permaculture

[João Pedro Moreira Gonçalves <joaovox@gmail.com>]

“Limits to population and consumption”

Is not at the same level of abstraction as those 2 ethics: earth and people
care.

My ancestors invested in building terraces as "return the surplus",
is my interpretation.

Limits to population and consumption would be too specific domains of
choice as "self-care"?
Care to grow your relationship with your soul and spirit?
Earth, community and self-care as the 3 ethics?


A qua, 8/05/2019, 01:36, Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com> escreveu:

> On Tue, May 7, 2019 at 6:45 PM Robyn Francis <robyn@permaculture.com.au>
> wrote:
>
> > Just curious about the various interpretations and renditions of the
> Third
> > Permaculture ethic, in particular the origins of the ‘Disperse the
> surplus’
> > catch cry. Curiously this is not mentioned in the Designers Manual, only
> > “Limits to population and consumption” is defined there as the 3rd ethic.
> >
> > Any thoughts?
> >
>
> In this list there was fairly intense discussion of the three ethics, how
> they were names an how they were defined and interpreted. Scott probably
> participated in this. It went on for
> enough posts to cover plenty of ground. My thoughts are that "return the
> surplus" or disperse the surplus" is critically important.....for hundreds
> of good reasons, some of which are "keep the money (or goods) in the
> community" and fund highly valued activities of community members" and the
> obvious "fund those in need".
>
> We can thank Scott for continuing to emphasize the importance of the three
> ethics and that they are the essence of Permaculture.
>
> Here are some things I found by searching the message archives for this
> list:
>
> From the Permaculture Institute Facebook page:
> Permaculture Institute
> <
> https://www.facebook.com/Permaculture.Institute.USA/?__tn__=kC-R&eid=ARCAF13L2rx8SAeWJ8GxIRurdcCYrojKr3nEFE29qfk3LjcViwmEIjmkCWGy7v_H0UUOlgP7tPVOxmgQ&hc_ref=ARRPMS861rijgVIn9OTv2lMO3gn0bPK0uZvvRioN2z3ECpnojOm57Eoc7YyFzAvBpCw&fref=nf&__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARA61dYKztio4Hmwxg-mag2mvvbw3AHoq8fwpDxnjPYQ2iMWeAlgRn2QEb2UYk87vJCxGJuRSRWU2YiF6L6ev-JgasgSLxo8eHEZH6JSne79VbuTYpyiP5wu1oCbxnpwaxRYfbLG1k2A49qkdRujtwrcmdQrQXVZP8gDz8XgXGJvpXjR73jOhLuQx1exnRQ3Pji2mwOxE1thJtrTsn0zSp7zKVmMT9kJ5_VgMYsjL570Ii2BVdLpooAtIBf7owDlfwuabkmlTTrV5ePNhOr9E3Pt2o7jmG5MXi1q-3uSOWPnq5IrwId89OVBCBTwRh-k9iM5uciiJNG5Oe5WhbbYuEvCqneB
> >
> March 22, 2014
> <
> https://www.facebook.com/Permaculture.Institute.USA/posts/10202597250786217?__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARA61dYKztio4Hmwxg-mag2mvvbw3AHoq8fwpDxnjPYQ2iMWeAlgRn2QEb2UYk87vJCxGJuRSRWU2YiF6L6ev-JgasgSLxo8eHEZH6JSne79VbuTYpyiP5wu1oCbxnpwaxRYfbLG1k2A49qkdRujtwrcmdQrQXVZP8gDz8XgXGJvpXjR73jOhLuQx1exnRQ3Pji2mwOxE1thJtrTsn0zSp7zKVmMT9kJ5_VgMYsjL570Ii2BVdLpooAtIBf7owDlfwuabkmlTTrV5ePNhOr9E3Pt2o7jmG5MXi1q-3uSOWPnq5IrwId89OVBCBTwRh-k9iM5uciiJNG5Oe5WhbbYuEvCqneB&__tn__=-R
> >
> ·
>
> Musings and mutterings from Scott Pittman in response to comments made by
> Toby Hemenway and Steve Hart (see below)!!
>
> 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/…/how-guy-mcpherson-get…/
> <
> https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Ffractalplanet.wordpress.com%2F2014%2F02%2F17%2Fhow-guy-mcpherson-gets-it-wrong%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR3EKq2XWPOx06Hl5NuxnKEIXpSj4WZXGfegQTX0bduN4m-ZiRAbaGQTvCg&h=AT2iE4ddl8jaLkmvmo9tlzjjjOSWBii3HVDz3tVLElxcd-db52spXHJvj74TQgOvGWvJAOaC6aubEfFVYfL_HT4pJNHdu-JFRzP9sF-3a3-9MLY3VPwz7hoSF3rk9tMDYcWlFP4FqGA_qnNT_Q0_8wObnBcpb-GcaR-syorKbg1G7WFsQy8uVKeRa9vAW6m8mCojrWK3L8GusVC1bHYxRAmYLi2HOhjmMoEP1IOutlSc8XxwqcHA4i9aVdUh1abWLhb2_DoFaT5rn8tMF7LGYzReVmji0JzZd7tY8NgjjNVMKXhp-a0BPMezwtd3wN_vB_y-IQRqIUDaGuK3kTPGjRMRlXiK1NDXFCd2xXuDTkVM1WJqJlU30IG9ui8eOEmfCpmfFehRZnUlDuiEJeLlEUforsoscNv7M1vKC-2cM1LS_3XxhoTUHwNubt79Dk7D9x4WyBisozZtLa2VSFo6k9uEW9vqpo49iWvZwV8ywmFP-8Oh0XwhrbT_6UsKheLxUyBrPLv7qdnJzHsWwD2QDhOIQBtTYgsRLmAc85S3Uh9o8ikbNx1C-q-B9ZJUGn7EnxBvsGqJCYlxI8nzVtwa_vJ-L-B097k3fv1aOxsbqTc0VD4BV34AGCt-6CpDcw7FzvpxwA
