permaculture

[Katey <newtribe@hughes.net>]

Tommy, I agree with your assessment of the future - it will get pretty 
ugly.  And we each have the choice to approach that reality in our own 
way.  I think it is partly due to being a cancer survivor, but also 
being a permaculturist, that i have changed my outlook of the times to 
come.  Laughter is glorious.  It doesn't mean i don't understand or am 
not actively participating in solution-oriented endeavors.  But i just 
plain don't have the time anymore to waste in negativity.  It does not 
assist in changing the status quo and prevents me from being the best 
warrior i can be for Gaia.

Losing 20 species a week is far more depressing to me than the loss of a 
 small portion of a single species.  Yes, even if i am one of them.

~katey

katey culver
ecoville architechs
www.earthandstraw.com

Tommy Tolson wrote:
> Graham wrote:
> > lets keep the 
> > internatrional permaculture forum focussed on positive solutions and 
> > ways forward to abundant living in post energy descent futures and what 
> > we can do thats positive and practical now...
> >
> > Cheers Graham www.spiralseed.co.uk
> >   
> This is a profoundly political statement favoring an arbitrarily 
> privileged viewpoint, as far as I can tell.  It comes from someone of 
> remarkable stature,
> an authority figure, if you will.  This is a statement of "how it should 
> be," asking for no support, a simple, authoritarian declaration, the 
> forte of white men. 
> How, pray tell, does a positive solution come about without a 
> decision-making process?  Yes, we are in energy descent, but saying so 
> is another political statement.
> Who decides what is "positive and practical now" for the members of this 
> listserv?  How is consensus gathered in the Permaculture community in 
> general and on this
> listserv in particular?  Who rules this listserv?  Who may speak 
> freely?   Anyone?  No one? 
>
> I am not a farmer and I am not white in more than skin color.  I look 
> white until you look close but I'm not white.  I have a Permaculture 
> design certificate and I do
> Permaculture designs when they show up to be done.  Even when I live on 
> the land, I am not a farmer.  Am I subject to farmer rules on this 
> listserv?  Like it or leave it?
> Is that the rule here, too?
>
> I do not own a positive view of the future.  Two out of three people now 
> living are not ecologically supported in a world without cheap oil.  It 
> is going to get very ugly very
> quickly, and insisting upon a positive viewpoint is not going to change 
> that.  The likelihood is that two thirds of the humans now living will 
> die off within the next fifty years.   I can not
> begin to make that appear positive.  Global warming is a one hundred 
> year old issue.  The warning was issued one hundred years ago and we 
> haven't done anything about it yet.
> Peak Oil was predicted in something like 1957 and few outside the oil 
> business (I'm third generation oilfield) still, in 2007, even know what 
> Peak Oil means.
> Leonard Cohen sang, "I have seen your future and man, it's murder." 
> That's consistent with what I know. 
>
> Thinking we can build out our designs and make them work and live out 
> our lives in relative peace while the rest of the world falls apart does 
> not strike me as realistic at all, and
> if I have to adopt an attitude based on the illusion that it is 
> realistic in order to be on a Permaculture listserv, I find that 
> prospect bizarre as hell.
>
> Are there any adults in charge here?  Or has Permaculture morphed into a 
> New Age quasi-theology?  We can think the future away?  Oscar Wilde, I 
> think, said "If you tell them
> the truth, make them laugh or they'll kill you." I have neither the 
> desire nor the inclination to make you laugh.
>
> Tommy Tolson
> Austin, TX
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