Periodically in my life, often when experiencing a significant challenge, I return to an examination of the Permaculture Principles and Ethics, indigenous wisdom collected in a form readily accessible by the modern person. These principles, gathered and handed down over hundreds of thousand of years, represent the basic instructions for survival of our species. I have endeavored to incorporate them into every facet of my life and I believe they are serving me well.
Right now, our nation is experiencing potentially the most significant disruption in its relatively short history. We are in the midst of events, the outcomes of which no person can predict. Many lives will be changed forever, and it looks like mostly for the worse. I have been obsessively following news outlets and trusted sources of information about unfolding events. But permaculture thinking reminds me to step back, look for patterns and to think about ways to move through these times by adapting and creatively responding.
These changes are being enacted on the stage of national politics so it is natural to frame it in terms of left/right, liberal/conservative. But through the permaculture lens we can ask ourselves how these developments align with the principles and ethics of permaculture. Furthermore, permaculture, as a design framework, orients us toward ways of responding to mitigate harms and to see challenges as opening up space for creative solutions. More importantly permaculture thinking helps us to imagine alternatives to business as usual, to explore new paths forward and help us create the conditions for the nourishing of life in the place we call home.
Periodically over the next several weeks and months I will be writing short essays relating permaculture principles and ethics to current events, how we got to this place, and what a more vibrant future could look like. I hope that these musings will provide folks with a helpful perspective and some practical actions that you can implement to navigate this period with some agency and purpose.
I will start with one of the three permaculture ethics which are Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share. The third ethic, Fair Share, encourages us to recognize that excessive accumulation of resources and wealth in the hands of one or a few threatens the health of the larger whole. It instructs us to share the surplus widely so that we all may thrive. It is no great stretch to recognize that we are now in a state of extreme disequilibrium with respect to the distribution of the surplus. Our political-economic system has been driving that imbalance for decades at an accelerating rate. What can we do to start to address this violation of the third ethic? It may seem like an impossible task, especially if you are one of the members with much less of that wealth. But in recognizing that we are many and they are few, we can see the solution in the problem: uniting for the common goal of rectifying that imbalance. So when The Peoples Union (https://jointhepeoplesunion.com/ ) calls for an economic blackout this February 28, I’m in! They ask folks not to spend money online or in big-box stores, fast food or gas, and to only buy essentials. If you must spend, be sure to support only local small businesses. I believe this is consistent with permaculture principles and ethics only if we see it as a first step toward permanently realigning our actions with our ethics. By withdrawing our support from large scale corporations and redirecting it toward our local economy as well as reducing our consumption and becoming more self-sufficient, we can start to break the stranglehold of wealth concentration on our economy and politics. They need us more than we need them!
In future essays I will look at the other ethics and principles and how they can be a guide for us in these times. For now, if you would like to explore them on your own I suggest the web-site, https://permacultureprinciples.com/. And of course there are many inspiring books covering a huge range of topics from designing a home garden to using the principles and ethics to create community governance structures. Enjoy the rabbit hole!