permaculture

["Lee Flier" <lflier@mindspring.com>]

Scott wrote:

>>I have seen his [Mollison's] illustrations, and words scattered like
confetti throughout other peoples books and talks without any hint that the
words originated with Bill - this is rude and disrespectful to a man who has
given all of us, both directly and indirectly, so much.  His words "for the
purposes of consistent education" is key to the copyright and there has been
a great loss in consistency with the advent of "new age" pseudo-science
whose advocates insist is permaculture or zone 6.<<

Yeah, I agree.  In fact this has become a rather disturbing trend to me
lately.  A lot of times nowadays if I mention Permaculture and the person
I'm speaking to has heard of it, they tend to dismiss the movement as a
bunch of freaks because every so-called Permaculture teacher they've met has
had some particular spiritual and/or political agenda that has absolutely
nothing to do with Permaculture but has now become associated with it.  In
other words, a lot of people have co-opted the word Permaculture to further
their own agenda, and they justify it by waving their certificate and saying
"It's OK, because Bill says the copyright is shared by everyone and we are
all (course graduates) contributing to this shared body of work."  True, but
it's also clearly stated that there is a specific curriculum for the design
course.  You can teach anything you want, but if you wanna call it
Permaculture then stick to the curriculum.  Otherwise, call it something
else.

For example it just astonishes me how many people assume that to practice
permaculture, you must be a vegan, because so many teachers and
practitioners of permaculture are vegan or vegetarian.  I'm mostly
vegetarian myself, but I would never, EVER say that in the name of
Permaculture.  In fact, I make it quite clear that animals are a necessary
part of good permaculture design.  Yet, just a couple of days ago someone
posted to my Homestead mailing list that she'd been visited at her wonderful
organic farm (which was designed with permaculture principles in mind) by a
local permaculture class - and both the students and the teacher slagged her
incessantly for raising animals.  I'm quite sure no one in the class,
including the instructor, has done half of what this woman has done in the
area of applied permaculture.  But she was denigrated for it, and this isn't
the first time I've heard of such a thing happening.  This is unacceptable.

Likewise, although I do have a spiritual doctrine, I keep it to myself when
discussing Permaculture.  I don't like it when I attend Permaculture events
and everybody is holding hands and hugging each other every 10 minutes,
having group prayers and smoking dope.  Again, if you wanna do all those
things by all means do them, but don't hang the word Permaculture on it.

If, as we've been discussing, we ever want Permaculture to be accepted in
academic or corporate circles (and it needs to be), this is not the way to
go about it.  Bill outlined a very powerful system of design with lots of
room to grow - but which still does have its boundaries.   No one is forcing
you to respect those boundaries, but if you don't, then don't co-opt the
term "Permaculture" or Mollison's work to describe what you're doing.

--Lee

***********************************
Lee A. Flier
lflier@mindspring.com
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
http://lflier.home.mindspring.com