Permaculture Future? Part II
Sharon June 30th, 2009
Since my previous post on this subject has gotten so much interesting discussion going, I figured I’d stick with the momentum, rather than have another one of my planned multiple posts turn into a singleton because I’m like a magpie, easily distracted by shiny new subjects 
.
I should be clear about something here – part of the reason I’m bothering to critique something that I am resolutely on the side of is this – I take it seriously. I believe that at this moment, permaculture groups and the Transition movement represent quite honestly the only game in town for an *organized* set of strategies for dealing with our present crisis – that is, ultimately, Transition and permaculture are the public face of our adaptive strategies. If they can’t do the work of helping us adapt, then we either need to make new strategies or make these work – and we don’t have a lot of time to figure it out. To some degree, I believe this is probably unfair to the permaculture movement as a whole – that is, they didn’t ask to be ”the last best chance for survival.” That’s a big burden to stick on them. It may, unfortunately, also be at least partly true, and it is not an accident – many people have been offering up permaculture as the best possible response to the Long Emergency for some time.
Now it should also be understood that my doubts about permaculture are not doubts about the basic work permaculturists advocate – that is, I don’t think there’s any question that if we all actually practiced and lived permaculture it would go an awfully long way to actually saving the world. Nor do I intend any personal criticism of permaculturists, many of whom are my friends, many of whom I admire, and who I’d probably like to be one of – at least on most days . My question is different – it is whether permaculture as a movement with a public face, and as it is being practiced and perceived in the mainstream right now has the tools to attract enough people and respond fast enough to our collective crisis - not to fix it, we’re long past that – but to do the most good possible for a lot of people who are facing a very bad situation.
I personally do not give a rat’s patootie about much of anything other than success on this front. That is, I think that if whatever strategies we who know what’s coming actually field are not successful – as successful as possible given the rotten circumstances we have to work with – it doesn’t matter whether the people doing it are really right. If I don’t think they can be successful – and by successful I mean saving lives and mitigating harm – I will put my energies elsewhere, and advocate others do the same. And, vice versa, I will happily table most of my disagreements, suck up my distastes and work with just about anyone who doesn’t hit my “evil” button if it saves people’s lives, feeds the hungry, warms the cold, gives succor to the sick or any of that. That is, I personally will politely and quietly roll my eyes while we stand in the circle sharing our feelings, but I will do it, and far less palatable things, if it gets us forward in productive ways – more forward than anything else. Convince me it does, and I’m your woman.
Which means that the assumptions I start with are these – that what matters most is maximum effectiveness of the right strategies. Thus, I think those who argue I just don’t fully understand permaculture are probably missing the point – I’ve been studying permaculture on and off since the early 1990s, have known many permaculturists and met with many permaculture groups. It may well be that I’m not getting it all right, but in the end, the truth of things is probably less important than how things are perceived, and I think it is fair to say that if I don’t “get it” that either I’m extremely obtuse (definitely possible) or there’s a problem with how permaculture is presented.
Or, permaculture’s presentation has not yet caught up to its “last best hope for survival” reality – this, I suspect is a large part of the truth – and always is true of alternative cultures, is when they hit the mainstream, they are often unprepared for their own success, or potential success. I do permaculture the credit of assuming that first, it could be a success under the right circumstances, and also assuming that those who have advanced permaculture as a responsive strategy to our crisis, are, well, right – but that means a certain amount of growing pains as one moves from an alternate culture to something else.
I also assume that we have very little time, and that there is too much work for small communities – that we need all hands on deck to get the best possible outcomes. Thus, my concern with public perceptions of permaculture – to me it only sort of matters whether they are right, what matters is that negative ones be overcome.
Finally, I also assume one other thing – as things begin getting difficult, more alternatives, many of them probably really bad, will start emerging. The reality is all of life is about how we tell our stories. The story of peak oil and climate change, of our financial crisis are already being told by a lot of people in a lot of different ways. Dominant narratives will emerge, and some of them will not be productive – in fact, some of them will be downright dangerous, as in Britain where far-rightists are already using peak oil as a justification for the implementation of policies. There is going to be a vast grab for explanations and visions of the future.
What worries me is the American version of Hezbollah, which I suspect will someday emerge – that is, a deeply violent and destructive subculture, complete with scapegoats and a compelling story for the angry and frightened mainstream about who to blame, along with practical institutions like hospitals, schools and rescue stations for gaining the loyalty of the victims of our collective crisis. Difficult times produce a willingness to accept things that are unacceptable in other times – the last great economic crisis, for example, resulted in the last rise of the popular left in the US, which is heartening, and worldwide, a move towards fascism, which is not.
At this moment, Transition and permaculture offer a story that is extremely useful and accessible in some ways – for example, permaculturists have done a superb job of shifting people from the rather depressing reality to the energizing power of permaculture work. The affirmative powers of both movements are superb. They have several advantages over many of the mainstream emerging answers.
1. They were there first, bringing the whole story together.
2. They are positive, energizing and reassuring to people.
3. Their story and solutions *thus far* lines up really well with events.
So while Transition and permaculture as movements have no hope of competing in the area of advertising dollars with government or corporate narratives, they have the advantage of telling a coherent story, an appealing and imaginative one, dosed in reality, but with ways to go forward. And for a surprisingly large number of people, that consistency and accuracy, that hope and utility are more attractive than the mainstream BAU narrative. For now, while things are not very bad, they line up beautifully with events – that is, people look and see “oh, wait, the evidence for these things is here, oh, wait it really does make me feel better to grow food and work in my community.”
My concern, then, is that Transition and Permaculture, perhaps thrust into roles they might not have fully expected, moving faster than perhaps anyone would have liked, in the face of great exigency and much more disrupted circumstances than they have been perhaps planning for, offer a compelling counter-narrative, and that that counter-narrative continue to play to their strengths – that is, that they continue to offer truths that line up with facts and that they continue to offer solutions that really do seem to get us somewhere.
I don’t doubt that the truth will continue to line up with facts, but I do worry that permaculture groups and Transition as they exist right now might not be able to expand fast enough into mainstream American communities (and I hope I am clear that I am writing from an American perspective here, from a country without a viable left, where even its “socialist” president would be a center or center-rightist in many countries), and that their solutions might come to seem irrelevant, if events proceed fast enough. These are places where I think potential allies could be lost, or where the structures might fail, and be replaced with structures that have far more troubling ideological issues.
Because I see these things as potential problems, my first choice is not to convince people that permaculture is bad, but to convince permaculturists to consider them and to take up strategies for “mainstreaming” and for adapting permaculture strategies for emergency preparedness – in that vein, I’m hoping to put up a couple of posts about what I imagine as the “permaculture of crisis” in the next few weeks.
I do worry that I am perhaps being unfair to both Transition and Permaculture. And I’d try not to, except this – I don’t think we have a Plan B. Ultimately, most of our plans – and I’d include Pat Murphy’s Plan C, Transition, Resilient cities, etc… come down to the same basic stuff, much of which has come, for better and worse, to live under the rhetorical rubric of “permaculture” and “Transition.” Get smaller fast. Get allies fast. Do everything at once – build new economies, grow food, fix the ecologies, help the hungry, the poor and the cold, help prevent more hungry poor and cold, stick your finger in the dike and watch it turn blue, hold back the water with your arms and all the force you’ve got. And the reality is this – on some measure what ever strategies we use will fail. But there is failure and failure, there are small floods and large ones. All that matters is that the work gets done, as well as possible, that the floods are as small as we can make them, and that the suffering is as little as possible. That’s honestly all I care about.
Sharon
- Uncategorized , permaculture
- Comments(55)
I just read this and the prior post on the topic. You raise a couple points that I feel are very important for all communities and groups (not just Permaculture): emergency preparedness and fostering greater cooperation with groups and individuals within communities who are already working on important issues such as food security and shelter for the impoverished.
I’ve recently encountered the term “economic refugees” to describe the growing numbers of dislocated persons migrating along our region of the country and I am concerned for several reasons. The first is that these persons are viewed with a general sense of hostility and distrust so broadly in communities that it is difficult to find many groups who feel real understanding and empathy for their circumstances at present. I fear, this will only be magnified in the coming months and years.
I don’t think I could possibly point enough to the seriousness of such attitudes. One has only to follow the headlines of violence against the homeless and economically disadvantaged for several months to understand where such attitudes lead us as a society. As a case in point, I refer you to the 6/9/09 report “Another homeless man, Tim Alcorn, beat to death by teenagers” from http://peopleproject.wordpress.com/ Such occurrences are not isolated to particular states such as California, but in my tracking have been occurring across the country with alarming frequenc. I shudder to think what the coming months will bring (particularly to California and it’s neighbors).
