permaculture

["Scott Pittman" <scott@permaculture.org>]

I have been watching this conversation with some amazement over the past two
weeks and for the most part it doesn't make any sense in the world I live in
or have experienced.

 

For the many years that I spent with Bill Mollison and as a board member of
the Australian Permaculture Institute I have never seen the profits
exhibited from the PDM as material goods accumulated by the author.  Bill
has always lived on the land of the non-profit and did not own his house,
car, books, or other material goods, he is allowed to use them and on his
departure they will belong to the Institute.  I must say that this was true
until his last move back to Tasmania and I don't know his arrangements now.

 

The income from the PDM has among other things supported the development of
the Institute in Tyalgun as one of the premier demonstration sites of
permaculture on the planet. Since I met Bill in 1984 he has travelled around
the world teaching permaculture and it has been, primarily, on the nickel of
the Institute in the developing world.  All of the incredible work that has
been accomplished would not have been possible without the cash flow from
the book that he sweated over for close to 15 years.  Since I travelled with
Bill sporadically for six years I can testify that we did not travel first
class, mostly we were accommodated by the people we taught in what ever
conditions they lived in.  We ate untold meals of mystery ingredients, and
then fed untold hoards of mosquitoes in our sleeping quarters.

 

Most of the teaching I have done over the past twenty odd years has been in
the developing world and I don't recall a single course where people were
clamoring for the PDM or any other book for that matter.  Mostly these are
students who already have the skill set to survive but are looking for a
better way or a more efficient way or are dislocated and need information
about their new site.  A few of them go out and Xerox copies, but for the
most part they are receiving the information contained in the PDM through
the tradition that they have always received information, the oral
tradition.

 

Bill's genius as an author is a pale reflection of his genius as a teacher
and story teller and for that reason he has reached thousands of illiterate
students around the world.  In my mind Bill's book sales are not that
different than other's silk screened t-shirt sales, a means to support the
more important work.  It has worked for over twenty years and worked well.

 

Having said all of that doesn't mean that I'm not sympathetic to the copy
left argument but I think that in the existing cash economies we have to be
careful in not radicalizing ourselves out of existence.  I discovered during
the 60's that the army that I belonged to was not powerful enough to
outshoot the Army of the USA so I had to find other strategies to correct
injustice, imperialism, and etc. if I was serious about my ideas and
believed in the changes that I still feel are necessary lo these many years
later.  Mozilla would have never happened if it had started by publishing
Microsoft's platform on line but they accomplished what they intended by
creating a better platform and people contributed and supported it.  

 

If we think that stealing from our allies will further our cause of a more
just planet we have already lost the battle.  If Bill is deprived of his
means of income and therefore unable to continue his work the world surely
becomes impoverished through that loss.  Rather we should build on the
incredible foundation that has been given to us and thereby create the
conditions of equal access to all the cultural and physical wealth of our
collaborative creativity. 

 

Scott Pittman

Director

Permaculture Institute

www.permaculture.org

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