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permaculture - Dung/Stucco Sidenote

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Subject: permaculture

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  • From: "Eugene F. Monaco" <EFMonaco@compuserve.com>
  • To: "INTERNET:permaculture@listserv.oit.unc.edu" <permaculture@listserv.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Dung/Stucco Sidenote
  • Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1998 12:02:47 -0500

Nice post Paul. I'd like to offer a couple of points.

Message text written by Paul Cereghino - crows@tkc.att.ne.jp - Tokyo
>There appears an interesting subtext to the stucco/manure thread. This
has to do with the qualities of industrialization and Permacultures love of
low technology. <

I don't think permaculturalists' love of low technology is so much a love
of low technology for low technology's sake, but rather a realization of
what appears to be more sustainable. Mollisonian wisdom suggests that a
technology is appropriate when it saves or generates more energy than it
takes to create plus consumes over its lifespan. Thus it's ethical to use
a diesel-fired bulldozer to build a small dam that will last thousands of
years, with all its benefits. PV panels may fall into the same category,
although the energy accounting is sometimes tricky. Opinnions vary, and
pollution is a big factor in the analysis. Because we live in a culture
that is saturated by unethical, non-sustainable technologies, we tend to
look to simpler times for innovations, hence the connection with low
technology.

>Love it or not, industrialization has caused a massive decline in death by
infectious disease, accomplished largely through drinking water
purification with chlorine, fecal and waste isolation/concentration,
immunization, anti-biotics, generous ammounts of DDT, and many other
hazardous activities. <

We hear this a lot, but I think if you step back and look at it in
perspective it's like this:
Suppose you were in the habbit of eating regular meals for energy, and as
each cell in your body died and was replaced by new cells, the material for
these new cells came from the high-quality food you ate, and so were
reasonably healthy. Your body spent time each night in sleep while this
regeneration took place, cells were oxygenated, and detoxification also
took place.

One day somebody came by with some methanphetamine and said, "Look! with
this technology you can go with much less sleep, and much less food."
After a few days or weeks they might recall that in earlier days they had
to sleep so much and spend so much more time sleeping. Now they live
without all that bother and can accomplish so much more each 24-hr period.
Isn't this great?

Then one day they started to get the shakes; they broke out in hives; their
nervous system was shot; their hair fell out; their internal organs began
to fail; and they died a violent painfull death while relatively still
young. What would you think?

Our culture is much the same way. Now we have chlorine, and antibiotics,
and heart surgery, and kidney transplants so we live longer. But in so
doing, the population increases to the point where the rest of the earth's
systems begin to change so they can not support our culture anymore. So
we're in a short term boom for our population which will be followed by a
rapid crash. From a longer-term perspective what's the difference if some
of us died from cholera at a younger age?

>Permaculture in industrialized countries is growing in a human cluture
that is currently pleased and benefiting from these industrial activities,
while these activities strip the life of the earth. (a true shakespearean
tragedy?!). To me the human urge to reduce suffering and death among our
elders and children is not just another industrial vanity. If permaculture
is to offer a replacement to industrial processes, and i think it can, It
will need to address issues like regionally specific disease vectors....<

Permaculture is here to usher in a new paradigm, a new way of thinking,
based on different ethics. The industrial processes that seek to
accumulate and hoard wealth have created these concepts such as
colonization, plantations, mining, and the corporate ladder. If this
thinking doesn't change, our industrial society will fall under its own
weight. A deer in the woods does not seem to try to colonize other areas,
yet there are species besides humans that do, Kudzu comes to mind, so does
duckweed. The other species keep them in a relative state of check; kind
of a low-level state of war (as Quinn describes it). We have been able to
dominate the earth as the king species, but we are not yet smart enough to
do it without destroying our host. Clearly there is a new paradigm at hand
if we are to survive. To me, permaculture represents humankind's venture
into this new way of thinking, with all its growing pains.

Gene Monaco



  • Dung/Stucco Sidenote, Paul and Sandra, 11/04/1998
    • <Possible follow-up(s)>
    • Dung/Stucco Sidenote, Eugene F. Monaco, 11/05/1998

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