permaculture

[YankeePerm@aol.com]

Well I am always impressed by Jack Rowes posts, usually because they are
correct and informative.  Now I am impressed by the strategy--attacking me
and then saying he didn't mean it gives him the effectivenss of the attach
and apparent immunity from retort.

Unless disagreeing with Bill is attacking him, which seems a rather
totalitarian view, no body has attacked him.  I'm disagreeing with his choice
of the term guild and the idea that such things are there to observe.  I was
also commenting on the unrelated fact that during the discussion someone
suggested that guilds a natural evolutionary event.  This has nothing to do
with Bill--if he every said that, I missed it and I doubt it. 

Maybe everyone is sensitive because of the letters to the editor in the
Activist recently.  Without going into whether the points raised were right
or wrong, I think it was the wrong forum, too public.  If we are going to
discuss Bill personally, he needs to be part of the discussion.  There is
enough gossip (about all sorts of people) in the permaculture movement
without electronic versions.  However Bill's intellectual contributions are
not sacrosanct and can be criticized, disagreed with, even characterized as
being outside of permaculture.  It is one thing to disagree, another to turn
it into a personal attack.

Imputing anger on my part was the height of arrogance.  How can you know my
emotional state from across the sea of electrons.  I am very concerned that
there is a tendency in permaculture to become glib and take shortcuts that
are counter productive.  Cutting the design course from three weeks to two is
another example.  The course needs to be longer, not shorter, for certifying
people.  There are other, non certificate approaches, which are more
effective than a design course for people who do not need certification but
just will design for themselves at home.  The sense of urgency is unbalancing
our perspective, not surprisingly, and we are cutting away at our own power
to acquire wisdom and direct change by quick and easy and wrong solutions.
 We see people take a 10 day course, now and rush off to give certificates to
others--instant experts.  Encouraging this is another example of desperation.
 Less than our best is not enough and we can't do our best if we are looking
for sloppy shorthand concepts like "guild."  People have been in attunement
with the earth before and despite the efforts of Western Society, a few are
still left.  These are the elders of the human species, these people.  We
need to take the time to listen.

Mollison stresses seeking the most benefit for least change.  This is the
mainstay of permaculture--the conservation principle.  Using words that don't
mean what we try to make them mean, ascribing motives to people when we can't
possibly know them, for that matter the discourtesy of not taking sincere
statements at face value, thrashing around trying to find things to change,
these are all mistakes we seem to be making in the permaculture movement.  

Maybe we should step back, question a bit more, and lash out a bit less.  

For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway, Yankee Permaculture Publications (since
1982), Elfin Permaculture workshops, lectures, Permaculture Design Courses,
consulting and permaculture designs (since 1981), and now correspondence
courses via email.  Next starts in Oct. 1997. Internships available.
Copyright, 1997, Dan & Cynthia Hemenway, P.O. Box 52, Sparr FL 32192 USA
 YankeePerm@aol.com  

We don't have time to rush.