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  • From: "Lee Flier" <lflier@mindspring.com>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Re: [permaculture] Re: For the survival thread...
  • Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2002 19:35:25 -0500

Ahem.

As I recall, the reason Bill M. tends to speak disparagingly of spirituality,
and particularly the new age stuff, is precisely because it can alienate
people who don't subscribe to your particular flavor of spirituality. Mark's
Christian farmers are a good example, and Rick Valley's descriptions of
various religious permies duking it out are good illustrations of this also.
And of course nearly all cultures around the world have entrenched religions,
which they are not going to abandon in favor of some Permaculture teacher's
philosophy.

The reason New Age spirituality in particular comes under fire is because
most of the entrenched religions are deeply rooted in culture; therefore many
religious doctrines actually have practical purposes in terms of people care,
and are time tested. Not so with New Age thought, which is a recent
occurrence and something of a mishmash of a lot of different religious
thought, without any particular basis for any of it except wishful thinking.
And of course there are a lot of New Age "quacks" - people hawking completely
bogus principles with very self serving motivations. Therefore lots of
people (myself included) have a deep distrust of New Age-ism. I've run into
enough flaky or outright greedy and power-hungry individuals who call
themselves New Age, to be very wary of them, and anyhow, I hate being forced
to hug strangers. :-)

I disagree with Gene that the ethics of Permaculture sound New Agey. They
don't, because an ethic is not at all the same thing as a spiritual doctrine,
in that it doesn't require blind faith or belief in something that can't be
proven. An ethic makes practical sense in the context of THIS life and THIS
world. Care of the earth, care of humans, and return of surplus are ethics
that can easily be embraced by people of practically any religion without
alienating them or suggesting that they supplant their own beliefs. And
hardly anyone can argue that the results of following those ethics is
beneficial. Whereas, with trusting in fairies or channeled spirits it's not
so evident.

I don't think Uncle Bill meant so much to imply that no one should HAVE
spiritual beliefs; it's obvious that most of us do. What he was saying is
that, like the separation of church and state, spirituality should be a
personal or cultural thing and not something that is made part of the PC
curriculum. I agree with that, but this doesn't mean I don't have spiritual
beliefs myself. I think that's what Mark was asking for also.

Now... ALL THAT HAVING BEEN SAID.... I do think that good permaculture design
does require a kind of "sixth sense" or holistic way of thinking that isn't
entirely spiritual so much as animal - something that's inherent in all of us
but is mostly dormant in our own culture. We are used to thinking of things
linearly, in terms of "problems" and "solutions" and this isn't the only way
we're capable of thinking, nor often the best way. The ability to look at
something such as a piece of land and right away intuitively grasp a lot
about what it needs, is a great skill to have, and again most people have it
already, it just needs to be paid attention to. I'd call it "right brain"
thought, the ability to take a mental "snapshot" of something and understand
it in the big picture, the essence of it. In that respect some of Gene's
skills that he learned at the Tracker School hold water, and may be useful to
westerners who are out of touch with such things. The pursuit of any kind of
creative art also encourages this kind of thinking.

Again this needn't either agree with or contradict one's spiritual beliefs.
That's not to say that some people won't use techniques from their religious
or spiritual background, such as meditation, to shift their mental gears.
But I don't think it's a good idea to espouse any specific spiritual
practices in Permaculture, and holistic/intuitive thinking can be taught in
ways that are "religion-neutral" so to speak, including to atheists and
agnostics. :-)

Anyway, hi guys, long time no see, I've been mostly just lurking lately but
still kicking. Nice to know y'all are still at it and still ornery. :-)

--Lee

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