permaculture

[Jason Gerhardt <jasongerhardt@gmail.com>]

Darrell,
Thanks for your sharing on this topic. You continue to teach me much since
I first visited your sites way back when.

Koreen, Loren,
Thanks for your insight. It is quite helpful. I think it's very helpful to
view permaculture as a process, as you say Koreen. It is my hope that this
will become more of the standard view that permaculture is seen as (but I
won't hold my breath). I'm not interested in creating "ideal" permaculture
sites, I don't think they exist even. I see so many designs that are great
on paper, but never get built because they don't take into account the
cultural appropriateness, psychology, emotion, etc, of the people who will
live with the design. Idealistic is too often unrealistic; that's a basic
invisible structure piece that kills designs. I think we can still use
permaculture (and be ethical) without creating ideal sites. Where the
ground gets unstable for me is when we refer to the sites AS permaculture,
then it's time to breakout the "score card", which if I read Loren's
comment right, I agree, kill me now.

I am more interested in getting things built than what I call them. I don't
really care whether my designs are called permaculture or not. To me it is
the design process that makes it permaculture, not the thing in itself. I
think part of what makes me limit the term "permaculture" in my own mind to
the design thinking process is that I'm not interested, for a variety of
reasons, in saving the world (and I mean this genuinely). I don't have a
desire for a term to rally the troops around or fashion a movement out of.
To me, if permaculture is going to save the world, it's going to be a
by-product of good design inherent to the permaculture design process
itself (principles, ethics, and all). So I think if we focus on that we'll
be good. I'm positive others will disagree, for which I'm happy to embrace
diversity.

-- 
Jason Gerhardt
Designer and Educator