Who is prepared for such events? Who is discussing them? So far, I don’t seem to be very successful in getting dialogs going on these topics – even in my permaculture community. Talk trees or mud or feelings and somebody will have something to say. Ask where this winter’s new homeless and hungry will sleep and eat, you get blank stares.
I am not the speaker or blogger that you and others are. My words, questions and ideas do not provoke ideas, discussions and conversations. For this reason, I quietly ask questions, follow the situations, examine the results. More importantly, I stand up and cheer whenever and wherever I hear someone who can effectively get such important messages across attempting to do so.
Thanks for all your efforts and for your thoughts on Permaculture.
I’m conservative, and there are aspects of permaculture (desert reclamation and water and soil conservation, working with your local climate instead of against it, etc.) that are really attractive. I’m finding that my urban garden beds really are more productive when I plan for a lot of diversity, with local plants and others that grow well here, with flowers and vegetables and who-knows-what volunteers all growing in a happy melange that saves me from weeding as much. But I would like to use the “this is how you grow stuff” aspects of it without all the mumbo-jumbo. As a descendant of farmers generations deep (until my parents, and Dad is blue-collar), I just want to get to the point- How do we feed ourselves? In our previous small-town community, full of the descendants of farmers, people who still held giant community pig-roasting parties and canned Christmas jams, the answers would have been easy. Here, where my neighbor’s son did not recognize the tasseling corn sticking up over the fence last year, where we hear gunfire off to the north almost every night (and they ain’t hunting deer), the answers will be much more difficult and scary. I’d be interested to see what permaculture could offer here.
In the early days of The Farm, when we would sit around reading Tibetian Yoga and Secret Doctrines by kerosene light, there was a standard condolence for our tough lifestyle choice that could be found in the Vow of the Bodhisatva, you know… “Sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them all…” Eventually we just boiled it down to Farm jargony shorthand, “I vow to shovel shit against the tide, forever.” This simple pledge works amazing magic when taking on an unwelcome task, like restarting a fire in the middle of the night with wet wood, burying a dead animal, or cleaning up after a sick child.
I wouldn’t get too caught up in the passing fads, be they permaculture, transition towns, or Tom Brown’s school. Yeah, we do all that, sure, and we even teach it here in our ecovillage and surrounds. Its like Biology 101. You have to learn it to be able to speak intelligently. Ultimately, though, it is about finding your inner strength and courage and piecing together your own resolve, and if any of these methods help you, great.
And then, once your own resolve is found, the circle has to move outwards, and you go in search of the others. Oddly enough, I most often find the others in meetings of transition towns and permaculturists.
– Albert Bates
Albert…
…and we do need the others. This is THE single best thing, in my view, about having found the Transition Town Movement – that I, for one, no longer feel like a “relic from the 1970s” (where I read the books/picked up the ideas….”Limits to Growth”/”Small is Beautiful” and all that……). I had virtually given up hope – as mainstream Society doesnt think like me/act like me to a large extent – so I was tending towards “if you cant beat them, join them”…whilst reserving the right to think differently in many ways. Having found a group of others who understand/basically agree with where I’m at…then I’m “back in harness” again for the Journey.
ceridwen
Sharon you’re right.
You’re right about Permaculturists not quite being able to see who they have to sell to yet (everybody) and you’re SO right about the UK far right party who is serious about the agenda. That’s making the other parties think totally differently about the issue and it’s going to hurt everyone if we’re not careful. We don’t want that linkage to be the one that’s in the public’s mind. They are close enough to a white Hezbollah… less humanitarian though.
You’re right that difficult times make people accept what they wouldn’t otherwise. It’s a sword with two edges — it’s what you play on with your ‘war footing’ — but oh how easily a war footing can turn into something else. This is what ‘Shock doctrine’ is all about. ‘War socialism’ is already something people are talking about — good article here:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49369
What I worry about with Transition is that they aren’t actually going to do enough on the ground. I know they’re all starting to worry about that too — that was the point of the ‘emergency response’ discussion that you mentioned. It’s the testing, back-to-the-wall times that will measure whether the movement was really worth something, or only looked good and felt good.
I’m totally with Ceridwen that lots of people who simply couldn’t find a home in the regular mainstream culture right now will be finding one with TT and that is wonderful. But if TT is to be the lifesaver it has the potential to be, even the people who have no interest in that kind of thing have to be able to find a way into it. And it has to be ready for them, no matter who they are.
I think Transition is having these discussions now though. It’s good to have Sharon (and others like John Michael Greer) continue to prod them though. Events are going to prod all of us soon enough. Heinberg is also pushing, in his gentle way.
I don’t want to see theyday when the BNP can claim to be the only major organization in the UK to have seen peak coming… and somehow inveigle the ordinary people who are scared into their way. It could happen, so we have to think about it. Everything that could happen, we have to think about, now. Constructive and feelgood don’t always coincide, but if they were to do so! Ah! Then — not only would there be camaraderie, there would be ready-made, locally driven practical alternatives to opt into for anyone.
Rob Hopkins’ latest statistics about Totnes will provide some food for thought:
http://transitionculture.org/2009/06/30/the-initial-findings-from-my-survey-of-totnes/
I also am willing to tolerate a great deal to move forward. But I see Transition Towns in a persistent assault against “Survivalists”, despite the fact that this is a loose an imprecise term.
This persistent critique has been brought to Rob Hopkins attention many times over the last 3 years by Dr. Kathy McMahon, Zachary Nowak, and others. Rob always responds with a mealy mouthed apology along the lines of “what I really meant was…” but inevitably resorts to bestowing round house bitch slaps to “Survivalists” in his next missive. Perhaps the next time he is called out on it he will tell us that some of his best friends are survivalists……. My point is that TT does not have as big a tent as we are lead to believe. “Survival ism” is a dominant American paradigm, and is quite congruent with the values of TT and Permaculture. Alienating potential allies in the face of collapse is prejudicial and unwise. For this reason alone I hold TT at arms length.
Sharon, I really appreciate you putting yourself out there and attempting to tackle major issues with the knowledge that you’re definetely going to rub some people the wrong way. The problems we face are myriad, and one huge problem is how to get people to go back to the land in a sustainable way. Permaculture offers tremendous insight into how this can be done, and I will certainly be using some of its principles when I can acquire land of my own, but I would agree that the appeal of this paradigm is limited. The problem is how to get the skeptics on board, and my bet is that permaculture will not be able to do that.
As an example, my boss works for the forestry service, mostly with Christmas tree growers. Recently, they’ve started using a new method of pesticide application that involves using tiny amounts of pesticide rather than the huge amounts they were previously using. This method is effective because it barely holds back really invasive weeds until a ground cover of clover pops us naturally. The clover is a nitrogen fixer, drastically reducing the amount of fertilizer they use on the trees. These farmers are only using this method because it saves money, not because they give a damn about the environment. Convince and demonstrate to people that a method works and saves money, and you have a way better hook than permaculture. For me, permaculture is fascinating and useful knowledge, but for the average person, it’s mumbo jumbo.
This is the issue that has kept me awake at night. Transition and permaculture are seen by many of us as our last best hope, and had peak oil and climate change continued to be our primary challenges, they would have had the time to grow, evolve and offer real strategies for mitigation and adaptation.
The collapse of the economy has moved us into the fast lane – where the bad, the dire and the ugly happen with no warning, no mercy and no 12-step response. I come from a law enforcement background and I know how a spark can set off an inferno and a small disturbance can instigate a riot. Civil unrest is more than a possibility – I expect it to happen. All bets are off when people have nowhere to live, can’t feed their children and there is no relief in sight.
When it hits the fan and our police, firefighters and EMS are overwhelmed, what do we do? I expressed these same concerns on the Oil Drun recently, and the consensus was that there is little planning going on in communities to deal with this. I’m doing research into this issue now.
I have friends in the Transition movement and permaculture and they are doing wonderful things. But these approaches take time. I hope we will have that time. I fear we won’t.
Folks interested in permaculture crisis intervention might want to check out the Earth Activist Training program, affectionately known as EAT. Many EAT crews went to New Orleans just after Katrina, and did just what you are saying is needed, intervened in a large emergency situation with permaculture tools and ideas. There are permaculture crisis intervention-specific courses available and groups already trained, ready to serve.
An interesting novel written in the early 90s by a woman named Starhawk, called *The Fifth Sacred Thing*, also looks at what happens when things get real scarey, as they may, as you say, when things get harder. Warning; the book contains graphic descriptions of group sex, not for the faint of heart.
Thanks for creating a forum for discussing permaculture and transition towns ideas.
Transition yes; permaculture no.
“The Problem” – is not to find a new path that works; it’s to get folks from “the mainstream” to adopt the new path.
