Subject: Re: Let's continue a global directory on-line...

From: Thilo Pfennig <[email-masked]>
Date: 29 Jul 1999 23:08:06 +0200

[email-masked] writes:

>     PIJ is providing a service.  It is up to them how they do it.  If you 
> took any kind of a real permaculture design course, you would know that we 
> have an ethic against competing with one another and duplicating tasks.  
>     There is no room in permaculture, in my opinion (and here is one place 
> where I suspect Bill and I agree), either for a welfare mentality where 
> people  feel ENTITLED to something or to a competitive attitude where we cut 
> at the work of others. 

This is half true. One essential point in permaculture is that every
task should be done by more than one element. I had the experience of
concurrence by the german permaculture institute. My mailinglist
(german-language) is running for years now, a year ago I had some
trouble with it while moving back from Austria to Germany. The
institute decided to make another list, so we now have two. There was
not much discussion. I did not get many answers and we did not try to
deal with this problem. THIS is in my eyes a very bad way of
concurrence in permaculture. So I would agree, if the problem is the
de-valuation of common ressources.

But I think the real problem comes with no-communication. If people do
things twice - and could do it together - so if there ar two
mailinglists and both have different people - and both have not much
discussion, that is just stupid. But if one changes the direction -
this could be a good cooperation. But that we only know if we discuss
these issues. And I don´t like the standpoint, that institutes or
organisations ARE contacted - and do not search for an open contact
themselves. Everybody has something to say. And one pc-organization is
just a bunch of people to me.

>  If there were no directory, we would not be having this 
> conversation.  Because someone is attempting one, and now is doing what they 
> must to do a good job if it. we get bitching from the non-workers.

The problem is, again, the non-communication. For instance I asked for
an update of the way to the permaculture-diplome(which I present on
may pages) on my mailing-list and got no answer. Months later the
pc-institute announced, that they have an update of the way for
pc-dimplome on their website (permakultur.de).

Well, I´m not the one who wrote the text (that was done by permacultur
austria), so I can not get credit for this. but I offered the
information freely. And others did not!

Your description is very much the inner view of those organizations,
those official instances. They are there to do their job. But there is
one thing you do not understand: Today it does not make much sense to
try to solve things with "well-armed" organisations.

Look at the people of the "open directory project". They accept help
from everyone. No one has a copyright of the work. And slowly it is
growing and it shurely will become the best source of web-links in the
future. The same thing with the free OS Linux.

If you build organizations to fulfill a special job, they tend to grab
more and more work, and costs, and people and publicity. They try to
organize their work. And at some point they begin seeing the world
in: helping their work, hindering their work. This is the point, where
is gets more and more difficult to communicate on the same basis. If
you help them it is good, if not it is not of interest or bad. But the
real bad thing is that viewpoint! 

> We don't really need the owners of the cash economy to try to undercut 
> permacutlure.  We are doing a great job of cutting ourselves down with this 
> sort of undermining.   

Who is 'ourselves'?

-- 
Thilo Pfennig 
<http://Alternativ.Net/>

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From: "Sal" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 06:53:06 -0700

"The only way we can do things fast is by making the least number of moves
in the fastest possible time, and by very rapid delegation of work to
people. There is no hope that we can get this done in the next five years if
we keep it to ourselves. Therefore I have come here to break the monopoly of
the elite alternative in America. We have got to let experts loose on the
ground. We need hundreds and hundreds of them. We don't want at any time to
patent anything or to keep any information to ourselves, not even keep our
jobs to ourselves. The time for that is gone. What we are involved in is a
cooperative, not a competitive, system. There are a very few of us operating
at this end of the system, therefore we have to act in a very efficient way
in order to create the greatest amount of change in the shortest period of
time. "

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From: Marsha Hanzi <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 13:28:16 -0300

In the same spirit as Sal writes below, I vote in favor and support of this on-line
collaborative effort.

Marsha

Sal escreveu:

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