permaculture

[YankeePerm@aol.com]

Nice post, Gene.  While I don't hold much truck with advanced degrees
necessarily meaning anything, they aren't necessarily meaningless either.

The problem here is the process.  If the process is not consistent with
permaculture, it is self-corrupting.  However this discussion, which at one
point I thought I was going to be able to avoid, is irrelevant except that a
small fraction of the permaculture movement now knows what has been decided
for them.  There is a history of awful human relations behind previous
permaculture institutes that were established by decree for North America,
with people who were doing something and swept aside actually moving and
swearing me, for on, to secrecy as to their new address to avoid any further
contact with Bill and his appointees.  I was not part of this--it was all on
the west coast and I was on the east coast with no interest in personally
being involved in larger organizations than myself.  It began to get me
thinking about what processes should be consistent with permaculture,
however.  Ultimately, hierachical forms and permaculture, which is inherently
anarchistic, are at odds.  Since the abient society--I eschew the word
"culture" with reason--is intensely hierachical, trying to keep
permaculture's integretity while subsuming it to one of these hierachical
forms has burnt out more than one person with as many good intentions as
Scott.  The individual makes his/her own choices, of course, as is right.
 But when it damages what we all are trying to do, we all have a right to be
concerned.  See what happens now over the next 5 or 10 years.  The energy is
in motion, now, cautionary advice despised, and the flow will play itself
out.

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  

If its not in our food chain, we're not thinking.