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  • From: Tommy Tolson <healinghawk@earthlink.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] BodyPolictic-Political Humor-Congress Votes to Outsource Pres
  • Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 18:12:36 -0500

Primal Parent wrote:
i promised to avoid Political arguments from now on, but i just had to jump in here and say that i feel there were some cheap shots taken at graham (especially in attempting to apply the 'Authoritarian' label on him). he has done some amazing work and inspired tons of individuals and i dont think that should be dismissed with a wave of the hand and the word 'privileged' (as if 99% of us on here aren't).

to paraphrase wendell berry, "well, if white men have the most influence on the world, then i guess it's good that i am a white man...'cause now i can influence people to start living in balance. and besides, if it's not a good thing...well it's not like i had any choice in the matter"

you should check out what spiralseed is doing.


My point is that those preaching the non-political path avoid politics no more than anyone else. You don't avoid politics when you design Permaculture communities, villages, towns, etc. You don't avoid politics when you organize Permaculture meetings, groups, guilds, co-ops, intentional communities, or any other arrangement that contains more than one person. You don't even avoid politics when you attend to your own psychology. Politics is not naturally avoidable.
If we want to allow the forces which benefit from undeveloped human political potentials (recall that there are six human potentials: physical, emotional, spiritual, social, mental, and volitional, or political) to continue to oppress life on this planet, then we can continue to pretend to avoid politics and thus leave them to those who oppress us. Our oppressors do not avoid politics. What I suggest, and what I advocate, is a means of utilizing politics as another tool in our Permaculture design toolkits. I don't know what the monster looks like, smells like, or what sort of noises it makes in the night. I do know that the artifice of avoiding the political potential of humans does no natural person or process any favors. We remain mired in the darkness of ignorance that way.
If we can't deal with our human political potential on a Permaculture listserv that, at some level, concerns designs with which to interface humans with the processes of nature, we are going nowhere good. I want, and propose, a creative conversation about the elements of politics as it relates to Permaculture design. Let's avoid oppression in this conversation, shall we?

Politics concerns who we include in our definition of community. Who do we include? I'm talking about bringing to reality a Permaculture ethics that articulates the specifics of "care of the land and care of people."

Let's define oppression, for example, so that oppression is recognizable, so that resistance/avoidance may be articulated, and so that we may create some effective strategies to overcome and/or avoid oppression that we unconsciously design into our work. Is anyone interested in taking on this creative challenge?

Tommy Tolson
Austin, TX




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