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  • From: Cory Brennan <cory8570@yahoo.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Toward Financial Permaculture: New Farms in the OldSystem
  • Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2012 08:36:09 -0800 (PST)

I don't think that "fair share" means that everybody has exactly the same
amount of everything. That gets into central distribution communism and is a
non sustainable and failed system. What I think fair share means is that
people get a fair share of what they produce. It goes a lot deeper than that,
but that's the soundbite version. You also need to look at the fact that
$7000 in some places goes a lot further than it does in other places (like
Los Angeles, for instance). 
 
Koreen Brennan

www.growpermaculture.com
www.facebook.com/growpermaculturenow
www.meetup.com/sustainable-urban-agriculture-coalition


________________________________
From: paul wheaton <paul@richsoil.com>
To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, December 31, 2012 10:44 AM
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Toward Financial Permaculture: New Farms in the
OldSystem

I think an important thing to keep mind when contemplating "fair
share":  the average world income is $7000 (annual).  So if anybody is
earning more than that and not giving a bunch of it away to people
with less than that - to the point that you keep less than $7000, it
seems less than ethical to speak of "fair share".

I think something similar can be said of property which would include
possessions and real estate.

I like the idea that John Stewart exercises permaculture and advocates
permaculture.  Could John Stewart advocate polyculture?  Maybe talk
about a bit of land that he has where 60 people live there and
practice permaculture?  I think it is not only plausible - but it
would be an awesome thing.

--

Sign up for my daily-ish email, or my devious plots for world
domination:  http://www.richsoil.com/email.jsp
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Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2012 08:46:54 -0800 (PST)
From: Cory Brennan <cory8570@yahoo.com>
To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
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Subject: [permaculture] Ethical energy use - what is your favorite "better
than PV panels?"
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What is the most ethical, least toxic and polluting energy production method
that you know of that is available for individual use? I understand that
reducing energy needs is the top of the list and first action. But say that
you have a laptop you need to power, or need to pump rainwater somewhere, or
have a community center where you are having a conference on how to get
permaculture design implemented in a city, etc. What state of the art energy
production devices that are currently available have people seen in use or
are using? I'm not talking about PV panels, but fuel cell, cogeneration, high
efficiency wind, etc. This is one area where I feel the weakest as far as
having really ethical solutions to stop using fossil fuels. PV panels only go
so far and dont' have the most optimum life cycle possible, by any means. I
would love to hear what others have seen on this subject. 

It seems like this is such a key area to address since fossil fuel energy
production creates so much of the ecosystem destruction. 
 
Koreen Brennan

www.growpermaculture.com
www.facebook.com/growpermaculturenow
www.meetup.com/sustainable-urban-agriculture-coalition
>From toby@patternliteracy.com Mon Dec 31 12:03:30 2012
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XysEuYb3nTyMqrSgh9UPtbfGf0drMXjVOYSubject: Re: [permaculture] Toward
Financial Permaculture: New Farms in the
OldSystem
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Paul, people have argued about what ethics are since humans could speak, so
we know it's a tricky issue. There are people who feel the extermination of
an ethnic group is ethical. And I understand why you think that adding a set
of ethics to permaculture design is confusing and troublesome--people with a
defective ethical sense can then, as you say, call "Ethics!" on anything they
don't like or that they want to do, the way some say that pirating my book is
redistributing surplus. But, they are focusing on "share the surplus" while
ignoring "peoplecare," (me, Chelsea Green's staff, bookstores, and everyone
who has paid for it). And that helps get to the importance of the ethics.
That's why the 3 must be used as an interlocking structure. Each ethic helps
you understand the others and together they make it hard to do harm. You can
do harm by choosing one and ignoring the others, but rarely by doing them all.

>> Is a prison with a green roof permaculture? No.
>
> Saywhat? I mean, I've seen some lame excuses for a green roof, but
> .... if somebody has taken a PDC, puts it on a [prison] and says
> "permaculture", then ... it is.

