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permaculture - Re: Ecovillage workshop in Australia

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  • From: Mikal Jakubal <mjakubal@asis.com>
  • To: "permaculture" <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Ecovillage workshop in Australia
  • Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2000 22:01:12 -0700




Miekal asked,

>can you say a bit more about this community, what was it called, where was
it, how
>many people, is it still functioning? etc.

I won't say what it was called, because that way I can give more candid
opinions of some of the individuals and problems. It was (is?) in western
Washington State. We started with 6 people and bought the land outright (I
put up more cash than anyone else). Two left within a year and had to be
bought out for their shares of the original purchase. Several more came and
went while I was there. When I Ieft, everyone but me had moved back to town
to their hot showers, lattes and going-nowhere-but-risk-free jobs (e.g.,
$5.50/hr as a cashier at a natural food store). It was actually nominally
functional for a couple years or less. I have no idea what became of the
land. I know some people were living on it a few years ago, but it wouldn't
surprise me if it had been sold off at a massive profit.

>where are you now & what kind of land base do you have?

In Northwest California, Humboldt County. I have 3.5 acres of flat land
with good soil, my own small natural gas well, a salmon stream, grid power
and wide open solar window. It's between the fog belts, but in a heat and
frost pocket.

(original snipped)
>>Doing this alone is difficult, but
>> still easier than always having to fight five other people just to get
>> anything done.

(reply snipped)
>I have had an opposite experience. Indeed working with a group is
extremely complex
>& not always fulfilling in the way one would expect, but compared to what
I can
>accomplish on my own, the impact is far greater. (snip)

Hypothetically, much, much more could be done with this place. It seems a
waste to not develop it to the potential that I see here--something I can't
possible do alone. But, in five years that I've owned this place, I've
accomplished vastly more *alone* and with fewer resources than all of us
did in five and a half years at the previous place. (That's not to say that
I haven't had help from lots of other people here, but we had help from
friends there too.) The difference? No meetings! I didn't have to ask
permission every time I wanted to pee. No people making up for their own
incompetence by trying to constantly put the brakes on my projects. No
control freaks working out their abusive-father-problems at me. No insecure
twerps playing "Alpha Male" at meetings. And, right now, all of the people
here (that is, me) are actually committed to this project instead of living
somewhere else and only showing up to tell me what I can't do.


I think of consensus groups as a nutrient-rich psychological petri dish
into which fall the festering spores of everyone's dysfunctional, neurotic,
insecurities. There they take root and bloom like the grey, stinky blobs in
the High School biology class experiments where the agar in the petri
dishes was dabbed with swabs we'd wiped on the lunch room floor. Mmmmm!

The thought of letting that sort of energy into my life again makes me
cringe. My main problem with it is that I don't trust my own ability to
sort out the dysfunctional control freaks, slobs, lazy asses, wingnuts,
spongers and so on. People can be quite good actors if they know what you
want to hear. How do others out there do it? The only possible arrangement
I can conceive of right now would be a Benevolent Dictatorship, having had
so much bad experience with what I call "malevolent democracies." The fact
that I've invested years of work and money into the place adds a whole
extra level of complexity to the process of developing a mini-community.
I'm not particularly willing to just let go of the notion that this is
fundamentally "my place." But, I also don't see that necessarily precluding
the development of some sort of workable arrangement with others.

I'd love to hear details of other, specifically Pc-based, situations that
work where one person owns the place. I can think of a dozen cottage
industries people could do out of here (e.g., using the natural gas and sun
to run a custom fruit and vegetable dehydrating business). What sorts of
arrangements--financial or otherwise--work in such situations?

It's the "culture" part of Permaculture that always seems to be the most
difficult to figure out.

(Sorry for the length, but while I'm here...)
Many of the reasons communities fail can be compared to someone deciding to
go off into the wilderness and live off the land. That's fine--if you know
how to do it. Till then, you'll have to rely on stored food, fuel,
medicine, and so on that you brought from the city or go back there to get.
The way we--and most others, it seems--did it was to go off with our
pie-in-the-sky idea without the skills to carry it out. We didn't realize
that we'd have to start from where we were and incorporate new skills as we
learned them. For example, we tried to share tools so we wouldn't each have
to go out and buy a set. Problem was, most people didn't have and never
developed the level of "tool consciousness" and courtesy necessary to do
this. After two and a half years of it, I'd had enough, thank you, and
marked my stuff, moved it into my own space and told others not to use
anything without asking. My livelihood and projects require various tools
daily and I got tired of having to hunt for lost tools or repair or sharpen
things left out in the rain or broken by the last user. All the other
skills necessary for survival in the permanent culture wilderness fit the
same pattern, I think, and have to be learned before they can be
implemented materially.

Mikal




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