permaculture -> symbiculture -> husp

Hi Paul and All-

Thanks, Paul, for your article (and the diagram!) on husp, that you linked to, in yesterday's daily-ish email:
Paul's MakeIt Missoula HUSP Article (with ag continuum diagram!)

After reading it, I tracked back here, to better understand "What more is Paul after, that he wants to go so far beyond symbiculture, even?"
And this thread answered that for me.

So, what do I think is in the husp?
One thing I would like: an absence of the sound of machines.
Since in Paul's version of husp, there is no electricity and no plumbing, and no vehicles ON the husp, the soundscape would already be pretty natural (biologically-produced).
In my ideal, I would not be able to hear the noise of cars' tires on the pavement from nearby roads and highways.
I would not want it to be under a busy flightpath, either, although occasional planes overhead would be OK.

'Ta,
Mariamne

Hi Paul,
I've learned a lot from these forums, and appreciate this record of exploration, but until now haven't contributed. This tiered development idea has brought me out of the woodlot, so to speak. I really like it, and for what it's worth, think that you're on to something here. I imagine the symbiculture region to be the heart of the property, and the area of long-term residence: the setting of the most exciting and fulfilling endeavors. The permaculture region facilitates interaction of all sorts with those that are not long-term participants; it makes those interactions meaningful, possibly productive, and less, well, heartfelt: often an advantage. And like others, I've enjoyed thinking about the husp. I see in it a bit of lightness of heart: I'm liking this theme too, though unintentional. I simply can't read the acronym without a smile. The most precious things, we hold lightly, and though I have no noble savage illusions, it is precisely this lack of grasping which seems it's greatest strength. May this word find soil, and may it's fruit teach you the meaning.

i find this extremely interesting. though solar is the only thing i can come up with in any form that cooking would be feasable on the husp area.

something that i didnt see brought up is trade between areas. for instance pottery made by someone on the perm/symbi areas could be used by someone on the the husp area for things. of course there is baskets but what are you going to cook in a basket in a solar oven?
the other solution would be the "husp settlers" would need to be raw eaters. like vegetarian/vegan and whatever raw meats you dare eat.

bringing me to the next thought, would the husp settlers decide to trade cooked meats for things with people in the other areas or would that be not so husp?

i'm reading up on the full husp thread (: very cool.

i think personally i would be a conservative symbi...

I suspect that meat would be prepared by curing, pickling, drying and the like. In that way you could feasibly store it for a while. Of course fresh meat from healthy animals could in most cases be eaten raw. MMMMM


I was also interested to know how "Huspies" would deal with a wild fire. Let it run it's course? Fight it? How? If a fire wiped out an area for native cultures back in the day, they would move to a new place til things reestablished, right? If the Husp area were wiped out, the Huspes are kinda "outta luck". It's not like they could just keep their way of life if all the land around them is owned by others or already in some other form of use. I suppose they'd have to retreat and adapt for a while.
Just a thought

Craig Dobbelyu wrote:I suspect that meat would be prepared by curing, pickling, drying and the like. In that way you could feasibly store it for a while. Of course fresh meat from healthy animals could in most cases be eaten raw. MMMMM

yes but how to cure/pickle/dry with NO fire source at all for the whole process?
i cant think of any except maybe some very carefully made solar dehydrators. but having all your food made only one way is going to get old. at least to me it would.

*gag* on the raw meat... i like my meat well done. no raw meat going into my belly if i can help it

You could prepare meat by these methods.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_did_native_americans_preserve_their_meat

http://suite101.com/article/pemmican-food-preservation-as-practiced-by-the-plains-indians-a231705

http://ruralspin.com/2012/03/10/food-preservation-lets-talk-methods/

I am uncomfortable with all this segregation. Before you know it, the huspians will be raiding the permies for being too toxic, the permies will drive their cars through symbiland to attack the huspians, and all will be chaos and death.

Okay, so perhaps that's a little dramatic. But honestly, I think that if it were to develop organically (sorry for the pun) as opposed to segregation by number, I think we'd find that perhaps individual buildings might be classed as Permie, Symbi, or HUSP, for instance. The HUSP buildings, by definition, would not have extensive kitchens, but much simpler food storage and preparation areas, as the technology to do more complicated, energy-intensive preparation and preservation food tasks would be located in the other two types of structure. HUSP structures would likely be used for activities that don't need, well, anything, like meditation, sleep, prayer (for those however inclined), daytime child-minding and teaching (More on teaching later). Places where there is no electricity because you don't need it. Likewise, the activities that couldn't be done without electricity would occupy the Symbi buildings, and I'm sure that part of the parking lot and visitors area would have to be a bit permie, allowing for people parking their cars. Land use could follow similar patterns, except that, with cheaper and more efficient electric traction, there would be no call for fossil fuels, ergo no real reason for a giant chunk of land where it's necessary. So areas with mechanical cultivation would end up being symbi, and those that are tended with animal traction, or just grazed for maintenance, or just plain let wild would be HUSP.

