This article from The Baffler, titled "Against Activism", expresses a key aspect of what I wish to address. <http://thebaffler.com/salvos/against-activism>
There is a huge problem with volunteer-driven activism. I have witnessed a great deal of focus among organizers on how to tap the energy of volunteers, but very little on how to feed the base of that energy. This is a fundamental error, in violation of Permaculture principles -Principle #2: Catch and store energy, Principle #3: Obtain a yield, Principle #5: Use and value renewable resources and services. In my small suburban garden, it has taken six years of feeding the soil before finally producing a successful vegetable harvest. Prior to this year, I have had access to substantial amounts of lambs quarters and day flowers, wild and weedy plants requiring little input and thriving in poor soils and drought conditions, but few other useful cultivated types.
There are instances when a specific campaign is both winnable and important enough to warrant depleting your base. When it comes to the longer struggle, we must cultivate our activists like we cultivate a garden.
This is also the argument for raising the minimum wage or expanding the social safety net. Sustained productivity requires feeding.
Sunday, May 1, 2016
Sunday, April 24, 2016
On extraction and restoration
Many in Permaculture view the New
Homesteading movement and other approaches to ecological restoration
as the new frontier. Within Permaculture, we are taught to think
about the Earth as the source of all wealth, and it is, but we forget
that most of the Earth’s accessible, concentrated wealth has
already been harvested, and is being stored within the bounds of
civilization and industrialism. Concentrated metal ores are almost entirely gone, and the existing mines are grinding up huge volumes of rock to obtain a scant amount of metal. Fossil aquifer levels are dropping rapidly. The soils are depleted of phosphorus and magnesium. Most of the world's forests are under assault, and the prairies are turning to dust, and on and on. The biosphere certainly has a
capacity to renew itself to a degree, but on its own terms, and its
own time frame. The task ahead of us, as humans, is to return much of our
stored wealth back into the diversity of life and our ecological
support systems.
It is easy to look at the systems at work in our world in a hierarchical way. The ecosphere is at the base of the pyramid, the industrial economy rests on top of that, and so on. In reality, the systems are best viewed as a web. They are recursive. They all feed into each other. Under the current circumstances, of course, the flow of energy is primarily unidirectional, from the biosphere and into the capitalist human economy. This imbalance is the source of our predicament and must be rectified. Those who would derive their livelihood from working with nature must understand this. We coax the Earth back to health by giving, not taking. Our own individual sustenance, and the initial feed stock for any attempt at restorative endeavors, must come, at least initially, to whatever degree is feasible, from the system that is overbalanced, not the system in decline – from the great concentration of wealth that we call civilization. To do otherwise is ineffective and counterproductive.
Toby Hemenway states that a new garden takes six years to "pop". The first five years tend to produce lackluster harvests. These gardens have large pest populations, poor water retention, and so on. I can attest to this myself. My own garden has taken exactly six years to become fertile and abundant. Most of the work that went into this garden prior to this year has been soil building and preparation - making compost, adding mulch, digging hugelkultur beds, cutting or pulling weeds, and that sort of thing. Of course I did plant vegetables and some herbs every year prior, but nothing ever produced more than a bare handful of food (the lambs quarters and dayflower are a different story). Where did all this fertility come from? biomass brought in from off-site, by and large, mostly in the form of food and yard waste. This process is well understood by most practitioners. There is a reason most Permaculturists spend the first several years on a new site planting leguminous trees and dynamic accumulators before transitioning into the fruit trees and vegetable gardens that characterize a mature site. Here I propose we look at both the biological and non-biological, physical and non-physical aspects of our work with nature in this way.
Permaculture and the ecological sciences in general, have taught us a tremendous amount about the techniques for regeneration, and that has been a significant and essential revolution in thinking, perhaps as significant as the industrial revolution. We understand the techniques, and there is a growing number of people enthusiastic about this knowledge. There is a strain of thinking that views any use of the industrial system at all as problematic, which has led to a degree of purism among the ecologically conscious. It is very understandable why, and I participated in it myself. However, the instinct at that point is to turn to the biosphere and look for ways to fulfill our needs directly from it, in ways that sidestep the industrial system entirely. My problem with this, is that, while the techniques are more benign than industrial extraction, it is still potentially extractive. I suggest that we can't simply sidestep industrialism if we hope to make the changes we need to make at the proper scale, and in the needed time frame. We have to actually turn industrialism on its head, reverse the flow, empty the coffers and return the wealth that was taken.
