permaculture

["Don Titmus" <ujgs2@4dirs.com>]

Ditto this post, very balanced.
Relationships to self, Earth, others and everything else is what PC Designer 
do. And it is necessary to be impartial, and open for the client.

Don

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <lbsaltzman@aol.com>
To: <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 9:51 AM
Subject: Re: [permaculture] permaculture Digest, Vol 48, Issue 62


> I agree on your statement about indigenous people. And I still argue that 
> human cultural patterns are part of nature and are as valid to study and 
> understand as any other patterns that are studied in permaculture.
>
> Some form of spirituality and religion is a cultural universal and 
> critical to the survival of any culture.  Permaculturalists seem to have 
> no problem thinking about and including in their design other invisible 
> structures that are part of human culture.  We don't seem afraid to deal 
> with economic structures and settlement patterns. I can assure you that 
> most indigenous cultures have spirituality and religion so interwoven in 
> the structure of their culture that it can't and shouldn't be separated 
> out. There is even evidence that religious practices pre-dated our 
> species. Amongst at least one other member of genus Homo, Homo 
> Neanderthalensis, we find the beginnings of spiritual/religious practices 
> in the burial practices.
>
> I see Permaculture designers approaching human settlement patterns, 
> community, and making many changes that can alter the culture of a given 
> group of people. I think that it is naive to think you can play with human 
> culture and ignore spirituality and religion which are core to any human 
> culture. Obviously, I don't think permaculture practicioners should behave 
> like European missionaries of old and impose a specific religion. In the 
> third world where cultures may have powerful and intact religious 
> practices don't be so naive as to think that benign changes introduced 
> into the culture can't have unexpected consequences. And when working in 
> the 1st world with people, often cut off from the Earth, but intent on 
> forming intentional communities, I suggest that thinking through the 
> invisible structures of religion and spirituality can't be ignored any 
> more than figuring out how the community survives economically.
>
> As to the person who sneered at new age people in a recent post, I would 
> say the following. Yes some can be flakey, but in their own way they are 
> embarked on a journey to restore important human spiritual patterns of 
> Earth based religions that have been lost in our secular society.  Some 
> new agers may go off the deep end and get lost, but others have done 
> important work in reconnecting us to the planet we live on.  I am sure in 
> a hundred years if humanity gets it right and is living sustainably, the 
> insights of permaculture and new age folks will both have their place in 
> the new sustainble society. Hopefully our descendents will have taken the 
> best of both permaculture and new age spirituality and other movements and 
> left the worst behind. I am sure that those folks in the future could look 
> back at the early tentative steps the permaculture designers are taking 
> and be critical of some of the mistakes that were made just as they could 
> about new age spirituality. Hopefully, the
> y will be mature enough not to do that, but to respect their ancestors for 
> the wisdom the possessed.
>
> Larry Saltzman
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dtv@mwt.net
> To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> Sent: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 7:59 AM
> Subject: Re: [permaculture] permaculture Digest, Vol 48, Issue 62
>
>
> Tell this to the indigenous peoples whose 1000s of years of
> relationships with the world around them inspire a lot of
> permaculture practitioners.
>
> ~mIEKAL
>
> In one of our early permaculture courses at Dreamtime, we had 3
> Hochunk guys who were constantly bored with the lectures & went
> outside to smoke.  At one point I joined them outside next to our
> chicken pen & they told me it was farm more interesting what the
> various chickens were saying to each other about their lives inside
> the pen & the proceded to explain to me in detail what each chicken
> was saying.
>
>
> On Jan 30, 2007, at 9:49 AM, camille cimino wrote:
>
> > PC is based on reality, facts, and physics NOT
> > spirituality.
>
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