Subject: RE: elitist PC?

From: John Schinnerer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 10:52:11 -0700

Aloha,

> >From: Skye <[email-masked]>
>Can we only teach Pc to those with sufficient
> >education, access to information (and maybe internet) and a wide
> >experience of concepts????
> 
Perhaps - and the others, we can learn a heck of a lot from!

In more words:

If we want to "teach," for profit, in the ways we're habituated to in
industrialized needs-based cultures, I'd say the answer is "yes."

And other questions arise...
"Sufficient education" of what kind?  Whose concepts of "education" are we
assuming, valuing?
Same questions for "information" - whose concepts, what kind, what is
"valued" or not?
Wide experience of what concepts?  Those campesinos have wide experiences
that I've never had...and that I could probably learn a lot from.  

I feel this has something to do with the "culture" that is supposedly a
component of "permaculture."  Lived culture in relation to appropriate
design action is not being attended to - not enough, anyhow.

This has been illustrated right here on this list in various ways - the
Mayan villagers asking where they'd get newspaper to mulch, posts a while
back about chicken tractors conflicting with cultural norms of never caging
animals (and the learning on the part of the "instructors" than enabled more
appropriate new designs to emerge), savannah dwellers having nothing to
mulch with but thorn-covered brush, the complete un-affordability of $40
ferrocement cisterns, the native rain forest person with deep intuitive
understandings of interconnectedness and natural patterns with no "formal"
education, etc. etc. etc.

Cultures that arise through human relatings and activities are as much
patterns of nature as those patterns that arise through plants and animals
(which includes us) growing where and how and when they do and water flowing
as it does and so on.  They need to be attended to in our designing, perhaps
more than anything else - and starting (PC style) "at our doorsteps," with
ourselves. 

> >...has anyone ever noticed that nature
> >changes and evolves???? Are we prepared to also grow and evolve -
> >Natural Succession is a basic premise of PC for me - lets try doing in
> >our organisation as well as our gardens!!
> 
Three cheers for that!

John Schinnerer

---
You are currently subscribed to permaculture as: [email-masked]
To unsubscribe send a blank email to [email-masked]