permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

I'm intrigued with Michael's idea that permaculture can be taught without
covering soil, water, plants, etc. I agree that the idea behind Pc could be
conveyed in such a way--I know a lot of people practicing Pc who are not
gardeners, and the concepts of whole-systems design can be found in places
other than the garden. But as Larry S. points out, whole systems design is
modeled on and derives almost wholly from nature. The other fields that
Michael refers to--ecopsychology, ecological design, etc, all make frequent
references to natural systems in their teachings; they use examples of
trees, lakes, animals, etc. to convey their ideas (Bill McDonough's "waste
equals food" for example). In contrast, most human-designed systems
operating today are wrenchingly dysfunctional: the stock market, law,
politics, religion, housing, energy use, and so on. So one would have to be
awfully choosy to draw useful principles from human systems (unless you
restrict your choices to indigenous, low-tech people who, revealingly, are
living very close to nature), whereas one could pluck perfect examples of
sustainability almost at random from nature.

As Michael knows, I'm in agreement that 72 hours of lecture is a dreadful
way to convey Pc. I learned and retained far more about Pc from the
experiential PDC I took from Penny Livingston and Tom Ward than from the
lecture PDC I took from Mollison. But I'm also a firm believer in having a
shared body of knowledge common to all Pc practitioners, grounded in a
curriculum that covers principles, methods, water, soil, ecosystems, and
invisible structures. One can practice surgery without knowing organic
chemistry, but o-chem gives all surgeons a common language and a set of
working concepts to describe the phenomena they work with. I think the
analogy is true for permaculture. I still think the PDC curriculum is an
effective way to convey Pc, but it's obvious that there can be huge
variations in how it's presented, both in terms of what is covered and in
the format of presentation. But I'm not ready to hand out a certificate for
a course that skips the garden modules. I think that with some
audiences--urban activists, for example-- one could spend a very short time
on the soil/water/plants segment--enough to show the origin and universal
applicability of the principles--and focus mainly on invisible structures.
And it can be given in a straight shot or in multiple weekend, 4-day, 5-day,
one-week, or other formats. The people who argue that it can only be done in
the 2-week lecture format (is anyone really saying that?) are in a very
small minority and to focus on them is a waste of time and ignores the fact
that the format has already evolved very successfully beyond that.

Toby
www.patternliteracy.com