It is easy to look at the systems at work in our world in a hierarchical way. The ecosphere is at the base of the pyramid, the industrial economy rests on top of that, and so on. In reality, the systems are best viewed as a web. They are recursive. They all feed into each other. Under the current circumstances, of course, the flow of energy is primarily unidirectional, from the biosphere and into the capitalist human economy. This imbalance is the source of our predicament and must be rectified. Those who would derive their livelihood from working with nature must understand this. We coax the Earth back to health by giving, not taking. Our own individual sustenance, and the initial feed stock for any attempt at restorative endeavors, must come, at least initially, to whatever degree is feasible, from the system that is overbalanced, not the system in decline – from the great concentration of wealth that we call civilization. To do otherwise is ineffective and counterproductive.
Toby Hemenway states that a new garden takes six years to "pop". The first five years tend to produce lackluster harvests. These gardens have large pest populations, poor water retention, and so on. I can attest to this myself. My own garden has taken exactly six years to become fertile and abundant. Most of the work that went into this garden prior to this year has been soil building and preparation - making compost, adding mulch, digging hugelkultur beds, cutting or pulling weeds, and that sort of thing. Of course I did plant vegetables and some herbs every year prior, but nothing ever produced more than a bare handful of food (the lambs quarters and dayflower are a different story). Where did all this fertility come from? biomass brought in from off-site, by and large, mostly in the form of food and yard waste. This process is well understood by most practitioners. There is a reason most Permaculturists spend the first several years on a new site planting leguminous trees and dynamic accumulators before transitioning into the fruit trees and vegetable gardens that characterize a mature site. Here I propose we look at both the biological and non-biological, physical and non-physical aspects of our work with nature in this way.
Permaculture and the ecological sciences in general, have taught us a tremendous amount about the techniques for regeneration, and that has been a significant and essential revolution in thinking, perhaps as significant as the industrial revolution. We understand the techniques, and there is a growing number of people enthusiastic about this knowledge. There is a strain of thinking that views any use of the industrial system at all as problematic, which has led to a degree of purism among the ecologically conscious. It is very understandable why, and I participated in it myself. However, the instinct at that point is to turn to the biosphere and look for ways to fulfill our needs directly from it, in ways that sidestep the industrial system entirely. My problem with this, is that, while the techniques are more benign than industrial extraction, it is still potentially extractive. I suggest that we can't simply sidestep industrialism if we hope to make the changes we need to make at the proper scale, and in the needed time frame. We have to actually turn industrialism on its head, reverse the flow, empty the coffers and return the wealth that was taken.
Saturday, April 23, 2016
Link - "Permaculture as a Gringo Movement"
Take a look at this analysis of the class privilege inherent in much of North American permaculture, and its relationship to the third ethic. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tobias-roberts/permaculture-as-a-gringo-_b_9753212.html>
Here's a key passage from the article: "Some permaculturists argue that they need to charge $70 a book or $2000 a course to support their ongoing permaculture work and research. They may argue that maintaining an alternative, sustainable lifestyle is costly. And therein lays the problem. If living sustainably is an expensive luxury, then it is a privilege of the wealthy and affluent. Marx would be turning in his grave."
The importance of this passage can not be overstated. A sustainable lifestyle must be accessible to all people, not just a few. If it is not accessible to the bulk of humanity, than it will not be achieved. If it is not achieved, then ipso-facto, we are all doomed. This should be self-evident.
Here's a key passage from the article: "Some permaculturists argue that they need to charge $70 a book or $2000 a course to support their ongoing permaculture work and research. They may argue that maintaining an alternative, sustainable lifestyle is costly. And therein lays the problem. If living sustainably is an expensive luxury, then it is a privilege of the wealthy and affluent. Marx would be turning in his grave."
The importance of this passage can not be overstated. A sustainable lifestyle must be accessible to all people, not just a few. If it is not accessible to the bulk of humanity, than it will not be achieved. If it is not achieved, then ipso-facto, we are all doomed. This should be self-evident.
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Nasca water harvesting spirals!
My first link, <http://www.sciencealert.com/how-scientists-solved-an-ancient-peruvian-mystery-from-space> and it's actually a piece of physical Permaculture. Ancient stone spirals dug into the ground on the Nasca plain in Peru. They are very old, and impossible to date. Archaeologists had been unable to discover their purpose until now. Turns out they serve to use the wind to passively drive water out from the ground, in one of the driest places on earth. These devices follow Permaculture principles perfectly - Principle #2: catch and store energy, #3: obtain a yield, #5: use and value renewable resources and services, #6: produce no waste, #7, design from pattern to details, #11: use edges and value the marginal (think of the spiral as a great edge wound on itself). Many even still work today. Notice they are shaped into the spiral, one of the fundamental patterns found in nature.
