permaculture

[Greg <FarmerGreg@UrbanFarm.org>]

BTW - This email came from the New PC List.  LL - you don't have 
enough here people to give a hard time on your own list?

> Thought I'd repost this to the list. - worth reading to see how some 
> othes think about PC.
> Wondering what  planet this fellow is from (says there's no need for 
> PC certification or to be concerned about "one's
> survival and meeting one's basic needs in the US").-
> ===+++===
>
>
>  [Permaculture International] The debates
>
> *farmerdave at permaculture.com* farmerdave at permaculture.com 
> <mailto:Permaculture%40openpermaculture.org?Subject=%5BPermaculture%20International%5D%20The%20debates&In-Reply-To=BE6ED71E.40C9%25toby%40patternliteracy.com>
> /Tue Mar 29 18:28:11 CST 2005/
>
>    * Previous message: [Permaculture International] The debates
>
> <http://openpermaculture.org/pipermail/permaculture_openpermaculture.org/2005-March/000040.html>
>    * Next message: [Permaculture International] Re: [Permaculture] Re:
>      new list
>
> <http://openpermaculture.org/pipermail/permaculture_openpermaculture.org/2005-March/000027.html>
>    * *Messages sorted by:* [ date ]
>
> <http://openpermaculture.org/pipermail/permaculture_openpermaculture.org/2005-March/date.html#42>
>      [ thread ]
>
> <http://openpermaculture.org/pipermail/permaculture_openpermaculture.org/2005-March/thread.html#42>
>      [ subject ]
>
> <http://openpermaculture.org/pipermail/permaculture_openpermaculture.org/2005-March/subject.html#42>
>      [ author ]
>
> <http://openpermaculture.org/pipermail/permaculture_openpermaculture.org/2005-March/author.html#42>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Just another couple of thoughts on certification etc.  The original 
> plan by Bill
> was to have a flat hierarchy where once you learned pc at a course AND THEN
> APPLIED IT TO YOUR HOME SITE, or village or whereever, then you could be
> considered somewhat competant to teach a course.  This works pretty darn well
> in developing countries since the techniques and guilds that are going to work
> well in a given locale will quickly distill into a few main designs with
> endless small variations.
>
> But in the United States where the issue is not survival and meeting real life
> needs, but instead wants, you get different results.  Our culture's love of
> celebrity took Mollison and made him a god and a lot of young boys and with
> dysfunctional fathers and a few highly competitive women sure wanted to be
> celebrities like Bill whether they were conscious of it or not.
>
> Bill and Scott's original proposal in 1997 to create a teacher's certification
> and to try and patent the word permaculture (and charge everyone a 
> biennial fee
> for use of it)were not devised so much to guarantee a high level of
> qualification but to create a caste system in which as Scott put it 
> "you had to
> earn your chops at the feet of a master."  The other goal was to 
> exclude people
> who they felt were either a threat to their head of cult status or who they
> didn't like.
>
> Luckily the people who were invited to the meeting in which they pitched these
> schemes had good heads on their shoulders and rejected "taxation without
> representation" and a heirarchy they rightly felt went against everything Bill
> had said in the past about the structure of permaculture.
>
> But in every "industry" there is always someone ready to farm the 
> wallets of the
> constituents with trade organizations, certifications, ever higher levels of
> qualification for which they charge a fortune to do not much of anything
> useful.  It is to permaculture's credit that it has resisted this 
> sort of thing
> for as long as it has.
>
> So let's get on with the work, out design and out delight the established
> competition and show them that we can produce more surplus and live well on
> what each of us considers enough.  In so doing we withdraw our life energy and
> capital from Transnational capitalism and when there are enough of us to just
> stop it from growing, it all falls in on itself. We don't even need 
> to tear the
> multinationals down or fight them face to face; just bleed them to
> non-existence  with thousands of people using whatever part of permaculture
> they resonate with.
>
> Certification? Pshaw! The only "certification" we need is the respect and
> admiration of our neighbors. Especially now that oil is running out.
>
> Remember what Darwin really said, organisms that compete for a 
> scarce resources
> (fame perhaps) both die out and nature replaces them with cooperaters.
>
> Farmer Dave
>
> www.earthsite.net
> > > / This email sent by the wind
> /
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Previous message: [Permaculture International] The debates 
> <http://openpermaculture.org/pipermail/permaculture_openpermaculture.org/2005-March/000040.html>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> permaculture mailing list
> permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture


--


***ATTENTION***  Please note my new email address.  FarmerGreg@UrbanFarm.org

The Urban Farm
Growing good food
Having fun gardening
Connecting with nature


Greg Peterson
http://www.urbanfarm.org
602/565-7045