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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Capitalism works fine, I just don't want it.

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  • From: "John Schinnerer" <john@eco-living.net>
  • To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Capitalism works fine, I just don't want it.
  • Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 11:42:10 -0700 (PDT)

Aloha,

> I want more alternatives proposed for social and economic organization.
> Currently, we suffer under a lot of contradictory language.

Seems more propagandistic than contradictory to me. The cultural norm of
using generalizations and buzzwords ('the mainstream', 'capitalism',
'socialism', 'democracy', etc.) rather than precise descriptions of
existing or desired processes and consequences is probably not accidental
on the part of those seeking/holding power.

> How could we
> clean up our vocabulary (and our language) so that we have more
> alternatives to choose between on the level of proposals for whole
> societies and economic systems?

Be specific in describing design parameters, details, structures,
processes, outcomes. Don't accept generalizations and buzzwords in place
of specifics. Focus on actions and consequences (existing and desired),
not rhetoric.

> We don't have to try hard to use language which keeps us in the current
> system.

Indeed not - our languaging is part of how we support current systems. To
the people that manipulate those systems we are in fact not whole people,
and we use the language of fragmentation and separation ourselves -
'consumers', 'producers', 'protesters', 'labor', 'management', 'the poor',
'the rich', etc.

> How would the fair marketplaces defend themselves from
> the free market we currently have?

Hmm, sounds like a war/military metaphor. Is that an example of the
language use issue you're addressing?

We can start 'fair marketplaces' (whatever that may mean) any time. I
think some of the alternative money systems (LETS, Hours, etc.) are
examples of this, as well as the even less formal barter that is always
going on here and there (especially in areas where the 'economy' is
categorized as 'depressed', it seems to me).

The question IMO is what will be the responses from the 'free marketeers',
or for that matter anyone who decides to feel threatened by something
different?

> In human history, societies which exist in a general state of peace and
> non-violence are taken over by societies which use violence.

And yet, active non-violence did get the British out of India.

I make a distinction between pacifism and passivism. Ghandi and his
colleagues were pacifists, but definitely not passivists.

> If
> Permaculture is a peaceful form of sedition, how can we prepare for the
> day when the current society (and economy) disagree with our designs?

The current power-holders already disagree with our designs. They just
haven't perceived us as a big enough threat to bother to swat at yet.

This is IMO one reason why the "mainstream" approach to cultural change
via permaculture, and the desire to gain "mainstream" recognition for
permaculture per se, is possibly the least likely to effect change (and
the most likely to be actively repressed, co-opted, trivialized, etc.).

If you have a very small group of warriors with very limited means and
wish to take over and dismantle the castle, it would seem unwise to walk
right down the middle of the road leading to the drawbridge waving
brightly colored banners saying "here we come, we disagree with how you
run the kingdom, we're going to change all that...".

> Not what already-existing system do we want, but what not-yet-existing
> system do we want? I consider this a legitimate question for designers.

Absolutely. Not only legitimate, but absolutely necessary. Design *is*
the creation of the not-yet-existing. Otherwise it's not design, it's
some other process (and sometimes that may be fine; other times, only
design will do).





John Schinnerer, MA
-------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Cultural & Ecological Designing
People - Place - Learning - Integration
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net




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