Permaculture has really failed, in all it’s years, to attract any significant interest from the mainstream. Whereas Transition, in a VERY short time- has caught fire, and caught the public imagination.
Personally, the involvement of the mainstream is MORE important than any details of the concepts. Concepts can be tweaked- if you have everyone’s attention. If nobody is listening- you are irrelevant.
If I may offer one small, constructive critique of the Permaculture movement:
When one is presented with the whole package (based upon reading the books, I am assuming that the course is largely the same effect), it does tend to be rather overwhelming. Few, if any, of us really have the ability to implement the whole package, immediately. Furthermore, none of us live in ideal locations. We have to work with what we’ve got, and each location undoubtedly presents its people with unique challenges that have to be worked out.
It needs to be very explicitly understood, and communicated, that it is perfectly possible, feasible, and even expected that implementation will be on an incremental, evolutionary basis. Yes, I know that time is short and action is urgent. Yet, people can only do what they can do. What we definitely don’t want to do is set up an “all or nothing” mentality. Too many people might wrongly conclude that since they can’t do it all, they might just as well not even try and do nothing.
This being said, I think that one thing that would be very helpful to a great many people would be to provide better guidance on priorities. People don’t need a list of 101 or 1001 things they CAN do, they need to be told the one most important thing they MUST do right now, and then the next most important thing, and so on.
For example, I believe that getting fruit, nut, and shade trees planted needs to be pretty high up on the priority list. It takes several years for these to grow to a point where they are useful, so delaying these has serious consequences.
This in turn might imply that one really should get busy and develop their land use plan first thing, because if you are going to plant trees, you want them to be in the right place.
Before that, even, one must do some serious research and thinking as to whether one is really even in the right place; permaculture development is a serious, life-long enterprise, so one must select the location to which one will commit one’s life with great care and deliberation.
Issues about one’s livelihood are inevitably bound up with this as well. Few of us are independently wealthy, so most of us are going to have to have a way to earn enough money to acquire our permaculture homestead and to pay for the materials to develop it, as well as to cover our other living expenses.
The economic turmoil that we are now experiencing and that will likely worsen in the future considerably complicates this problem for many people; getting a steady enough income to get their feet above water financially and to allow them to even think about buying a place and beginning to develop it is a considerable challenge these days. Many people are still stuck on that square one, and may never get past it. Some sort of communal approach, more or less, may be the only hope that some of the people stuck in this plight might ever have to situate themselves in some sort of permaculture development.
This, in turn, suggests another need: scalability. While I believe that the permaculture concepts are inherently scalable, in too many cases the impression that actually forms in many people’s minds about permaculture is something that is implemented for individual homesteads. Undoubtedly, that is because most of the actual implementation up to now has indeed been at individual homesteads. I’m sure that there are quite a few co-housing developments that are deep into permaculture implementation, and that is great; what we need is to hear much, much more about those. I think it would be especially helpful to see examples of conventional apartment or condominium or housing developments that have been transformed into permaculture co-housing developments. People need a vision of the future, and to have that they need to visualize what the future could look like, and for that they need to see examples.
Scale, of course, can go all the way up to the neighborhood and community level, and this is where the Transition movement comes in. Our problem here is that the larger you go with scale, the longer it takes to substantially implement permaculture. There have been a few transition towns that have been such for several years now, but none of these are even remotely close to having implemented permaculture extensively enough to yet make a good example of what an entire permaculture-oriented community would really look like. Give them another twenty years, and maybe they’ll start coming close. Unfortunately, that is twenty years we really don’t have.
Greenpa –
Grab them by the stones and their hearts and minds will follow.
The problem I have with permaculture is… it is essentially a demonstration project. Permaculturists make their living by holding workshops and design seminars for the curious who can afford the hefty fees. They don’t make their living by going out and buying a farm and converting it to permaculture. To me, that’s a huge foundational problem.
This is from Rob Hopkins’ blog, and well worth reading carefully. It contains some of the basic reasons why permaculture tends to lose the attention people looking for answers. Read the comments, too.
http://transitionculture.org/2008/10/20/in-search-of-the-fabled-permaculture-chickengreenhouse/
I won’t belabor the challenges before us. It’s huge. But clearly, we can’t just throw in the towel and walk off to save ourselves. Nor does it seem reasonable to stand with fingers in the dike while those around us rush madly about or ignore the situation completely. I don’t really think that’s the choice before us. While there isn’t a lot of time as Sharon has said, we are not lost. A dystopian future is not a foregone conclusion.
In the Cascadia Bioregion, where I live the grassroots movements begun in the 1970 are now strong enough with enough new blood to prevail.
I recently had a conversation with a friend about Octavia Butler’s 1993 “The Parable of the Sower.” In Butler’s story California has completely unraveled. Her descriptions sound like Somalia today – a completely failed state. The protagonist, and a few people picked up along the road from LA, eventually end up in Mendocino County only to find one member’s refuge farm burned to the ground with the bones of his relatives in the rubble. I don’t plan to read her sequel.
“Why not?,” my friend asked.
“I just can’t deal with that image of the future,” I replied. “I mean, it’s no future.”
“But that’s what all your friends think you believe will happen and what you’ve been trying to get us to prepare for,” she said.
“Apparently, I’ve had some success. Just look at new edible perennials in your yard or Sherri’s.”
In point of fact, each of our efforts to influence those around us reduces the probability of Butler’s dystopia. However slightly, we change the trajectory of our headlong rush toward destruction. Attitudes can change quickly once a tipping point is reached and actions follow quickly given a clear and present danger.
I’m remembering how quickly attitudes toward the Viet Nam War changed once the tipping point was reached. Actions followed with people taking to the streets and Al Gore standing before congress in the Winter Soldier Hearings.
The clear and present danger then was that anyone’s son or brother could be drawn into the maw of that war machine at any time. As California’s financial mess is resolved on the backs of the working class, the clear and present danger is becoming apparent.
It has long since become apparent to the mainstream in the Pacific Northwest. Portland Oregon had become a de-facto open-air university of sustainable practices. For example, with the annual Village Building Convergence sponsored by Portland City Repair. They now operate with the blessing and support of city government. San Francisco area, Seattle, Vancouver and Victoria are not far behind.
Not coincidentally, this is the area that was the subject of Ernest Callenbach’ “Ecotopia.” Hippie or not many of the values he expressed in that story have stuck in the mainstream. As I write, the garbage truck is loading up yard and food waste to be composted and redistributed to gardeners.
At Seattle’s Green Fest I stood booth duty for SCALLOPS (Sustainable Communities All Over Puget Sound, 70 and counting). Judging from conversations and appearance the attendees were overwhelmingly middle of the road folks with a considerable number of people of color. Paul Stamets filled a 750-seat hall with his show on mushrooms. This year, the conference broke all records for attendance – somewhere north of a hundred thousand tickets were sold.
Lest you think all this green activity is limited to the liberal costal cities, consider the following: The Okanagan Barter Faire, whose site I helped search out in 1974, is located in one of the most conservative, redneck counties in the state. Seventy four’s attendance was a few hundred hippies from all over the state. Last year attendance was capped at 15,000 with people still lined up at the gate.
Back-to-the-landers who couldn’t get served in local restaurants in 1974 were grudgingly accepted into those communities by perseverance and hard work. The rednecks now shop at the co-op but the grey ponytails still don’t shop at Safeway, much hated by all because they won’t carry local produce or eggs.
One now old hippie, whom a forester friend of mine first met while investigating a compliant of some sort, met him at the door with a rifle in one hand and a suckling baby in the other. Two years ago she missed being elected county commissioner by a handful of votes. Not to be discouraged, she has started up a consumer/producer co-op with support of the Grange and the valley’s old timers. She and others are working on a local currency for the valley too.
I could go on but I think I’ve made my point. Things are not a bleak as some of my younger friends believe. We are close to a tipping point in the Northwest. The changes that are apparently needed have as much if not more support in rural areas as in the Seattle area. The pragmatic rural people take a “show me” approach but once shown that something works they’re on board.
I think the urban working class, at least on the West Coast that I’m familiar with, is another matter that deserves much discussion.
Tom Allen
Seattle
A correction: I meant to say John Kerry not Al Gore at the Winter Solder Hearing
Sharon,
I’m familiar with some of the local permaculture folks. I also am familiar with history and human psychology.
While attempts to grow food and create a sustainable culture are laudable, they will come to naught without significant thought given to defense and some very difficult choices. Neither you, or anyone else, can save everybody.
The permaculture folks I talk to don’t… No, *won’t* hear this. The walled cities and castles build in the last dark age were built for a reason. They needed defense against foreign invaders, and sometimes they needed defense against neighbors whose crops had failed, or had a contagious illness, or who had lost their water supply. This is what I mean by “difficult choices.”
