permaculture

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

Aloha,

> The title is a take from Gregory Bateson's "Steps to an ecology of the 
> mind".

Bateson's work is a big gift to students of permaculture (among many other
areas of inquiry).  Deserves to be high up on PC reading lists.

For the beginning Bateson reader I recommend "Mind and Nature: a necessary
unity."  It is written as one cohesive book (instead of a collection of essays
like "Steps to an Ecology of Mind") and is IMO more accessible because of it
(though no less rigorous).

Another collection of Bateson essays is "A Sacred Unity" - more of his later
writings.

> But what is happening in a cyclical sense is that we are caught in our 
> habits.
> (Addiction is a pathology of habit.) Because habits are things that we have
> 'learned to learn'.

Habits a la Bateson are behaviors that have become (or always were)
"sub-conscious" - we do them without having to "pay attention" to them.  This
is not a bad thing in itself, as he points out - it is necessary for our mere
existence that we as living systems relegate a great deal of essential
activity to "habit."  Breathing, beating our heart, digesting our food,
"keeping our balance" and so on are some of his fundamental examples.

> Then we must learn to challenge our learning.

Exactly.  We have 'learned', as organisms, not to pay attention to certain
behaviors.  We have even learned lots and lots of ways to not pay attention
("addictions," etc.).  It remains to be seen if we can learn to discern what
behaviors need more attention and what can safely be left as habit, and then
learn to take appropriate action.

> For Gregory Bateson, this
> is cognitively the equivalent of a zen enlightenment, or a 
> psycho-therapeutic
> insight, where a person's behaviour is changed(not just their opinion!).

I'm not sure about a full-on Zen enlightenment, but a "psycho-therapeutic
insight" can stay a head trip - behavior does not necessarily change (aside
from a person talking a bunch about the insight they had... ;-).  Most
practices of western psychology/therapy are very "heady" and intellectual. 
"Understanding" one's pathologies intellectually does not necessarily lead to
behavioral changes that address them.

Scattered throughout Bateson's writings are various examples of creating
contexts for actual behavioral change.  A PC course may be such a context, for
example.

> I don't think that we are going to have a choice about reducing our energy
> consumption. We don't need to proselytize about the virtue of living
> cheaply(or energy efficiently) because it will be a necessity before long

Hear, hear!  In systems as large as planetary, even the seemingly big messes
we humans can make are going to be self-correcting.  Not that the correction
will be "nice" or "pretty," but it will happen.

> Please let's forget about oil for a while and think about the consequences 
> of
> the already occurring climate change!

Good point.

> This CO2 is there largely because of the
> actions of the US imperium and it's devotion to the so-called capitalist
> enterprise.

This looks like a good example of how the habit of blaming and finger-pointing
is of little use in designing alternatives.


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