permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

On Oct 23, 2010, paul wheaton wrote:

> Suppose you reach 30% of the PDC graduates and they trust you and do
> as you ask:  they stop calling themselves "certified permaculture 
> designers". 

I don't think that your hypothetical situation is likely occur enough to 
justify your "baby with bathwater" solution of just giving up on standards. 
Only a few PDCs claim to create certified designers; Beeja's is the first 
mention of it I've seen in many, many PDC announcements, and only a small 
percentage of the grads I encounter think they are certified designers. So I 
don't see a big cadre of phony certified designers out there wreaking havoc. 
And the logic of the solution seems dreadful: SInce about 30% of all drivers 
speed, let's give up on enforcing speeding laws, or raise the speed limit to 
where no one can be convicted of speeding, since the law disadvantages those 
who don't speed. I don't think so. Like Albert Brooks's character in 
"Broadcast News" says, all the devil wants is for us to lower our standards 
just a little bit.


> On Oct 23, 2010, Killian O'Brien wrote, about the Gaia University diploma 
> program
> 
>> And, who will be able to afford this? If we simply repeat what has always 
>> been, we are not moving forward. By making permaculture about money and 
>> formal certificates, you are preventing/slowing its spread.

This is so disappointing, Killian. Sean offers a path to advanced 
certification in permaculture, something thousands of people are clamoring 
for, and your reaction is to brand it as elitist, rather than rejoice at the 
emergence of yet another option. And since 55% of the US population has 
attended some college (US census), you're talking about a pretty enormous 
"elite." 

Did you know that the certificate was created by Bill because it was the only 
way people in less-developed countries could get funding to take PDCs? It was 
a solution to lack of money, not the problem. And still is. If you don't 
think a certificate helps, then you don't have to get one. But a certificate 
gives just enough credibility to a PDC to where people--participants, 
parents, grantors, NGOs--will find ways to pay for it. And if money is still 
a limit, I have yet to see someone who asked, who actually tried, be turned 
away from a PDC because they had too little. There are grants, scholarships, 
work trades, loans, free courses, low-income courses, deferred payments, 
payment plans, a whole host of solutions that show me that the "I can't 
afford it" whine is just a cop out, more revealing of the person's negative 
attitudes about money and desire to blame others than about any real 
obstacle. Or as Larry Santoyo puts it, "Then let's just die."

By the way, Gaia U is working with the Permaculture Institute on the diploma 
program. PI-USA folks have been talking to Andy Langford there for a while. 
There is a great deal of interconnection and conversation going on; the days 
of the Mollisonian lone wolves are drawing to close.

If anyone doesn't want to play in this process, then don't.  Do it however 
you want. But please don't tear down those who are trying to get permaculture 
out to a larger audience: the mainstream, higher education, those outside our 
tiny countercultural elite. News flash: standards increase popularity and 
appeal, not decrease. And in a culture that is all about money, free is 
regarded as worthless, and money means value. My higher priced courses get 
far more students, and far more of the mainstream, than my inexpensive ones. 
Ironic, but a cultural truth.

You see, my fear is just the opposite of yours. I think permaculture is being 
held back far more by the self-righteous, screw-the-man, those without 
dreadlocks need not apply, money is evil attitudes of the old core of Pc 
practitioners. Permaculture is largely regarded as too hippie and flakey to 
be worth paying attention to. The vast majority of people, the ones doing the 
real damage, are repulsed--or worse, amused--by those attitudes and will 
never take permaculture seriously until we stop our self-righteous insistence 
that everyone have our radical, minority politics before we work with them. 
If we want to keep permaculture limited to our little elite, then let's not 
offer diplomas and let's only do cheap courses in an old barn. To talk to 
more people, you have to speak in their language, not force them to speak 
yours. The true flag of the guerrilla is the color of the enemy. 

Pardon my heat, Killian; it's not really all directed at you, but reflects my 
annoyance at what I see as the real limitation to permaculture's spread.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com