Steven Johnson wrote:i'm amazed that there is all this talk about managed and unmanaged lands, this is a discussion of non hierarchial paleo permaculture, right? the permaculture part expressly includes agriculture, which implicitly means managed I think, but in a way that mimics natural systems, and specifically talks about humans designing, and I would have to think, changing, and managing land, including earthworks for water and fertility retention, and planting of a wide variety of species selected for increased productivity of life, meaning food for humans and for all other forms of life. Seems like as permaculturists, even paleo anarchistic ones we would have to do some designing and implementing for continual improvement of productivity.
like Matt says, that would mean lots of horticulture which would create more habitat for animals and people and improved opportunities for hunting and gathering.
the natural systems we want to mimic are at base all hunter gatherer things, that is what animals do after all, what natural systems do.
in todays world we can't improve land like that unless we own it, but that is where the non hierarchial element comes in and what this discussion should be all about
Andrew Scott wrote:Permaculture can restore human flourishing, health, and social relationships by acting as a bridge over the chasm of agriculture to the restoration of land and lifeways for human and non-human animals... Place the highest value on Zone 5, closely followed by Zone 4, and shrinking the internal cultural values placed on Zones 3, 2, 1, and 0. This is an attempt to value hunting, fishing, and foraging over the domestication of plants and animals.
There is nothing permanent in a culture dependent on such temporaries as civilization.
www.feralfarmagroforestry.com
Matt Ferrall wrote:Sorry for any confusion.In my mind permaculture = horticulture and HG = non horticulture.
leila hamaya wrote:they certainly weren't farmers, or agriculturalists, but i thought it was extremely common that many or most tribes practiced horticulture along side foraging and hunting. combined with their ethics, to me it seemed like a superior form of horticulture than has been practiced outside of those groups.
leila hamaya wrote: i maintain that this to me seems to be the ideal, to hunt, gather and practice a horticulture which is not damaging, and instead regenerative, as well as having a sedentary dwelling....and that this can be done without hierarchy, domination, and "horticultural warfare".... respectfully. this is my opinion and my goal.
Jay C. White Cloud wrote:
leila hamaya wrote: i maintain that this to me seems to be the ideal, to hunt, gather and practice a horticulture which is not damaging, and instead regenerative, as well as having a sedentary dwelling....and that this can be done without hierarchy, domination, and "horticultural warfare".... respectfully. this is my opinion and my goal.
I will take that a step further...it is a reality. This is the way it was among many cultures, and can be done again...often in many different formats. We are lucky in these days of "easy connectivity." I am a luddite in many ways, yet will not ignore the benefits of technology and how it supports great information exchange and learning. There are many like me (us?) that may be sleeping outside year round, practicing, and/or teaching traditional life skills, yet still well connected to the "great world," and not just one intimate relationship with a singular biome.
Steven Johnson wrote:the kind of world i'd like to see is a long, long way off, .... I suggest that with a few people working together that it might be possible to sequester thousands of acres of good, and contiguous land as well as smaller nodes, and well, thousands of acres in multiple locations seem possible to me. I know this is a little different than the op and maybe should be a new thread. what does anyone think of that?
Steven Johnson wrote:current iconic images to the contrary, I believe there is a lot of evidence that hunter gathering works better in groups of people cooperating....
this idea is oppositional to our current prevailing paradigm of competition between individuals and groups so it is really this basic mind set that we need to change...
Humans, still haven't figured themselves out well enough to "pull off" most of what you are suggesting in a substantial way. We still don't really know if our base line Ethology from our primate ancestry was more like that of todays Chimpanzee (patriarchal) or that of the more loving, and compassionate (matriarchal) Bonobo behavior patterns. One lends us to a brighter future, while the other is going to take some time to overcome...I do have my suspicions of which we are more like...
leila hamaya wrote:yes i share in that confusion, i have been confused about that since we first started discussing this. apparently i have different base assumptions/ideas about these kinds of things...i do not see horticulture as being automatically hierarchical, or a bad thing. i do not see being sednetary as being a bad thing, or the cause of this. some people may be also perpetuating hierarchy, domination and other things alongside their horticulture, but i dont see them as being directly causal to one another.
...i dont think this simple horticultural role makes us any more likely to be hierarchical or domineering, just as i dont see sedentary people as being necessarily more hierarchical or warlike...
Matt Ferrall wrote:Sorry for any confusion.In my mind permaculture = horticulture and HG = non horticulture.Of course you will understand my confusion when horticulture is associated with hierarchy while simultaniously being advocated to be used in a non hierarchical focused group.I thought permaculture implied using intention in the landscape so it seems an odd way to achieve the HG ideals of non intention(taking what you want and than moving on).Olso,there is a word to describe what the above posts claim to aim for:horticulturist.The indigenous here focussed mainly on hunting,fishing,and gathering but also created other modified enviroments to enjoy greater diversity and yield so are classified as horticulturists.As you can see,its all abit confusing.
