Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Trojan Horses and Permaculture

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Scott Pittman" <scott@permaculture.org>
  • To: "'permaculture'" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Trojan Horses and Permaculture
  • Date: Sun, 8 Sep 2013 11:53:59 -0600

I think that any time we try to treat persons and organizations motivated by
ego and greed as equals in a learned conversation on the deeper meanings of
permaculture it is equivalent to Eve trying to reason with the snake in the
Garden of Eden.

It is obvious to me that there are two trends developing in permaculture
teachers and designers. Some few (yet very visible) are obviously in it for
personal gain primarily to satiate enormous egos with fame and concomitant
with that to secondly to satiate greed with money (and lots of it). In my
mind this trend has little to do with permaculture and a lot to do with an
admiration of the 1 percent and their techniques. Fortunately most people
in permaculture have been able to see through this, unfortunately we live in
the electronic media age and anyone with a high skill set in web
communications and video technology can develop an admiring audience through
flimflammery or snake oil sales. This is permaculture a la capitalism with
a capital C. This thought process can only find solutions to the social and
environmental crises that beset us with the Oligarchic MBA solutions that
got us here in the first place. The folks in this trend see permaculture as
a marketable commodity, and that the same rules apply to permaculture as to
any other market, fortunately this is a small but highly vocal view. If we
are, indeed, seeking a paradigm shift then we have to learn to not to use
the rules and behaviors of the current paradigm to create that shift!

I have avoided personalizing this dichotomy as I find that most people
already recognize who is who in permaculture and then are confronted with
the old ditty "which side are you on".

A second permaculture trend was born out of pattern literacy gained from
protracted observation of whole Earth systems and seeking solutions based on
those observations and patterns. In other words applying permaculture
design ethics and principals to a broken system - broken in the sense that
humans have lost connection with or even recognition of the planetary
processes. By looking at the whole system one cannot ignore economic and
social justice any more than one can ignore deforestation, and
desertification to do so is to miss the primary cause of the secondary
symptoms.

I believe that permaculture appeals to the highest of human aspirations, and
that is, to live an ethical and careful (full of care) life. I believe that
it is from this higher calling that permaculture was conceived and developed
and without this bedrock foundation there would not be such a strong
response around the world to the lessons of permaculture. Most of the
people that I admire in permaculture are those who are seeking to better
conditions for all species, ecosystems, and communities within and
surrounding them. Permaculture was the culmination of those pattern
literate predecessors, as Jason points out, who carefully spelled out how
our planetary systems configure and operate. Bill and David Holmgrin's
brilliant development of permaculture was their recognition (though often
not credited) of these thoughtful scholars and combining their work into a
functional system of design. It is from that template that all good
teachers and designers do their work.

Permaculture design is a system to restore and create better conditions for
our planet it is not and has never been a vehicle for ego gratification or
for obtaining wealth, unless wealth is the realization of a healthy social
and environmental situation in which everyone and everything thrives
equally. Is that woo woo? I don't think so, I believe it is the
evolutionary path we walked for thousands of years until the advent of
settled agriculture which to me was a socially aberrant mutation from which
we have suffered over the past 10,000 years.

My contribution,

Scott

"To change something build a new model that makes the existing model
obsolete" Buckminster Fuller
-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Lawrence London
Sent: Saturday, September 07, 2013 10:19 PM
To: permaculture
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Trojan Horses and Permaculture

On Sat, Sep 7, 2013 at 11:51 AM, Jason Gerhardt
<jasongerhardt@gmail.com>wrote:

> Toby's new article was posted on PRI's website, I tried to comment, but am
> guessing I have been censored since I didn't bow down to Geoff Lawton.
Just
>

Hilarious and not unexpected.


> trying to have my comment heard, somewhat futile to post it here, but in
>

Futile?


> case anyone is interested. It might seem out of context without reading
the
> comments on PRI.


Not going to lure me to go there and read that stuff....juicy comments, etc.


> ---
> Geoff I am so surprised you would claim that the PDM is basically a
> flawless toolkit that can be applied wholesale.


The PDM is the definitive starting point for anyone interested in
permaculture;
it is a magnificent magnum opus, indispensible in learning how to become a
permaculture practitioner.


> You should research the
> numerous errors in that text (I'm aware that a lot of what is in there
> works too)? I absolutely love Bill Mollison (and PDM) and respect your
> teaching a ton, but what good does it do to insist that something with so
> many flaws is perfect? This book is a main reason, in my conversations
with
> agro-ecologists, why scientists discount permaculture as phony science.
>

Why would anyone waste time on "scientists" discounting permaculture as
phony science
when it is not a science at all in the first place; it is a lens through
which you view the world, nature and the sciences
(crafts, arts, trades also) and how they all interrelate.