Walled cities don’t mean much in an age of easily made explosives. So this brings us to the topic of firearms and weapons.
To be clear, I grew up using these things to hunt deer. I despise them now. The last thing I want to do is have anything to do with them. That being said, I’d take the permaculture folks much more seriously, if they included such weapons and defense in their calculations. A few do, as I understand it, but at the moment, most seem to be basing their scenarios on some situation in which criminal gangs have mysteriously disappeared. It makes me more than nervous. If the shit hits the fan in a serious way, I plan to go nowhere near any permaculture settlement since I’m pretty certain they will be slaughtered in the first year.
Sorry to be Mr. Cold Water of Reality man, but you, I and all of us need to consider this to survive.
GREENPA – APOLOGIES FOR ALL CAPS, I’M NOT YELLING, BUT MY SHIFT KEY IS OUT FOR INEXPLICABLE REASONS AND THIS IS EASIER THAN TYPING IN ALL LOWER CASE LETTERS. I DON’T THINK YOU CAN SEPARATE PERMACULTURE FROM TRANSITION IN ANY MEANINGFUL SENSE – ROB IS VERY EXPLICIT THAT PERMACULTURE IS THE PRINCIPAL FOUNDATION – HE USES THAT TERM – OF TRANSITION, AND I THINK IT IS SAFE TO SAY THAT TRANSITION IS ESSENTIALLY PERMACULTURE UNDER ANOTHER NAME, APPLIED AT A MUNICIPAL SCALE. SO I THINK THAT PRAISING TRANSITION AND DECRYING PERMACULTURE IS KIND OF LIKE DECRYING ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES AND PRAISING BEER – ONE IS A SPECIES OF THE OTHER.
I’M GLAD TO SEE SOMEONE FESS UP TO THE INANITY OF THE CHICKEN GREENHOUSE – IF IT WORKS, IT CERTAINLY DOESN’T WORK IN CLIMATES LIKE OURS – MAYBE IN ZONE 8 ON THE BRITISH COAST, SINCE WE ALL COULD JUST LOOK UP HOW MANY BTUS FOR BODY WEIGHT A CHICKEN GIVES OUT AND FIGURE IT OUT OURSELVES. BUT THE CHICKEN GREENHOUSE ISN’T PERMACULTURE, AND NOT ALL PERMACULTURISTS USE THINGS THAT ARE THAT SILLY – A DISTURBINGLY LARGE NUMBER OF THEM DO, OF COURSE, BUT A DISTURBINGLY LARGE NUMBER OF HISTORIANS GO AROUND REPEATING SILLY THINGS THAT AREN’T ACTUALLY TRUE, BECAUSE THEY LEARNED THEM SOMEWHERE AND NEVER GOT INTO THAT PARTICULAR ASPECT DEEPLY ENOUGH TO CORRECT THEMSELVES – THAT DOESN’T MAKE HISTORY VALUELESS.
VERA, I ACTUALLY THINK THAT THE VAST MAJORITY OF PERMACULTURISTS DON’T DO ANYTHING BUT GO BACK TO THEIR LAND AND DO THE WORK – THERE AREN’T THAT MANY PERMACULTURE TEACHERS IN THE US, AND MOST PERMACULTURE IS BEING DONE BY PEOPLE WHO ARE SELF OR OTHER TRAINED AND WHO WORK ON THEIR SITES OR THEIR COMMUNITIES FIRST.
IAN, I THINK THIS IS PROBABLY TRUE. ON THE OTHER HAND, AGAIN, ALL PERMACULTURISTS AREN’T ONE – THEY JUST SOMETIMES LOOK LIKE IT. IF YOU EVER HAVE A CHANCE TO MEET LARRY SANTOYO, DO – HE USED TO BE A COP, AND HE’S VERY, VERY FUNNY ON JUST THIS SUBJECT. HE DID A GREAT WORKSHOP AT AN ASHRAM LAST YEAR, AND DID A LONG SPIEL ON JUST HOW EASY IT WOULD BE TO TAKE THE PLACE, AND WHY THEY SHOULD CONSIDER THINKING ABOUT THAT.
TOM, THAT’S CERTAINLY HEARTENING.
SHARON
Sharon- AHA! so; Christianity and Judaism are the same thing, eh?
Worthwhile endeavors. However, overpopulation isn’t fixed by permaculture and transition. Nevertheless, we will carry on while nature balances herself.
As a permaculture designer operating a modest PC design consultancy, I have a few thoughts on this matter.
I came to PC through the natural resource/field sciences…my other job is as a mining geologist. I am also uncomfortable with hand-holding and serious discussions about woodland spirits, but I feel the message is too important to exclude those with whom I disagree. When my fellow PC teachers and I teach our Intro to PC class, others do the “circle stuff” and I focus on what know well…the hard science aspects. It seems to work, as our students come from diverse backgrounds and understand the world in different ways.
As to whether PC can “save the (U.S./western) world”, I think the answer is no. Can PC help reduce the pain of transition…probably, but PC is really about design. You might as well ask if architects and interior designers will save the world. What PC does is design agriculturally productive systems using PC principles like:
Ethics
Relative Location
Multiple Functions For Single Elements
Multiple Elements For Single Functions
Zones, Sectors, Elevation Planning
Biological Resources
Energy Recycling
Appropriate Technology
Natural Succession-Stacking
Diversity-Guilds
Maximise Edge-Patterns
An understanding of systems thinking and complexity are also very helpful. It is not that PC is especially intellectually challenging, but it is an intellectual pursuit. Does society need PC designers? I would say yes, but we probably don’t need more PC designers than structural engineers.
Besides, systems of plants, especially trees, take years to begin bearing significant amounts…my home is in it’s eighth growing season and the major food forest elements are only starting to bear significant crops. Mast production is still very modest and while annual and perennial crops are big producers, they can only meet a modest fraction of our family’s needs.
My fellow PC teachers and I teach, once or twice a year, an introductory course for about $80. It takes a weekend, but covers all the major topics and heavily focused on our local biome. Some modest fraction of the attendees actually go on to use what they have learned. Definitely a drop in the proverbial bucket but who knows?
This winter, Kelly Lerner, our local strawbale architect, and I taught a Homeowner Environmental Stewardship class combining PC outside the building envelope and green design and remodeling inside the building envelope. It was very well attended and student assessment was very positive. We used Kelly’s book “Green Remodeling for the Not So Green House” as our textbook combined with my Intro to PC handout/slideshows. This format focused on what to do and in what order.
As to the criticism that PC design courses cost too much, I don’t think so. My PC design course cost $1500 and lasted three weeks including meals. Winter before last I took a two-day workshop on epithermal gold-bearing quartz vein systems for $775 and we got convention center coffee and bottled water. Both classes were incredibly informative but the PC class was definitely a better value.
Forest gardening and the like is way cool. I think its possible to learn the principals behind it all on your own by simply doing…trial and error, observing nature/forests, and thinking. It also helps to have many years in which to learn. Probably a luxury for most of us now.
Pemaculture’s current image may make it difficult to approach and convince scientists. The “mumbo-jumbo” MD refers to may provide valuable spiritual sustenance for some people but I agree will be off-putting to many others. This issue aside, the final test is whether permaculture can deliver on its promises better than other systems that claim sustainability.
My knowledge of permaculture is limited, but I’ve noticed many statements (and I’m paraphrasing here) that raise an eyebrow:
“Per acre a walnut tree can feed more people than just about anything else”.
“A mature ecosystem (food forest) is more productive than one in transition (typical annual row cropping)”
“Maximizing interfaces will maximize diversity and productivity”.
To scientists these are testable hypotheses – the stuff they live for. I haven’t seen any scientifically defensible studies put forth to support some of the key permie principles. This could just be my ignorance (help!). Not that convincing scientists is supremely important since most or us are too techno-obsessed to listen. But, we do all speak a common language of megajoules and kilograms that is firmly based in physical reality. I believe that mainstream scientists can be convinced if permies can show that the physical quantities add up.
I like permaculture and I believe it has a lot to offer. I know there’s a lot of common sense involved and a deep respect for natural systems. We’re in a crisis and can’t wait for incontrovertible proof to act (analysis paralysis). But to the extent that we can, I believe we should make some measurements and evolve the language so that it can reach more scientists.
Ok, since we’re getting into this. 2 basic problems with permaculture (there are more).
The trees in their forest gardens, etc.; are WILD trees. Which rarely produce reliable crops in the temperate zones. Walnut calculations are certainly based on big crop years for Juglans regia- but show me one walnut grove that has maintained such production for 10 years in a row. Doesn’t happen. You need trees with tested, appropriate genetics; and wild is rarely either.
