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permaculture - Out of Control (was: Re: Birmingham seed swap, online db stuff)

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  • From: Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Out of Control (was: Re: Birmingham seed swap, online db stuff)
  • Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 17:53:16 -0800


on 11/15/01 4:43 PM, souscayrous at souscayrous@wanadoo.fr wrote:

>> Toby Hemenway tells me Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control: the rise of
>> neo-biological civilization" ranks as one of the most influential 'permie'
>> texts of his life
>
> Question: Toby, sober Toby, tell us you repudiate such resounding cant.

Well, it's bizarre to find myself cited as some sort of authority; but,
setting Kevin Kelly's occasional mechanist excesses aside (like the place in
"Out of Control" where he envisions designing animals that have an "off"
switch so they can be shut down), his syntheses in OOC of current ecological
knowledge, whole systems, genetics, patterns, economics, manufacturing
methods, and sociology are simply brilliant. I can recommend the book to
anyone on this list.

Kelly has put the full text of OOC on the web at
http://www.well.com/user/kk/OutOfControl/
though the layout is hard to read. Why not browse it a bit?
I found myself referring to OOC constantly as I wrote Gaia's Garden.

>> "We should not be surprised that life, having subjugated the bulk of inert
>> matter on Earth, would go on to subjugate technology . . ."
>
> No 'big brain' of coast or plain, mountain or savannah would make such an
> elementary category mistake of attributing human compulsions to 'life'.

Call it poetic license. Life "acts" as if it has agency, just as it appears
to me that ecosystems, in their succession from pioneer to maturity,
"subjugate" (yuck--how about [moving up the scale of anthropocentrism]
ameliorate, take advantage of, or harness) the wild pulses of wind and rain
and blasting sun, using living tissue to damp large fluctuations into
gentle, more predictable rhythms that can be harvested and channeled into
usable form. That looks almost like intention to me. Life "uses" matter,
energy, and flow to enlarge its reach and build more life.





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