permaculture

[blissv@nmhu.campus.mci.net]

 *When we start suppressing views, as in implying that black and white are
the same, for the sake of uniformity, permaculture starts to die.*

The point is -not- to suppress views or to say that black and white are the
same, rather exactly what you earlier stated, together they form one pulsing
whole, energized by the nature of their polarities, inter-related, the
yin/yang forming one whole circle of life. That is what "Both", implies to
me rather than *Yes and No are rarely  if ever "both right."  That is
foolishness. * There must be a place in permaculture for expanding cosmology
or it will become extinct.



At 12:49 PM 11/4/98 EST, you wrote:
>I'll pass on the politically correct froth with which everyone seems to be
>lathering him/herself (mostly him so far) in the color and texture of the 
>day.
>
>The reason why problem solving is the point of permaculture is that, 
>according
>to the people who claim coinage of the term, notably Mollison, the 
>development
>of permaculture was sparked by awareness of the decline and apparent collapse
>of global ecosystems.  There is no need to design eden where eden persists.
>
>Where no problem exists, it violates the most basic permaculture conservation
>principle, which is to act only insofar as action is required, espoused by no
>less luminaries than Mollison and Fukuoka.  If there is no problem, design
>music and paintings--you already have a sustainable life for you and yours.
>Permaculture is then un-needed.  The first principle of permaculture design,
>the conservation principle, admonishes us in all terms most teachers can 
>think
>of to do little or nothing to the extent possible.  We design first on paper
>because it is fairly harmless to make our mistakes, there, so long as we
>discover them. If it ain't broke, we don't fix it.
>
>It is not so harmless to make our mistakes on a discusison group on the
>internet, where the core of permaculture can be even further diluted from the
>discipline it started out to be by misinformation and misunderstanding left
>uncorrected.  
>
>Yes and No are rarely  if ever "both right."  That is foolishness.  Yes,
>everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, even wrong opinions.  That is
>where the discussion of organic got us into this one.  That there are
>frequently more options than yes or no is another matter.  However the point
>or something, that is the intent, is based in fact.  Somone devised
>permaculture with a purpose, and th e purpose is to solve problems.  Surely 
>it
>solves them in the direction of joyfulness.  Surely it solves them by design.
>And surely the design is four dimensional, unfolding in human-scale steps
>toward the vision.  Anyone with a significant fraction of the usual human
>mental equipment can concoct a vision, indeed a nice vision.  In 
>permaculture,
>because we are focussed on fixing what is wrong, it is a practical vision, 
>one
>we can achieve with available resources, in a human scale timeframe, within
>the specific context of place, culture, and history.  
>
>Being right or wrong has nothing to do with cooperation, unless one means to
>go along with wrongheadedness for the sake of uniformity.  Uniformity is
>another concept with only slight application in permaculture.   It would have
>been nice if people could have been introduced to permaculture with something
>like courses of a uniform quality.  Ok.  But we always value diversity.
>Mollison did not cooperate with the status quo when he brought the concept of
>permaculture around the world.  He did so as an individual and without his
>individualism we would not be having this conversation.
>
>In my course I teach that there are two basic forces, affinity and entropy.
>they appear to the limited human mind to oppose each other but they do not
>cancel, they pulse back and forth so a comet is pulled toward the sun by
>forces allied with affinity and hurled back into space by entropy, always
>changing, always individual in terms of mass, spectrum, direction and 
>relation
>to every other particle and energy ray in the universe.  the pulsing as these
>two forces throb back and forth creates all form, and every form above the
>sub-atomic or atomic levels appears to be individual.  They are joined by
>general laws in to general behavior.  As animate, by our limited terms,
>systems develop, there is cooperation in the sense that individuals or 
>species
>ally in certain aspects of survival, while the same individuals and/or 
>species
>almost always compete directly in other regards.  The balance between
>competition and cooperation is a hallmark of a healthy ecosystem, one that
>efficiently uses the resources available for the perpetuation of life.
>Extremes in one direction, say complete competition and the other, complete
>cooperation, are unhealthy and the systems do not persist.
>
>So long as we  have an honest attempt to share views and experience here on
>this list, we have an adequate amount of cooperation.  When we start
>suppressing views, as in implying that black and white are the same, for the
>sake of uniformity, permaculture starts to die.
>
>For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway, Yankee Permaculture Publications (since 
>1982),
>Elfin Permaculture workshops, lectures, Permaculture Design Courses,
>consulting and permaculture designs (since 1981), and annual correspondence
>courses via email.  Copyright, 1998, Dan & Cynthia Hemenway, P.O. Box 52,
>Sparr FL 32192 USA  Internships. YankeePerm@aol.com  
>
>We don't have time to rush.
>
>A list by topic of all Yankee Permaculture titles may be found at
>http://csf.colorado.edu/perma/ypc_catalog.html
>Elfin Permaculture programs are listed at the Eastern Permaculture Teachers
>assn home page: http://home.ptd.net/~artrod/epta/eptahmp.html
>
>