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  • From: Stella <stella@finca-luna.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] politics and permies
  • Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2007 12:35:10 +0100


my understanding of lists is that its a dialogue amongts many people - if I were replying to you personally Scott, I´d do so privately or state that in my reply. NONE of this is an attack, please don't read it as such.

i agree with many things that are being said, and perhaps focusing only on the parts I find interesting (where our perceptions diverge) gives the impression i´m disagreeing with the whole.
Not so.

I AM a permie, i DO all those radical self-change things, from time, and I am passionately engaged in my work as well as the permaculture community, and also in my surrounding community. Which is a spanish community, and I am italian - if I deviate a little from anglosaxon forms of expression please don´t take it personally. I have to do a lot of cultural adjustments to stay in this dialogue, please meet us half way and also try do some.

I am obvioustly (i hope) in PC because i DO think it´s the most radical path there is, but I would like to balance some attitudes because I just know they are not the whole story, and I think its important that people aren´t cocooned too much in their own class and culture. I care about us a LOT. I hope we don't have to question each others motives and can just move from a base of shared understanding that we are all just doing our best to shift things towards a sustainable planet (with humans in it) / embody our PC ethics.

i am giving my thoughts about a great deal of conversations I have had, not just this one.
if they are not of interest just skip them.
I am learning a lot from hearing many points of view and don´t think it at all necessary that we all suddently agree. this is not how creative dialogue happens, in my experience. I dont dialogue in order to stay with my original point of view, nor to convince others to adopt mine. What I love about our community is that we have so many backgrounds, so many ways of seeing things, so many different main concerns, yet we have a huge and wonderful design culture in common.

As we are ALL severely limited by our own perceptions, the closest thing to 'reality' we can get to, surely, would be whatever we spin together, as we lend each other's eyes and ears in dialogue.

you are free to see this as a fight but I see it as an interesting exploration. Comfort is diametrically opposed to creation. And there is no need to teach me to read, really: my understanding of anything anyone says is filtered by my culture, my experiences, my reality, my life, my prejudices, and all the other dialogues am having and have had.
*And so is yours*

(of course I feel 'misinterpreted' too, muucho! - it´s just not particularly helpful to point that out all the time: just explain it in a different way. How people hear things is just as interesting as what they say, I think - it´s all information)

I think the points are important and the ones you refer to below as being my personal beliefs were actually very clearly stated as my impressions from hearing MANY south american colleagues. (What on earth is a 'profound fact'? anything any of us state are just our opinions, no?)

Belive me, I have re-stated the points I heard a LOT less 'emotionally' than I heard them.
but I personally don´t feel any guilt, discomfort or victimization in hearing what they think of ME (us), because I understand this is just how things are: it IS a system, I am part of it, but it just happens that I am in the hyper-privileged part of this system... yet I was born there, how can I possibly be 'guilty' of anything? What I AM though, is responsible, and a designer: we are all responsible, if we choose to be. One thing I definately would disagree with is that we are all 'equally' victims of it. 'Complementary' yes, but 'equally'... I don´t think so.

Saying what our colleagues seem to think (and its only my impression) is NOT designed to 'guilt-trip' anyone, it´s just a reality-check (as in: this is our reality, this is theirs, isn´t it interesting how they differ?). Since it IS one of the main points that came up at IPC8, I would think it´s at least worth a conversation .. ("sweeping generalization", "dramatic ploy", "hell bent", etc. .. all sounds like emotive language to me, why not just talk about the core issues?)

Of course we are all 'victims' of the system, but to ignore or dismiss the profound significance of the fact that we in the west are the net beneficiaries, materially, of that system, is very misleading. It´s just an economic fact (which reflects plentyfully in our mostly very comfortable lives, in comparison with how the rest of the world lives - this potentially gives us MUCH more room to move to change things).
I do happen to believe that our psychological damage is far greater than we can imagine, and more than 'makes up' for the material privileges we are heir to. (one indicator is precisely how difficult it is to just express opinions without all the emotional storms and resulting mis-understangings happening - it´s exhausting, but also a necessary part of the process perhaps)

I also happen to believe that staying comfortable is anti-evolutionary. My perception right now is that there are perhaps too many feelings we are NOT having (= too many points of view we are NOT hearing = important design information, essential to shift this stuff) .. and it gets in the way of our work.

IF it´s of interest .. what my attitude is (at the moment) about what perceptions many third world colleagues seem to have of how we use permaculture in the west, it´s just what i stated: am just listening.
i don´t feel compelled to make a black and white decision about who is 'right', but I DO very much value their perceptions. I think it´s just basic respect to do so, ESPECIALLY when they are strongly felt opinions, and of more than one individual (one person can be mis-lead, two also perhaps.. but when u hear the same thing many times? .. it gets harder to dismiss all of those people).
It goes without saying that I´m also respectfully listening to other opinions, strongly felt or not.

