Four Ways to Break Free and Start Designing
Land — by E. Ray Gard February 23, 2013
Photo© Craig Mackintosh
In one of the first segments of the Permaculture Design Course DVDs with Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton, in addition to the massive amount of information, a few comments made by Mr. Lawton struck a chord with me. The nature of his comment, as I understood it, was that the PDC is intended to empower the course participants to go out and start designing at any and every scale. This one passing remark still stands out to me as transformational and applicable across every aspect of life that permaculture design can influence, which is all of them.
With that comment in mind, I set about making the following list of ways that I can break the momentum of being the spectator that modern life lets so many of us slide into without realizing it.
This is my list, but I hope it helps you along your path as well. Feel free to add or edit and please leave any more great suggestions in the comments below.
Comments (6)The Shifting Baseline (TED video)
Biodiversity, Society — by E. Ray Gard January 8, 2013
The more I learn about permaculture, the more I learn about the potential for not only stability in our food and water systems, but abundance. When I see the sharp difference between the future that permaculture offers and the future of scarcity that our current path seems to lead to, I have to wonder what is wrong with society’s perspective in general that it wouldn’t be searching desperately for an alternative path, like permaculture.
The video above might be part of the explanation for warped perceptions in the scientific community about the real differences between the natural world that we are destroying and the abundant world that we could reclaim.
These two quotes touch on the talk, but the video explains them more fully.
Comments (0)We transform the world, but we don’t remember it. We adjust our baseline to the new level, and we don’t recall what was there. — Daniel Pauly
Before an animal becomes extinct, it becomes rare. So you don’t lose abundant animals. You always lose rare animals. — Daniel Pauly
