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  • From: "Scott Pittman" <scott@permaculture.org>
  • To: "'permaculture'" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Extinction of the species Man ? H2BO&KYAG
  • Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 14:37:35 -0600

I have to concur with Toby's rejection of bum osculation as our way out of a
grim situation but I must also reject the hypothesis of evolving ourselves
into a brighter future. I think that there is a middle path of activism
that gives me some hope.

That activism is what I have been teaching and practicing for the past 30
years and it is permaculture. Not the watered down version of permaculture
that is currently being flogged by to many incompetent teachers and
practitioners but the version that I believe was envisioned by Bill
Mollison's anger and David Holmgin's thoughtfulness and keeping in mind that
hey stood on the shoulders of generations of experiential knowledge.

To correct our current course it is necessary for us to return to some old
ideas, beginning with the "ethics". At some point the fourth ethic was
dropped from the teaching of permaculture and that ethic, reduction of
population and consumerism, was and is critical to our future path. It has
been the incredible increase in grain crops afforded by agro-chemicals, and
mechanical monocrop agriculture that has provided the fodder for the
phenomenal boom in population while at the same time ushering in a new
catalog of diseases and economic inequality. I have reverted back to this
use of four ethical principals in order to cover what I perceive as a
serious oversight.

I also believe if we are to take ourselves seriously, and be taken seriously
we have to return to and further develop a set of standards and practices of
permaculture that will give the word more credibility. Since the first
courses taught by Bill Mollison (except for a brief period in the early
development of the Permaculture Design Course) the PDC was 12 full days of
lecture, practicum, and design. I think this should be a minimum standard
and I would argue that we need more time than this if teachers insist on
creating the illusion and giving permission for their students to
immediately go out and teach the PDC and design properties. This is of
course fantasy for the most part and has opened the doors to speculators who
see the marketability of permaculture and once they have their
"certificates" feel free to exploit those seeking solutions to real
problems. The Permaculture Institute (PI)does not recognize certificates
from a PDC that comes from an individual who does not have a Permaculture
Diploma as valid certificates nor do we honor certificates from course that
are less than 12 days in length.

In order to encourage more development of teachers we only charge full
tuition and costs to first time participants in the PDC, once one has a PDC
one is welcome to participate an any other courses just for the cost of
being there (food, lodging, and venue). This was the practice of Bill
Mollison and it was, I believe, to enable potential teachers the opportunity
to experience many teaching styles and to hone their own craft thereby.

The Curriculum of the PDC was established at the first Permaculture
Conference in 1984 and that curriculum is the one that the PI still
recognizes as the only curriculum for certification. Since there have,
obviously, been many new developments not incorporated in this curriculum it
is expected that the teachers will incorporate new material on a regular
basis. We believe that "Permaculture - A Designer's Manual" is one of the
seminal books on permaculture we do not recognize it as the curriculum, but
rather one of many books that more fully explicate the material in the
curriculum.

Every PDC must incorporate one or more design exercises and must finish with
a talent show. While many current teachers don't maintain the tradition of
a talent show I believe it is an important part of the pedagogy of
permaculture and should be continued. I would be glad to argue the
pedagogical benefits of the talent show off list.

That pretty much covers my thoughts on teaching and the PDC and it is the
erosion of this tradition that I think creates the greatest danger to
permaculture as a design system and as a way into the future.

While I am deeply concerned with global climate change, social inequality,
the rapid growth of fascism in our governing bodies, and economic
malfeasance that supports all of these maladies, I am not in the least
deterred from the path I am on. I believe that permaculture offers all of
the tools we need to create a better way to live and I don't see any other
game out there that does as good a job, when done right and with integrity.
Even if mankind was due for extinction within the next twenty years what
would you radically change about your daily life and your relationship with
others??

Thanks for indulging me!

