Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - [permaculture] conservatism

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "rafter t. sass" <liberationecology@gmail.com>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] conservatism
  • Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 21:23:18 -0600

Thank you, David, for expressing that so well.

It sometimes seems like folks confuse markets with capitalism.

On one hand, there is the traditional town square market, like you see daily or weekly in village and small cities in most of the world. (You know, the one that all our urban farmers' markets are trying to find their way back to.) On the other hand, there are the commodity markets of massive transnational corporations, and the consumer culture they require. Let's not confuse the former - community-based markets - with the latter - corporate, commodity markets. And capitalism, lest there be any confusion, is about the latter.

I'm ready to at least entertain the assumption that we can't, or wouldn't want to, do without the community markets. But commodity markets are something we very well may not be able to live with.

We all make the system, I have no doubt about that - it's not as simple us benevolent, intelligent permies, and those greedy, ruthless corporate CEOs. But the folks who have most outrageously disproportionate ecological (and economic) footprint have always promoted the idea that the current system is natural and inevitable. This has been the case since feudalism, and before.

How about the idea that all systems, in times of chaos, evolve in unpredictable directions? And that in these times, small interventions have the potential to create sweeping changes downstream?

For those of us in the US (and to a lesser extent, the rest of the "developed world): here in the belly of the beast, which is all too often the center of attention, we have an ethical imperative to call for alternatives to the system that makes us disproportionately more powerful, and more dangerous, than any other nation or people.


rafter t. sass
The Liberation Ecology Project
liberationecology.org
518-567-7407
skype: raughter







  • [permaculture] conservatism, rafter t. sass, 02/14/2008

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page