Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - Re: [permaculture] people care article by Patch adams in PC Activist and Hopedance Magazine 2001

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network <lakinroe@silcom.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] people care article by Patch adams in PC Activist and Hopedance Magazine 2001
  • Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2010 19:08:27 -0800

Designing Care
Thursday, 20 August 2009 18:48 Sterling



Designing Care
A Conversation between Susan Parenti & Patch Adams about Health Care, Permaculture, and Humor



...a theory of permaculture that shows care for people as well as the biosphere...But the dynamics of an ecosystem are not that of a social system, or are they?" Rob Scott, student, School for Designing a Society

Patch Adams: Susan Parenti and I work together on two distinct but connected projects: The Gesundheit! Institute in West Virginia, and The School for Designing a Society in Illinois. Both are based on premises foreign to the current social system; thus, we consider these projects revolutionary. For a long while I spoke, publicly, of creating a social system "based on peace and justice." Now, for the past year, I've added "and based on care." This is because care medical, social, political, environmental has long been ignored as a requirement for humane life. In the following article we present our projects-- their premises, their hoped for consequences and our attempts to design care.

"I ain't gonna study war no more"

Susan Parenti: In the past eight years I've been an organizer and a teacher at the School for Designing a Society, as well as a performance partner with Patch Adams. The School, located in Urbana, Illinois, is an on-going experiment in making temporary living environments in which the question, "What would I consider a desirable society?" is given serious yet playful discussion. This discussion then forms the basis for a variety of creative projects. Rather than orienting participants to find a comfy spot in the current social system, the School offers tools, time, ambiance, and company in which people can imagine and design a system they would prefer. Participants live together cooperatively, discuss, write, take and give classes, make performances, and do experiments. Through these means, they explore the consequences of making their desires a basis for both learning and action. The concepts and skills developed through these activities are brought together in "design groups." In these groups we challenge the assumptions of contemporary society in order to explore how a better society might be designed. One of the ways we do this is to make "false" statements based on our desires. These statements are untrue in the present system, but would become true in another, differently designed, system.

Patch and I have given a lot of attention to the matter of care and how society's beliefs about it impact the choices we make and the institutions we create. Care is a human need. Permaculture takes Care of People as one of its ethical foundations. But what do I mean by care? Care occurs when one person temporarily becomes part of another's (social/emotional/personality) structure. And what do I mean by need? I use the word "need" whenever I wish to speak of conditions that must be met continuously and unconditionally if living organisms are to be motivated to maintain themselves, their identities, their existence. "In Permaculture, everything works both ways."

PA: A good deal of my passion for care comes from my mother and my friends, and from the circumstances surrounding my growing up. I spent my childhood and youth on army bases overseas while my father was away at war. Nothing about the military made me interested in it, ever. But my mother gave me tender loving care; she fully cared for me. A propensity toward science led me to think about medicine, a profession to care, and in my early teens I read the books of Tom Dooley, M.D., about his work helping in places where there was no medicine. These books were a hymn to caring. I liked his language, how caring is "thinking to do," and not with the implication that the cared-for were a burden. I believed (a misunderstanding, I later learned) that his being a doctor made him a caring person. After I became involved in medicine, I learned that a doctor's practice defines the healing interaction more than his profession.

My father was a soldier. Fighting two wars broke first his soul and then his body: I became a war orphan at age 16. I had already learned that violence is never intelligent, when, moving from Germany back to the U.S. and to the South in 1961, I became immediately aware of the racism in Virginia. I naturally took part in the Civil Rights Movement and still find it incomprehensible that every citizen didn't rise up and say: "We are all in this together. Stop this hatred!" During that time I realized our society was in a crisis of lost caring. This shout rose from every novel I read of the 20th century. Tom Dooley had shown me that it was possible to express care through one's actions, and from his example and from my own interests I was drawn toward a career in medicine.