And- war.
One of the first things invaders do in an all out war is cut down orchards. (Like the Taliban cutting down walnuts and mulberries in Afghanistan.) So the inhabitants have no food. Big mature forest groves- will not recover in the human time scale.
Greenpa, I certainly get a lot of Jews for Jesus making just that case. Christianity is a radical breakaway from Judaism, one that specifically repudiates many of the basic principles of Judaism, including transmission by birth, the covenant and obligation to circ – and let’s be honest, Christianity would probably still be a teeny subset of Judaism if they hadn’t given up the circ requirement for the Greek converts, who would have otherwise probably decided faith, schmaith…;-j. But your analogy fails here – there’s no radical breakaway in transition – it is just a repackaging of the same thing on a different scale.
As for the rest, all the permaculture teachers I’ve met pay a lot of attention to genetics and plant breeding – some of the species are wild, and by necessity won’t be annual croppers, some of them are the best of the cultivated ones.
I agree with you about war – obviously some people are doing the work, but it should be pointed out that forest gardening is not all of permaculture. I do agree with you that permaculture has sometimes gotten stuck on concepts that are either silly or unhelpful or simply not widely enough applicable – I for one am not convinced that temperate forest gardening is really a first-tier project – although I’m all for common sense stuff like replacing street trees and ornamentals with food producers. I think almost as many permaculturists as non-get stuck on the idea of the chicken greenhouse, the herb spiral, the forest garden… but while that’s partly their fault, it partly is misperception.
Sharon
One nice thing about the forest garden/permaculture approach is the diversity of life forms. Using real forests as inspiration, a good forest garden can often produce food in unusual ways and under a wide variety of conditions. All the recent rain in the Northeast has gotten a bum rap but the fungi in the forest are loving it, even if the conventional crops are not.
There is a lot going on in your post, Sharon, and in the comments. But let me see if I can address the issue about “public face.”
Does in fact permaculture have a public face? By that I mean, does anyone in the so-called mainstream actually know about it? Maybe on the west coast. Maybe parts of the east coast. But in the Midwest, where I live, it’s not a word in the public vernacular, at least not the public vernacular that I hear. Frankly, no one except a few weirdos like me has ever heard of it.
As far as I can tell, pretty close to no one has ever heard of the “Transition Town movement” either. I was on a small listserv where it was discussed, for awhile. But it was tiny in numbers of people who were even worse than me for long-windedness. So I left it.
So for the part of your query regarding can the TT movement and/or PC provide us with the tools we need as you defined what you think we need, first of all people would need to know they exist. Nobody does out here. There are plenty of people in the Midwest, so this isn’t a small thing.
Whether they could if people knew about them, I don’t know. My tendency is to think that if the mass media got hold of them (the only way I can see them being heard of), the media would distort them into just another way for corporations to suck money out of us. Just today, I passed a billboard for Lay’s potato chips saying, support your Midwest potato farmers. It sure didn’t take them long to distort the local-food movement, and that is something people out here have heard of.
I don’t really know what to expect in the coming years, or what it is best to do, or how to handle potential serious problems. Like all of us, at the moment I’m doing the best I can to work with what is happening. I’m not quite as pessimistic as you might be, because I’m old enough to know how utterly amazing and totally unpredicted it was that the Berlin Wall crumbled without a shot being fired. Same with the former Soviet Union. So who knows what we could do? But yes, it could be really, really grim, and contingency planning is the best approach. But how to do that? Excellent question, and maybe it will depend very much on location and culture. Beyond that, I’m not wise enough to say, or even guess.
Dang, Sharon–
You hit this one outta the park. Fantastic piece!
My problem, as a blogger, is how much, and what to excerpt to get my own readers to click through to read the whole thing.
Any guidance would be great, as I don’t want to just grab it all, or too little. This is one important piece of writing on the future of not only Permaculture, but Society as a whole, and you’re right, we’re seeing some usurpation of Permaculture from those who would first cause harm.
Permaculture is GOOD, and it works– we’ve all been using it, or at least toying around with Guilds, and other important features as we work our land, but, really– there are plenty of wretched people who would bastardize the process and push it widespread, while throwing away the important bits– like Organic, and COMMUNITY.
Can you recco a grab that I can use to fully convey the goodness of this article. I’ve too often been overzealous in my grabs of your writings, and want to get it right for all of us.
I really like what you’re doing, Sharon, and wish you and your family well.
–mf
almost a relief to read this post. I agree that a problem with permaculture and TT is the kumbaya mentality. I heard from a family member of a TT organizing meeting in her town – and she felt that the “let’s hold hands” sort of stuff turned a lot of people off. Approaches need to recognize what works with different groups and tailor the message for that group.
One of the issues is that TT and Permaculture seem to some to be so “white and liberal”.
I also find that when reading about what some of the TT’s have accomplished – I am a bit disapointed. Yes, plant nut and fruit trees now – but understand you won’t see results on many nut trees for 8 years. And, if anarchy breaks out – won’t those trees get stripped by gangs of kids? Or worse – get chopped down for firewood? I find it a bit naive that the TT’s I am aware of do not talk about the need for protection. And it seems to me that security is an issue most people are concerned about. It would be nice to find an approach somewhere in between the scariness of “survivalism” and the niavete of TT.
All I know about permaculture comes from online reads. I don’t see anybody putting it into practice locally because in my area of California the agriculture is largely dependent upon irrigation. OTOH the natural landscape was a permaculture before the white people got here and could convert back pretty fast. Acorn meal is edible and nutritious if bland.
The local farmers have been converting fields from row crops to walnuts for years now and with the rice and the almonds lack of food isn’t going to be a problem.
Areas south of the Tehachapi’s are doomed. In a real crisis it would be too easy to cut the water supply from the North. Urban refugees are not going to get past local farm boys with deer rifles. If you’ve never left the city you don’t have time to decide which patch of brush is natural and which holds the sniper blind. Don’t plan on leaving town in a rush if you’re urban.
Cuba converted from technological agriculture to it’s current, mostly organic, small farm practices in a very short time. More people are aware of the Cuban organic revolution than have land to practice with. Given access to land the conversion could go quickly.
People may be cursing a diet of amaranth, beets, potatoes, cabbage and collards for a few years but with access to land we should all eat just enough. Out here we’ll be buried in almonds and walnuts, YMMV.
Sharon, I’m an American living in a small town in the North of England, and I’d love to get details about what you meant by this:
“Dominant narratives will emerge, and some of them will not be productive – in fact, some of them will be downright dangerous, as in Britain where far-rightists are already using peak oil as a justification for the implementation of policies.”
Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t think peak oil is on the radar of 95% of Brits, including the far right. Transition Town folks obviously have heard of it but most people haven’t heard of that either. As for the far-right, well, the BNP did win some seats in the EU elections, but they are still a tiny minority in this country, at least as far as I can see. Could you please explain?
As someone who, until five years ago, had moved between the US and UK every few years, I can tell you where the right wing scares me more. Civil discourse appears to have completely collapsed in the States. It has not here (at least not yet). The UK even retains the infrastructure and some of the ethics necessary to rebuild communities. Beyond the small towns, I don’t see that in the US.
And if anyone wants to look at an interesting model that’s not permaculture or TT, search for Incredible Edible Todmorden (http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk).
Carol, the BNP are very aware of Peak Oil and they are proposing measures to deal with it. If they weren’t far-right racists I would actually be impressed with some of their ideas.
(I wrote an earlier comment mentioning this, but for some reason it still appears above as ‘awaiting moderation’.)
There’s a danger that the BNP hijacking of the issue will cause people to tie it to other things no-one here wants it tied to. In their own words:
When the BNP does win political power Peak Oil will not be something that we can postpone. It will be happening at the very time that we come to power. In fact it may well be an important catalyst that helps us to win political power because we are the ones talking about it now, the voters might not like us pointing out that the wolf is approaching the chicken coop but they will identify us as the ones who kept speaking about it back in 2005, bringing it to their awareness and understanding.
It’s a mistake to think that because they’re wrong and unpleasant, therefore they are stupid.
http://bnp.org.uk/peakoil/politics.htm <– for more.
Thought provoking article, and an interesting slew of comments. A quick two cents here:
First, permaculture as a set of design principles (as Edward listed) is extremely useful on any scale, and can be used for a wide range of projects. You don’t need a three week intensive to learn them, either. Many would do well to learn one or two and find an application for them, and soon.
