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  • From: Stella <stella@finca-luna.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Why Bother With Permaculture? An essay by Ted Trainer
  • Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 10:27:01 +0100

thanks so much for sending this ... see below (cut)


El 19/12/2007, a las 5:01, Jim escribió:

Those of us who read the list in digest form have a lot of scrolling
to do.

thanks for the reminder


Permaculture design principles are obviously crucial for sustainability.
Viable settlements must be designed to provide most of their needs from
the local landscape without external inputs of resources, and in ways
that are ecologically sustainable. But given the nature and the
magnitude of our limits to growth problem much more than Permaculture is
required. Fundamental economic, political and cultural change is
essential and without these Permaculture will be of no significance even
if it flourishes.

This is the crux of the matter I was trying to focus on much earlier in the 'politics and permies' thread.

I don´t agree that "much more than permaculture is required"

RATHER that we have to clearly teach permaculture design, a lot more explicitly, to INCLUDE "economic, political and cultural change". Because many of us (not just Ted, me and others) observe that there is a tendency to 'forget' this.

Because it actually IS inherent, in my understanding of permaculture, in everything that the designers manual says.
It just isn´t understood properly (and certainly not USED), I believe, and so there is a tendency to teach this much more 'diluted' version of PC design which makes Ted (and many others) believe that "Permaculture isn´t enough".

(and just to be clear about where I stand on this: I get VERY cross about this kind of attitude - permaculture is about EVERYTHING for gosdakes ... how can it not be 'enough'?!?
If it´s not being done as if it were about ALL aspects of life, then it's not permaculture, in my opinion ... or not good permaculture anyways)

This was the attempt to gently 'divert' the (obvioustly too emotive) discussion on politics to Designing Societies (changed the topic thread, but nobody answered it), which I emailed to this list on the 3rd of dec.


Unfortunately much Permaculture literature and many
courses tend to leave the impression that spreading knowledge about
Permaculture techniques is sufficient to achieve a sustainable world and
that there is no need to question affluent living standards or the
present economy.

I don´t think it´s just about questioning our living standards, but a whole set of other crucial layers like an understanding of how opressions fit into the big picture, which is the under-pinning of the DESIGN of the destructo-culture which makes possible our huge blindness to just how massively privileged we are in the first place (you can´t begin to question something you can´t really see)


In general far too little emphasis is put on the fact
that a sustainable society cannot be achieved without radical a change
in lifestyles, in the economy, in the geography of settlements and in
world views and values.

And the rest!

but even just getting a good handle on how economy works would be a great start.

I found it incredibly worrying that we managed to have a whole international permaculture convergence with practically NO dialogue on economy, monetary theory or complementary currencies work.

Complementary Currencies seem to be filed away (by most permies, with some notable exceptions like Margrit Kennedy and others) as some cute 'add on' we can make to our designs!

Yet there is a whole world-wide network of people now in the Complementary Currencies movement who realize how TOTALLY FUNDAMENTAL money-re-design is to changing society ..
(see Bernard Lietaer's latest book on re-designing society ... easily the best permaculture visionary work I´ve seen so far)

and the huge irony for me is how skitzoid it feels to be in both movements.
Trying to figure out how to unite them, or at least incorporate the best of each into the other ... because what I see is a hell of a lot of time and talent - wasting.

Eg. that right now I am colaborating ('trying' to colaborate would b more accurate) on a book on Currency Design by someone who has tons of practical experience in the area yet no notions of permaculture, and who is trying to re-invent a "design language"!

It´s great that they got this far and realized these are design issues ... and also incredibly sad that they're trying to re-invent the wheel when we have such a powerful design language FOR sustainability already invented.

So my question is ... Where did we miss the boat? And how can we best swim to catch up with our design colleagues (working on precisely the 'bits' we have tended to leave out in 'traditional' PC)?


Permaculture is part of the problem if
it is essentially enabling people to do some ecologically correct things
in their gardens, such as growing some organic vegies, and then feel
that they are making a significant contribution to saving the planet.

And this is precisely the critique of our sudamerican pc colleagues, I think.

To remove it a little from PC to the ecovillage movement
(attempting to take the emotional sting out of this so hopefully it can be heard better) ...

just an example
... a permie from Hong Kong who made a great impact on me (she visited our project a few years ago) told me how there was an 'alternative' ecovillage movement forming (she was on the way to a meeting of it in south america) of people who have a totally different concept of what 'ecovillage' means, to the one of GEN.
She mentioned things like the massive 'ecological' fridges in big 'bioconstruction' houses that can be seen in most of the 'model' ecovillages in the west ... and how this other group are creating ecovillages without electricity for eg, instead of focusing how to get their 'green' electricity.

it´s a big shift in enphasis ... and it´s about questioning basic values about privilege which I totally agree ISN´T happening in too many permaculture designs either.


There is a seriously mistaken theory of change underlying much of the
Permaculture movement. Many seem to assume that that the more people we
get to take an interest in Permaculture and to practise it the closer we
move to the establishment of a just and sustainable society. This is not
so.

Totally agree. But only IF we take 'permaculture' to mean what it seems to mean for many.


If all we do is work at increasing the numbers who understand and
like and practice Permaculture this will probably have no more
revolutionary significance than if we increased the number of people who
are interested in the RSPCA or golf. This will just reach the point
where all those potentially interestable in Permaculture will have
become interested, and will be out their reading the books and growing
things, while still living in and benefiting from and not challenging
affluent-consumer society and the growth economy.

Again, replacing that society is the crucial task, not getting more
people to like and practice Permaculture. Merely teaching Permaculture
techniques will not get them to see that affluent industrial consumer
society is a terrible mistake, that capitalism must be scrapped, that a
growth economy must be scrapped, that we must build small and highly
self-sufficient economies based on cooperation and participation, and
that very different lifestyles and values must be embraced. People can
become very knowledgable and keen about Permaculture without
understanding any of this.


This is also what I observe.


Why do you want people to take up Permaculture? Just to enjoy the idea
and the practice? Or to help us build a sustainable society. If your our
answer is the latter, then we will not get this outcome just by
increasing people's understanding of Permaculture techniques. We make
sure that wherever possible we connect Permaculture with the global
scene and the need for radical social change, so that people understand
that Permaculture is necessary but only as part of the bigger picture.

Yet I´d be a lot more ambitious and say that GOOD and correctly applied permaculture design cannot BE a 'part' of anything .. it has to take into account the whole.

It´s just very difficult to DO ... but the sooner we stop congratulating ourselves on how englightened we already are as permies (nothing wrong with self-apreciation but lets get the smugness out of it please), the sooner we can have an intelligent dialogue about how we can improve the teaching of permaculture .. and indeed improve Permaculture Design full stop.


We can't claim to be centrally concerned with achieving sustainability
if all we talk about is Permaculture. It is in fact only a one element
in the list of conditions and factors required for a sustainable world
order. But there can be no doubt that it is a crucially important element.





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