> >
>
> 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
> <
> https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpatternliteracy.com%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR3qNIsosdBKGSdsMVTJ9qER2JIQT_KPNLweIyU9kTKNs8QztxtKWl1p_uE&h=AT2w5NBUTGN6TkQlDa7C5xzWEmHAT8yeRtkizhF3Bcys__mysN0byLN7_dnfW-zLBP9mHpNw24nOIxFJ_jFlVqumt-0Xm4Ij1wG0ur4NhjuwkVZlrCoGaFTy9Z2ftFsESwpgD52KZCcTXTGREc0KAOY_vcvCGRl11kFpP_zT4OCGE2k5ZuNr2hLLafeHRVm-GCgVzIzuRRL4WoRIHbR1bSOoPxbFmQQiJfkL9vzNWDjdegDY0hNpK_rybzizVmXpvoIWwsxHwvfN9gbhy0j5ridrUnLgUMpLqmQfFyKOgNYzjGvgCmiIaBgwsySAJgjh4ugy-L5rOY6bcnZ1Ib4O2UYoIrOGCiTHoOIUWqIeO7RUF2453CXFP9VV8ucBdSBxZJh4sDolMik4W5KTgdZHTHJCtGoJUhzGNb30k0aTLcQgDP-6LkIiDj5MY2Zegi98jKexlhLW8FVq0Y3nentyaXBhEzVo_VokV9Y0pCmdvphf8oYtEobQIpGGC22xsajGfQGbDqh2iw1Aq3PkzEVJJ2qbmpszYBVfn8FHteaqvOIoYpw_jY3ItUQMxPOy7HodVKJy-demxxL_ZIi8KPyEXHoHi-HfjspU5XFvBbj3jRavvUFl31FJdRvFB8LRGoZkVir2jg
> >
>
>
> 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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> >
> Permaculture: -- portal to an expanding global network of landtech pioneers
> -- who are designing ecological land use systems with integrated elements
> for synergy, sustainability, regeneration and enhanced nature-compatible
> human habitat
>
> From Bill Mollison through Dan Hemenway:
>
> On 12 Jun 2001 15:22:35 GMT, in alt.permaculture permacltur at aol.com
> <http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture>
> (Permacltur) wrote:
>
> Actually, anyone with a permaculture certificate is supposed to
> subscribe to a
> set body of ethics.  Here there are from a 1981 Permaculture Design
> Course
> taught by Bill Mollison.  They are reprinted in Designing for
> Permaculture,
> Pamphlet VIII of the Permaculture Design Course Series.  Since these
> pamphlets
> have been placed in public domain by me (with Mollison's consent),
> they may be
> freely reproduced without copyright violation.
>
>
> PROFESSIONAL PERMACULTURE DESIGNERS' ETHICS
>  1. As a group of designers, we cooperate; we do not compete.
> 2. We do not duplicate each other's work. As far as possible, we
> create and use
> individual designs.
> 3. We care for our clients and are responsible to them.
> 4. The end to which we are working is the reforestation of the Earth
> and the
> restoration of its soils to health.
> 5. We care for the environment and wildlife. In all our design work,
> we side
> with that "super client," Gaia, which is an old Greek word for the
> Mother Earth
> Goddess. Earth was con-ceived of then as a living, thinking organism,
> a
> biological entity.
> 6. We seek the best, the most appropriate energy paths, utiliz-ing
> appropriate
> energy.
> 7. We recycle at the highest level possible. Everything can be a
> resource. You
> must know how to use it. Use what you have. Try to make the least
> change
> produce the most effect.
> 8. A final ethic, which we practice in our community in Tasmania, is
> that we
> divest ourselves of everything surplus to our needs. But we don't ask
> you to do
> that.
>
>
> Dan Hemenway
> Barking Frogs Permaculture Center
>
> From Maddy Harland and Permaculture Magazine:
>
> What Is Permaculture
> https://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/what-permaculture-part-1-ethics
>
> What is Permaculture - Part 1: Ethics
> Maddy Harland
> Wednesday, 23rd January 2013
> In this first part of 'What is Permaculture', Maddy Harland explains the
> three permaculture ethics - Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share
>
> Permaculture is primarily a thinking tool for designing low carbon, highly