>
> It's not actually the hippy memes that are discrediting permaculture for a
> lot of people; for a ton of people it was Bill Mollison himself.
> Sustainable/Organic agriculture conferences are full of obvious hippy
> types, and they are often the ones paid to speak! Scientists abound in
> these conferences as well, and they all listen to and learn from each
other
> (gasp!).
>

What do you have against hippies? You owe it to yourself to spend some time
with all those
religo-wacko hippy haters at the notorious permies website.....you will
gain new attitude and appreciation for
alternative types (Mollison?). I spent decades in bohemian/beatnik/hippy
modes of living; this list is a product of that.
I get incensed when people go off on an anti-hippy rant; I think of what
happened to our counterparts in Argentina and Chile (genocide).
Take some time and use your brain; learn to view the world as it is. Don't
join the John Birch Society or send money to Pat Robertson....

LL

>
> The Permaculture I know and have worked in for the last 10 years embraces
> all the contributions that people have made to the field, not just blindly
> following Mollison. Mollison is a genius, obviously, but the founders of
> new fields are often eccentric and prone to exaggeration, so there is no
> need to accept his words as the holy gospel.
>

BS If you appreciate Mollison, say so less insults denigrating his
contribution.
If you make a contribution to the permaculture movement even remotely
comparable to his then maybe people will
pay attention to you.


>
> How I read Toby's article is that we need strategies, recipes, etc, that
> can lure people beyond the following-the-steps-approach and become pattern
> literate critical thinkers. If all we ever do is follow the recipes of PDM
> and others, we miss our chance to develop new ways of doing things (and
>

We need doers as well as people involved in new thinking and teaching.
People who work with their hands; if they follow
someone's step by step method, that is just fine. Finding new ways of doing
things, new methods to incorporate into the
permaculture manual, is easy these days; just look around, use Google,
watch videos, experiment on land you have access to.
Spare me the social engineering.


> will make a ton of errors in the process). Basically the PDM has taken the
> work of tons of pattern literate critical thinkers and put it into a
manual
> (I will hesitate to call it a recipe book). Yes, a lot of it works and is
> sheer brilliance, and we should replicate that, but we should also be
> encouraging the development of new ideas and thinking in our students
> rather than just telling them what to do. It's the old adage 'don't just
> tell me WHAT to think, teach me HOW to think'.
>
> There are hundreds of books as important as the PDM, most for other
reasons but all apply to the practice of permaculture and contribute
to a valuable knowledgebase.

Lastly, permaculture obviously means a lot of different things to different
> people. I no longer hope we can agree on what the term actually means. We
>

Of course we can agree on what permaulture means; that should be no problem
and above all no obstacle but always a stimulus for discussion and
exploration of new ideas and territory.

Wikipedia permaculture entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture
"Permaculture is a design system which aims to create sustainable
human habitats by following nature's patterns."

*Definitions of
Permaculture*<http://ibiblio.org/permaculture/documents/permaculture-definit
ions.faq>

http://ibiblio.org/permaculture/documents/permaculture-definitions.faq

have to remember that Permaculture is not the goal, it too is a Trojan
> horse. The goal is to make our actions have positive effects on ecosystems
> and to make such action and skills a regular/normalized aspect of human
> culture. Permaculture is a finger pointing to the moon. If you get stuck
> looking at the finger, you miss the whole point.
>

Having permaculture as a central focus, to keep in the forefront of your
mind is a great idea,
as a means to an end and as an end in itself but not a religion; bigger and
better Woo Woo Permaculture. If you search the archives for this list you
will find that the meaning of woo woo is
super enriched, enhanced, developed high energy distilled esence of
classic, advanced permaculture design and implementation, not airy fairey
stuff as wheaton like to call it. He offers PC courses "with zero woo woo";
if he only knew what he was saying...........

LL

> --
> Jason Gerhardt
>
> PO Box 4355
> Boulder, CO 80306
> 720-496-9744
>
_______________________________________________
permaculture mailing list
permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
subscribe/unsubscribe|user config|list info|make a donation toward list
maintenance:
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
message archives: https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/permaculture/
Google message archive search:
site: lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture [searchstring]
Permaculture Institute USA http://permaculture.org
Avant Geared http://www.avantgeared.com





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page