Jay C. White Cloud wrote:We still don't really know if our base line Ethology from our primate ancestry was more like that of todays Chimpanzee (patriarchal) or that of the more loving, and compassionate (matriarchal) Bonobo behavior patterns. One lends us to a brighter future, while the other is going to take some time to overcome...I do have my suspicions of which we are more like...
leila hamaya wrote:much as i would like to say we are more like the free loving bonobo, i think the answer is that we have BOTH of these kinds of natures, and then even more than this duality, a whole lot of other potentials.
Steven Johnson wrote:remember the little clip in the op talking about how easy life could be, the permaculturists were embarrassed because they didn't have to work very hard. well a lot of us have that sort of a problem. we have been living in this separatist reductionist reality all our lives and the habits of needing to justify our selves, to do something to own, earn our living, are deep, and even built into the language. I have to say that I am currently reading eiesenstiens 'the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible' and I find that I continue in many of the thought patterns that reinforce the competitive style of thinking that seem to be destroying beauty, life and ecosystems in our world.
i'm working on changing, neurolinguistic programing in progress whenever I can figure out how.
as I see it the goal of permaculture is to get to a point where we do not have to work hard at all, there is abundant beauty and life around me, and boundless opportunity for hunting and gathering.
fortunately for my current mindset, there is plenty of work to do before we get there
Thomas W. Killion, Ph. D. wrote:Concluding Remarks
In summary, I return to the central theme of this paper and to the long tenure, wide distribution, and significant potential of mixed subsistence systems in the Gulf Coast lowlands for social complexity during Late Archaic and Early Formative times. Simply stated, I argue that the rise of the Olmec and their ancestors was founded on a system of mixed subsistence practices in place in the tropical lowlands by at least the third millennium BC. Mixed subsistence based on wild and cultivated foods supported hunter-fisher-gardener populations in a variety of well-watered lowland environments. In some cases, high-population levels and complex sociopolitical organization also were possible depending, in part, on the local abundance and extent of wild and cultivated resources. Emerging economic, social, and political arrangements, underwritten by the environmental and subsistence factors forming the core of the HFG model, yielded a level of complexity generally attributed to agriculture.
There is nothing permanent in a culture dependent on such temporaries as civilization.
www.feralfarmagroforestry.com
Andrew Yansen wrote:I find it troubling how linearly the relationship between horticulture and hierarchy is being viewed here.
Andrew Yansen wrote:I also would like to speak out about the role that ideology has been playing out in this discussion, and how dangerous it can be in the context of a larger movement (the permaculture movement). The primativist ideology, like all ideologies, tends to see things in black and white, and I don't think this is a constructive way of looking at the world, especially within the context of our shared global struggle. I was deep into the primativist ideology hole until I read Ted Kaczynski's critique of John Zerzan's work (http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-the-truth-about-primitive-life-a-critique-of-anarchoprimitivism). He rips Zerzan's work apart by looking at his sources and realizing that most of what Zerzan quotes as proof of primative human's wonderfulness is no where to be found in the sources cited!
Andrew Yansen wrote:I have noticed the same thing going on in this very thread, the references to "The Art of Not Being Governed" (which I started reading after following this thread) must be to a different book than the one I picked up!
Andrew Yansen wrote:Hunter gathering and horticulture can both exist in harmony, in fact, I think you would be hard pressed to find an example of any society that explicitly practiced one or the other (barring the Inuit example). From my perspective, something as small as breaking the stems of certain plants, or staying in one place long enough to build up a concentration of seeds from food plants, would be enough to count as a form of horticulture. I would like to propose that a new term gets used to remove the charges behind the terms "HG" and "horticulturalist." For example, indigenous land management, with that term representing a whole range of possible ways of subsisting.
Andrew Yansen wrote:Primativist ideology sells the idea that simply by adopting a hunter gatherer lifestyle we will reach the optimal state of human being, and cure all of our earthly woes, but I consider that a cop out. It is a much more difficult (and in my opinion, important) task to actually form a relationship with a landbase and to form a unique culture that inhabits and takes part in that ecosystem, and that relationship will not simply fit into some linear model of (HG/non-hierarchal<--->Horticultural/Hierarchal). The ideology says that if we live as hunter gatherers that an egalitarian lifestyle will be assured and life will be gold, but the world just ain't that simple.
