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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 TedTrainer
  • Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2007 13:13:32 +0100

El 20/12/2007, a las 21:51, Scott Pittman escribió:
As I look at alternative currencies, barter systems like LETS, and co-op
movements like Mondragon they all seem to be partial answers but for some
reason none of them seems to generate enough participation to provide all
the needed products and services even in a small community. So rereading
Marx, Engels, Kropotkin, and other economic visionaries seems part of my
search but the more I read and experience the more I am convinced that we
have to come up with a whole new idea. I am convinced that there is a good
design solution out there somewhere hovering on the edges of our collective
consciousness.



So the complicated part is expanding our imagination,


I have this feeling too.. that there is a "good design solution out there somewhere hovering on the edges of our collective consciousness" .. and it´s very exciting and enormously frustrating all at the same time, which is a very interesting mix...

i can´t find it but someone said something about 'finding each others edges... and the elephant and 6 blind men comes to mind a lot

I think we have all the basic ingredients in the PC movement but we haven´t figured out how to join up the thinking yet. We already do it a lot better than most groups (how we got THIS far) and we have much to be proud of. But ..

I think this quote from JF Noubel sums it up very well:

"The main stakes for humanity are not hunger, poverty, sustainability, peace, healthcare, education,
economy, natural resources or a host of other issues but our capability to build new social
organizations that are able to provide solutions. Our main stake is Collective Intelligence."

the main stakes for humanity being the same as for the pc community: we are great at providing partial solutions, and as Ted's article said, there is no doubt whatsoever that what we currently do in permaculture is a big an essential part of whatever these new social organizations will DO.

but I think if we are honest with ourselves we can´t say we've built any of these social organizations, NOR that we're anywhere near doing so.

(Please DO prove me wrong on this if you have some data to the contrary, I´d love to think otherwise.)

And the 'design' - lack of - of our own PC community (I believe) is testament to the fact that we're very much in the toddler stage of learning how to design effective social structures.
We can TALK about invisible design, we can point to some very rudimentary examples of some,
and we can even teach about it (and I certainly do teach it, putting a great deal of emphasis on the thing infact)... but I believe we can only teach to 3/4 of our own - practical - capacities, at best .. so we have a while to wait till our students figure out how to really DO good invisible design, I reckon.


The best example I´ve personally seen of what this 'joined up thinking' or well designed social organization might look like is Damanhur, in NW Italy, which I visited recently (maybe if I think longer i´ll come up with other examples, but right now this one is the only one I can honestly think of).

If you go to their website you might well come up with the kind of prejudice that we've been speaking of in the poison well thread, and I confess that when I first came across their project many years ago, just on the web, my own prejudices around what I call 'pseudospirituality' (and feel very strongly about) didn´t allow me to see past the wrapping and appreciate what I see now (having fought off quite a few other layers of prejudices all the way .. these guys are'well weird' in quite a few respects), spoken at length with some of the members, and stayed just a week .. which is very little but enough for me to think this is the best example of holistic permaculture i´ve ever seen, on a large scale. And totally replicable - IF we figure out what the essential brilliant bits of the design are about.

it would take too long to go into what I see of very good design there (I also see many mistakes and re-inventing of wheels because they DON´T have any permaculture training! and other big gaps which I think could do with joining up with other people-based important movements ... yet i think we have very much vitally important stuff to learn from them, also) but some of the practical results are:

* possibly the most advanced real life example of a complementary currency backing the regenaration of a whole bioregion - inicially like many previously de-populated by industrialization rural valleys, this one is coming back to life, with many housing cooperatives, (LETS are a very rudimentary design of CCs, appropiate for some things, but on their own certainly not sufficient for regenerating ecomomies: what they have in Damanhur is a euro-backed currency: it can be changed for euros, 1 Credito = 1 euro, as WELL as some LETS-type structures)

* this - brilliantly designed - currency in turn generated the need to design their own financial institutions and now bank, all created to ensure their money is used only for ethical ends. This all complemented by a personal micro-loan system, which allows members to adventure out into some risk-taking activities without relying on banks, even their own. Some very innovative design around wealth-sharing has made them very wealthy, over 30+ years (and - ironically - this is now one of the major 'criticisms' I hear from permie colleagues about the project!)

* an open, rich and research-based culture (they emphasize that they are always exploring and actively set up experiments ... when I was there they were exploring culture, infact (amongst others, including more esoteric things).. by encouraging their 2000+ 'citizens+ to meet up in same-culture dinners and explore ... all because they're designing a big underground conference centre they want to be for 'peoples' (popoli) to come and dialogue for peace in ... so they figured they need to expore their own peoples.

* a great evidence of innovation encouraged at all levels (much cultural and economic activity, mostly of very high quality, eg. mosaic, stained glass, musical instrument and restoration businesses, as well as organic own production everything, from day one, and now increasingly alternative energy businesses etc.). Much lovingly designed detail as well as massive structures (physical and otherwise).

* their own political party (they control the local authority, the mayor is one of them) with the reputation already of being the only party in italy to fulfill all its electoral promises: which were significant, like making the area a gmo free zone, restoring historical watermills, etc.

but for me what stood out really, especially being there, was the very high level of genuine people-care I felt I could breathe in all parts of the community (which extends in many 'nuclei' of 20 or so people, scattered in the woods, each of which shares responsability for the children's care, they have population limiting traditions, an innovative form of marriage, etc. ...). It´s a place where I really saw a big group of people DO their ethics (which are essentially what the PC ethics are.







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