permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

If we must have a soundbite, then "reinvest the surplus" offers much more 
direction, in a way that suggests beneficial connections, than "redistribute 
surplus." Redistributing doesn't suggest focus or relationship. It could be 
simply a random throwing around, or a concentration where it won't do much 
good. Reinvestment suggests that it goes to support the systems that it came 
from: people and earth. "Return" is pretty good, too. 

Paul, to me it is the ethics that distinguishes permaculture from all the 
other groovy design methods that humans have used to loot, bomb, torture, and 
enslave. Is a prison with a green roof permaculture? No. So let's reverse the 
question: if a hip design with guilds and sheetmulch harms people and the 
earth, and concentrates wealth, can it be called permaculture? No. That's why 
the ethics matter. It's that simple, and that obvious. Just as the principles 
insure that we are designing a whole system, the ethics guide us to design a 
moral system, something likely to do good and not harm. Without  principles 
and ethics, it's not permaculture. It's just a bunch of cool techniques, and 
we use cool techniques to do shitty things all the time when we lack the 
ethics to guide our actions. Maybe the ethics seem tangential to you because 
you are an ethical person and naturally follow them. Try violating them and 
see how well those designs work.

I think you are seeing so few examples of the ethics magically correcting 
wrongs because most of the people attracted to permaculture are ethical. 
Ethical work is the norm for us; our designs almost never do harm, and if 
they do we fix it because we are ethical, and if our clients or employers 
aren't ethical--and I know this--we quit. So from this highly skewed sample, 
you can't conclude that the ethics don't matter. Permaculture is 
whole-systems thinking, and we aren't thinking in whole systems until we 
grasp the connection between behaving ethically and maintaining healthy 
relations with all that's around us. If I pay crap wages to the workers on my 
sexy "permaculture" farm, I am not using permaculture.

I could do a great design for Monsanto, and reduce their energy footprint, 
have them develop new GMO strains in the greenest labs on earth, and put 
hugelkultur GMO-corn guilds on every farm they control. But even though the 
methods, the approach, and the cool synergies might be straight out of 
Mollison, Holzer, or Holmgren, it's the ethics that would stop me or any 
ethical permaculturist from doing it. It would never be permaculture, because 
Monsanto is bankrupting people, poisoning the planet, and concentrating their 
surplus. That design fails on the most important, basic level, that of 
ethics. Only someone for whom the ethics were irrelevant could call that 
permaculture. That's why they matter. 
 
The methods of permaculture are not the point; that's not what makes it 
permaculture. What makes it permaculture is how you use the methods--both as 
a way of creating beneficial connections, and in a way that is consistent 
with the ethics. Otherwise, permaculture is reduced to one more collection of 
cool techniques that can be used to gut the planet and its people.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com


On Dec 30, 2012, at 1:01 PM, paul wheaton wrote:

> 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.
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