permaculture

[Tripp Tibbetts <slowfoodguy@yahoo.com>]

Let's rewind for a second here, because there seems to be some ongoing 
confusion about what exactly we're discussing.
 
In my original post under the "US National Permaculture conference" thread, I 
began by debating the absolute need for an individual to take a PDC in order 
to practice permaculture.  I think the final answer to that was, no, but it 
almost always helps.  OK, cool.  I'll try to take one as soon as I can.  
Next, in a post under the "Thoughts on PDCs - Was US National Permaculture 
Conference" thread, I introduced the idea that some "freaky interesting 
things have happened to me since I discovered permaculture."  I then invited 
anyone interested in talking about that kind of thing off-line for further 
discussion.
 
This line of discussion was then continued ONLINE, and has drawn some fire as 
an inappropriate part of the permacultural world.  (Apparently even in this 
setting!)  Repeatedly the idea that I would be teaching New Age, Aquarian 
thinking in a PDC setting, if not nipped in the bud now, has been fabricated 
out of thin air.  Remember, I was the one presenting the idea that a PDC 
wasn't even necessary for one to "get" permaculture.  (I had already 
discovered that connection to spirit, in an utterly mind-bending, 
paradigm-shifting way, and wondered if that was the mind-blowing, 
life-changing experience folks were crediting to their PDC experience.)
 
I just thought it was really interesting that one could come to recognize a 
spiritual nature in the universe through science and resource economics, and 
wanted to talk about it.  The idea that I even HAVE a spiritual nature is 
still very foreign to me!
 
But Lee, your post makes a lot of sense, and I want to thank you for finally 
touching on what I was hemming and hawing about in the first place.  I was 
starting to get the feeling that that more indigenous connection to the 
spirit had somehow been missed by a whole bunch of people who were claiming 
some pretty intense experiences!  How could that be?
 
Is the subject just still a little taboo?
 
It's that tangible reawakening of the spirit and deep connection to Nature 
that I think of as the beginning of a new age for humankind.  A completely 
different relationship with the natural world, not based on economics of 
scarcity, but on Gaia's bounty.  Maybe not capitalized 'New Age' in the 
Aquarian sense.  But I have to be honest, we haven't even touched on the 
freaky interesting things I originally brought up...yes, this time off-list, 
please.
 
Tripp out.



The best fertilizer is the gardener's shadow.
-Chinese proverb
 

--- On Sun, 12/13/09, Lee Flier <leeflier@comcast.net> wrote:


From: Lee Flier <leeflier@comcast.net>
Subject: Re: [permaculture] the gardener's shadow falls both ways
To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Sunday, December 13, 2009, 7:13 PM


Tripp Tibbetts wrote:
> I don't believe any of us are post-poning the joy of that connection.  If 
> you don't feel it, you don't feel it.  Fair enough.  But I'd like to 
> propose that the anti- sentiment is at least as dogmatic in nature as what 
> I've been talking about.  Hard-line science and Darwinian gradualism 
> produce a certain type of superiority and inherent condescension that one 
> usually only sees in the certainty attending religious faith.  It's a 
> brutal irony that afflicted me as recently as a year ago.
>   

I'm not advocating "hard-line science and Darwinian gradualism."  Now 
it's you who's being dualistic. ;)
>  
> I think as long as we subscribe to a Cartesian dualism that delineates 
> practicality and spiritual belonging-ness, we certainly will never fully 
> understand the connections reported by Fukuoka, Einstein, Stamets, DaVinci, 
> Newton, Galileo....not exactly a bunch of teleological flakes.

Thank you for making my point for me.  ALL of those guys came to their 
understanding of connectedness and spiritual belongingness *as a result 
of* direct observation of the natural world.  And I'd be very surprised 
if anyone came away from a PDC not having a greater spiritual awareness, 
but not because anybody taught it to them directly.  Thinking 
permaculturally just inherently seems to lead to that.

But how that awareness and understanding manifests itself is going to be 
different among different cultures and different individuals, whereas 
directly observable things will not.  If you can demonstrate something 
in practical terms and it will feed people, that's something anyone can 
see regardless of their cultural or individual background.  The rest 
will take care of itself.

So, if a student at a PDC gets the urge to talk to plants, they should 
go right ahead.  If members of the class want to organize a sub-event 
like a dance or a sweatlodge, great.  But as an *instructor,* one 
shouldn't force any of these things on students, but simply let that 
awareness emerge and manifest itself however it does, if it does.  And 
certainly as an aid worker in a vastly different culture (which a lot of 
permaculturists go on to be), one should never enforce one's own 
spiritual direction on anybody else.  Whatever practical good you might 
do will be lost at that point.

If you feel that you have to shove spiritual awareness down somebody's 
throat in order for them to "get it," then it's you who doesn't trust 
that the natural world is the work of the divine and that this will 
become apparent when one learns to observe its patterns.
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Subject: Re: [permaculture] the gardener's shadow falls both ways
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Interesting discussion...
Truly, community will move ahead or fall apart on lines of culture...
Yes, having courses that are free of it will offer something to everybody.
But, they will not create community.

I recall the permaculture course offered at Alba Nueve next door to where we
sojourned in CR...
Was friends with the teacher, and she did speak with the students of the
concept of 'tribe' and finding it...
She was experienced in much of the youth movement that involves itself in
such activities as the Rainbow gatherings...
She introduced the concept, but I doubt that she did more than that. The
course group was varied in its composition.
Wouldn't it be a part of a course to have people introduce themselves, where
they're coming from, why they're in the course, etc.?
I would think the responsibility of the teacher is to provide amenable
cultural content to the students that they have agreed to teach, within the
realms of their capability.

On another note, there is a whole body of course work about building
community with awareness of other dimensions of life beyond the overt focus
of our modern global culture.
In particular, I took a course with Carol Heywood Bebrauskas, a NW pacific
'seer', who had been to Findhorn and wanted to share with us the exercises
for building community that she had learned there.
Interestingly, if you really look into 'presence', you'll find that it takes
some work to bring people into presence. People have analyzed where people
really are half the time, and mostly it's not here and now.
So, there is a place for these subtleties in the here and now... Bringing
people into presence, without any terminology of that nature, would
definitely be part of any teacher's agenda in any subject, if they wished to
be successful.

Frances



--------------------------------------------------
From: "Lee Flier" <leeflier@comcast.net>
Sent: Sunday, December 13, 2009 12:11 PM
To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [permaculture] the gardener's shadow falls both ways

> Oh, forgot to address this part.
>
> Tripp Tibbetts wrote:
>> So I'll be sure to add that question to my interview of possible PDC
>> instructors.  If you have a religious conviction that the deep and
>> interconnected weavings of permaculture have nothing to do with spirit,
>> then I think I'll pass.
> Permaculture aspires to work for anybody, regardless of their belief
> system, and that includes both atheists and people who subscribe to an
> organized religion.  That doesn't mean at all that permaculture and
> spirituality are mutually exclusive, it just means that it can't matter
> what any of its practitioners' spiritual leanings are, or are not.
>
>> I have to say the speed with which this door keeps getting pushed closed
>> is really interesting.
> I think you need to understand that there are good reasons it gets
> pushed closed.  The number of people who've been alienated and turned
> off from permaculture altogether because their experience of it was
> one where they felt forced to engage with beliefs/activities that
> contradicted their own religious, spiritual, or scientific
> understanding, is staggering.
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