It is hard to imagine this technology taking hold in today's society.
It is hard to imagine this technology taking hold in today's society.
Sunday, April 17, 2016
On the nature of the seed
It seems to me that those who would
launch any new enterprise would do well to consider the nature of a
seed. The ancient traditions teach that life is the blending between
information (spirit) and the material. Mother and father. Mater e
pater, in the Latinate. Matter and pattern.
Considering this, what exactly is a seed? It is a small bundle of information encased in a dense envelope of nutrients and energy, adequate to the task of building the bare framework of an organism capable of sustaining itself in the external environment, and programmed to activate when the conditions are ripe, and consume its store of energy in a pulse of rapid growth.
Considering this, what exactly is a seed? It is a small bundle of information encased in a dense envelope of nutrients and energy, adequate to the task of building the bare framework of an organism capable of sustaining itself in the external environment, and programmed to activate when the conditions are ripe, and consume its store of energy in a pulse of rapid growth.
Saturday, April 16, 2016
Introduction
Welcome, gentle reader! You have stumbled across my online repository for ideas, musings, philosophizing and theorizing. Over the coming months it is my intention to publish a grab bag of personal writings, musings, links, and hopefully conversation about social change, permaculture, and the human condition.
A little about myself is in order first, I suppose, that you may understand the context in which I write, and the assumptions I bring with me. I am a white male living in the great plains region of the United States, in a small-ish university town. I was born on the East Coast, the child of a working class immigrant and an upper middle class WASP, and moved to my current location in my early childhood. I was raised in the upper tier of the working class, with a lifestyle that was comfortable and well provided for, but far from luxurious by local standards. I graduated high school in 1999, attended university in-state and graduated with a degree in sociology.
During university, at the height of what was known as the Global Justice Movement, I became enamored with radical politics and social and environmental activism. After graduation, being the idealist I am, I chose to stay local and work on a series of half-baked grassroots projects rather than move onto graduate school like most of my classmates. This may well have been to my ultimate benefit, since I was able to avoid student loans entirely, along with the extremely weak job market for graduates in the social sciences. Nonetheless, things did not go as hoped, and nothing I worked on gained enduring traction for what in hindsight were obvious fundamental flaws, rooted in inexperience, rigid idealism, and rejection of any engagement with what I viewed, and in many ways still view, as a hopelessly corrupt system.
Several years later, no closer to success, I allowed myself to be talked into attending nursing school as a path to basic economic stability. I have worked as an LPN in a variety of environments for the past eight years, and currently seek to pursue my RN. In all that time, my interest in politics and social change has never diminished, but has deepened and systematized into a passion for permaculture and herbalism. In 2005 I began my studies in herbalism through the Dr. Christopher School of Natural Healing, and in 2010 I attended my first Permaculture Design Course under Scott Pittman. Since then I have continued my studies independently.
My current perspective thus encompasses Permaculture; the social sciences; the hard sciences of ecology and biology; a practical and experiential understanding of existing systems, in both their substantial successes and significant failures; the willingness of the radical to critically examine both the humanity and functionality of entrenched systems; commitment to a bottom-up approach to social change; philosophy and ethics; and an understanding of human health and well-being informed by the science-driven art of nursing, the holistic wisdom of traditional herbalism, and the pure sciences of sociology and ecology. It is the nexus of these diverse topics that will be the focus of this blog.
With this blog I am hoping to explore the application of permaculture and its principles to social organization, political and economic change, activism and social change, and human health and wellness. If you are unfamiliar with the three ethics and ten principles of permaculture design, they are well explained here <http://permacultureprinciples.com/principles/>. The ten principles are usually viewed as applied ecology, which they most certainly are. The application of these principles to land management is well understood, and has thus far been the primary focus of most permaculture education and permaculture projects. This is understandable and largely appropriate, for as many have pointed out already, a functioning ecology and a healthy land base is the foundation of all life including human civilization. Still, as a form of systems theory, the principles are equally applicable to human systems, both biological and social. Failure to apply these principles to social systems, I propose, has limited efforts to apply permaculture on a broad enough scale to enact the necessary changes that our times demand. Largely due to my own disappointing experiences, which in many ways parallel the large-scale failures experienced by the Left in the USA and elsewhere over recent decades, I have a strong interest in understanding why activist projects and social movements fail. It is said that we learn more through our failures than through our successes, and we on the Left, boy have we had our share of failures. It is time to learn from these failures, quickly, and find a way forward, or, to paraphrase Rosa Luxemburg, we face the prospect of a coming barbarism.