Second, in some sense this is a debate about which language we’ll all speak. We need all of them. That sounds trite, but *REALLY*, we need people who will put into practice all odd manner of work and thinking. The more eggs we put into the transition or permaculture basket the more danger there is if we’re wrong. I’m surprised John Michael Greer’s name hasn’t come up yet; for an articulate analysis of “dissensus” I’d suggest his blog “The Archdruid Report” — particularly this essay, “Why Dissensus Matters”
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/12/why-dissensus-matters.html
There are lots of strategies to debate, and enough good arguments for many of them that in the end everyone should just PICK ONE and get moving. Talk while you work.
Finally, where I live in the northwest corner of the lower peninsula of Michigan, in a county where the Democrat side of the ticket stands empty, what I see gives me enormous hope. Old hippies, farmers, young middle class college grads, survivalists, primitive skills folks, anti-UN and anti-USDA folks — no, we don’t sit in circle together, and yes, some of them really don’t like some others of them, but usually on personality, not on principle. But come time to boil the maple sap, can the tomatoes, put up a new plant nursery or celebrate the hunt – most of the time some of them are there. There are no meetings, no clubs and no titles – just neighbors being neighborly. A good place to start, eh?
Carol, Jason covered most of what I wanted to say about the BNP, so we’ll just leave it there, but PO is very much a part of their narrative. My claim is not that the British right is more troubling than the American right, so much as they’ve actually begun a process I think is inevitable here.
Sharon
I’m in the Transition Movement…and I find it difficult to think along the lines of “lets all hold hands and be nice people”…..I’ve had to “fight my corner” personally for way too many years for me to revert back to “nice/touchy-feely person” without quite a bit of effort. But its probably good for me to have to make the effort to “revert to type” in this respect – whilst still bearing in mind that many people wont try/didnt even start from that basis at the outset…
Its a way forward though….at a time when no other paths through the gloom are visible right now. Here – in Britain – we see the idea of stock up with a year or two worth of foods and a gun to protect them…but that is a way of thinking that is totally not there in this country…doesnt even get off the starting grid. I understand it – but, some time/somewhere along the line the food and the ammunition would run out and then what…..?
So – having said that – the Transition Movement is still the best way forward currently available – so I’ll go with it and see how things work out…
Sharon: PO is very much a part of their narrative.
This is the thing, they’ve been smart about it. It makes perfect sense.
It’s all about peak representing a forced return to ‘traditional British values’, seeing as how multicultural capitalism has let us down and made us weak.
We need to get back to the old days when we had proper families, foodgrowing skills, respect for authority — and none of these unpleasant dark-skinned people.
Hmm … I learned about permaculture many years ago when someone saw my garden and said, “I see you have a permaculture garden.”
Out of curiosity, I got hold of a copy of Bill Mollison’s book and read it straight through, with great excitement. What I liked (and still like) about it was that it was a very straightforward, logical approach to obtaining food and shelter at no cost to the environment and at the lowest possible cost in terms of work. I later did a couple of workshops with Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton, and I can’t say I remember any circles or holding hands. To the contrary, both Mollison and Lawton struck me as very practical, no-nonsense people. I liked both of them a lot. In fact, most of the Australian permaculture people I’ve met are down-to-earth, practical people. I think it must be the Americans who do the circles and hand holding stuff. The few American permaculture people I’ve met were way too woo-woo for my taste. But I really haven’t met many of them.
Permaculture as presented by Mollison and Lawton is not meant to be a series of recipes to follow or already cut-to-size kits patterns that you can assemble from a kit.
Instead, it’s a way of thinking, of designing systems so each effort accomplishes more than one thing. For example, chickens and gardens: Instead of having big compost piles, I through compost materials right into the garden. In areas where I want to plant some annual vegetables, I scrape the top layers of compost off, leaving rich, friable soil crawling with insects. I move the chicken pen on top of this, and the chickens have a wonderful time eating the insects and fluffing up the soil. I live in a very hot climate where even sun-loving plants such as tomatoes appreciate light shade, so there are trees in the garden to provide shade, and other things such as berries, nuts, edible seed pods, etc. The trees provide shade for the chickens; the compost provides food for the chickens; the chickens eat weed seeds and insects and fertilize the soil with their nitrogen-rich droppings. I don’t know about a chicken greenhouse, because I’ve never had chickens in a greenhouse, except for broody hens and their chicks, whom I keep in the greenhouse for protection from snakes. But I can assure you that chickens in the garden work very well indeed.
I don’t remember seeing anything about a chicken greenhouse in Mollison’s design book or hearing about it in any of Mollison’s or Lawton’s workshops. But if there WAS something about a chicken greenhouse, I’d guess it would have been an illustration of possible ways to get the most work out of a system rather than a set of plans meant to be exactly followed regardless of where one happens to be. Obviously, things that work in a desert are not likely to work equally well in a rain forest.
To benefit from Permaculture, one has to think for oneself. If you read the article Greenpa linked to, you’ll find among the comments one by Albert Bates that illustrates a clever system he devised for chickens and straw bales. This is the sort of thing I like to see — a multi-person conversation in which one person says, “I’ve tried this and this, and it doesn’t seem to be working,” and another person says, “Well, I did it this way, and here’s what happened.” And so forth.
If asking people to think for themselves means an idea can’t go mainstream, then we’re all done for anyhow.
Hi Sharon
Great pieces, and fascinating discussions. I just wanted to alert you to the post I just put up on Transition Culture exploring some of the issues you raise. http://transitionculture.org/2009/07/03/responding-to-sharon-astyk-on-permaculture-and-transition/
With very best wishes
Rob
Like Barb, I think of permaculture in terms of a garden design, attempting to create more productivity in smaller spaces and to make sure each element accomplishes more than one function and works with the other elements. I guess I didn’t realize permaculture had a “kumbiya” quality to it. I’m attempting to grow food for the first time this year, though I grew up with parents who had veggie gardens, canned and froze produce, made pickles, heated with wood, etc. I am trying a little of everything: square-foot garden boxes, food guilds, a regular old rhubarb patch. I like the prospect of creating different zones around my rural-suburban house lot and growing something besides grass on my lawn. Perhaps it is wise to separate permaculture as social movement from permaculture as gardening technique.
This is a very productive thread that began with a discussion of how PC presents itself to the uninitiated. That, of course, is critical to its growth and insinuation into the mianstream. If we’re to avoid a dystopian future a la Octavia Butler (see my earlier post) then its all-hands-on-deck. Maybe we PC types should be posting some of this to the Permaculture mail-list but it also deserves an airing here. Please excuse me if I’m commenting on the obvious but my experience with various course presentations tells me that it’s not obvious to everybody.
Some groups in some towns need a bit of hand-holding and some circle dances. It provides emotional support some people need. Other groups are clearly put off. So, as we market PC courses, and Transition Initiative too, we’d be well advised to get a good reading on the culture of the intended audience. Sometimes this will be self selecting, as when groups request a PC course from area instructors.
In my area (Washington state, USA) there are enough prospective students to fill courses from a particular cultural melieu. In other areas where you get wide-ranging folks the cultural aspects need to be pretty bland.
Two years ago, I showed a film of the 8th Annual PC convergence in Brazil to a group that included sixty-year old, redneck ranchers as well as hip-looking youngsters from Portland, Oregon. The film was back to back with “The Story of Stuff” and followed by a discussion I moderated. This was at a renewable energy conference that tends to attract both libertarian off-grid types and members of the crunchy, bean-sprout left. The ranchers were mostly concerned with how they could take tropical PC techniques and apply it to ranching in Eastern Oregon. They just didn’t get it.
What a great opportunity for me to do my PC principles rap. So, I did. It was tough at first to get the ranchers to see that the tropical techniques were just tropical examples of permaculture principles. Midway into the discussion I realized that I was getting lots of help from long-haired, grey-bearded beatnicks with Peterbilt belt buckles and assorted peirced, tattooed, goth youngsters who did get it. Pretty soon everybody was coming up with examples of what one could do in dry-land situations and the ranchers forgot to be defensive, the goths forgot to be smug, the beatnicks smiled knowingly and we ran overtime.
The common ground turned out to be water: the pumping of it, its conservation, its storage and what was happening climate-wise. It didn’t hurt a bit that the film followed a plenary session by Oregon Secretary of State, Bill Bradbury, who did the Al Gore dog and pony on climate change and what Oregon could expect. The temperature was way over 100 F (38C) and there were no climate deniers in that un-airconditioned sale barn.
I’ll take serendipity where ever I can find it.
Tom Allen
Seattle
I followed this discussion over to Rob Hopkins’ website and now feel quite impatient about the whole thing. I do not understand the need people feel to proselytize, especially to teach something they’ve *never even seen done*! (referring to the infamous chicken greenhouse) I’m certainly glad I never spent money and time taking such courses.
