permaculture

[EFMonaco <EFMonaco@compuserve.com>]

Mark wrote:
><At the risk of offending, this kind of quasi mystical stuff not only does

>>very little to inspire me, if I was one of the many deeply religious 
>>people I have met through the years at organic farming functions I would 
>>likely find it out right offensive.  IF this really is a system for 
>>everyone I would strongly suggest separating the new age gloss form the 
>>main body of the design system, it is not at all necessarily to develop 
>>good designs.

Au contraire mon ami.
Maybe permaculture isn't for everybody.  And all reliegons are not created
equal.  Permaculture is about ethics.  These ethics are not present in
modern agriculture or business or financial systems.  And I'd like to see
the organic farmer who's offended by the basic permaculture ethics.

I think it's not only entirely appropriate to talk about philosophy in the
context of permaculture, but down right essential.  As is not uncommon for
folks who haven't taken a formal design course, permaculture is often
misinterpreted as a set of techniques for designing sustainable systems. 
That's why we get comments to the effect that we can separate the
philosophy (ethics) from the main body of the design system; as if it's
about a set of techniques of design.  It isn't.   Rather, it is about
shifting paradigms for developing principles from which these techniques
will arise.  Huge difference!  (Claude help me out here (remember the
iceburg?)).  And <bold italic large font on> Permaculture starts with
ethics <bold italic large font off>.  What are the ethics, Mark?  Are they
something about dominion (or is it domination?) over nature for the benefit
of humans at the expense of all other life, with ruthless competition so
that the person who has the most toys when s/he dies wins?  Wasn't Mollison
getting spiritual and "new age flakey" when he talked about Care of the
Earth, Care of Humans (a subset of 1) and Return of the Surplus to the
System?  Pretty darn new agey, wouldn't you say?

You know, I'm reminded of something I read in the book Ecoforestry: the Art
and Science of  Sustainable Forest Use, Edited by Alan Drengson and Duncan
Taylor.  In the Foreword, Jerry Mander tells of the late French
philosopher, Jacques Ellul, who "made the case that in technological
society all forms of human activity, whether personal behavior or organized
social and economic activity, are fundamentally adaptive to the dominant
logic and form of the machine.  As we drive our cars, we merge with the
machine and the road, ultimately becoming "car-like".  As we "watch" TV, we
actually ingest its images and store them and they become our
consciousness; we begin to merge with the images we carry.  As we use our
computers, we are engaged in endless feedback cycles, which bring our
minds, hands and bodies in concert with the machine.  As we work the
assembly line, we are utterly subject to the external repetitive rhythms
that the line imposes, but which are also internalized and carried by us
beyond working hours.  Now increasingly, our co-evolution is with
mechanical or electric forms, while non-human nature is dropped from the
equation, and from consideration, with already evident disastrous
consequences."

Daniel Quinn points out very well how this phenomenon has twisted our
thinking due to conventional agriculture, with his "Takers" vs. "Leavers"
analogy.

The observations and illuminations one gets in Zone 5 are nothing less than
the antidote to the ill effect of industrialized culture described above. 
Permaculture, in a nutshell, is about ethics:
An archaic revival.  Put that in your new age pipe and smoke it.
Gene Monaco