Subject: Anger - Ecofascism

From: [email-masked] (David de Vries)
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 12:29:53 +1000

Anger - Ecofascism

Mollison's angry branding of different green groups as ecofascists had
(until this weekend) looked to me to be inflammatory and
counter-productive.  I asked myself "How can he lash out at those who
should be Pc allies?"  I had the attitude critiqued by Lee Flier:

"
>From some comments I've seen on this list and others in the PC
Activist, it appears there are a lot of people who seem to sum up the
Grumpy pattern by saying (I'm paraphrasing):  "Well, Bill Mollison
obviously has a lot of great ideas, but he's just a quaint little old man
from a different era whose social skills need refining, and WE can do
better in that arena."  It's a way of derailing what is actually a very
important part of Mollison's (and others') philosophy and is responsible
for much of his effectiveness: his anger.
"

This weekend I attended a regional "Landcare Forum".  Landcare is an
extensive, national, grassroots, volunteer organisation that does fantastic
work restoring degraded landscapes planting local trees.  To my surprise, I
discovered they can also accurately be described as ecofascists.
Q.  How can a group of green, ecologically aware, educated and motivated
people also be fascists?
A.  By being preoccupied with destruction.  Through their love for nature,
these people have developed a cult of weed hatred.  At any cost
(labour-herbicide) the weed/enemy has to destroyed.

The War on Weeds had been declared and, like other war efforts e.g. WoIraq,
WoDrugs, dissenters have to be denounced, ridiculed or ignored.

Some permaculturists would respond to this situation by saying.
"These people are on the path, they will get there eventually, you cannot
push them"

If Bill was there, I am sure he would have ignored his own advice on not
wasting your efforts with people who don't want to hear the message and
given a biting and angry critique.

Another (repressed?) option that I and a few other permies employed was to
get angry internally and snipe from the sidelines indicating there were
some unbelievers.

How dangerous are ecofascists?  Very.  "Earthcarers" are a large and
influential group.  They look set to link with herbicide companies and Govt
Ag Depts to come up with a formula for future farming:-  farms + some
native trees = ecologically sustainable farming.  Affluent countries have
set in place policies that they will be green/sustainable.  Within the next
few years these policies WILL be achieved.  Governments cannot function
without their policies in place.  A best case scenario is that the policies
will result in a dull lime-green brand of sustainability.  The worst case
scenario is that efforts in the name of sustainability will push us in the
wrong direction.

Well-meaning, concerned citizens are joining green groups whose narrow
focus may make them irrational.  In this, I would even include anti-genetic
engineering, anti-biocide, .pro-wilderness etc.  groups.  Then there are
the green grass roots groups sponsored by multinationals...  Successes by
narrow green lobbies may produce a patchwork of green and pseudo-green
policy/practise such that it will be less workable that the current
mish-mash.

Permaculture needs to loudly proclaim its identity and follow Bill's lead
to challenge
stupidity.  This will often appear angry and often get an angry response.

War on Dogma?

David

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From: Lee Flier <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 01:31:27 -0500

Excellent post David!  And this is exactly the kind of thing I was
referring to.  Too many effective "movements" end up getting completely
watered down and unable to achieve their original purpose because people
prefer "niceness" and security to combativeness and risk.  People also
prefer rigid, black-and-white answers to complex problems, and a good angry
diatribe tends to remind everyone that their dogma is not so safe. :-)

>(labour-herbicide) the weed/enemy has to destroyed.

Wow.  I had no idea this was their agenda.  They have no knowledge of the
benefits of weeds?  Where do they get this idea?

>given a biting and angry critique.

Yeah I'd say!

>A best case scenario is that the policies

Yes, and I see this happening a lot already.

>engineering, anti-biocide, .pro-wilderness etc.  groups.

Yes.  I think possibly the most dangerous groups are actually (hate to say
it because I've been involved with them before) the "wilderness
conservation" crowd.  These folks would have it that humans have no "right"
to alter the environment in ANY way.

In fact there was an article in the current PC Activist by an obviously
conscientious fellow who tried to justify some of his eco-dilemmas (read:
guilty conscience) by passing on some recently-learned information about
how Native American tribes did greatly modify their environment and as such
were maybe not so much the ecologists that we make them out to be.

