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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] defining permaculture

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  • From: Tommy Tolson <healinghawk@earthlink.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] defining permaculture
  • Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2007 00:37:28 -0500

Roxann Phillips wrote:
That's about how I feel about cutting trees. The balance of our property
is heavily wooded and home for the wildlife, not us. The part we are
using amounts to about 10 acres for the horses and an acre for gardens
and household. The rest will stay wild. I'm constantly guarding it
against marauding cows from the neighbor.

Roxann, Kingston AR, zone 6b

This post furnishes lots of traction for pondering Permaculture politics.
You didn't move to the forest expecting to feed yourself, did you? I'm asking, not saying you did. If you did, though, Bill Mollison calls that a type-one error. The land doesn't belong to you. You belong to the land. The land produced your species from bacteria, the same as every other species. Your fancy papers representing ownership (private property legitimates itself with the logical fallacy of dominion) mean nothing to nature. What are the horses used for that they rate a 10-acre clearing in the forest?
How are nature's cougar and wolves treated?
Is thwarting the will of nature on the land still, so far in time removed from the Nearings, no more than a cause for regret? Why is meeting nature on the land not instead a call to transform into usefulness to nature?
Pond scum is more useful to nature than nearly every human living in the US. It should not be this way. Permaculture calls us to join nature in creating life support systems, not to continue our illusion of dominion over nature. When will the I/Other binary opposition lose its illegitimate acceptance? The I/Other binary opposition is neither logically justified nor ecologically possible.
Can one ever hold power over their source?

Tommy Tolson
Austin, TX






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