Matt Ferrall wrote:My own journey has found me feeling a sense of ownership over a landscape when I have put effort into its management.Since this group effort is to be a progression,how do you overcome the feelings of ownership/resposibility that might come up while practicing the horticultural compromise? It seems that management is THE direct lead into hierarchy.
Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote:The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, "This is mine," and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, how many wars, how many murders, how many misfortunes and horrors, would that man have saved the human species, who pulling up the stakes or filling up the ditches should have cried to his fellows: Be sure not to listen to this imposter; you are lost, if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong equally to us all, and the earth itself to nobody!
Samuel Bowles and Jung-Kyoo Choi wrote:Our model and simulations explain how, despite being an unlikely event, farming and a new system of farming-friendly property rights nonetheless jointly emerged when they did. This Holocene revolution was not sparked by a superior technology. It occurred because possession of the wealth of farmers—crops, dwellings, and animals—could be unambiguously demarcated and defended. This facilitated the spread of new property rights that were advantageous to the groups adopting them.
Olive Jones, Ph. D. wrote:I consider that a central underlying reason for their long-term stability is the fact that they are all owned by charitable trusts. Charitable trusts enable land to be held in perpetuity. They preclude the rights of individuals to assume ownership of any of it.
Peter Gray, Ph. D. wrote:The writings of anthropologists make it clear that hunter-gatherers were not passively egalitarian; they were actively so. Indeed, in the words of anthropologist Richard Lee, they were fiercely egalitarian.[2] They would not tolerate anyone's boasting, or putting on airs, or trying to lord it over others. Their first line of defense was ridicule. If anyone--especially if some young man--attempted to act better than others or failed to show proper humility in daily life, the rest of the group, especially the elders, would make fun of that person until proper humility was shown.
Peter Gray, Ph. D. wrote:...the theory is this. Hunter-gatherers maintained their egalitarian ethos by cultivating the playful side of their human nature.
Social play--that is, play involving more than one player--is necessarily egalitarian. It always requires a suspension of aggression and dominance along with a heightened sensitivity to the needs and desires of the other players. Players may recognize that one playmate is better at the played activity than are others, but that recognition must not lead the one who is better to lord it over the others.
Matt Ferrall wrote:The video is interesting in that is uses horticulture to defend HG with no mention of the social structure his clients formed as a result of their extensive investment is setting this up? ...I have always found this video confusing in that everything he is talking about is horticultural(modern genetics,fences and domestic animals) but he uses HG statistics.
Matt Ferrall wrote:As for 'work',I dont do any 'work' because I enjoy what I do but I stay active all day.I think this is somewhat what Fukuoka was talking about with his 'no work' method.
Matt Ferrall wrote:Landscapes are not stagnant so once established,will require management or it will revert to far less productivity.
Matt Ferrall wrote:Still though I guess I can see your point of idealising HG lifestyle while actually practicing horticultural.I hope you succeed!
"Bowles, et al. wrote:...the boundaries demarcating the four production systems that we study—hunter‐gatherer, horticultural, pastoral, and agricultural—are a matter of judgment. We employ these conventional categories because past research has suggested that these are strongly associated with different levels of equality and inequality...
Accordingly, we define hunter‐gatherer production systems as those that make no (or minimal) use of domesticated species (either plant or animal), whereas pastoralists rely primarily on the livestock that they raise for subsistence and sometimes commercial purposes. Pastoralists may farm, but the extent of land that is cultivated is constrained not by ownership rights but, rather, by labor availability. Horticulturalists are variously distinguished from agriculturalists in the use of plows and traction animals by the latter, in whether the system is labor or land limited, in commercial orientation, or in the alienability of land. A strict technologically based definition of production systems would focus on the use of plows and traction animals versus hoes. In practice, the systems analyzed here differ in terms of technology as well as in terms of the productivity, scarcity, and alienability of land. Accordingly, horticulturalists cultivate land that is plentifully available with hoes, and agriculturalists cultivate family‐owned farms with animal‐drawn plows. As subsidiary activities, horticulturalists often fish, hunt and gather, and keep livestock, whereas agriculturalists most commonly supplement their production of crops with livestock rearing. We recognize that distinctions between these production systems are necessarily somewhat arbitrary, and we stress that production systems are in no sense viewed as evolutionarily sequenced stages. They are, however, very useful for defining the broad contours of how the intergenerational transmission of their principle wealth types might be correlated with levels of inequality.
Terms like agriculture and horticulture can be problematic: as used here, agriculture (farming) denotes a primary cultural commitment to, and reliance on, domesticated plants while horticulture (gardening) reflects small-scale investment in the production and consumption of cultigens.
A cultigen (from the Latin cultus - cultivated, and gens - kind) is a plant that has been deliberately altered or selected by humans; it is the result of artificial selection. These "man-made" or anthropogenic plants are, for the most part, plants of commerce that are used in horticulture, agriculture and forestry.
