permaculture

["April Sampson-Kelly" <askpv@ozemail.com.au>]

it is impossible to create anything static anyway!
we all live in transformation.

On the other hand if i design for my transformation i exclude
all the possibilities that nature provides,
i have to allow her input.

it all boils down to observation, the best designer is the person
and/or people living on site,
they have time to observe the site and
its changes through the seasons, they get to watch the effects,
and inter-relationships that build between elements.

April

__________________________________________________
 
Permaculture Visions International.
International Permaculture Teaching Project
Leaders in Student Focused Distance Learning.

        http://www.ozemail.com.au/~askpv

___________________________________________________



> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-permaculture@listserv.oit.unc.edu
> [mailto:owner-permaculture@listserv.oit.unc.edu]On Behalf Of John
> Schinnerer
> Sent: Friday, 18 December 1998 16:03
> To: 'permaculture@listserv.oit.unc.edu'
> Subject: RE: Permaculture's purpose & "transformation"
>
>
> Aloha,
>
> Small rant first, "practical" comments a bit further down...
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From:       Elfpermacl@aol.com [SMTP:Elfpermacl@aol.com]
>       >Permaculture is design.  I think we
>       >have established that amonst anyone who is willing to accept
> that it is not
>       >useful to postulate his/her own wishful thinking on sysems
> developed and
>       >perfected by others.
>
>       I'd agree about the postulating of one's own thinking (wishful
> or not).  There's "further development" with respect to original
> fundamentals and then there's "co-opting" and "exploiting" (like the
> whole fuss with "organic" food labeling).  If I really wanna make it
> something else, I can take responsibility and call it something else (if
> the government will let me... :-p).
>       Now...developed by others, no doubt!  Perfected, I doubt it -
> but only because perfection is such a slippery (and dangerous) concept.
> C'mon, what's "perfect?"
>
>       "1 a : being entirely without fault or defect : FLAWLESS <a
> perfect diamond>
>           b : satisfying all requirements : ACCURATE
>           c : corresponding to an ideal standard or abstract concept
> <a perfect gentleman>
>           d : faithfully reproducing the original; specifically :
> LETTER-PERFECT
>           e : legally valid
>       2 : EXPERT, PROFICIENT <practice makes perfect>
>       3 a : PURE, TOTAL
>          b : lacking in no essential detail : COMPLETE"
>
>       ...says Webtser's.  What a silly human concept!  Gets us in a
> lot of trouble, I reckon.  "Good enough," now there's a useful design
> tool.  If I'd come up with permaculture I'd threaten to shoot anyone who
> called it "perfect," and I'd keep "developing" it and encouraging others
> to do the same until my last breath, while simultaneously grousing about
> the co-opters and exploiters.
>
>       And now, a few "practical" comments on:
>
>       >To be real, to fix things, to solve the
>       >global and personal problems, we need staging, as bill calls
> it.  A set of
>       >step by step measures that get us from where/what we are to
> where/what we want
>       >to go/be.  This is the process of transformation, of going from
> one form to
>       >another.
>       <snip>
>       >I try to get students to add and improve in our section on
>       >transformation, but so far very little luck.  We are a people
> conditioned to
>       >instant gratification and we don't fined it easy thinking of
> the actual
>       >process of change, how it pulses and cycles, what practical
> measures now build
>       >for the next step later on, etc.
>
>       Gee, I don't have any trouble *thinking* of change, in stages or
> otherwise.  It's *living* change that I find difficult often enough.
> This seems the case for most people I know well enough to guess about.
>
>       In the design course I took, we implemented a few stages of
> previously worked-out designs.  We didn't implement our group designs
> because a) we did 'em near the end of the course, as is typical and b)
> the community hosting the course needed time to consider, refine, and
> decide on what might be implemented of our designs.  However, it was
> made clear that some of the implementations we did (swales,
> sheet-mulching, etc.) were stages of transformation in realizing a
> portion of a prior design, and that after the passage of appropriate
> amounts of time further stages would be implemented.
>
>       Also, in the design group I worked with (and seemingly most of
> the others), stages of transformation were implicit in the designing.
> We couldn't produce an instant transformation using permaculture
> methods, so we mapped out a few phases of how things would progress,
> including various inputs and outputs and how they would shift over the
> course of several years or more at least (depending on what our various
> tasks were).
>
>       I hope this is happening in most design courses.  It seems to me
> it would be hard to avoid having it happen in a live hands-on
> residential course.  Other comments on living "transformation?"
>
>       John Schinnerer
>