permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

On 9/16/04 7:56 AM, "GlobalCirclenet" <webmaster@globalcircle.net> wrote:
 
> That's saying that people do not have a "right to call themselves
> permaculturists" unless they pay whatever workshops are charging. That they
> literally buy that "right" with money.

We've been showing in many posts now that you don't need money to get a
certificate, so please allow your opinions to be affected by the facts that
others present. Also, what's the gripe here? You can't call yourself an MD
or LLD or LMT or whatever without paying for or otherwise earning the right.

Mollison and Holmgren coined the word "permaculture" with the stipulation
that it embodies a particular set of ideas, and they hoped that it would not
get watered down by those who had not bothered to understand what they
intended the word to mean. (I can't tell you how many times I've been shown
someone's "permaculture garden" only to see a nice, neat set of row-crops.)
They developed the PDC as one way to do that; other ways have evolved, as
has been said here. Mollison set criteria for learning the material, but he
also had the hope that the standards could be maintained without setting up
the whole dismal bureaucratic apparatus common to our dysfunctional
education system. 

>Yet they don't have to qualify for
> certification by mastering any body of knowledge, by passing any exam, or
> by successfully completing any internship

(I realize that when I responded to this erroneous assumption, I did not
mention the 2-year diploma program; there's your internship. There are many
other internships offered at many Pc sites as well).

Why do I have the feeling that if Pc had a more formal bureaucracy for
imposing these standards, this same person would be griping about how
elitist and exclusive that system was? I realize now, somewhat belatedly,
that I'm wasting my time replying to these absurd statements because there
is no consistent logical basis behind them; they are arguing about 12
different sides of the issue in mutual contradiction. Pc should be less
formal; it should be more formal. It needs rules and tests; rules suck and
anyone administering them is a jerk. The PDC is meaningless and the
certificate nonsense, but those offering it are building a fence around Pc;
If you take a PDC you need to practice Pc, if not, the PDC system is to
blame. My head is spinning.

There are no evil Pc police out there preventing anyone from learning Pc;
those monsters lie only within the minds of those with authority-figure
issues or other neuroses. There are simply different ways to learn Pc, and
different ways to try to pass on the body of knowledge that needs to be
common to all who call themselves permaculturists for the word to mean
anything.  Those who are trying to pass on that body of knowledge are pretty
open to intelligent critiques of how Pc is transmitted; we'd love to see it
done better. But the critiques need to be based in fact and experience, not
just knee-jerk rejection of authority and spinning of negative scenarios
that are based only on unhappy speculations.

--Toby, who is trying to put off work on other things he doesn't want to
tackle, but will now knuckle down.