No, it's not. It violates the ethics because the design serves oppressors. So
it can't be what Mollison named "permaculture. It's something else, call it
green design of prisons. Look, when the Supreme Court makes biased decisions
like Citizen's United or Gore vs Bush, we don't say, yes, that's American
democracy and the Constitution working well. We say, that's wrong and
violates the spirit of the Constitution and no one who loves what America
means can tolerate it. We don't just shrug and say, gee, I guess the
Constitution means something different or doesn't matter. Holding to the
spirit and intent of the founders (in our case, Bill) is what keeps the whole
enterprise on track. Losing the ethics is like losing the BIll of Rights and
claiming you have the same form of government. If I say that, I am lying.

> I cannot fathom a "groovy design method" that features looting,
> bombing, torture and enslavement.
>

Easy. Let's design a CIA black facility that uses blood for biofuel and
captures the energy of thrashing victims to power their electroshock devices,
and they feed the victims gruel from their keyhole beds, and all sorts of
other cool, function-stacking designs. You could use all the permaculture
principles to design that facility, and it could never be permaculture
because it does harm. You must call it something else, because the founders
and adherents of permaculture gave us a coherent program of ethics and
principles that must remain linked or it's not permaculture, just as an
oligarchy is not democracy, even when the dictator claims it is.

> I am trying to wrap my head around "hip design with guilds and
> sheetmulch harms people and the earth" --- like the sheetmulch goes on
> top of the people and the suffocate?
>


See the CIA facility above. A guild with GMO corn isn't permaculture because
it's doing harm on another level. If the only way you can conceive of
sheetmulch doing harm is if it smothers people, you are not thinking in whole
systems, and that is the essence of permaculture. Sheetmulching a GMO crop
isn't permaculture. Pc uses the same premise as organic: if you use GMO
seeds, you aren't doing organic ag, because you are doing harm on another
level. Permaculture takes all the levels into account--that's why pirating my
book isn't permaculture, since it does harm at a level away from the pirate.

> "and concentrates wealth" so if John Stewart tries permaculture, that
> would be a bad thing?


Jon Stewart did not gain his wealth using permaculture; he got if from the
corporate system. I don't mind that he is wealthy, but I do mind all the harm
done by the system while generating his wealth (there's that other level
again). If he chooses now to use his non-Pc derived wealth to create
permaculture designs (a la Koreen's dream), that's reinvesting the surplus in
earth and peoplecare. A different behavior grounded in ethics, unlike how he
made his pile. Permaculture almost certainly could not create personal wealth
on a Gates/Buffet scale; the surplus would have to be reinvested in earthcare
and peoplecare too early in the process to allow it.

The ethics are not a bandaid that can be applied after unethical work is
done. That's why saying "Ethics" does not, as you say, fix a bad design. The
ethics have to be in it from the start. Unethical people will do shitty
things and justify it, so the ethics--any ethics--won't help them. That's no
reason to say we don't need the 3 ethics in permaculture.

> I could really use an example.

If someone is doing harm on some level--like the real person running PDCs and
making unauthorized charges to their students' credit cards--that design is
harmfully flawed and they need to rethink it. And the ethics can help them
see where they are doing harm, very quickly and simply. They can, sure, use
sophistry to say "I am making them share their surplus with me" or "it's
peoplecare because it cares for me--at their expense," but I think we can all
agree that it truly violates the 3 ethics.

Part of the problem here is that you see permaculture as a "visible"
technique like gardening or water catchment, and I see permaculture as mostly
invisible--it's a way of thinking that makes unethical behavior very
difficult.

The way I teach the ethics can illustrate. I have people list all the things
we need to do to be sustainable. Altho at first people talk about recycling
and reducing oil use, but very quickly the list is dominated by things like
social justice, better education, respect for elders, reform of the banking
system, and a whole slew of things that are about ethics and not about
mulching. It shows that if we aren't acting out of an ethical sense, we will
never get to sustainability. We'll just have solar-powered Monsanto plants
with water catchment. That's not permaculture.

Time for other things.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com







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