To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Why is permaculture more about selling books, DVDs and training courses?
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:04:17 -0500
----- Original Message -----
From: "Suraj Kumar" <suraj@sunson.in>
The only thing I'm "nit-picking" here is the
proprietary information
bit. Why should information be proprietary? Is
it because there is an> underlying element of
insecurity?
Is it possible that there is a
language/communication issue here? When I think
of "proprietary" information, I think of
trademarked/copyrighted/patented info. It seems
unlikely to me that there is much of that in the
permaculture movement. Just because someone is
selling a publication doesn't mean that the info
inside is proprietary -- which suggests some kind
of legal protection to the info.
I think that all of the information necessary for
permaculture education is certainly available in
the public domain somewhere, starting with
Mollison's pamphlets, available for free at
http://www.barkingfrogspermaculture.org/PDC_ALL.pdf ,
which are transcriptions of a PDC given by Bill
Mollison of a Permaculture Design Course in New
Hampshire in the early 1980s.
A design certificate "certifies" that you have
attended a course and gone through a certain
curriculum. It doesn't mean that you are an
expert permaculture designer, "apprentice" would
be a better description, or perhaps it is a
"ticket" to a lifelong experience of learning and
practice/praxis. I studied and tried to praxis
permaculture for years before I got enough money
to take a permaculture design course. In my
self-study, I got some things right, some things
wrong. Now my approach is more organized and
wholistic, before the course I was always looking
at things as discrete units and not always getting
the inter-connections, but I suspect that even if
I hadn't taken the course, I would still have
learned that lesson. My mistakes were very
important to my learning however, and thus I
treasure them as much as my successes. I have
actually lost count, but I sometimes say I grow
more than 100 different varieties of useful or
edible plants on my 1/7th acre house site in
central Oklahoma City, but there is another list
of almost 100 different varieties of plants that I
tried and failed with.
I like giving stuff away too, I started a food
coop (www.oklahomafood.coop ) that only sells
local foods and we give away our software to other
groups who want to do something similar
http://www.localfoodcoop.org/ . Now that that
group has matured to the point where I have been
liberated from the position of General Manager, I
am part of a design process to prepare and then
give away (under the general public license
system) a platform for online newspaper
cooperatives, hopefully that will launch within
the year ("you heard it first here"). I have a
free online "Almanac of Useful Information", which
is mostly about "kitchen permaculture" or perhaps
more correctly, "permaculture design principles
applied to kitchens and food systems".
www.bettertimesinfo.org/2004index.htm . And then
there's www.energyconservationinfo.org where I
pile up and give away various accoutrements
relating to energy conservation and disaster
preparation/recovery/mitigation. I really enjoy
this kind of social entrepreneurship.
At the same time, if you want to read the
permaculture design of my house, I charge US $10
for the PDF. I give some of those away too
usually in response to requests from people in
third world countries. I am a teacher's assistant
with an online PDC, and I get paid a bit for that,
and tuition is charged and paid by the students.
Dan Hemenway (not to be confused with Toby who
participates here, they are probably related at
the "200 year ago ancestor level"), whom I study
permaculture with, in his essay on Living Lovingly
http://www.barkingfrogspermaculture.org/livinglovingly.pdf
says that "Love is the harmony between giving and
receiving." And that's what I'm trying to find in
my own life.
Those are my thoughts, hope they are not too
confusing and contribute something to the
dialogue.