permaculture

[Steve Hart <stevenlawrencehart@gmail.com>]

Yes Will...a subject worth discussing and realising for fear and
unwillingness to understand the big picture will create much conflict,
unnecessarily.

Where is your farm ?

The evolutionary cycles you offer I agree with. It does help one to gain a
better picture of the big picture and why are these people on the move.
There are countless similar examples through history. Always have been and
always will be. I am building your suggested solution. These were what
Mollison taught us was the best solution. I am in New Zealand. A country
the same size as UK and Japan with a multi-cultural society with huge
immigration over the last few years of Asians and Indians. In is a country
that has had many different waves of immigration.

I agree that Permaculture is the solution. But, do we need to identify the
problem ? facebook "ctrl-shift summit 2018" is a breath of fresh air,
opening many many great models, story, research and ways forward, a few
recipes and good debate.

So, Will, when 10 immigrants walk onto your farm, what job have you got to
offer them ? There are many many in fact thousands of sleeping
semi-derelict villages right through all 50 countries of Europe. Perhaps we
could stimulate this whole subject by creating a Europe wide *revillage the
villages* campaign. The Mollison model was to find land immediately
adjacent to a small rural village and slowly integrate the village so it
becomes a Permaculture Village. If we look at any village anywhere in
Europe and did an Advanced PDC on its revitalisation involving any number
of refugee families we would soon realise the solution. What is the problem
? The problem is..very few politicians and senior level bureaucrats have
done a PDC or even been invited to do a PDC or for that matter never been
approached with this solution. The answer is to find a couple who would
like a medal pinned on their chest to create this solution. I'm sure there
are a few mayors of these derelict villages who would love to have such a
social medal.

I look fwd to the debate


*Steve Hart*
*Ecology Architect*

Designer, Teacher, Builder of Ecologically Sustainable Resilient
Environments, through Urban Design, Architecture, Landscape Architecture
and Systems Ecology via Ecological Agriculture..


*Skype: tipenemanawaPhone: +64 220 75 62 11*



The Permaculture International College
https://permacultureeducation.com/
https://permaculturecollege.academia.edu/SteveHart
In association with www.organicag.co.nz & bdmax.co.nz
*I*




On Mon, 10 Sep 2018 at 21:07, William Horvath <
william@permacultureapprentice.com> wrote:

