permaculture

[Lee Flier <lflier@mindspring.com>]

Excellent post David!  And this is exactly the kind of thing I was
referring to.  Too many effective "movements" end up getting completely
watered down and unable to achieve their original purpose because people
prefer "niceness" and security to combativeness and risk.  People also
prefer rigid, black-and-white answers to complex problems, and a good angry
diatribe tends to remind everyone that their dogma is not so safe. :-)

>Q.  How can a group of green, ecologically aware, educated and motivated
>people also be fascists?
>A.  By being preoccupied with destruction.  Through their love for nature,
>these people have developed a cult of weed hatred.  At any cost
>(labour-herbicide) the weed/enemy has to destroyed.

Wow.  I had no idea this was their agenda.  They have no knowledge of the
benefits of weeds?  Where do they get this idea?

>If Bill was there, I am sure he would have ignored his own advice on not
>wasting your efforts with people who don't want to hear the message and
>given a biting and angry critique.

Yeah I'd say!

>A best case scenario is that the policies
>will result in a dull lime-green brand of sustainability.  The worst case
>scenario is that efforts in the name of sustainability will push us in the
>wrong direction.

Yes, and I see this happening a lot already.

>Well-meaning, concerned citizens are joining green groups whose narrow
>focus may make them irrational.  In this, I would even include anti-genetic
>engineering, anti-biocide, .pro-wilderness etc.  groups.

Yes.  I think possibly the most dangerous groups are actually (hate to say
it because I've been involved with them before) the "wilderness
conservation" crowd.  These folks would have it that humans have no "right"
to alter the environment in ANY way.

In fact there was an article in the current PC Activist by an obviously
conscientious fellow who tried to justify some of his eco-dilemmas (read:
guilty conscience) by passing on some recently-learned information about
how Native American tribes did greatly modify their environment and as such
were maybe not so much the ecologists that we make them out to be.

Well sorry, but I just don't think humans are all that special.  All living
things modify their environments!  Some quite dramatically (whole
ecosystems, just to name one example, evolved around dams built by
beavers).  To suggest that humans need to leave the "wilderness" alone
entirely is still to deny that we have any valid place in the "natural"
world.  The way the eco-fascists frame it, humans are pretty much forced to
divide the planet into "pristine" wilderness (unoccupied and untouched by
humans) and polluting, un-ecological human settlements.  Why human survival
is necessarily damaging and other animals' survival tactics are not,
doesn't enter the question.  HOW humans can live with the land and even
change it, without being destructive of other life, doesn't enter into the
question either.  The only "compromise" is to "live as lightly on the
planet as possible".  And feel damn guilty about every footprint you leave.

This kind of "solution" is certainly never going to work for any length of
time.  Appealing to a person's guilty conscience can only get you so far.
Other animals and plants are not feeling compromised by their very
existence.  They don't question whether they have the "right" to kill other
animals for food or choke out other plants for sunlight or build dams or
spin webs or dig burrows in the ground.  Yet all of these
ecosystem-altering activities actually PROMOTE the health of other life in
the ecosystem. If any animal or plant in a stable ecosystem is not doing
its job or disappeared, the entire web of life would suffer if not
disappear altogether.

And what the eco-fascists haven't figured out yet is that this web includes
humans.  We too have our jobs to do and if we don't do them, the world will
suffer.  As it is we are definitely NOT doing our job, in fact are mostly
acting in opposition to our job - but the reaction to this on the part of
some of the green groups - namely that we should keep our mitts off the
"wilderness" altogether - is also alarming.

The fact is that none of us living knows what a "pristine" ecosystem looks
like, if by "pristine" we mean untouched by humans.  This is because humans
have occupied practically every square mile of this planet for thousands of
years.  By my definition a "pristine" ecosystem means a healthy and
abundant one, and in that regard, many humans such as Native Americans DID
actually help to contribute to that health just as the beavers and prairie
dogs do.  'Cause I hate to break it to the eco-fascists but if we just
"leave the wilderness alone" it is NOT going to end up looking like it did
five centuries ago, at least not in my part of the world where the Cherokee
and other woodland tribal groups were very much involved in the propagation
of chestnuts and oaks and berries and the stewardship of deer and turkey.

To just disregard this involvement and chalk the richness of the Eastern
woodlands of the U.S. (or wherever) to "accident" is a terrible mistake, an
extreme disservice to the people responsible (ironically since eco groups
just LOVE to romanticize indigenous peoples), and will certainly not bode
well for either the humans or the rest of the ecosystems we occupy.

Of course we can't continue to occupy the land in the way we have been.
But to suggest that we ought therefore to feel guilty about our own
existence and hold it as an ideal not to occupy land at all, is hardly an
answer.

>Permaculture needs to loudly proclaim its identity and follow Bill's lead
>to challenge
>stupidity.  This will often appear angry and often get an angry response.

Here, here!

>War on Dogma?

Right on!  Or at the very least, expose it as dogma.  Get people to
question it.  If they still decide that's their bag, so be it.  But we
needn't just stand around and proclaim our love and solidarity with them. :-)

= Lee =