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  • From: "Healing Hawk" <healinghawk@earthlink.net>
  • To: "'permaculture'" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] politics and permies
  • Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2007 13:44:14 -0600

This post raised the hair on my body. Thanks, Scott.

It seems to me that the long-term survival potential for life on Earth
depends on breaking the pit bull death grip that dominion holds on "first
world" consciousness before that consciousness is exposed to Permaculture or
some other ecological system of thought that nurtures a practice.

It seems to me that Permaculture is a conceptual tool with which to engage a
process of praxis which, according to Paulo Friere (_Pedagogy of the
Oppressed_), results in liberation. Praxis may, then, liberate us from
dominion. Action, reflection, action; driving FOR the liberation of life.

It seems to me that dominion drives parasitic lifestyles in opposition to
Gaia's life cycles. Dominion creates a death cycle, as evidenced by the
ecological destruction left in its wake. Lynn Margulis says that humans, in
order to join the cycles of life, must live in symbiotic relations within
Gaia (the sum total of life on Earth, perhaps in the cosmos).

James Lovelock said in a recent Rolling Stone interview that humans are the
brains and nervous system of Gaia. Consciousness changing? Isn't the
"invisible hand" of the free market supposed to guide the process of life on
Earth?

The decision to consciously join Gaia's flow seems to me profoundly
political, emotional, spiritual, physical, social, and mental. Friere says
humans should strive to enhance our humanity. The "whole human" is composed
of those six "potentials," according to Janet Wegsheider in _Another
Chance_. Permaculture community offers us the opportunity to grow ourselves
to fullness in all of our potentials.

That's why we're here now in these lovely human forms, I think.

Tommy Tolson
Austin, TX

-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Scott Pittman
Sent: Monday, December 03, 2007 12:53 PM
To: 'permaculture'
Subject: Re: [permaculture] politics and permies

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





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