I completely agree that changes in perceptions take time, and they are what ultimately change things. Absolutely. And the same about revolutions and evolutions.
Evolutions towards climax forests also take centuries. But the whole point of permaculture design is that we think long and hard how to interfere with the length of that process, because we don´t want to die. Are we seriously thinking about how we do that with societies? (it's a genuine question. Meaning "I don´t know", ok. If you really wanto know what the 'core of my concerns' is, as far as I can tell, this is it)

I would disagree that the role of outstanding people (pioneer species) in human evolution should be belittled however - we have much to learn from them, as DESIGNERS: how did they achive those changes, WHY were there no equally outstanding successors to their work? what is great leadership about? why don´t we have many more?

But changes in perception, or evolution, don´t happen if we sit smugly in believing we are 'right', surrounded by others who agree with us: creation happens in an empty, uncomfortable space - of doubt, humility, much questioning, feeling 'horrible' (and wonderful) feelings, silence, listening ..

I think it´s great that we have SO many different perspectives now in the PC world movement - enough to keep us 'uncomfortable' (creative, evolving, moving) forever.
Unfortunately 95% of them aren´t represented on this list, nor could be. So it´s great when a few get a peek, I should think. I think our basic PC boat is sturdy enough that we can rock it a bit (with dancing!), no need to throw anyone overboard.

I really love everything we have achieved and are doing in Permaculture, as a world-wide movement. it´s a very impressive ship.
And see no contradiction whatsoever in also believing we are MUCH more powerful, much more creative and much smarter than we are expressing, & than we have been so far.

If you have feelings about that, great. I hope so.
But please don´t hear "what you are doing is wrong, "bad", you should go into politics" .. whatever. NOT what is being said!

please lets' keep the dialogue on principles, not personalities.
shooting the messanger rarely helps.

It doesn´t do US justice to 'individualize' these points of view, it just comes across as an intimidation tactic. But the effect is precisely to intimidate the most different of opinions, which are often very needed. edge and all that ..


El 04/12/2007, a las 0:10, Scott Pittman escribió:

I don't know what email you read Stella but if it was mine you did a fine
job of misinterpreting it in your response. So I will take it point by point
for you....


-----Original Message-----


Stella Wrote:
given what ONE Ghandi was able to do, or one Martin Luther King, in
terms of social change .. I think we should seriously ask ourselves
why, with so many permaculturists loose ... we haven´t re-designed
society yet.

Scott wrote:
Because the conditions that obtained during both Ghandi and King's time were
different than ours. Just as the work of Ghandi and King was accomplished
over many many years, so too our permaculture "re-design" will and is taking
time.


Stella wrote:
it´s only a revolutionary system of design if some revolution actually
happens.

Scott wrote:
There has never been a revolution that happened overnight. Karl Marx wrote
his tome many years prior to the Cuban revolution, and that revolution is
still revealing itself - unfolding over time.

Perhaps it is only when one thinks of revolution as the overthrow of a
government and way of thinking that the act is valid; to my mind we are in
the midst of a major change that I would call revolutionary in terms of its
long term impact, and permaculture is certainly in the forefront of that
movement.

Stella wrote:
evaluations are not necessarily excercises in one upmanship, nor
put-downs of anyone.
Maybe they are just evaluations. They can be used to improve the
design, instead of dismissing the people who aren´t feeling served by
the design as emotional, backward or not seeing the 'real' reality
(i.e. yours).

Scott wrote:
Your previous email did not present this as an evaluation but as a profound
fact - I disagreed with it as a factual statement. And does evaluation in
your lexicon read as opinion? I certainly didn't take Lucy's statement as a
put down but a sweeping generalization of third world versus first world
perception of permaculture. While this is great for dramatic effect in
front of an audience it does not necessarily lead to any profound
understanding or action. I don't recall mentioning anything about a design
being emotional or backward, just that I saw things differently. You seem
to be hell bent on putting meaning to my words that aren't mine so they must
be yours or at least triggered something that really got you going.


Stella wrote:
And I really hope we're well beyond the attitudes that if feelings are
involved the people having them must be irrational, or what they say
isn´t ALSO 'real'. In this case the very opposite is very likely
true: centuries of brutal colonization doesn´t make you just angry, it
also makes you very perceptive of the subtleties of the workings of the
system that has your people enslaved.

Scott wrote:
It feels as if this is at the heart of your concerns - that I am somehow
dissing emotional or feeling statements as invalid. That is your projection
on my words and perhaps you should reread them. I'm saying that it may feel
that way but it isn't necessarily so! The whole bit about brutal
colonization, and slavery is another dramatic ploy to carry your argument
and doesn't do you justice. If you think about it we are all colonized, we
all are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and we all have to
save ourselves from our historic past no one gets a free pass.

Stella says:
Maybe we should just listen.
It would be very strange if the opressed and those benefiting from the
opression actually agreed on 'realities'.

Scott says:
This is an incredible materialistic rhetorical statement that tries to
induce guilt in lieu of any thing substantive to say. It would have been
more honest to call me the oppressor and that I should agree on the
oppressed view of reality. I am not and I consider that the reality of
Lucy's statement is as I stated it in my original email.

To try to use emotional and rhetorical language and imagery to put down an
opinion that you do not share is demeaning to honest dialog.

Scott Pittman
Director
Permaculture Institute
www.permaculture.org







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