permaculture

[Loren Davidson <listmail@lorendavidson.com>]

My personal opinion is that I find most political arguments to be 
repetitive and boring, and they do not accomplish anything. Once it 
gets to "fuck you," all chance of modifying someone's opinion in your 
favor tends to sort of vanish with the morning dew. :)

That said...I think that there is definitely a place for a discussion 
of politics on a Permaculture list, if it is done *in the context of 
Permaculture*.

A good example might have to do with, say, how work on local food 
independence or an initiative to reduce private transportation might 
be encouraged or hindered by making changes to land use/zoning 
legislation - how do we structure our cities and our transportation 
infrastructure to reduce the amount of petroleum it uses, reduce the 
number of wasted hours people spend in traffic that they could spend 
getting to know their neighbors, reduce the auto exhaust? How do we 
create urban and suburban spaces for food self-reliance?

Or how can issue X be tweaked in order to support the Pc principles 
of "Care of the Earth" and "Care of the people?"

A bad example would be one that starts, "Al Franken is a liberal 
idiot," or "Bill O'Reilly is a conservative idiot." It has zero 
relevance to Permaculture or associated philosophies/sciences, it's 
confrontative, and there really isn't a lot of common ground to be 
had or solutions to be found in it.

The *problem* I see with political discussions is that, even when 
they *start* with something like "How can we reform land use," they 
tend to devolve into "Person X is a liberal/conservative idiot." 
Followed by "*You* are a liberal/conservative idiot." This is partly 
because many people carry a rather strong emotional charge around 
their political views, many people really aren't all that tolerant of 
disagreeing viewpoints, and email is too damn easy to misinterpret.

(Apologies to those who feel that the above example is too 
US-centric. It's what I know. Please don't start an argument about 
US-centrism, 'k? :) )

If people can act like mature adults, discuss the issues without 
judgmentalism, try to relate what you're talking about to 
Permaculture and Pc principles, and agree to disagree when things 
warm up, then yeah, we might be able to make it a vital part of the 
discourse.

But if you're just gonna piss on each other's campaign slogans, do it 
somewhere else. That's my two cents.

Loren
--
Loren Davidson          listmail@lorendavidson.com
Music with tropical attitude - http://www.lorendavidson.com
"There's just too much to see waiting in front of me, and I know
that I can't go wrong" - J. Buffett