Scott Pittman





"To change something build a new model that makes the existing model
obsolete" Buckminster Fuller


-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Toby Hemenway
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2014 12:24 PM
To: permaculture
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Extinction of the species Man ? H2BO&KYAG

In the immortal words of Larry Santoyo:

"Then, let's just die."

I don't think saving the planet or the human species or civilization are
goals worth contemplating--no more achievable or worth wasting resources on
than keeping the sun from burning out in a few billion years. But what is
quite achievable is saving myself and any friends who want to play with
me--and creating models for others to do that--and that's what I'm focused
on. And I am having a wonderful time doing it, rather than wrecking my spine
and getting a terrible taste in my mouth by trying to master
auto-ass-kissing.

I think "it's too late to do anything" is a harmful and false message. It's
illogical: if it's true, then it's pointless to waste time talking about it,
and if it's not true, then you're spreading fear and despair unnecessarily.
Since you can never, ever know if it's true, given all the other choices of
message we could have, it's unethical to spread it. The inaction, despair,
and fear that it breeds are the worst frameworks for decision-making. It's
the dumbest kind of dead-end street to waste time on! And it sure ain't
permaculture.

Human extinction would take centuries at the least, and more likely
millennia, and will be avoided by lots of tiny, local decisions rather than
giant global plans. The loudest advocate of near-term human extinction is
Guy McPherson, and he's had to utterly distort the scientific evidence to
make his case:

http://fractalplanet.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/how-guy-mcpherson-gets-it-wron
g/

Guy and his ilk are unfortunate cases of confirmation bias, only hearing
evidence that supports their theory.

The most common cause of whole-species extinctions, speaking as a former
geneticist with a shelf-full of books and papers on the subject, is not
resource depletion, but climate change. The most common cause of extinctions
of local populations (rather than widespread species) is competition for
resources by more fit variant populations (think Neanderthal vs us), and the
next is predation to extinction. Resource depletion runs a far third (or
maybe 4th, after epidemic), and usually affects small sub-populations only
(think rabbits on a small island). And climate change, for local populations
(emphasis on local), can be dealt with.

Like the joke says, I don't have to outrun the bear--I just need to outrun
you (okay, not you, but the fools who refuse to do anything because they
think nothing can be done; which is the point of the joke).

If I were being truly selfish, I'd encourage others to do nothing; it would
better my own chances to get their stuff when they die off. Hey, maybe
that's the point of that message!

But most extinctions are an artifact of evolution--the species drift and
shift over time into a different species, rather than get wiped out. At our
distance in the fossil record, it just looks like they died without
offspring, but they had offspring who were subtly different, generation
after generation. E.g., the dinosaurs are still with us; they just are
smaller and have feathers now. Humans will probably do something like it, as
we already have over the last two million years.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com


On Mar 19, 2014, at 10:43 PM, Steve Hart <stevenlawrencehart@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Yeah...finally the news is out...something I have been quietly commenting
> on for a few years now. For many years we talked of "Saving the Planet"
but
> then we realised the planet can do very nicely by itself, and always has.
> The reality is about saving the species...after all there is such a thing
> as species extinction. And, when we research the reasons for most species
> extinction it is due to total exploitation of its resources, generally, by
> itself....so...does that ring a bell. Yeah well its time to start runnin
> workshops...and we all love workshops....but the next wave of workshops
> will be on How 2 Bend Over and Kiss Your Arse Goodbye. As Schumacher
> said...sometime ago...its all too late we are over the tipping point. So
> not even David Holmgrens scenarios on decline design can save us now. It
is
> suggested that even if we plantedt the world in trees ..over the next five
> years...it is still too late. Besides the economic policy of Rockerfella
> and Rothchild who own the world and manipulate every aspect of every
> ecomomy are not into planting trees so...who wants to come to my next
> workshop ?. Maybe I should offer this....H2BO&KYAG... at the innaugrual
> Nth American Permaculture Conference...
> Like to join me on that one Toby or Scoty? ...how about you Skeeta ?.
> Albert..how about you ?.....Steve Hart
>
>

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