporate excesses that laid waste to nature and her creatures (including the privileged, who generally live profoundly diminished, spiritually barren lives). While I agree that the decision to grow one's own food in a "sustainable" manner is indeed a revolutionary act, I think a larger-scale effort is required if we are to save enough of the natural order if we are to avert a crash back to the bacterial level from whence we emerged, perhaps two million years ago. The market society and consumer culture must be killed quickly, like one might wring the neck of a pet chicken in order to feed one's family.
But there must be a functioning alternative in place before that killing can be called a success. In the US, Canada, much of Europe, and parts of Asia, South America, and Australia and New Zealand, there are no structures that can replace consumer culture now. This revolution must not lead to a long period of chaos. It must be the paradigm shift Thomas Kuhn writes about, where one paradigm simply replaces the other with minimal carnage. This seems to require a global culture of adults.

Have enough of us "grow[n] up through self-reliance and personal responsibility" to pull off a global cultural revolution?

Tommy Tolson
Austin, TX




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