> productive systems but its influence can be very pervasive! What can start
> as a journey towards living a more ecologically balanced lifestyle can go
> far deeper, even transforming our worldview and radically altering
> behaviour. This is the inspirational nature of permaculture, it is a means
> of connecting each of us more deeply to nature’s patterns and wisdom and of
> practically applying that understanding in our daily lives.
>
> The discipline of permaculture design is based on observing what makes
> natural systems endure; establishing simple yet effective principles, and
> using them to mirror nature in whatever we choose to design. This can be
> gardens, farms, buildings, woodlands, communities, businesses, even towns
> and cities. Permaculture is essentially about creating beneficial
> relationships between individual elements and making sure energy is
> captured in, rather than lost from, a system. Its application is only as
> limited as our imaginations.
>
> Permaculture is not just a green way of living or a guiding system of
> ethics, it is a way of designing using nature’s principles as a model;
> ‘bending’ them as much as possible to create fertile, self-reliant,
> productive landscapes and communities. This is what defines permaculture
> and it is uniquely effective and powerful. Where permaculture stands out
> from the crowd as a design system is in its capacity to integrate the
> intellect with ethics. It can teach us to ‘think’ with the heart and
> respond with the head. By combining pragmatism with philosophy, we can
> create a greater synthesis.
>
> The three ethics are: Earth Care, People Care and Fair Shares. They are not
> exclusive to permaculture and were derived from the commonalities of many
> worldviews and beliefs. They are therefore shared by many throughout the
> world. What permaculture does is it makes them explicit within a design
> process; removing them from the realms of philosophy and practically
> rooting them in everybody’s lives. This transforms thinking into doing. It
> is their combined presence within a design that has a radical capacity for
> ecological and social transformation.
> Earth Care
>
> Imagine the originators of permaculture, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren,
> in the 1970s, seeing the devastat-ing effects of a temperate European
> agriculture on the fragile soils of an ancient Antipodean landscape. Like
> the dust bowls of Oklahoma in the 1930s, an alien agriculture has the
> capacity to turn a delicately balanced ecology into desert. Their initial
> response was to design a permanent agriculture with tree crops and other
> perennials inhabiting all the niches, from the canopy to the ground cover
> and below. The soil is left untilled to establish its own robust
> micro-ecology. Key to this is that the land must be biodiverse and stable
> for future generations.
>
> This ethic of Earth Care was the basis of permaculture design, but it was
> bound to grow and pervade all aspects of permaculture... How can we have an
> organic agriculture or horticulture and manage our landscapes to sustain
> themselves over gener-ations on one hand, then consume goods from
> industries managed in ecologically damaging ways on the other? It’s
> pointless designing an organic garden and then buying a gas guzzling car or
> building a house from concrete and steel, when we can use local materials
> with less embodied energy.
>
> The original vision of care for all living and non living things has grown
> to embrace a deep and comprehensive understanding of Earth Care that
> involves many decisions; from the clothes we wear and the goods we buy to
> the materials we use for DIY projects. Though we can’t all build our own
> house or grow all our own food, we can make choices about what and how we
