permaculture

[Charles Knoles <charles@growfood.org>]

At 10:32 PM 1/06/2003 -0400, you wrote:
> > This assumes that my comments were bigoted - please explain why my
> > comments were bigoted.

Dear Bob,

  I am an Australian living in the U.S.A. and seeing this dialogue has 
made me rethink a lot of the things I say about Americans.  I've indulged 
in rants against "Amerikans" (why the weird spelling by the way?) but it's 
really not the right thing to do.  Because the USA is so powerful it 
doesn't seem so politically incorrect to rip into it's citizens as a 
group.  The problem with doing this is that regardless of the relative 
power of the people involved, it's unfair to treat individuals as though 
they necessarily conform to the average standard of the group they belong 
to.  Anti-Americanism is just as intellectually lazy as racism or sexism.

  If you think that you weren't stereotyping Americans, then just go back 
to the letters you posted and change "amerikans" to "women" "negroes", or 
"asians". The results sound pretty scary.  I was thinking of doing exactly 
that and posting them without comment but I didn't want anyone to take it 
the wrong way.

  Unfortunately the very relevant points that you made about skepticism, 
american education and the media were framed by aggressive language that 
made people react emotionally and not hear the sense in what you said.  You 
might want to think about the way you communicate in future.  Marshall 
Rosenburg's book "non-violent communication" has been very helpful to many 
people I know.

You said: "locally based administrations that lead to creation science 
being taught in schools. Never happen here except in privately run 
religious schools."

  This is false.  I am 25 years old and from 1st grade through 6th grade I 
attended mandatory scripture classes at three different public schools in 
Australia during which I was taught creation science along with every other 
child in my school.  Although there are some discrepancies such as the 
Kansas ruling that you pointed out (which is limited to a couple of states) 
religious education is illegal in the USA in public schools.  I would be 
very happy to hear if this is now also the case in Australia but if so I 
don't think it is something we should crow too loudly about.

You said: " I'm sure there are many intelligent citizens in your country 
but  every one of them that I've got to know personally has had marked 
gaps  in their knowledge about ideas and the rest of the world."

    All people have gaps in their knowledge.  To imply that this is 
uniquely American is absurd.  In my experience the AVERAGE level of 
environmental awareness amongst Americans does seem lower than in Australia 
but being involved in Permaculture education I have found the general 
receptivity to also be higher than it is in Oz.  Everyone I know who says 
they are practicing Permaculture here seem like real overachievers, usually 
involving themselves in ecovillage design, renewable energy practices, 
overseas aid work, amazing urban permaculture food forests etc.  Although 
this is sometimes true in Oz, I know quite a few Australians who say they 
are practicing Permaculture just because they sheet mulch the veggie 
patch.  Personally if I had a choice between dealing with the gaps in 
knowledge of the people on this list versus some prominent Australians I 
could name (you know who I'm talking about) give me the Yanks any day!

Charlie Knoles
Fairfield Iowa

P.S Have you ever heard of Bioneers, ATTRA, Noam Chomsky, Hunter Lovins, 
Howard Zinn, Paul Stamets, Winonna La Duke, Nancy and John Todd, Anna Edey, 
Michael and Judy Corbett .... jeez, I could go on all day. These are all 
"amerikans" too.