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  • From: Marsha Hanzi <hanzibra@svn.com.br>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Re: Permaculture: patterns and paradigms
  • Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 10:07:02 -0300




Scott Pittman escreveu:

> Since paradigm is new speak for pattern I prefer to use the old word since
> it carrys the same meaning in a more familiar form.

I understand paradigms and patterns to be entirely different things, and I
think it is
important that we have a clear understanding of each, as both are
fundamental to
understanding what we are doing in Permaculture, and I think there is a lot
of fuzzy
thinking around the subject...

Paradigms are mental constructions around a central nuclear idea ( or symbol,
as I will
point out below), which include ideas, attitudes, decisions, strategies,
and,finally ,
actions. A good example of a nuclear idea and how it can generate a paradigm
is
cooperation. When we move from the basic idea of competition to cooperation,
the way
we see the world changes: unknown people are not adversaries in potential,
for example
( as they would be if we worked out of the competition paradigm). When an
insect
attacts our corn we will not see it as an ënemy" competing for the same
product and
with which we will want to make war. If we are in the cooperation paradigm,
we take
the whole context much more into consideration. Much of destruction of
Nature has come
from the competitive paradigm in agriculture.
Another example of paradigms is in social stucture, where you could have
a triangle
in the center of one, representing hierarchies, with a leader at the point,
and the
public at the base, as contrasted to a circle, where there is no one higher
than the
other. The triangle is stable, can lead to crystallization, whereas the
circle is
dynamic, leading to exchange of leadership according to situations.
It has been a "hobby" of mine to get really into understanding what the
basic
principles of Permaculture really are ( i.e. the central nucleating ideas
from which
action is generated), and one of the principle ones is cooperation. I came up
with a
list of eight principles. There are probably more. What are called
"Permaculture
principles", by the way, I do not see to be central ideas, but rather
strategies.
Principles are ideas which generate somthing akin to philosophies. For
example, I
would consider "diversity promotes stability"to be a principle, but "each
element
should have several functions" a strategy based on that principle. I may be
hair-splitting here, but I think we need to be a bit clearer about these basic
underlying elements in our work. They are our building-blocks.

Patterns, on the other hand, I see to be universal laws , probably mathematic
(maybe by
now modern mathematicas has already got there!), which model and modulate the
formation and flow of matter. They are universal, and not relative. We
discover them
and understan them, and work with them, but we do not create them. Paradigms,
on the
other hand are relative, and based on our ideas, thus they are created by us
and can be
changed by us.
So paradigms are in no way "new speak". They are fundamental to
understanding the
nature of the transition that the whole world is going through at the
moment...

Marsha





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