Future posts will likely take a meditative or narrative approach, rather than the more scholarly format I would prefer. Part of that is due to the way I naturally think. Part of that is simply due to a lack of time resources, largely a result of a demanding job with many 12-15 hour days. Posting will be sporadic at times. Perhaps weekly, perhaps several times a week if I stumble on relevant or interesting information. Sometimes likely less often than that. I am open to critique and to new information, and I look forward to dialoguing. Hostility and obvious trolling will not be tolerated, and will be removed without comment. That being said, please enjoy. I can't wait to get started!
A little about myself is in order first, I suppose, that you may understand the context in which I write, and the assumptions I bring with me. I am a white male living in the great plains region of the United States, in a small-ish university town. I was born on the East Coast, the child of a working class immigrant and an upper middle class WASP, and moved to my current location in my early childhood. I was raised in the upper tier of the working class, with a lifestyle that was comfortable and well provided for, but far from luxurious by local standards. I graduated high school in 1999, attended university in-state and graduated with a degree in sociology.
During university, at the height of what was known as the Global Justice Movement, I became enamored with radical politics and social and environmental activism. After graduation, being the idealist I am, I chose to stay local and work on a series of half-baked grassroots projects rather than move onto graduate school like most of my classmates. This may well have been to my ultimate benefit, since I was able to avoid student loans entirely, along with the extremely weak job market for graduates in the social sciences. Nonetheless, things did not go as hoped, and nothing I worked on gained enduring traction for what in hindsight were obvious fundamental flaws, rooted in inexperience, rigid idealism, and rejection of any engagement with what I viewed, and in many ways still view, as a hopelessly corrupt system.
Several years later, no closer to success, I allowed myself to be talked into attending nursing school as a path to basic economic stability. I have worked as an LPN in a variety of environments for the past eight years, and currently seek to pursue my RN. In all that time, my interest in politics and social change has never diminished, but has deepened and systematized into a passion for permaculture and herbalism. In 2005 I began my studies in herbalism through the Dr. Christopher School of Natural Healing, and in 2010 I attended my first Permaculture Design Course under Scott Pittman. Since then I have continued my studies independently.
My current perspective thus encompasses Permaculture; the social sciences; the hard sciences of ecology and biology; a practical and experiential understanding of existing systems, in both their substantial successes and significant failures; the willingness of the radical to critically examine both the humanity and functionality of entrenched systems; commitment to a bottom-up approach to social change; philosophy and ethics; and an understanding of human health and well-being informed by the science-driven art of nursing, the holistic wisdom of traditional herbalism, and the pure sciences of sociology and ecology. It is the nexus of these diverse topics that will be the focus of this blog.
With this blog I am hoping to explore the application of permaculture and its principles to social organization, political and economic change, activism and social change, and human health and wellness. If you are unfamiliar with the three ethics and ten principles of permaculture design, they are well explained here <http://permacultureprinciples.com/principles/>. The ten principles are usually viewed as applied ecology, which they most certainly are. The application of these principles to land management is well understood, and has thus far been the primary focus of most permaculture education and permaculture projects. This is understandable and largely appropriate, for as many have pointed out already, a functioning ecology and a healthy land base is the foundation of all life including human civilization. Still, as a form of systems theory, the principles are equally applicable to human systems, both biological and social. Failure to apply these principles to social systems, I propose, has limited efforts to apply permaculture on a broad enough scale to enact the necessary changes that our times demand. Largely due to my own disappointing experiences, which in many ways parallel the large-scale failures experienced by the Left in the USA and elsewhere over recent decades, I have a strong interest in understanding why activist projects and social movements fail. It is said that we learn more through our failures than through our successes, and we on the Left, boy have we had our share of failures. It is time to learn from these failures, quickly, and find a way forward, or, to paraphrase Rosa Luxemburg, we face the prospect of a coming barbarism.
Future posts will likely take a meditative or narrative approach, rather than the more scholarly format I would prefer. Part of that is due to the way I naturally think. Part of that is simply due to a lack of time resources, largely a result of a demanding job with many 12-15 hour days. Posting will be sporadic at times. Perhaps weekly, perhaps several times a week if I stumble on relevant or interesting information. Sometimes likely less often than that. I am open to critique and to new information, and I look forward to dialoguing. Hostility and obvious trolling will not be tolerated, and will be removed without comment. That being said, please enjoy. I can't wait to get started!
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