permaculture

["Jeff Hall" <JRHALL@gwgate.lib.iastate.edu>]

My take is that academia has been coevolving with the reductionistic 
worldview for centuries, and holistic alternatives, be it health, education, 
or whatever you're talking about, are defined out of the picture. Sometimes a 
few radicals can bring something under the tent and set in on an edge, but it 
always seems to be a very tentative existence.
Ecology as a field is a bit of an exception, but it has largely been defined 
as a very passive area, studying wilderness but not much about human cultures 
everyday impacts.
There is a lot of talk about "learning communities" here at Iowa State 
University. It'll be interesting to see if that movement has any more ability 
to work its way in than previous ideas.
It all reminds me of "My dinner with Andre", where Andre talks about the old 
forest protector who equates New York City with a concentration camp where 
the inmates are the guards also (its a great quote, find the video or 
screenplay). The university is a special "concentration camp", being both the 
place that absorbs and neutralizes the most intelligent and creative young 
people, and doing much of the technological development of the means of 
sluising and uptaking nature into the industrial machine.

-Jeff

>>> "Claude Genest" <genest@together.net> 05/31/00 09:06PM >>>
Ava, I'm pretty new to PC. Tell me, how do academics and Ag Schools view
Permaculture? I can't understand why there aren't more people on board. Why
do youy suppose that is?
Does PC have a bad rap? and if so, why?