permaculture

[Claude William Genest <genest@together.net>]

   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?)). 

Well, the short version of the iceberg analogy ( taken from Dana Meadows
from the Sustainability institute) is : if you apply "new" techniques with
the old mindset, you will get the same results.

Put another way, if you wanna keep gettin' what you've been gettin', keep
doing what you've been doing !

What we've been doing is the Cartesian, reductionistic, mechanistic two-sep
shuffle; what we need to do is the holistic "full-system" boogie.... the
very essence of PC design and the course curriculum.  Does that mean we must
have that mindset BEFORE doing our earthworks ? Ideally yes, but then again,
we learn by doing..... the mindest develops as we set about the land with
the principles/ethics in mind.

The Australians with whom I studied so often made the observation that you
can't do worse than what's out there ! In other words, even a rudimentary,
mechanistic application of the design principles ( grounded solidly in the
ethics) will yield a hell of a lot better landscape than what we've got,
which is squat.

That a thoughful, sensitive energetically connected design(er) will yield a
more thoughtful, sensitive and energetically connected desin(er) seems
obvious enough.

Where I want to chime in is: you can have all the woo-woo in the world,
spend years in nature chanting to all things sacred and still not be able to
make the most basic design connections.

In the last year ( while taking the Biodynamic course which I loved) I also
visited two spiritual/yoga centers ( one for the "One Earth conference which
I've wrtitten about)..... As concerned and spiritual and sensitive as these
good folk are, I was amazed to see acres of lawn, old fashioned light bulbs,
SUV's in the parking lot and mountains of organic food scraps being thrown
away.....   For all their spirituality, the places, practices and actions (
as far as sustainability goes)  were still nothing if not old school
paradigm.....

In other words, for all their meditation and care, they still hadn't made
the obvious connection that , for example, no-brainers like changing the
neon lights to compact fluorescent would save them dollars as it helped save
the environment; that all they had to do to help reforest the landscape
was...nothing ( stop mowing !)  ...

My point is that what seems obvious to graduates of the PDC is not
necessarily so to even the most dedicated spiritual seeker.....

 However, the combination of spirituality and roll-up your sleeves Permie is
just what we need..... I like to think of the ideal man as "Tarzan the
Buddha"...equal parts conscious and instinctive; action and reflection.....

I imagine his conscious chant, swinging from the vines:
......"Oh-oh-Ohhhhhhh....mmmmmmmmmmmm"  :-)

 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
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