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01/23/2006
For the Masses
I seem to have kicked off a debate at Ran Prieur about what seems to be a corruption or perversion of permaculture – in the US at least. I put this down to the way corruption increases the closer you get to the centre of power and is (from my point of view in New Zealand) just one more weird story from the US. As an aside we often hear in our mainstream news an item about somebody doing something weird in the States and people just nod to each other and say; ‘Only in America’. It’s a very common phrase around here.
As for permaculture down under, I first heard about it from my Australian aunt and as an indication of how widespread it must be over there she is not a particularly radical person and doesn’t practice is it very seriously either, she’s just sort of picked up an awareness of it out of the ether. Meanwhile here in New Zealand, just like in the US, there are expensive courses available, actually there’s going to be a two week, live-in course in my town this April for only $995!. Here is a comment about this sort of thing from one of Ran’s readers:
“However the disappointment that these people feel is that they cannot sell the fruits of their permaculture for a high enough price to remain participants in civilisation.”
If I’m honest and if I were a permaculture teacher I have to admit that I’d still want to be a participant in civilisation, it is after all where my culture and family are to be found. Finding a way to detach from civilisation is a major issue for most people and I’m wary of criticising someone for not having done it well enough. Plus at the moment there’s a need for permaculture teachers to travel to help spread the word. Living in civilisation is costly, in fact going anywhere near civilisation is costly.
What we really need is a bit of creative thinking to get around the money problem that civilisation has put in our way so here’s a few examples of people trying to find a way to spread the word.
Jo Pearsall and Brian Innes, two permaculture teachers, wanting to help prepare for peak oil, realise that teaching two week courses to a handful of people each time is not going to cut it so they start the Ecoshow – a 5 day extravaganza of alternative living and permaculture, featuring stalls, lectures and hands-on classes that cover such diverse topics as; seed saving, mud house building and how to find true north. It survives by attracting mainstream people who pay a charge at the door but it seems to be almost entirely run on volunteer labour and I presume this includes many of the speakers (including David Holmgren, Geoff Lawton and Joe Polaischer). I went up last year and recorded many of them and camped out with the Wwoofers. I loved hanging out with people who are working to achieve positive change, it’s a profoundly different atmosphere to the hopelessness of mainstream society.
In my town last year we had a permaculture week with free classes and events running day and night for 9 days, and poor old Geoff Lawton who gave 4 talks and was in high demand at the Ecoshow, was dragged (willingly I should add) down to Raglan when someone (the true north guy actually) realised that he would still be in the country for our permaculture week. It ended with a discussion about how to turn one of the local parks into a food forest to provide for those on low income.
Kaiwhenua Organics; a charitable trust who see one of their main roles being to provide low/no cost permaculture courses to people on low incomes and benefits by tapping into government funding.
We also have the country’s best recycling centre here, Xtreme Waste, it achieves a massive 70% diversion from landfill, has the cheapest second shop I’ve ever seen and it’s operated according to permaculture principals.
For more of this kind of thing to happen we need people who aren’t so entangled by the demands of civilised life, people who have not only avoided the trap of trying to maintain social status but also, and this is the real trick, have freed themselves from the financial strangleholds of mortgages, rent and the need to buy food. It’s one of the reasons I’d like to start an Ecovillage – to provide a supportive environment for people who want to be active in this way. Of course it would have to be a permaculture village.
23:22 Posted in Crash | Permalink
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