permaculture

[Bob Howard <rmhoward@omninet.net.au>]

Permaculture as Education - A polemic

Permaculture (PC) I would claim, is a practical _expression_ of the Shambala warrior's first weapon, the knowledge of the interconnectedness of all things. The second weapon is compassion.

This idea of interconectedness is also found in the works of the deep ecology movement, and of course is a central tenet of Mahayana Buddhism, Australian kinship systems etc. etc.

I have previously argued that the work involved is best understood as reproductive work as distinct from productive work where time is seen as cyclical rather than linear.

For these tasks of reproduction the skills are not acquired in the same way as they are for productive skills. They are learnt in the kitchen or the garden or on the street or at the well, rather than in the class room.

If PC is about design then it is not something that is simply contained in the private sphere but also something that exists in the public sphere. PC is about town planning, grass roots democracy, neighbourhood  committees and rescuing ourselves. This is a call to action. PC IMHO seems to have not considered it's social and political side as important as it's private side.

In recent days in this newslist there has been an exchange about the similarity between 'redneck' and 'hippie' viewpoints (forgive the caricature) - but of course conservation and conservatism have similar viewpoints too - especially when you recognize that they are both about the protection of capital.

Let's not kid ourselves though - if PC means anything beyond a middle class wank about trees - then it belongs to the poor, serves the needy, and defends the weak The second weapon is compassion.

We need to teach/learn about the local plants in our neighbourhood that were indigneous sources of food (I've made a sort of start for s.w of W.A.)  We need to encourage the creation of farmer's markets and local economies. In Australia, we need to start to educate people about our backyards, the resource that is going to save most of us when the crunch comes.

We need to create "compleat idiot" guides to backyard farming and survival for the suburbs. From time to time, local governments or the Ag dept wipe out some fruit or nut tree from an area to control some disease or pest. PC applied over a council area would be a definitive answer to this simply by increasing the complexity of the environment you would reduce the risk of spread etc. (fill in the arguments).

Much learning only comes from practice - gardening for instance is not a list of procedures as much as a practice. I know women( and a few men) who can have a veggie garden producing within 6 weeks of moving into just about anywhere with enough soil. It is a habit that they have become almost thoughtless about.

Cyclical time and reproductive tasks are about emotions as much as anything. We need to realize that learning and emotion are inextricably intertwined (as Julie MacCrossan is wont to say) and how we learn habits very young is really very important. We learn bad as well as good habits easily and break them with great difficulty. But I'd contend that the secret to giving up bad habits is taking up good ones, and, that we can learn till the day we die. But hey! why make it hard for our children? Again compassion is the key.

In Noongar(i.e.Aboriginal) terms, learning is always a holistic thing, "sit there and watch me" You watch and watch and learn the whole task - wadjila (white) educators get frustrated when they can't teach tasks bit by bit. But this is the way it works in cyclical time.

We need to start now establishing establishng alternative food webs within our community. Upgrading kitchens in community centers is a useful tactic. Because it is a piece of capital that can have at least four uses. That's somethng I did a couple of years ago. There is always something that can be done. Everything has at least least four uses.

We need to start working on a manifesto about how our town, or neighbourhood could be and we need to start a revolution of hope.
 

Bob Howard