permaculture

[John Schinnerer <eco_living@yahoo.com>]

Aloha,

Well done Toby!  You must be an editor or something... ;-)
I'd say you have woven into PC context a number of loose ends from all
our recent posts in this thread.

I think in general we're all having what a friend of mine in college
years ago called a "furious agreement."  You've put my intent with
language and reification into PC context, anyhow.

> These difficulties start to explain why this tool using animal, who 
> has been building things
> for roughly a million years, has only in the last few years started
> coming up with a rational approach to design.

Some folks I know would say that we have in fact been designing for
roughly a million years; that designing is one of our oldest (but
currently least appreciated or understood) "traditions."  Some of 'em
are here (and yes, some of 'em live in head trips, but some don't):

http://www.advanceddesign.org/

"Rational design" is to me a potential oxymoron, because none of the
people I consider good or excellent designers rely primarily (and
certainly not exclusively) on rationality.  The Cartesian(?) myth of
humans as fundamentally rational creatures is trivial to disprove but
still seems pervasive.

> How do we know what we know? What filtering and mangling do we do to
> the things we
> observe when they enter our consciousness? What am I leaving out of
> my design because of my assumptions about what's important and about
> what I know? So I think it's necessary to look at these subjects, or
> we run the
> risk of just plugging various technical bits into our designs without
> assessing whether they are appropriate for the culture, the client,
> or the land--or whether they are just "things" we like because of our
> personal prejudices.

My thoughts almost exactly.  Very important to attend to this as
designers.

A reason I point to the likes of Bateson and Maturana (and Buber) is
that as individuals, they are primarily rooted in biological and
social/cultural observations rather than heady philosophy.  With or
without grokking their ontologies, one can still learn a heck of a lot
towards systemic observation and understanding of living systems
(including us humans and our interactions with one another) from them. 


Bateson is especially helpful in refuting "scientific" arguments
supporting the "safety" of genetic engineering.  He also gives frequent
"everyday" examples to illustrate what he is writing about.

Maturana matters most to me because of his exploration and explanation
of constitutive ontology.  Nothing Buddhists and others haven't been
saying for thousands of years in different forms, but for a
neurobiologist to reach similar conclusions is like when quantum
physicists began observing events previously described best by mystics.
 Perhaps those who don't hear mystics (or dead Frenchmen ;-) will hear
scientists.  If enough explainers from enough "different" belief
systems explain essentially similar understandings in the contexts of
their belief systems, a lot of people may hear them and maybe we'll
even quit having wars and stuff.

It occurs to me that Maturana's constitutive ontology is what the
deconstructivists were (are?) deconstructing towards.  Maturana builds
up an explanation from a starting place in human biology, and seems to
have a more successful go at it than the philosophers IMO.

Bateson is a thick read partly because he is a Brit of a certain
generation.  I have heard a tape of a presentation of his and he speaks
quite slowly and ponderously (think Hitchcock on tranks ;-) and with
very dry and ironic wit, for example in describing how creating and
maintaining a good lawn (turf) mimics the co-evolution of praire and
ungulates (the dimpled roller, the manure, the mower...).

Maturana is a thick read partly because he is using lots and lots of
words, at times seeming somewhat repetitive, in order to be as precise
(and in a sense clear also) as possible.  He does not want to leave
linguistic loopholes in his explaining.  He is also writing from a
constitutive "place" as best he can in a written language - not an easy
feat, as we've discovered here!

I learned a lot about myself, language, clarity, understanding and
other good things (including, by golly, systems and observing and other
PC relevant stuff) just from following through on reading them and
teasing myself into their explanatory place.  I've learned even more
good stuff in exercising and refining my understandings here, so thanks
all!


=====
John Schinnerer, MA
--------------------
- Eco-Living -
Cultural & Ecological Designing
Food - Shelter - Community
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net

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