permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>]

Rich wrote:
>       So whats so good about the labels Zone 0, 00 and 6 when there
> are perfectly adaquete names out there allready.

Excellent point. Zones 00 and 6 seem to fall outside the context of a
landscape design system. Calling the house or village "Zone 0" just  makes
the terminology consistent and points out that Zone 0 is integral to the
design. Almost no conventional garden design books include the house,
resulting in, well, the problems that zones address. New names can put old
ideas in a more appropriate context (terms like "ancient forest" instead of
"overmature timber" or "elder" instead of "old person" come to mind).

I think the fulcrum around which this discussion pivots is: how do we use
the zone system? Rich calls it a "very nice system on how to lay out your
garden," and this seems an excellent use. Mollison (who gets annoyed when
people call permaculture a gardening system) goes beyond the garden to
discuss village and large landscape design. Also a superb use. And some
people think of it as a system for integrating physical and metaphysical
components, and thus ask that it be expanded to include concepts like Zones
00 and 6. That use has its appeal, but as Rich points out, adds a narrowing
religious/New Age element and risks turning a good design system into a
half-baked philosophical one.

One of permaculture's strengths is that it manages to be grounded in ethics
without invoking spiritual concepts, in much the same way The Natural Step
is based on scientific principles that can't be dismissed merely as
environmentalists' preferences. An action is ethical, Mollison and Holmgren
were very careful to say, because of its effect on people and the earth,
not because it fits a set of beliefs. I'm sure this practical,
non-religious approach was deliberate: beliefs can be discounted, less so
results. Permaculture has developed an overlay of New Age ideas like Zone 6
because permacultureis practiced by many westerners with a New Age
orientation. But I hope that Pc will not become explicitly New Age, because
then it will never be adopted by that vast majority who have other beliefs.
I know of Christian design course participants who were terribly alienated
by the idea of Gaia, but not by the idea of the biosphere. We're letting a
particular spiritual view--one I share--creep into a design system. These
beliefs go so deep for many of us that it's hard to see that permaculture
isn't dependent on any one spiritual view. I'm not denying the importance
of spirituality, but I'd be careful of promoting a specific spiritual
viewpoint under the name of permaculture.

Toby



Toby