permaculture

[Ben Martin Horst <ben.martinhorst@gmail.com>]

On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 12:37 PM, Rain Tenaqiya <raincascadia@yahoo.com>wrote:

>
> I hate how discussions on this list (and everywhere else, I guess) get
> polarized,


Hear, hear. I'm constantly flummoxed by people's knee-jerk responses to
something that they obviously didn't read carefully but onto which they've
projected their own insecurities.


> as I've mentioned before, and I think Toby contributes to this.


I don't think Toby contributes to this at all. I don't always agree with
him, but his posts -- whether original or responses to ongoing threads --
are typically well-reasoned, measured, and insightful. Even -- no,
particularly -- when I disagree, I find that he forces me to look at issues
from angles I hadn't previously, and I come away with a better overall
understanding. Toby has opinions, yes, and sometimes strong ones, but I
don't think I've ever read anything of his that I would consider polarizing.
Counterweights to polarizing opinions, perhaps, but not themselves
polarizing.

All Toby did in this case was to point out that the myth of self-sufficiency
is one that has A) inspired countless thousands and B) bankrupted,
disheartened, and burned-out most of those thousands. All of us know
back-to-the-landers who gave it up and went back to shilling for the Man
because it was just too hard. Toby didn't say "You can't be
self-sufficient." If that's what you really, really want, go for it. But
expect it to be infinitely harder than you imagined. Toby just realistically
suggested broadening the question "How can I grow all my own food?" with
"How can I obtain my food in responsible, satisfying, ecological,
permacultural ways?" That's likely -- but not necessarily -- to include
growing a significant chunk of it, and encourages thinking about our
relationships with the ecosystems and human systems around us.

With all the flak Toby gets on this list and others, it amazes me that he
hasn't gotten defensive or dropped off entirely. I think it speaks volumes
about his moral character that he ignores the personal attacks and sticks
with the issues at hand.


>   I know he wants to stimulate discussion, but he doesn't have to make the
> issues sound so black and white (and I just got done reading all the
> wonderful essay on your site, so I know you can do better).  On the other
> hand, I do appreciate Lawrence's restraint in the tone of his responses.
>
>
Really? I don't generally think calling someone a Monsanto PR hack --
particularly in permaculture circles -- represents a "restrained response."
Perhaps this was an attempt at humor. It sounds to me more like an ad
hominem attack. It's language I'd expect from a troll, not a list moderator.


> I feel the question about how much land it takes to grow one person's food
> has been framed in a way that unnecessarily encourages this debate.  A more
> interesting question, for me, would be, "How much area in food forest is
> reasonable per person, given a certain climate and available gardening
> time?"  Cities can probably typically grow 50% of their food.  If urban
> areas were planted in food forest, a lot of the heavier food could be easily
> obtained just outside your doorstep, reducing transport fuel needs.  New
> aquaponics techniques also have potential for urban areas.  Growing food
> doesn't have to be a grueling enterprise for the specialized farmers.  And
> this leads to questions of social equity and justice:  if you don't grow a
> substantial portion of your own food, who is going to do it?  This whole
> debate has taken place with the apparent assumption that we are all equals
> who can freely choose our work.  Not so.  Most of the people on this
>  list are probably white middle class people who would be buying their food
> from poor brown immigrants if they didn't grow it themselves.  According to
> David Holmgren, the peasant class is only going to get bigger as fossil
> fuels become more scarce.  Growing more of your own food is a slap in the
> face to class specialization and the stigmatization of doing such "lowly"
> work.
>

I didn't hear Toby saying anything that would argue with any of the above.
In fact, the above paragraph seems mostly to follow directly from the sort
of approaches Toby suggests.

I know it's too much to expect of email lists -- and, given the history,
this list in particular -- but I really wish folks would sit down with a
post, digest it, and mull it over for a while before responding. Give it a
couple hours before you click "Send." Yes, we'll still have a lot to
disagree over, but I would hope we can do it in civil ways.

-Ben