permaculture

["Jamie Nicol" <souscayrous@gmail.com>]

Dear All, Robyn makes a timely point with her reference from 'Seedling'.
Here's another in similar vein from the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6927890.stm - it describes how the
requirements for palm oil in the West to meet 'renewable' energy
requirements, is leading to the destruction of swathes of Indonesian
tropical forests. The suggestion being that biofuels that are being touted
as an answer, are themselves becoming the new problem.

Solutions to problems in turn create other problems requiring other
solutions, which in turn lead to other problems and the need for yet more
solutions, which, in turn...

It is no new knowledge (technique) we need, but a new perspective.

While PC remains a technique-based design strategy, ignoring the thinking
from out of which it arises, it will continue to be part of the problem
because always looking for the next solution.

When Bill Mollison labelled those who would attach some spiritual practice
to PC 'Woo-Woo', he effectively limited the very real difference PC might
have made. Yet, if there's one thing that relates the people I meet who call
themselves PCers or Fukuokans, it is their spiritual dimension. For me, for
many of them, proposed solutions are nothing other than new problems because
we have not moved one step from the perspective that caused the original
problem.

Even the most pragmatic scientist can suddenly become assailed by the
deepest question regarding meaning. Another, so far unthought of horizon
appears upon which reason and the techniques produced by such reason, no
longer carry any conviction. I'm trying to describe a religiosity that is
not a religion, a philosophy that is not metaphysical and a nature that is
not a dualism with humanity at the opposite pole.

This email is intended to counter the overly practical nature of the current
threads, to suggest that what we need is no new actions but an action of
no-action.

Jamie
Souscayrous



On 8/4/07, Robyn Williamson <robinet@aapt.net.au> wrote:
>
> The latest issue of "Seedling", a journal published by GRAIN
> http://www.grain.org/ is solely devoted to information about the
> emerging, or should I say stampeding, industry for the production of
> agrofuels precipitated by the oil crisis and global warming.  Also
> previously known as "biofuels", the team at Seedling is now suggesting
> that biofuels have indeed become "agrofuels" as they join cattle
> ranching, monocultural food cropping, genetic modification and other
> unsustainable activities that are collectively known as modern
> agriculture.  The entire July 2007 edition of Seedling is now available
> online in English at http://www.grain.org/seedling/?type=68.
> Translations into French and Spanish will be made available in
> September and October.