permaculture

["John Schinnerer" <john@eco-living.net>]

Aloha,

Thanks for the inspiration, Robert!  Very glad to hear of your efforts and
the fruit (and vegetables) they are bearing.  Food is fundamental...maybe
that's why all those supposed "adversaries" are coming together...nothing
mushy about this at all.  "Scarcity" is a mental concept first and
foremost; until we change our minds it doesn't matter how much 'stuff' we
have, we'll still have "scarcity."  We can't make peace based on war
thinking, can't make abundance based on scarcity thinking.


Robert Waldrop said:
> I think one essential aspect of new structures and systems to replace
> the old failing ones is that  they grow organically from previous
> forms...
>...organizing a series of retail cooperatives that
> will only sell local foods.  To get enough folks together to make the
> cooperatives a success, we are presently organizing a buying club with
> about 100 people.  Superficially, this could be considered a
> capitalistic enterprise, and it is familiar enough to people that they
> don't recoil in shock at the thought.  But it represents a radical
> departure from the present way of producing and delivering food to
> people.  Perhaps to use a medical analogy, we are an invading virus
> that has disguised itself to confuse/defuse the body's immune system
> so we can replicate.
>
> It is also a radical departure from the way most "alternative"
> structures work, in that the participants come from widely different
> world views to get to this place.  when I look at our organizing
> committee, I see conservative Republicans, fundamentalist Christians,
> New Age Pagans, descendents of settlers who took Indian lands
> together, American Indians, conventional Democrats, radical leftist
> sectarians, Catholics, atheists, and all points between.  I am frankly
> astonished that we have made it this far, having gone through an
> extensive internet correspondence via a yahoogroup I started to
> develop the concept, a series of regional meetings statewide, and most
> recently an intensive series of meetings here in OKC to take all that
> we have talked about and turn it into a working concept.   Most of
> these people wouldn't generally be talking to each other, or even in
> the same room.   Maybe it helps that we start all our meetings with a
> potluck dinner.
>
> In coming together to make this work, we have discovered a great
> liberation.  I have found this in my own life as I have, over the last
> few years, taken back control of my food from the agribidness corpses.
> I know the farmers that produce my food, personally, I know their
> addresses and have been to several of them.  plus each year I produce
> more food from my former lawns.
>
> Sorry to get mushy but the power of the oppressor is first of all a
> power we give to it in our own minds.  By "changing our minds,"
> literally I think, we take away a lot of their power.  All the way to
> heaven is heaven, as they say, and its corrollary would also have to
> be true, all the way to hell is hell.
>
> Robert Waldrop, okc
> http://www.oklahomafood.org


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