I’m far more impressed by working examples, and so are my neighbors. Since I’ve started a garden in the city, the neighbors have come over to see what I’m doing, and some have started gardens of their own. I began keeping chickens (and gave away some of the eggs), and now I hear no fewer than 4 roosters crowing each morning from 4 different neighbors’ homes. This is decidedly not a white, middle class neighborhood (it’s mixed, ethnically, racially, and economically).
Just do it! People will see it and like it and want to have what you have, and you can show them how, after they ask you to. Why all the agonizing over being politically correct and so forth, over whether or not to have a circle and dance around? Who cares? Have a circle if you want to. Dance, hold hands, whatever. Or don’t.
The important thing is what works and what doesn’t work. I am not advocating pragmatism but rather a philosophy based on reasons and reality – societies in which humans can function to the limits of their potential, in which natural systems are disturbed as little as possible. Within a society based on a philosophy of reason and reality there is plenty of room for individual preferences, for dancing or not dancing.
I have always considered the social aspect of Bill Mollison’s book to be its weak point, and I find some of his stuff about patterns fairly … well, I guess the polite way to put it is that I don’t understand what the hell he’s trying to say. But far as I’m concerned that does not detract from the great design ideas, many of which are based on designs that have been successfully used for thousands of years.
With respect to weapons, which some comments have discussed, I’ve had to deal with agents of the BFTA (is that what they’re called? Bureau of Firearms, Tobacco and Alcohol, something like that) who descended on my isolated country home with weapons I could not have hoped to survive against if I had chosen to fight them. Truly, my only viable choice was to remain very calm and talk to them. (the federal gov’t spends millions of taxpayer dollars flying helicopters around looking for illegal herbs; they saw a vitex tree on my land and mistook it for an illegal herb). Weapons might protect a person or group against common criminals, but they’re no match for large groups such as police and military. In fact, I think they’re often counterproductive, except for hunting food, because they give people a false sense of security.
“… the tools to attract enough people …”
Start from the bottom. ( which you are doing )
I’m involved in a community garden. It has more than doubled in size, this year. The mix of crops and the mix of people is unbelievable.
Everyone is watching the other gardens and getting hints of what they should do or could try.
I’m going to link this article with The automatic Earth, so that the “newbies” will be able to realize that there are positive actions being taken.
jal
Sharon worries about an American version of Hezbollah, which she describes as a violent group that seeks out scapegoats.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah grew out of a political landscape where majority Muslims are kept in a minority status based on a 1936 census, while Christians enjoy more power than their numbers would allow.
Add to that the Israeli invasions and the massacres at refugee camps.
The point is, you may not like Hezbollah, but it grew out of real injustices. It defends its people and it fights Israeli incursions, and it also supports a social service network that’s not corrupted.
What does that have to do with us? Someday we may have to protect ourselves against roving marauders or a government of war and prison farms.
Hezbollah may have a few things to teach us.
Regarding the lack of diversity in our groups: I do agree that we need to be reaching out to people we don’t often talk to; but I don’t think we should be surprised that what are, after all, intellectual discussions couched in somewhat technical language don’t attract many people who haven’t had a lot of formal academic training. However, when we get beyond studying and planning, and begin seriously working to implement our Community Resilience Plans or whatever we wind up calling them, we can expect lots of able-bodied and able-minded folks who care about those aspects of our mutual survival to jump right in to the work. Even now, if you walk through the community gardens in our town, you will find the people much more diverse in various ways than the groups at our Transition study groups and planning meetings.
Do the re-skilling workshops attract more diverse participants?
[...] The backdrop I see the little drama of my life playing out against – at least as I understand it at the moment – is the unfolding “triple crunch” of economy, energy and environment, and the attendant human tragedy and tragicomedy. And, simultaneously, the burgeoning information economy, in which more voices than ever are accessible (leading perhaps to an increased awareness of our individual ability to choose and shape our own stories) as well as more ways than ever to get your own voice heard. The urgency of articulating my own standpoint in this context was crystallised for me by this recent quote from Sharon Astyk: [...]
[...] Sharon’s concerns on Casaubon’s Book about Permaculture and Transition (Part 1 and Part 2). And followed to Rob’s response at Transition [...]
From Part I:
“There are plenty of exceptions, but the predominance is of grey pony tails, yoga mats, priuses, flowered skirts and lefty bumperstickers. These are not bad things – I grew up in precisely this culture and am quite fond of it. But the absence of trucks with gun racks, right wing bumper stickers, non-white people and other signifiers of ideological is somewhat disheartening, if you are looking for a universal movement.”
An apt point, but there’s a very clear reason permaculture tends to be dominated by “leftist hippies.” It’s an inherently anti-capitalist ethic and movement (here I am using “capitalism” in its actual economic, historical and sociological sense, not in the sense of “ ‘private property’ and free enterprise”). I would like to see us being able to reach out to “right-wing folks with gun racks” (rural working-class) , but we only have so many hours in a day. It takes a lot of energy to try to convert people who are totally opposed to everything we represent (i.e. have a kneejerk reaction against anti-nationalism, eastern spirituality, emphasis on community, environmentalism, etc), and who live far away from where we live. Some people just won’t make it, and karma and Earth will sort that out.
“I’m sure some of them would, but the emphasis of many permaculturists on the language of popular therapy and summer-camp style activities designed to create consensus, build trust and visualize the sustainable future are, well a turn off for whole classes of people. They will speak to other groups – but the question of who you are speaking to is, of course, the essential one.”
This is a good point.
“I think it is important to recognize that while permaculture itself is not a leftist movement philosophically, an extended diet of bearded and ponytailed permaculture teachers and enthusiasts
making comments about the Republicans will tend to associate the movement with the politics of its public faces.”
That depends how you define “leftist.” If you mean permaculture is not in support of large centralized governments and bureaucracy, I would agree. If you mean it does not inherently call for social justice and an end to exploitation and patriarchy, I would strongly disagree. There is no sustainability without justice and cooperation, which is actually implicit in your discussion below about reaching out to marginalized groups, the homeless, etc.
“My main suggestion would be that at least in the US, Transition movements begin engaging religious communities on a serious level. I give a lot of talks at churches and synagogues and other religious communities. Many of those communities are already engaging in the nuts and bolts work of responding to an *existing* Long Emergency – they are doing the marrying and burying, the preaching of moralities, both productive and not. They run the food pantries, the battered women’s shelters, the emergency funds. They find clothing for the naked, food for the hungry and offer sanctuary and public appeals when violence breaks out. This is the nitty gritty work of responding to the crisis as it unfolds, and it must be done simultaneously with the building of the “better model.” I would argue that some of (not all) the best people to make the case for Transition to are the people who are already on the ground in our cities and towns doing the work that desperately needs more hands.”
I resoundingly agree with you on this point. Now in particular, as the economy falls apart, is a key time to begin expanding outreach to the houseless, unemployed, and working class, and everyone for that matter.
“My other suggestion is that permaculture groups seek out people who are *already* doing the work of sustainability, but don’t get any credit for it, because they are poor. Some do this, but the fact that these groups tend to be mostly made up of middle class white folks suggest to me that that asking the people who are already living in the city with no electricity, because the bill gets cut off every April, and the people who are already dumpster diving and making their livings of the waste of the city, and the people who are already stretching every resource because they have no choice, or urban farming because that’s just what you do where they come from ought to be invested in the local permaculture community. And it will not do to go among them as missionaries and teach them – let them teach you. You may have done the food stamp budget challenge one month – they’ve been doing it for years, and can tell you how to keep eating when the money runs out. I do not want to see something so valuable become the territory only of an affluent middle class who can afford to pay a few thousand bucks and take two weeks off work to take a design seminar.”
I would not say permaculture is dominated by the “affluent.” It is dominated mostly by the lower-middle class and semi-employed students; the affluent are the one group that is least likely to be involved in permaculture. Unfortunately, most of the working poor don’t have access to property on which they can grow food, but I’m sure it’s true that many permaculturists could learn a lot from them.
“The second question/critique I’d offer is this – is it possible to imagine permaculture responding successfully in situations not of peaceful exigency, of gentle shifts, but of violent ones? I think there is little doubt that some places will experience violent shifts – by this I mean war, civil or otherwise, rioting, vast increases in criminal activity and violence, and civic disruption. Some of those places may not be in the US
. Recently Rob Hopkins and Richard Heinberg made public their correspondence about whether Transition should incorporate emergency preparedness into its training and work – it was an excellent conversation, and long overdue…”
Yes, yes, and yes. There is not going to be a gentle shift. Anyone who thinks that needs to get their head out of the clouds and their eyes back on the ball. The shift will be rocky. There will be a sudden economic collapse and a lot of chaos afterward. Preparedness for this is the MOST important thing for us to be doing. If you have the cash, go to a local wholesaler and stock up on dry beans and other storable foods that don’t have weevil problems or go rancid, etc. Food can then be shared with others after system crash, and the double benefit here is that we will have a ready seed stock to plant our staple foods when the system crashes and we’re able to begin appropriating grass seed fields and public parks for growing food in ecovillage settings. The focus on “native” plants (all our plants are native to Earth) has some validity in some cases, but can be a distraction from more immediate concerns of preventing complete social breakdown, starvation, and infighting.
