permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>]

1earth permaculture at permaculture1@start.com.au wrote:

> Toby, I'll single your comments out mainly because I'm so suprised and
> disappointed that you made them.

All I'm saying. Marcus, is that I prefer to act differently from the way
that aboriginal woman does. She has the right to do whatever she wants with
her knowledge, and given her experience with whites, who can blame her?
Nevertheless, it's not my way. When someone asks me a question, I try to
give them the fullest answer I can, especially if my knowledge may benefit
others, and for me, this feels right.  But I come from an open society, she,
I think, from a closed (and abused) one.  As I said, the contexts are very
different.

You're so angry with my post that you've badly distorted or misunderstood
nearly every sentence you've commented on. At risk of being boring, let me
try to correct  a little of that.

>  if a Native
> American Medicine Man was in one of your classes and said he that his
> custom was to pass his knowledge by mouth, would you say to him:

>"If a drug corporation withheld access to a new and promising
>medication because they might lose control over it, we'd be screaming
>bloody murder. But when an indigenous person does the same, we bow our
>heads in respect."

I am not sure what "by mouth" has to do with it. If I asked someone how to
use a medicinal plant and they refused to answer, I would be disappointed
and probably annoyed; it's not my way, and to me, it doesn't serve humanity.
But I wouldn't bludgeon them into telling me. My statement was directed to
westerners (myself sometimes included) who hold a double standard of
judgment and revile western behavior while unhesitatingly accepting that of
other cultures. 
> > 
>> Toby says: "it seems like a claim that her people are more worthy and
>> right-minded than others are. Who is wise enough to decide when
>> unknown others are "ready" for knowledge?"
> 
> (That is their custom, Toby, that's how they pass their knowledge,
> step by step. Do you teach the last section of the Permaculture
>Manual first . . .

I understand the concept of adjusting teaching to learning ability. But
notice that I wrote "unknown others." I try not to judge people I don't
know, though when someone's in front of me, I make an assessment of what
they will understand.  But to withhold information about a plant from
someone capable of using it is not in the same category; that involves a
moral or cultural judgment. I assume people won't do stupid or venal things
with what I teach. That's how my culture operates, and, on consideration of
other ways, it's the way I prefer to act, and the way that, to me, has the
highest probability of benefiting  others. Other cultures do it differently
and it works for them. When our cultures meet, as in this case, there's a
conflict. I think we're smart enough to preserve indigenous knowledge while
sharing some of it, but I could be wrong.
> 
> She teaches by
> word of mouth as her way of foiling the pharmecutical companies. More
> power to her I say.  Those that listen are hearing her story.

Most of us would be dead or disabled from some simple disease if it weren't
for those evil drug companies. I worked for a tiny immunology R&D company
and watched it become a biotech giant worth $18 billion. Though I had my
differences with some of their policies (and with much of allopathic
medicine), the vast majority of people there were selfless and worked
incredibly hard to find and deliver treatments for many diseases. I object
to classifying an entire industry--one that we depend on when we get sick or
hurt--as evil. They do some bad and stupid things. They do a lot more useful
things. To simply judge all of them as evil as you (and perhaps that woman)
seem to be doing, and to wish all of them harm, seems foolish.

My point all along here is that it seems reckless to judge those we don't
know; that's my cultural bias. I have no judgment of this aboriginal woman;
I just don't behave as she does, for my own reasons, just as she has hers.
Maybe in the long run it will turn out better to withhold knowledge from
those whom we don't know. That's not my philosophy. If someone asks me a
question, that tells me they are ready for an answer. I tailor my reply to
what I think they will comprehend, and only rarely to what I think they will
do with it. I'd rather offer up the knowledge, and believe in the good
within other people and in the Creator, and believe that it will turn out
right.

Toby