permaculture

[Victor Guest <vic@daena.eepo.com.au>]

To: "chrm" <general@lists.holisticmanagement.org>

As part of an on ongoing website remodel I'm developing a
document listing the reasons why people resist changing the way they make
decisions. This is a "worst possible outcome," with the purpose of allowing
a wide variety of these reasons to be stated or asked, and responded to in
a variety of ways. It will become a list of Frequently Asked Questions.

The hope is not so much that rational answers will dispel fears and allow
people to move forward unobstructed. It is that a diversity of such
questions or
statements, and a similar diversity of replies on these matters, help share
learning and shed light on beliefs that hold us back.

So here are the questions: (1) What are the biggest barriers, challenges,
or logjams you or the people you work with are encountering in changing the
way you make decisions? 

(2) How could you deal effectively with these?

Answers to one or both will be appreciated. 

I'll lead off by saying that a big barrier for me and my rural community is
simply being proactive. The weight of past experience is that we cannot
design our own future. Our land is mostly federal land, the economy for the
last 100
years has mostly been harvesting sunlight for unprocessed export, and the
means of doing this (sawmills, railroad, packing plants) have never been
locally owned. We are politically dominated by urban voters.
Outside money and other outside forces are making it difficult for the
traditional ranching economy to continue. Our habit is reaction,
defensiveness, and defeat. To suggest that we can design our future as a
community, that we are not at the mercy of outside forces, has troubling
overtones of elitism, lack of solidarity, criticism of past efforts, risk
of takeover on another level by unfriendly forces, socialist agendas, and
so on.

The successes that we do have are on the level of ranches and businesses.
But it is difficult for people to extend their proactivity to designing a
future for their community, as the belief is still that it cannot be done.

Any questions or answers would be appreciated. A first draft of the
Frequently Asked Questions will soon appear for public use on the website
below.

Peter

PRACTICAL HOLISM IN THE NORTHWEST: A JOURNAL OF PEOPLE, LAND, AND MONEY
reports quarterly on what people are learning from conscious efforts to
manage wholes, rather than issues, positions, rules, problems, symptoms, or
parts:  http://www.orednet.org/~pdonovan