permaculture

[John Schinnerer <John-Schinnerer@data-dimensions.com>]

Aloha,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: brookse@igc.org [SMTP:brookse@igc.org]
> 
>...sustainable systems of food production and
>distribution are much easier to create and manage when they are set up for
>people on vegan diets as opposed to diets with meat and/or dairy in them.

Try telling that to the tribespeople in dryland Africa whose subsistence
culture revolves primarily around domesticated goats (for just one of
countless age-old examples - there's also the Lapps, etc.).  It all depends
on where one is and what one has to work with.

Anyone have examples of ecosystems large enough to be potentially
self-sustaining that both include vertebrates (especially mammals) and are
"vegan?"

>Simply look at veganism, not as static, but as a temporary state of being
on
>a greater continuum. That, the continuum of doing as little harm to the
>universe and biosphere around you, while going about the business of
>surviving and enjoying life. All of us kill. The point is to do as little
>killing as necessary, and create as little damage in our wake as possible,
>because to -not- do so endangers our -own- survival and happiness.

So where along this continuum do we stop killing billions of innocent
plants?

>To rely, at all, on meat and dairy, is to introduce unecessary
complications
>and damage into a system. 

Damage (or not) would depend on *how* "meat" and "dairy" relate to other
systems, how they are "implemented."   
Complexity can be a very desirable characteristic for ecological systems -
makes them more robust, flexible, adaptable to changes in larger systems and
thus more likely to continue in some recognizable form.  That's a feature I
like in ecological systems that keep me alive!  It also seems to be a
fundament of permaculture, or at least of the natural systems we claim to
pattern permaculture designs after.
I would like to hear more about where animals of all types fit in to your
master plan for this planet (or some other one, as the case may be).  If
they threaten your vegan food sources (whether by trampling, grazing, using
them for habitat, or whatever), what do you do?  There are countless
essential (to life as we know it, anyhow) symbiotic/balancing/cyclical
relations between plants and animals to consider, as well, in this
interconnectedness you mention.

>Only in the most extraordinary circumstances,
>(such as those presented to one living a non-technological life in the
>arctic tundra), does such reliance make any sense.

I suspect most humans live in circumstances more closely related to the
"extraordinary" cases than to the situations of the privileged few
first-worlders who can easily and affordably live and/or advocate a vegan
lifestyle.

>It is likely that the next phase of human civilisation will eventually
>reject animal slavery, just as it did human slavery. I certainly do
already.

I can see many ways to "reject animal slavery" and still eat meat
occasionally - probably much better meat, too.  "Free range" fish are
healthy and tasty...grandpa's venison was lean and flavorful.  Neither of
those critters are "slaves" in any way I can imagine; certainly no more so
than veggies in a human-cultivated garden.

>I also see it as ethically imperitive that any future human civilisation in
>space, follow a rock solid doctrine of noninterference with other life
>forms, when they are discovered.

If they are "discovered" in such a way that they have any experience of your
existence, they will have been interfered with.  So this appears to be a
paradox...

>It is much more likely that vegans would
>hold true to such an ideal. Meat and dairy eaters, because they have not
yet
>come to terms with even their -own- unecessary causation of damage and
>suffering to other living things, would be much less likely to stay true to
>that doctrine when circumstances challenged it.

Now this really starts to sound familiar.  With apologies to Pastor
Niemoller:

"First they came for the red-meat eaters, and I did not speak out because I
do not eat red meat. 
Then they came for the fish and poultry-eaters, and I did not speak out
because I do not eat poultry or fish.  
Then they came for the ovo-lacto vegetarians, and I did not speak out
because I do not eat eggs or dairy products.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me..."

;-)

John Schinnerer