When I finished medical school I began to see the strict, hierarchical, white-male-dominated institution only recently integrated, that lay ahead of me: I knew I could not work in it. Fun and love were excluded, as well as any discussion of compassion or care. So far away from care was the medical system that care grew to mean the best machines and drugs, and not an experience and action of compassion, generosity, intelligence, art, and foolishness.

SP: It doesn't take much to go a stretch and notice how in our society receivers of care are perceived as burdens. For, after all, what are they doing but taking? Burden permeates all language around care. It's assumed. Well-meaning book after well-meaning book asks how can we deal with the burden of care, who shall have the responsibility for care, how can we pay people enough to take on the burden of care. Care does not move in one direction only from generous giver to unfortunate needy receiver, but in both directions at once; the giver becomes a receiver, and the receiver a giver. When I use the word care, I understand it as going in both directions at the same time. "In Permaculture, everything works both ways."

PA: Looking closely, I saw many glaring examples where loss of care- turning care into a burden as Susan would say- did horrible things to the practice of medicine: it became greedy; it became a business, with insurance companies and pharmaceutical and hospital suppliers swarming in for their share of the profits. Care is never where greed is.

The only saving grace within the greedy medical system was the health professionals who still cared. Yet whatever real care I found came from the nurses, orderlies, cleaning people, or volunteers- mainly people in lower paying jobs, most of them women. The rude, top-of-the hierarchy doctors got the most money (anyway before corporate medicine) but gave the least amount of care. Care was clearly devalued. There was no insurance reimbursement for it. I believe care even got in the way. Yet, women are so reluctant to stop caring that many heroic women continue trying to bring care even to corporate medicine.

I knew that if I was going to play doctor, I would have to create a context, a hospital, where care wouldn't be penalized, a place where--as Susan

would say- my need to care wouldn't be suppressed, indeed, would be an essential expression of the healing situation. With the Gesundheit! Institute I wanted to address every problem in health care delivery and suggest alternatives based in care. I knew that individual health was inseparable from family, community, and social health. Therefore community problems, societal problems, and environmental problems all fell within the domain of health care delivery. And so from the perspective of giving care, poverty and justice became concerns of the Gesundheit! project as surely as illness, for the one could not be addressed without regarding the others.

SP: Care happens by design: when the needs to receive and to give care are linked.From our students at the school, who study and apply permaculture ideas jubilantly, I've learned about that relationship called companion planting- plants help each other thrive when rooted down next to one another. So, for example, a plant that needs to grow in the shade and offers protection from beetles is placed next to another that offers to grow tall and can't abide beetles. Or, in the animal world: a garden offers a chicken room to scratch, seeds and bugs as food, shade, home range; while the chicken offers the garden aerated soil, fewer weeds and bugs, manure. This linking of needs and offers in the plant and animal world points to a method of design for the social world as well. Permaculture invites us to look at every element in all its functions. This leads naturally to understanding the way things work both ways. Design that links needs and offers ensures stability and sustainability, as the components of the system provide for each other. In the social world no one wants to be a burden- no one. Older people willingly incarcerate themselves in nursing homes, in order to avoid seeing themselves as burdens to their children. Bi-directionality or mutuality eliminates the possibility of burden, because in a mutual system, each component plays the dual roles of benefactor and recipient. This idea of companion plants and animals has influenced my thinking about care. Are there other ideas from permaculture that show care for people as well as for the biosphere?
Susan Parenti may be contacted at sparenti@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu .
Patch Adams at the Gesundheit Institute, 6855 Washington Blvd., Arlington, VA 22213. (Yes, this is the same Patch Adams whom Robin Williams played in the movie, "Patch!"). This was reprinted with permission from the Permaculture Activist.


hi Sakia
Take a look at Permaculturalist and Doctor Patch Adams Work http://www.patchadams.org/hcjg
wes