“The problem is lack of time – historically institutions that have done very well in tough times have been those that had something to offer people in exigency – that took up the work of dealing with the crisis. If a crisis comes before the town council or the local government is replaced by loving permaculturists, permaculturist movements must offer a compelling case that they can handle a rough transition better than existing infrastructure – that means heavy emphasis on preparedness. Religious institutions have known this – think how powerful the relief institutions and madresses of Islam, or Catholic social welfare structures have been in influencing local relationships to religious communities. Permaculture is not a religion, but it is perhaps, a faith at this stage – a faith that it has something to offer. But if tough times come rapidly and it has nothing to offer those already experiencing exigency, if its message is “wait, we’ve go the right technique, it just takes a while…” I think that permaculture will be rapidly pushed aside.”
Yes.
“I find myself wanting permaculture to succeed – there are plenty of things to like about it, particularly as an economic model. And if Transition or Permaculture can’t do enough fast enough, I’m honestly dubious that they will succeed at all. If we had world enough and time, that would be great. But the models that will help us most are the ones that can work under circumstances of enormous disruption and difficulty as well as during a smooth shift.”
Success/failure is a contrived dualism. We will succeed. The only question is what success will look like, and I do agree that we will succeed much better if we understand that systemic economic collapse is approaching, and we design our efforts accordingly.
Part II:
“Finally, I also assume one other thing – as things begin getting difficult, more alternatives, many of them probably really bad, will start emerging. The reality is all of life is about how we tell our stories. The story of peak oil and climate change, of our financial crisis are already being told by a lot of people in a lot of different ways. Dominant narratives will emerge, and some of them will not be productive – in fact, some of them will be downright dangerous, as in Britain where far-rightists are already using peak oil as a justification for the implementation of policies. There is going to be a vast grab for explanations and visions of the future.”
Yes. We need to be putting energy into outreach (door-to-door fliers, etc) to disseminate our narrative (the accurate narrative).
Clay — right on.
Per, I understand where Hezbollah arose, but Hezbollah, also bombs people who are not making incursions. But more accurately, all movements – right and left, productive and disastrous, arise, for the most part, from real suffering and real injustice. That’s not quite the point – the point is what comes out of that injustice.
Clay, I don’t think only leftist movements oppose injustice – and I admit, I’m genuinely troubled by “some people just won’t make it” – if only because frankly, I think if that’s true, some of the nonviolent eastern spirituality folks are going to be among them. As Larry Santoyo jokes, “The meek won’t inherit the earth, we’ll take it from them. That’s why they are the meek.” I don’t think the question is of “will the transitionists do the anthropological work of converting the right, or will they let them die” – I actually think that in many regions of the US the question is “will the transitionists be relevant or totally irrelevant.” If you live, say, in the American South and you can’t find away to get along with people who aren’t into eastern spirituality and non-violence, you are headed rapidly for irrelevance.
Sharon
[...] the debate raged around the web this weekend over Sharon Astyk’s posts (I & II) on Permaculture and Transition, Rob Hopkins’s response, and a wild flurry of e-mails, I was [...]
I see Permaculture as part of a broad global mindshift towards wholistic thinking. For me, this is incredibly heartening. If there is a tsunami of threats approaching, this type of thinking is also a tsunami –of spontaneous evolution in consciousness, happening with or without handholding circles.
This new type of thinking has been cropping up in many places in the world. Although not always called “permaculture,” many of the same principles are being expressed by Vinay Gupta’s designs for disaster relief; in Allan Savory’s wholistic range management, developed in Africa; in Anna Edy’s “Solviva” greenhouse designs (Anna actually built and ran a massively productive greenhouse for many years on Martha’s Vineyard using chickens as a primary heat source.); in Alternative Energy DIY appropriate tech type inventions; even in business management theory where classic top-down authoritarian structures are now considered outmoded and are being replaced by more horizontal, collaborative structures; and as is happening on the internet with wikis, social networking, cell phone “flash mobs,” and open source projects. These are examples of the new type of whole systems, collaborative thinking in action, which Bill Mollison also invented in his own earth-restorative way.
One obstacle to applying rather than just teaching permaculture is access to land and the capital needed to put systems in place. In my part of Northern California I see so much underutilized land (considered Real Estate and thus far too expensive for young people to access.) which could otherwise be 1, 2, 5 acre smallholdings for families to tend and occupy in their handbuilt natural homes –even better as co-smallholding communities, with the common land being used for the larger undertakings such as grain-growing, pond-building, or large animal grazing.
In Santa Barbara, in a “use small and slow solutions” way, a group called foodnotlawns.org is putting in and tending food gardens in place of peoples’ lawns for free in exchange for rights to the surplus produce to sell in farmers’ markets –an example of a new kind of land reform (?!)
I agree that permaculture, very dear to my heart, has to deal with its branding or image before it can effectively go mainstream. This is the brilliance of the Transition movement –its openhearted, inclusive outreaching-with-a-positive-message which is able to bring in local government et al, and really get some broad attention.
Governments also bomb innocent people. And governments train and equip their own terrorists.
If I were a cynical person I’d shrug my shoulders and say that’s how the world operates. But I’m not being cynical, I’m outraged.
My main point is: Any government that makes war on others might some day make war on its own people. We should be aware of that.
Well, I’ve gone and read both of Sharon’s postings and the comments, then I read Rob’s postings and comments, took me a while, as I haven’t got a lot of time to spend in front of a computer, too busy “doing it”. By that I mean that most of my time is spend growing food, reskilling others in my community to do likewise, organising events to raise people’s awareness of the coming challenges of peak oil, climate change, etc, going to meetings to get people organised to start creating more local resilience, meeting with other community organisations to see how we could possibly work together, meeting with local authorities, have planning meetings with the other members of our core group and much more. Because I’m one of those transitionistas and worse, I’m even a transition trainer!
I’m glad to see this discussion taking place in this way, because it is one that we have all the time amongst al lot of us working in transition. How to get more people informed, then how to get them to feel that they can actually take action to start working on their resilience and their communities’.
We basically know what we’ve got to do, but it all takes a lot of time and energy. It takes a lot of talking before you can get people to start doing stuff. There’s just no getting away from that. It can be frustrating and seem like all we do is talk, but it still seems the most acceptable way to action.
Do we have enough time? I don’t know, but what else would we do? Sit at home in solitairy despair? Wait for “them”(whoever “they” may be) to sort it for us? Every fruit tree planted, bicycle repaired, person taught how to grow food creates more resilience and will put us in a better position to weather shit hitting fans. Like Sharon, if I could see a better way of getting our communities ready, minimise the suffering and give my children a future worth living, I’d be doing that. But I don’t know of anything else that would work as fast and with as much respect for individuals and humanitairian values as the Transition process as proposed by Rob Hopkins.
I must say, as a transition trainer, I am a bit bemused by all the assumptions regarding transition training. Yes, of course we sit in a circle, duh, it is just the most practical way to see and hear everybody without getting neckache. But we don’t “hold hands”.
The main aim of the course is to get people who want to start up transtion initiatives in their locality prepared to do this in the best possible way. It’s about how to hold productive meetings, how to hold awareness raising events without banging your head on brick walls, how to give talks and presentations on the topic, how to deal with people who are scared and angry because of what you are telling them about their future and to be compassionate. We explore the transition ethos and principles so that people gain a good understanding of these. We look at what has been tried already and what worked and what didn’t, so that people don’t need to keep on making the same mistakes and can speed up the process. And yeah, sure we look at why it is so hard for people to change their ways, how we ended up on such a self destructive path and how we can keep going and not burn out. That’s the inner work that we do that seems to cause such controversy. You can get get people to change what they do without getting them willing to change their expectations, their attitudes and their thinking. To ignore that aspect of humans would just be dumb.
So that’s my twopence worth on the topic. Now I gotta go, got a lotta work to do. All the best to you all!
[...] the forum- which was Rob’s response to Sharon Astyk’s astute critique of Permaculture and Transition- the discussion covered many interesting topics and many opinions, but several people clearly had [...]
[...] the Transition movement and the Permaculture movement, both community-based networks, are the analogue of the local cells of religious groups. [...]