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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Open letter to the Australian permaculture movement

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  • From: John Schinnerer <eco_living@yahoo.com>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Open letter to the Australian permaculture movement
  • Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 01:32:42 -0700 (PDT)

Aloha,

It sounds from this as if the 'Australian PC Movement' is rather stuck
in a formulaic rut and has missed the point of PC (it's the relations,
not the elements)...although I've seen evidence (including here on this
very list) that such is not the case for all those doing/teaching PC,
in Australia and elsewhere in the world.

Also - if Permaculture is to include design of culture (which it will
implicity anyhow, if not explicitly), it seems a bit of a cop-out to
throw up one's hands and say that the dominant cultural shifts of the
moment (as told to us by a few 'specialists' with their own particular
biases, which include our cultural love affair with numbers and
statistics over and above actual human beings) are nothing we can
'really' affect and we'd better join 'em cause we can't beat 'em.

To me it's necessary to both work with 'what is' - e.g. the current
cultures of urbanizing development and what's getting built - and to
educate about the *consequences* (as seen via the PC lens) of 'what
is', in case it helps some people to think twice or three times about
supporting 'what is' any longer.

Also, in realms of whole systems design it has been theorized, and
anecdotally shown, that sometimes (rather often, in fact) very 'small'
sytemic changes have very 'big' systemic consequences. So there are
most likely openings for 'little' PC to initiate 'big' shifts in larger
cultures.

I appreciate and agree with your points about the necessity of PC
practitioners/educators to continually and thoughtfully observe 'what's
going on' in our human cultures and integrate those observations into
praxis/teaching. That's what PC is fundamentally all about, as I
understand it.

cheers,
John S.



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

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