There is nothing permanent in a culture dependent on such temporaries as civilization.
www.feralfarmagroforestry.com
Steven Johnson wrote:I agree, that while no one person will own the land, it must still be owned.
Matt Ferrall wrote:The only point I would question in your above response is that having no one own the land does little to alter feelings of ownership.
Matt Ferrall wrote:Ive seen folks feel ownership for others land if they have utilized it for any period of time.
Matt Ferrall wrote:Ive seen land trust communities that publicly disavow land ownership have obvious feelings of ownership as a group which I find to be identical to the usual ownership model even if they cant see it or wont admit it.The litimus test being they dont move on and tend to protect it from outside intrusion.It seems if someone were to come and do whatever they please on this land these folks would feel some sense of entitlement to deciding to allow it or not.Is there a plan in place should someone from outside this community start to intrude?It seems feelings of ownership might naturaly occur in a defensive role as well.
Gurven, et al wrote:"Horticulturalists characterized by high mobility, little storage, small group size, and interdependence are more likely to be egalitarian, similar to foraging groups..."
Gurven, et al wrote:...whereas horticulturalists that differ along these dimensions tend to display greater levels of inequality, as found among complex hunter‐gatherers. Property ownership and territoriality are more culturally explicit among horticulturalists than among many foragers, while leveling mechanisms designed to maintain egalitarianism are less evident but not absent. Accusations of witchcraft or sorcery among aggrandizers are common in horticulturalist societies. Extensive wealth accumulation and self‐aggrandizing are atypical among egalitarian horticulturalists. Craft and ritual specialists, politicians, and formal leaders are not uncommon.
Steven Johnson wrote:I believe that the essence of non-hierarchial (I might as well say anarchical) thought, is that there is not only one good way. it seems that to try and deduce the essence is an inherently hierarchial,'one way' sort of thing.
Steven Johnson wrote:
it seems to me Andrew is trying to figure a way to reduce stress between people, by avoiding farming and the inequalities that seem to go along with it.
I wonder if the inequality ideal maybe came first, and farming came along as a possible outgrowth of that. but not a required out growth.
I suspect that we could make the decision to have horticulture, even somewhat sedentarily, and still be egalitarian. Andrew just found some research saying that some people did that. Might it be that the real deciding factor in whether we fight is whether we decide we should or not?
leila hamaya wrote:i have just attempted as best i can what community i can foster, in my small way, and had some really bad experiences, along side some positive experiences. the bad experiences seem to far outweigh the good, so i am kinda burnt out on everything! ah no thats not true...i still try in my way to figure it out, see why these things dont work, how can they work, etc...and live as though the everywhere community already does exist.
Arthur Haines wrote:I personally see no irony in suggesting to people how to live, think, or act. This has happened in all cultures throughout history. Every group of people (wild, traditional, and domesticated) has a core life view that is constructed through stories, social customs, taboos, and (today) laws. People respond to this today because many laws can be seen to be influenced by lobbies that support the well-being of a small segment of the society (such as a certain gender, ethnicity, religion, political party, etc.). The customs, rules, and "laws" of indigenous people, those who were truly egalitarian, also forced a certain way of thinking. For example, I recently read an Inuit fable of a group of successful hunters who did not share their successful hunting seal hunting bounty with a woman and her children. In the story, they stopped being successful in their hunts and starved. The story served to promote the sharing of foods among the people, just like a speed limit today attempts to guide people to drive at safe speeds so other people aren't harmed. Suggesting to people a manner of thinking or eating or living, so long as it is based on good intent (i.e., isn't promoting the individual) and is backed by evidence (preferably both historical and modern forms of evidence) isn't supporting hierarchy. Cultures that have successfully lived sustainably had factors in place that did suggest ways of acting and thinking. Combined with the fact that most people have lost all touch with practices that generate and/or support health, awareness, self-reliance, community, and ecocentrism, leaving everything to anarchy* is a very unpractical approach. With all our broken traditions and practices that only serve to harm people and the environment, suggestions that are based on "good message" practices are both timely and needed.
leila hamaya wrote:i think the only way to do this is to conform to one of the major already established religions, and i cant see how that would fly. plus then it would become a religious themed IC.
Andrew Scott wrote:
keep at it. dominator culture actively seeks to destroy the social relationships of community and replace them with the economic relationships of isolation. the hundreds of thousands of years of success of egalitarian hunter-gatherers societies shows us that the difficulty is not inherent in humans, but in the accumulation of power and power's self-reinforcing mythologies.
He baked a muffin that stole my car! And this tiny ad:
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