> consume and conserve. Key to this is the understanding that up to one third
> of our ecological footprint is taken up by the food we buy, so even growing
> a small amount in a city allotment or container gar-den can make a
> difference. Permaculture is all about making a difference.
> People Care
>
> Fundamental to permaculture is the concept of Permanent Culture. How can we
> develop a permaculture if our people are expendable, uncared for, excluded?
> People Care asks that our basic needs for food, shelter, education,
> employment and healthy social relationships are met. Genuine People Care
> can-not be exclusive in a tribal sense; there can be no elites here: no
> plutocracies or oligarchies, all members of the community must be taken
> into account. It is a global ethic of Fairtrade and intelligent support
> amongst all people, both at home and abroad.
>
> At the core of People Care is an understanding of the power of community.
> If we can change our lives as individuals and make incremental differences:
> think what we can do as a community! The permaculture designers who helped
> initiate Cuba’s post oil urban agriculture are a good example. They
> mobilised a whole country to become self-reliant. Ecovillages and cohousing
> communities who can significantly reduce their ecological footprint by
> sharing resources are other good examples.
>
> In smaller ways; in our cities, towns and villages, we can all benefit from
> deepening community links. I may not have all the skills to grow all my
> food or eco-renovate my house, for example, but by developing good networks
> I can expand my capacity to live more sustainably and become more
> self-reliant. This is a decentralised, democratic vision of social
> transformation where grass-roots initiatives like the Transition Towns
> movement can begin to plan for a low carbon ‘energy descent’ on a community
> level. There is no time to wait for central government to act, or
> eventually to react.
> Fair Shares
>
> The last ethic synthesises the first two. It acknowledges that we only have
> one earth and we have to share it with all living things and future
> generations. There is no point in designing a sustainable family unit,
> community, or nation whilst others languish without clean water, clean air,
> food, shelter, meaningful employment, and social contact. Since the
> industrialised North uses the resources of at least three earths, and much
> of the global South languishes in poverty, Fair Shares is an
> acknowledgement of this terrible imbalance and a call to limit consumption
> (especially of natural resources) in the North.
>
> Permaculture fundamentally rejects the industrial growth model of the
> global North at the core of its ethics, and aspires to design fairer, more
> equitable systems that take into account the limits of the planet’s
> resources and the needs of all living beings. Whilst these permaculture
> ethics are more like moral values or codes of behaviour, they are not
> enough on their own.
>
> We need the principles of permaculture to provide a set of universally
> applicable guidelines that can be used in designing sustainable systems.
> Otherwise, permaculture becomes merely a lifestyle choice within an
> existing unsustainable system. These principles can be inherent in any
> perma-culture design, in any climate, and on any scale. They have been
> derived from the thoughtful observation of nature, and from earlier work by
> ecologists, landscape designers and environmental science...
>
>
> >
> > cheers
> >
> > Robyn Francis
> > permaculture mailing list
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> >
>
>
> --
> Lawrence F. London, Jr.
> lfljvenaura@gmail.com
> Avant Geared
> avantgearedshop@gmail.com
> https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared
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