> Hey friend,
>
> My website and all its posts have always been permaculture focused, but
> from time to time I like to explore what’s happening with society as a
> whole.
>
> It’s hard to ignore the intensely geopolitical world we live in, and for a
> permaculture farm owner, it’s potentially detrimental to do so. As you’ll
> read in the rest of this email, if you live in the West the shifts that are
> currently happening in the geopolitics and society will be directly
> affecting your life.
>
> But as always I see permaculture as a strategy for weathering the storm…
>
> In EU, where I’m based today, a hot and very controversial topic is
> massive illegal migration from Subsaharan Africa and the Middle East. In
> short, millions of people entered EU as refugees, either real or economic,
> encouraged by the open gates policies of some European countries.
>
> *Source: AFP/Getty Images*
>
> Today a lot of these countries are experiencing some significant changes
> in the politics and their pro-immigration sentiment due to the bad
> management of newly arrived migrants, the burden on the welfare system and
> problematic integration of these people.
>
> For a long time, I’ve been looking at this issue with disinterest,
> probably because my life on the farm wasn’t affected with it that much.
> Better said I would ignore the news and create my own reality bubble; that
> bubble being my farm, enjoying the nature, birds, my trees and my family.
>
> That reality bubble burst when I realized that my farm is directly on one
> of the illegal migration routes, and probably hundreds of illegal migrants
> were passing through the woods on the neighboring mountains. As on one
> occasion, 10 of them were caught in the nearby village it’s a safe bet that
> it’s only matter of time when they might end up on my farm for one reason
> or another.
>
> Now I’m sure that if they come and were in need, I would wholeheartedly
> help a human being, I would feed them, give them water to drink and wish
> them luck on their journey to a country with a better welfare system. I
> care for a human being who needs helps as much as everyone else!
>
> But for me nothing can change the fact that I don’t feel safe anymore,
> suddenly ignoring the problem wouldn’t cut it anymore as the problem came
> right at my doorstep, potentially literally.
>
> Someone could in the middle of the night start bashing on my door. So what
> do I do then? Open, don’t open? If I see ten young middle eastern men going
> towards me on my farm what to do? Run? Keep it calm and see what they want?
> Call the police?
>
> You can see that there is a new dimension to my life as a farmer, one that
> I never had to deal with. I understand that I might be overreacting and
> most of them are just passing by, they are refugees, they need help, I
> might never see any of them… I understand all of that progressive liberal
> pro-immigration stance a city dweller might have but having skin in the
> game and family to care for makes me much more wary of the situation.
>
> I believe that the problem is here to stay and although in the future the
> route might change it won’t go away. To fully understand what’s happening
> and why we need to zoom out from these day to day details and look at the
> bigger picture…
>
> *From patterns to details: the clash of civilizations*
>
> As a permaculturist one of my favorite principles is designing from
> patterns to details. I use this principle, or at least my version of it;
> macro to micro thinking, in my life often, as much as I can when thinking
> about everyday things.
>
> So once you zoom out far enough and look at the Earth as a whole and its
> amalgamation of different nations that exist, you’ll realize that today
> contrary to belief of Francis Fukuyama
> <https://el2.convertkit-mail2.com/c/4zu8xxkvnhehqole9/qvh8h7h0vwe03/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbXpuLnRvLzJ3WjhxaEM=>
> who thought that by now we would live in one relatively harmonious world
> because everyone embraced Western liberal democracy, nothing can be further
> from the truth.
>
> The completely opposite has happened and rather than transitioning to Type
> I civilization and starting to colonize the space, utilizing unlimited
> renewable resources in the post-cold war world we have reverted to the old
> habits of the clash between the civilizations. Today significant conflict
> in global politics is the reality, not euphoria and harmony Francis hoped
> for.
>
> According to Samuel P. Huntington
> <https://el2.convertkit-mail2.com/c/4zu8xxkvnhehqole9/92uzhnhlxw4l7/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbXpuLnRvLzJOd2VKNkE=>,
> we can divide the world into eight "major" civilizations: Chinese,
> Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox, Western, Latin American, Africa.
> Without going into too many details, that divide is cultural in its nature
> with the religion being the primary factor for that divide.
>
> *Source: Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking
> of World Order, Simon & Schuster, 1996.*
>
> For a better understanding of this civilisational divide just think how
> alien it feels to be a westerner in Japan, the culture, the religion, the
> history, the writing, the values, the beliefs, it’s all an entirely
> different world for someone from Amsterdam, Melbourne, London, LA…that’s
> because you’re in a completely different civilization.
>
> Although all of these different civilizations have modernized, thanks to,
> in no small part, the technologies developed by the West, they haven’t
> Westernized to the point that they lost their culture and that culture is
> what distinguishes one civilization from other.
>
> The west who has been dominating the world scene since 15th century is
> just one of the civilisations, one that currently dominates the world with
> its ideas and values, like the already mentioned liberal democracy, free
> markets, dollar as a reserve currency, SWIFT banking system that everyone
> is forced to use, just to name a few. But West as a civilization is showing
> all signs of a civilization in decline.
>
> You see, coming back to those patterns and recognizing them, one of the
> most repeated patterns of the history when looking at the societies a whole
> is a cycle. A cycle of a rise and fall of different civilizations, empires,
> city-states…Since the ancient times, this cycle repeats itself and goes
> like this: conquest, ascendence to power, consolidation, expansion,
> degeneration, and conquest/foreign invasion.
>
> Every great society in the past has gone through the same pattern of
> ascendancy to power, peak power, and then inevitable decline and eventually
> being replaced as a dominant power. The full cycle might last for a
> thousand years, and the decline might take hundredths as it did with Roman
> Empire but it’s unstoppable due to human nature and changes within the
> society.
>
> In this last stage of degeneration, the civilization in power shows some
> obvious signs of decay. It becomes politically corrupt, its institutions
> unnecessary complex and a burden to its citizens, the inflation rises, the
> environmental problems are persisting due to over-extraction of resources,
> too much is spent on military rather than dealing with day to day problems
> of its citizens, the migration pressures from outside the borders increases…
>
> The population eventually loses its faith in their once mighty
> civilization, its culture progressively decays and as it does the
> civilization inevitably declines, collapses or gets invaded, conquered and
> absorbed into another one. The cycle restarts as another civilization
> becomes the dominant force …
>
>
> *Source: Breaking the Code of History, David Paul Murrin*
>
> Now circle back at what’s happening today with the EU and West as a whole,
> maybe we can exactly translate the historical model to today’s
> hyper-globalized world, but in my mind, the West checks a lot of boxes of a
> civilization in decline.
>
> Everything happening in the EU today is just symptom of that decline and
> loss of power, progressive cultural decline and migration/demographic
> replacement just being the last stages of the “decline” phase as seen many
> times before. As the saying goes “the more things change, the more they
> stay the same.”
>
> The US and its allies, EU among them, have been expanding the empire,
> extracting resources from undeveloped countries, bringing democracy and
> free market economy around the world, waging wars against anyone who
> challenges its power. As you would expect from a dominant civilization but
> the age of relative “stability” for people living in the West is slowly but
> surely coming to an end as we’re seeing the decline of that power, creation
> of an increasingly multipolar world and remaking of world order.
>
> That’s the big picture, and as its power and culture progressively
> decline, in the coming years we’ll be seeing more and more tensions between
> the civilizations, namely Chinese and Arab/Muslims challenging the West,
> and tensions between the different cultures living within the West itself.
>
> Your life day to day might not change much immediately as these are
> processes that last for decades but as they do, we’ll just keep on
> adjusting to the new normal. Stabbing rampage in Paris, London or Munich,
> well that’s just the way the things are now. The Chinese government
> covertly attacking democracy in Australia, well that’s worrying but normal.
> Fining citizens of Canada for “mis-gendering” gender neutral people, well
> that’s just outrages but normal…
>
> Yet again it all makes sense when we realize where we are in the cycle, we
> can’t do much about it except prepare for the various
> social/cultural/environmental/geopolitical disruptions that might be headed
> our way, whether you’re living it the West or not. Due to our global
> economy and interconnectedness, these potential crises far too easily
> translate to any place in the world.
>
> As I said in the intro, I see permaculture as a great strategy to weather
> this storm; specifically finding land and positioning yourself in a
> somewhat rural likeminded community, starting a permaculture farm,
> providing for your own food and energy needs, selling your produce and
> services as a way to make a living off the land...
>
> That’s what I’m trying to do, and that’s what I focus on when creating the
> content for my website. In the coming months and years, that’s what you can
> expect from me.
>
> Now if you had the patience to read the whole email, I want to hear from
> you. I’ve been thinking about this for a while and had to put it in writing.
>
> So, what do you think about the current geopolitical world we live in and
> the cultural decline of our society? Hit reply and let me know!
>
> Talk soon,
>
> - William
>
>
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>
>
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