Well sorry, but I just don't think humans are all that special.  All living
things modify their environments!  Some quite dramatically (whole
ecosystems, just to name one example, evolved around dams built by
beavers).  To suggest that humans need to leave the "wilderness" alone
entirely is still to deny that we have any valid place in the "natural"
world.  The way the eco-fascists frame it, humans are pretty much forced to
divide the planet into "pristine" wilderness (unoccupied and untouched by
humans) and polluting, un-ecological human settlements.  Why human survival
is necessarily damaging and other animals' survival tactics are not,
doesn't enter the question.  HOW humans can live with the land and even
change it, without being destructive of other life, doesn't enter into the
question either.  The only "compromise" is to "live as lightly on the
planet as possible".  And feel damn guilty about every footprint you leave.

This kind of "solution" is certainly never going to work for any length of
time.  Appealing to a person's guilty conscience can only get you so far.
Other animals and plants are not feeling compromised by their very
existence.  They don't question whether they have the "right" to kill other
animals for food or choke out other plants for sunlight or build dams or
spin webs or dig burrows in the ground.  Yet all of these
ecosystem-altering activities actually PROMOTE the health of other life in
the ecosystem. If any animal or plant in a stable ecosystem is not doing
its job or disappeared, the entire web of life would suffer if not
disappear altogether.

And what the eco-fascists haven't figured out yet is that this web includes
humans.  We too have our jobs to do and if we don't do them, the world will
suffer.  As it is we are definitely NOT doing our job, in fact are mostly
acting in opposition to our job - but the reaction to this on the part of
some of the green groups - namely that we should keep our mitts off the
"wilderness" altogether - is also alarming.

The fact is that none of us living knows what a "pristine" ecosystem looks
like, if by "pristine" we mean untouched by humans.  This is because humans
have occupied practically every square mile of this planet for thousands of
years.  By my definition a "pristine" ecosystem means a healthy and
abundant one, and in that regard, many humans such as Native Americans DID
actually help to contribute to that health just as the beavers and prairie
dogs do.  'Cause I hate to break it to the eco-fascists but if we just
"leave the wilderness alone" it is NOT going to end up looking like it did
five centuries ago, at least not in my part of the world where the Cherokee
and other woodland tribal groups were very much involved in the propagation
of chestnuts and oaks and berries and the stewardship of deer and turkey.

To just disregard this involvement and chalk the richness of the Eastern
woodlands of the U.S. (or wherever) to "accident" is a terrible mistake, an
extreme disservice to the people responsible (ironically since eco groups
just LOVE to romanticize indigenous peoples), and will certainly not bode
well for either the humans or the rest of the ecosystems we occupy.

Of course we can't continue to occupy the land in the way we have been.
But to suggest that we ought therefore to feel guilty about our own
existence and hold it as an ideal not to occupy land at all, is hardly an
answer.

>stupidity.  This will often appear angry and often get an angry response.

Here, here!

>War on Dogma?

Right on!  Or at the very least, expose it as dogma.  Get people to
question it.  If they still decide that's their bag, so be it.  But we
needn't just stand around and proclaim our love and solidarity with them. :-)

= Lee =

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From: Marsha Hanzi <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 12:53:36 -0800

The trouble comes when we or others continue in the  competition
paradigm "It`s us against the weeds, one of the two will win."
Competition is linear , me against you ( or  against whatever).

The cooperative paradigm ( which I think is one of the greatest 
contributions-- at least in potential! - of Permaculture) is "Me  AND
you", or "the trees AND the  weeds",  which always raises questions
about context, and other variables.  The cooperative mindset is global
and works within and with dynamic systems,  and has not so many easy
asnwers.  We must then come to ask "Why are the weeds there? " and come
to love and appreciate the role of weeds ( ane everything else) in
Nature`s scheme...

Competition provokes anger.  Cooperation provokes  ( an approximation
of!) unconditional love.  

Competition is not totally bad... A bit of competiton can be
stimulating. We  even see examples of competition in Nature between two
individuals , but the important and overriding  scheme  must be
cooperation for effective work to be done without  mutual cancelling of
energies...

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From: Lee Flier <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 01:31:27 -0500

Yeah I'd say!

Here, here!

= Lee =

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From: Marsha Hanzi <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 12:53:36 -0800