Subject: Perma+culture

From: jack rowe <[email-masked]>
Date: 28 Aug 96 03:21:07 EDT

Re: personal time and permaculture

	I was sorry to hear that some folks were disappointed to see discussions
over the mailing list(s), initiated by April Sampson-Kelley, which concerned
"personal" or "social" issues as somehow being separate from "permacultural"
issues. From the many positive responses April elicited (I myself was "guilty"
of participating), I trust that this negative reaction was not the rule. On the
other hand I have long been saddened to see "spiritual" issues regularly put
down as not cogent to sustainability. I disgree wholeheartedly. At the root of
our problems as a species with material needs is, sadly, NOT a lack of technical
information or wherewithal; we as a species have been producing this commodity
copiously, to the detriment of our supplies of common sense, kindness, and
equitable socio-economic relationships, for some centuries now. 

	We need sustainable, humane soci-economic and inter-personal structures
as much as we need sustainable practices, and vice-versa. I myself am actively
involved in the technical aspects of sustainability. At the same time, there
just ain' no way the one is going to happen without the other. They are in fact
one thing and not two -- a way of relating to what is outside of ourselves, be
it a planet or a person. Further, as the road to healthy inTER-personal
relationships starts with healthy inTRA-personal relationships, treatment of the
subject of planetary healing as distinct from that of personal healing is simply
not rational or realistic. It is in fact our basic attractions to addictive
behaviors, explicit or implicit, which have lead to our planet's not feeling
safe to turn its back to us, lest we yet once more knock it over its
metaphysical head and rip it off to purchase "drugs" in the form of material
wealth beyond our needs or even rational wants, more to drown our inner unease
than to supply real outer needs (Eric Hoffer -- "You can never really get enough
of what you don't really want"). It's really, really time we begin to consider
work on ourselves and on our planet as one and the same, to acknowledge that if
we don't heal our relationships with the quiet voices within us, a whole lot of
other voices outside us are going to get awfully quiet, for an awfully long
time. What's that saying, "Extinction lasts three weeks"? Hmmm....

	Let's take up one of Mr. Mollison's more oft-ignored admonitions, and go
into the world, and be quiet and OBSERVE, and remember to focus our seeing in
both directions, inward and outward, and see what interesting native beings we
discover, what interestingly-correlative patterns we find repeated in the two
worlds, and maybe when we realize they are in fact one world for each of us,
they will both get a little safer and quieter.  Anonymous the Bolder (aka Jack)