Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - [permaculture] Where the political discussion goes

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Tommy Tolson <healinghawk@earthlink.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Where the political discussion goes
  • Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:16:05 -0500

I think I understand the international intricacies of political discussion on a global listserv, which we started into with the economic colonialism idea of golf resorts and sugar plantations, which, in political economics, are the same thing: harvesters of gold, as Kathyann brilliantly called it.
The primary reason international politics is volatile is the ubiquitous economic oppression of the G8 countries. Read the history of the Bretton Woods Agreements spawning the World Bank, the IMF, and GATT, which became the WTO under Brother Bill Clinton. The fact that the WTO has almost failed is strong testament to the consequences of giving the victims of US ( and G8) economic oppression a voice in the global political economics policy process. There's a long way to go to attain a nearly fair global political economics and it will be a bumpy ride because the rich apparently think their money buys them dominion over everyone else.
It seems odd to see a US black man use his money to oppress others into leaving their land. Permaculture sees money differently than real estate developers and multinational food corporations, since Permaculturalists share the profits of our bountiful harvests. Money does not become a control issue, in Permaculture, because we take only what we need and we share the rest. This is what makes Permaculture sustainable, in political economics terms. We've seen the grinches of dominion economics crash any number of ecosystems in the interests of hoarding more gold. As I recall, although I'll need to re-read to be certain, William R. Catton, in his wonderful, if scholarly, /Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change/, (a scholarly book that has not once gone out of print since 1980), makes the case that the Great Depression resulted from overshooting the US ecosystem. Since then, we've way overshot it with the ghost acreage from cheap oil. Economic oppression is about purchasing ghost acreage to support overshot ecosystems and to maintain the elites in power positions, not necessarily in that order.
How can political discussion not be volatile, considering what's at stake?
Permaculture calls this volatility an edge.
Avoiding edges is not Permaculture.
In fact, edges are the most fecund places, to Permaculture.
Permaculture teaches us to pay close attention to edges.
The political discussion has led us to the nub of The Problem: the global North's need for ghost acreage in order to continue a failed economic agenda. Read the history of the Bretton Woods agreements. Read the neo-con agenda at http://newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf.
Then, if you live in the US, consider if you're willing to live with efforts carried out in your name that perpetuate US economic hegemony over the rest of the planet.
US foreign policy is run by the plantation mentality of the rich. In our name.
Getting that information from "our" victims is tough to face without resorting to denial or the "isms." Racism. Classism, Etc.
But Permaculture teaches us to observe, and to act in harmony with our observations.
The baseline question from my observations, though, is this: shall we act symbiotically or parasitically?
Permaculture says symbiotically.
Parasitic isn't Permaculture.
Yet we in the US live in an economically and ecologically parasitic system dependent on global military dominance and stripping Earth of her bounty.
We've mortgaged our grand-children's future to China in order to continue purchasing this military dominance and its attendant economic expansion.
How do we in the US live with this?
Earth is one ecosystem and we have to find niches in it that do not oppress others.
This is Permaculture.

Tommy Tolson
Austin, TX




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page