permaculture

[paul wheaton <paul@richsoil.com>]

Yesterday we recorded a podcast review of Geoff Lawton's Introduction
to Permaculture DVD.  In the beginning was a bit about the ethics.
And I had to wonder:  where are there examples of people doing
permaculture, but because of the lack of ethics, things didn't turn
out.  Things were bad.   The person is still calling it permaculture,
but it is now awful due to the lack of ethics.

So then that situation can have "care of the earth; care of the
people; return of surplus to the first two" and everything becomes
right as rain.

I have yet to fathom even one realistic scenario.

I do see people using the three ethics (and mostly, twisted
variations) as a weapon to get other people to comply with ...
whatever.  But in those scenarios, my impression has been that the bad
guys are the ones screaming the ethics, while the decent folks are
being screamed at.

Granted, there are bad guys out there doing bad things.  And most of
the worst have never ever heard of permaculture.  And I feel like a
bit of ethics could help the situation.   But I doubt I will ever get
a chance to talk about ethics with them.

As for billionaires:  I guess I'm in a weird position where it doesn't
bother me that somebody has a billion dollars lying around.  What
bothers me is if a person got a billion dollars through unethical
behavior.   I usually think of John Stewart.  I doubt he has a billion
dollars - but he is far closer to a billion dollars than I am.  I
don't see him as a bad person.  I see that he did a cool thing and got
a lot of money for it.

I suppose there are many schools of thought around the permaculture
ethics.  And around the billionaires thing.   I suppose it is possible
that I am even the only person that is keen on permaculture that feels
this way on these two topics.  I am grateful for the opportunity to
express my position.