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  • From: Paul Cereghino <paul.cereghino@comcast.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] The Fed
  • Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 09:51:19 -0700

"why is it that permaculture [as an example of decentralized ecological design] has such a small cult following in the US rather than having broad attention and appeal?".
>I suspect because the educational system, does not support it

I learned about permaculture by going to college, and though the college didn't teach permaculture, it did teach a range of skills that I have retrofitted, and it gave me resources with which to make choices about how I apply my life energy to affect the fabric of human ecologies. There is a little of the chicken or the egg here, in that you need people who think ecological design to teach ecological design... I wonder if integration into primary and secondary education would be more powerful? Over the last 20 years there are increasing academic programs teaching 'holistic' stuff, and this is because they are competing for students who demand 'holistic' stuff. The populice and the dominant economic model doesn't support it, and the educational system is just a service provider.

I want to redirect the character of this analysis -- this idea that Pc doesn't thrive because of 'them' or 'the system'. That is just the easy way out. If we are such good designers, then lets design! The problem is the solution, right... so show me! Least action greatest response? Show me! Why is it when we come to human systems we throw up our hands and say 'the system' is flawed? Perhaps we are just ignorant of the actual design context?!

>there are not vast economic dependancies associated with it, in the minds of policy makers
>material returns of investors, rather than address the investments of the natural world
> you might find yourself working as a carpenter.

I think these combine -- Pc doesnt produce revenue that can be concentrated to produce a lobbying force or a political caucus. Pc offers guilt free subsistance but the potential for emotionally stressful isolation. It is land dependant, but land ownership is concentrated, and it is difficult to own land outside the investment-mortgage system without fleeing population centers -- so again, isolation. Then there is also increasing insecurity in becoming old.

>The uncertainties of business are being minimized by causing the customers to behave in a way to allow for a significant return beyond expenditures.

The horrific irony is that 'causing the customers to behave' part is very penetrating and pervasive. It is a economic landscape phenomena that must be overcome. The Pc idea is that you invest the surplus in the land -- not give it to a shareholder. So you limit you 'constituency'. Pc has a very limited 'constituency'. Economic interest groups use their surplus to influence the economic landscape for the benefit of their industry. Pc is busy working on soil fertility on land they have barely secured, while the rest of the world is creating the cultural infrastructure in support of their revenue streams. The Pc answer is that the rest of the word will fall apart and settle into Pc and so we focus on soil rather then 'the system' or 'the man'. Is that a safe or accurate assumption?

I think land ownership is central to this thread. If I owned land outright, I would have more options, but I trade work for land over a lifetime, and to squirrel away capital for future security. Although I deviate from norms quite substantially, some of my behaviors are quite normal, because they are driven by economic insecurity context.

>If your not perceived by those pulling the strings in society as acceptable your going to be swimming up stream a lot.

But only when you are dependant on string pulling, i.e. you are not generating your own revenue, not generating your own power, rather you are trying to appeal to a non-functioning populist ideal and you go appealing to the string-pullers and find that they have no interest or use for you. If you want to redirect the stream you learn the stream dynamics and start looking for weakness in the bank where you can cause an avulsion.

>Permaculture is a frontier and that is why you don't find lots of people out there. It is not what
>has been going on the last 10,000 in agriculture.

Perhaps I am an unforgiving perfectionist, but I am not convinced that our designs are so spankin' special at this point.

Paul Cereghino







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