Health Care Justice Gathering
Register Now!
A gathering at the beautiful Gesundheit! Institute in West Virginia with programs from December 27, 2010 to January 1, 2011
Wild wigs and clown noses, talks by Patch Adams and his team of doctor-dreamers, imaginations that span the sky, sunrise hikes in West Virginia hills, music and dance, organic nourishment, and most of all, inspiration to change the world of medicine! If any of the above pique your interests, read on, dear friends! We are looking for 30 health justice activists nationwide to join together for an inspiring and unforgettable gathering at Patch Adams' Gesundheit! Institute in Hillsboro, West Virginia.
The Healthcare Justice Gathering is an activism-oriented meeting of students, physicians, medical professionals, clowns, and community-builders, whose programming is organized and created by its participants. Initially started in 2005 by the Direct Action Interest Group at AMSA, the HCJG is going on its fifth year and has expanded to include a workshop-based gathering at Patch Adams' Gesundheit! Institute in Hillsboro, WV, Dec 27, 2010 -Jan 1, 2010.

Past conferences have included workshops on: Building Novel Model Health Clinics, Coalitions, Liberation Medicine, Body Language and Greetings, Medical School Curriculum, Laughter Yoga, Diversity and Racism, Permaculture and Land Sustainability, Media Tools for Activism, and the Economics of National Healthcare. Patch Adams, Susan Parenti, John Glick, Lanny Smith, Margaret Flowers, Paul Glover, John Stang, Andru Ziwasimon, and many other physician-activists have participated and presented, and we are looking to have a similarly brilliant line-up this year.
The theme of this year's gathering is Activism in Healthcare: Visions and Strategies. The conference will provide opportunities to meet with current healthcare activists and to develop individual action strategies to help you continue to practice activism when you return to your community. We encourage participants to brainstorm about their own interactions with and knowledge of activism and to consider leading a workshop at the gathering.
This organic conference has reached out to participants from Canada to Mexico, students from allopathic, osteopathic, and naturopathic institutions, Ph.D. candidates in hospital administration programs, nurses, physicians, residents, and high-school students. The meeting draws strength through building a lasting community. Students from past conferences organize the gathering for future participants to experience, allowing for continuity and evolution of the project.
Participants should arrive at the Gesundheit! Institute by the evening of Dec 26th and stay through the morning of Jan 1st, 2010. We ask everyone to pitch in $ for food and housing - the love and life changing part is free of charge! Questions? Email Elisa!

Has anyone in the US come up with a good Permaculture solution for health care? My husband and I have our own business and have been going without insurance without but we want to start a family and it seems our risk of medical emergency/ bankruptcy is increasing. We don't want to pay into a system that doesn't work/ take care of us. Has anyone been successful at forming a group health-care fund or any other creative solution?
Thanks!

Saskia Esslinger
Red Edge Design Urban Homesteads for Modern Livinghttp://rededgealaska.com/907.563.1119 office907.529.2498 cell


_______________________________________________
permaculture mailing list
permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
Subscribe, unsubscribe, change your user configuration here:
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
Read the public message archives here:
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/permaculture
Command to put in your browser's Google search box to search these archives:
site:lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture [search string (omit the brackets)]
List Usage & Guidelines:
http://ibiblio.org/permaculture/documents/permaculturelistguide.faq
Permaculture http://www.ibiblio.org/permaculture
Permaculture Mailing List Blog
http://permaculturelist.blogspot.com
permaculture forums http://www.permies.com/permaculture-forums
List contact: permacultureforum@gmail.com
_______________________________________________
permaculture mailing list
permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
Subscribe, unsubscribe, change your user configuration here:
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
Read the public message archives here:
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/permaculture
Command to put in your browser's Google search box to search these archives:
site:lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture [search string (omit the brackets)]
List Usage & Guidelines:
http://ibiblio.org/permaculture/documents/permaculturelistguide.faq
Permaculture http://www.ibiblio.org/permaculture
Permaculture Mailing List Blog
http://permaculturelist.blogspot.com
permaculture forums http://www.permies.com/permaculture-forums
List contact: permacultureforum@gmail.com




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page