Subject: Re: [permaculture] Why is permaculture more about selling books, DVDs and training courses?
Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:38:19 -0400
David Travis wrote:
>I agree that this is a serious problem. In my experience it is a byproduct of the original process of certification.
>Permaculture education was originally designed to be a means of certifying design consultants. Even today, the
regional >groups (in the US at least) seem to be strongly focused on how to add new levels of accreditation, mentorship,
and >certification onto the PDC process; implementation and verification of permaculture methods seem to be secondary
>priorities. The most generic goal of a consultant is to make money using his or her certificate, and it turns out that
>the easiest and fastest way to do that is to promote oneself as a teacher. In addition to this there are landscapers
>who have used the certification process to "green" their resumes and explore new territory. Often all of this is
>combined in the permaculture demo/teaching site. The result is what some people (affectionally!) call a permaculture
>ponzi scheme of certificates, diplomas, apprenticeships, etc. It costs money, but people like to spend money and they
>have fun.
Pretty limited and shortsighted view of the permaculture scene. Much progress has been/is being made spreading the good
word. Many lives have been improved and the environment is in a much better state, because of the widespread use of
permaculture methods.
>Part of the difficulty is that permaculture ideas are largely speculative and there is a great deal of risk involved
in >actually implementing them on any kind of large scale. Perhaps if permaculture had started out as being more
>centralized and democratic (as opposed to decentralized and autocratic a la Mollison), it would have developed the
sort >of infrastructure needed to move beyond demo sites and a handful of NGO projects, but who can say? >
To make such a statement you obviously do not know much about permaculture, and for that matter natural agriculture and
landscaping either.
>Anyway, it's easy to see how the initial structure lead the movement there. Most people I've met within the
>permaculture movement seem to be perfectly happy with it staying on that track; it is satisfying peoples' needs on
some >level.
Pretty short-sighted and limited view of permaculture. Interesting that you give little credit to Mollison, other than
for the wrong reasons.