permaculture

[lbsaltzman@aol.com]

And thanks for the kind words Toby.  One final set of thoughts from me.  
Books and DVD's on permaculture have been invaluable in my personal training 
in Permaculture, I'll buy all I can afford.  I need all the information I can 
get from every kind of traditional and new media source available. I will 
gratefully take what is free, and happily pay for the rest within the 
constraints of my budget. 

The PDC was worth every penny my wife and I paid for the course. I thought I 
knew a lot about Permaculture until I took the PDC from Larry Santoyo, and he 
helped me really got my head around the theory of Permaculture.  Teachers at 
that level should be paid or supported for their teaching work. Unless you 
propose we defund all the teachers from Kindergarten through graduate school 
and ask them to work for free as well.  Permaculture has an incredibly 
important role to play in helping humanity save itself from total collapse.  
We need to spread this information as rapidly as possible. There can't be to 
many courses taught, in relationship to the numbers of homo sapiens on the 
planet.  Unlike a Ponzi scheme, most people at least in the U.S. who take the 
course don't rush out to become teachers or design consultants, and in turn 
train more teachers.  Many take the PDC to incorporate Permaculture design in 
their lives and change how they live. Santa Barbara and surrounding areas 
where I live have been deluged with training in Permaculture and it
has taken that intense approach to begin to reach critical mass in changing 
how our community operates, and we are just starting in terms of the changes 
that have to be made.

Larry Saltzman




by Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thu, Jun 25, 2009 1:41 pm
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Why is permaculture more about selling books, 
DVDs and training courses?



This whole thread reveals more about people's head-worms around money
han it does about the actual state of permaculture training. And thanks
o Michael B, Larry S, and Paul W for having more patience than me in
ealing nicely with this perennial issue. It reminds me of the
reationists; you show why their arguments make no sense and reveal
deological bias, and then they just keep on spouting the same
rong-headed statements.
David Travis wrote:
 The most generic goal of a consultant is to make money using his or her
ertificate, and it turns out that the easiest and fastest way to do that is to
romote oneself as a teacher.
his is just silly. I'm not sure that there is a single person on Earth
ho actually earns a living teaching Pc; we all need other jobs to make
nds meet. And it takes 5 years or more of hard work at little or no pay
o earn the reputation to attract enough students to courses to make
hem run. Easy and fast? It was and is the hardest work I've ever done
y far and only after 12 years of it are my courses consistently
ucces
sful, and that's the case for every teacher I know. Please do some
hinking and research before making knee-jerk assertions like this.
As for more layers of accreditation being gratuitously added, I am
ombarded, as are other teachers, by countless requests for ways to
ontinue in permaculture learning in a formal way. I'd rather not set up
urther programs, as it's a lot of work for almost no personal return,
ut the demand for them came long before the advanced programs did. If
ll this is a Ponzi scheme, it's a terrible failure of one. Few design
ourses make money; I've been around enough to know.
No one seems to remember that Stewart Brand's great quote, "information
ants to be free" was only the first half of what he wrote. The 2nd half
as, "information wants to be expensive," and he then gave potent
easons why that is also true. TANSTAAFL.
If I never see this kind of thread again, it will be too soon, but it's
ood to know that fewer and fewer people are hanging onto these
ninformed views.
Toby
ttp://patternliteracy.com

>
 "I get the feeling that the permaculture movement has morphed into a
 market place to sell books, DVDs and training courses related to
 permaculture than a platform for sharing techniques and allowing
 humans to live closer to nature in a simpler way. Many a material I
 find on the internet are incomplete and keep referring to "Stuff to
 Buy" or "Courses to Take". Just search for permaculture on youtube and
 that's what you find. Any
site claiming to be a "permaculture" site
 talks about doing a course.

 Or am I mistaken? I'd love to be corrected if I'm mistaken.

 I remember some noble soul here who had setup permaculture.info - that
 is great! WTG! But, why do the 'experts' end up locking themselves
 into seclusion and not share their knowledge?

 Cheers,

   -Suraj"


 Dear Suraj,

 I agree that this is a serious problem. In my experience it is a byproduct of
he original process of certification. Permaculture education was originally
esigned to be a means of certifying design consultants. Even today, the
egional groups (in the US at least) seem to be strongly focused on how to add
ew levels of accreditation, mentorship, and certification onto the PDC 
process;
mplementation and verification of permaculture methods seem to be secondary
riorities. The most generic goal of a consultant is to make money using his or
er certificate, and it turns out that the easiest and fastest way to do that 
is
o promote oneself as a teacher. In addition to this there are landscapers who
ave used the certification process to "green" their resumes and explore new
erritory. Often all of this is combined in the permaculture demo/teaching 
site.
he result is what some people (affectionally!) call a permaculture ponzi 
scheme
f certificates, diplomas, apprenticeships, etc. It costs money, but people 
like
o spend money and they have fun.

 Part of the difficulty is that permaculture ideas are
largely speculative and
here is a great deal of risk involved in actually implementing them on any 
kind
f large scale. Perhaps if permaculture had started out as being more
entralized and democratic (as opposed to decentralized and autocratic a la
ollison), it would have developed the sort of infrastructure needed to move
eyond demo sites and a handful of NGO projects, but who can say?

 Anyway, it's easy to see how the initial structure lead the movement there.
ost people I've met within the permaculture movement seem to be perfectly 
happy
ith it staying on that track; it is satisfying peoples' needs on some level.

 - David



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