I don't know if this fits within the original parameters of the idea, but it would result in function-delineated territorial lines that would result in not only more HUSP and Symbiculture, but more people making use of the lower-energy areas. To be clear, I refer to the use of high-cost energy when I say that.

I haven't heard of natural gas addressed here, or methane from whatever source for the purpose of cooking on a gas stove, though I suppose you could make a woodgas generator and feed it into a conventional gas stove, but would it be permie, symbi, or what? Personally, I like the idea of an induction range that will boil water in 90 seconds, although I do enjoy cooking with gas and would find it an adjustment to learn on anything else.

As to education, there is an idea out there, an example of which can be found in fiction in S.M. Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time series, that being that the mental faculties of peoples belonging to cultures with extensive oral histories but no written way of recording them would of necessity have developped either complex mnemonic systems to help with recall, or else they simply would have had better recall and more memory because they were constantly using them. This is not to suggest that we should do away with writing, but that perhaps we should think about drills and repetition, and about how we teach children AND adults, and perhaps that the newest of educational ideas might not be the best. One example: I have a nine-year-old little brother (he's 19.75 years younger than me) who is going through an educational system I don't even recognise. He's bright and has no problems other than motivation to do work he finds boring, but he has had none of the drill that was the norm for me, not even in handwriting. They've just hit cursive writing this year, two years later than the latest I'd ever heard of it being done. As you can guess, he and his whole class (generation?) spend their free time glued to a screen, sometimes two at once, and their handwriting, to an individual, is abysmal. Most don't know their timestables properly, have problems with arithmetic, and still feel they are given way too much work to do, though they get little enough compared to what I used to get. I'd love to know if there'd be a new take (or old one, or whatever) here. I think that if most classroom learning that didn't require electronic computation was done in a HUSP way, there would be no issues of cellphone distractions, doing internet/social network things on classroom time, or ADHD caused by unknown toxins and pollutants in the deteriorating cheap building materials.

That's my bit. If this has caused you to have ideas, I'd love to hear about them.

-CK

Chris Kott wrote:I am uncomfortable with all this segregation. Before you know it, the huspians will be raiding the permies for being too toxic, the permies will drive their cars through symbiland to attack the huspians, and all will be chaos and death.

Okay, so perhaps that's a little dramatic. But honestly, I think that if it were to develop organically (sorry for the pun) as opposed to segregation by number, I think we'd find that perhaps individual buildings might be classed as Permie, Symbi, or HUSP, for instance. The HUSP buildings, by definition, would not have extensive kitchens, but much simpler food storage and preparation areas, as the technology to do more complicated, energy-intensive preparation and preservation food tasks would be located in the other two types of structure. HUSP structures would likely be used for activities that don't need, well, anything, like meditation, sleep, prayer (for those however inclined), daytime child-minding and teaching (More on teaching later). Places where there is no electricity because you don't need it. Likewise, the activities that couldn't be done without electricity would occupy the Symbi buildings, and I'm sure that part of the parking lot and visitors area would have to be a bit permie, allowing for people parking their cars. Land use could follow similar patterns, except that, with cheaper and more efficient electric traction, there would be no call for fossil fuels, ergo no real reason for a giant chunk of land where it's necessary. So areas with mechanical cultivation would end up being symbi, and those that are tended with animal traction, or just grazed for maintenance, or just plain let wild would be HUSP.

I don't know if this fits within the original parameters of the idea, but it would result in function-delineated territorial lines that would result in not only more HUSP and Symbiculture, but more people making use of the lower-energy areas. To be clear, I refer to the use of high-cost energy when I say that.

I haven't heard of natural gas addressed here, or methane from whatever source for the purpose of cooking on a gas stove, though I suppose you could make a woodgas generator and feed it into a conventional gas stove, but would it be permie, symbi, or what? Personally, I like the idea of an induction range that will boil water in 90 seconds, although I do enjoy cooking with gas and would find it an adjustment to learn on anything else.

As to education, there is an idea out there, an example of which can be found in fiction in S.M. Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time series, that being that the mental faculties of peoples belonging to cultures with extensive oral histories but no written way of recording them would of necessity have developped either complex mnemonic systems to help with recall, or else they simply would have had better recall and more memory because they were constantly using them. This is not to suggest that we should do away with writing, but that perhaps we should think about drills and repetition, and about how we teach children AND adults, and perhaps that the newest of educational ideas might not be the best. One example: I have a nine-year-old little brother (he's 19.75 years younger than me) who is going through an educational system I don't even recognise. He's bright and has no problems other than motivation to do work he finds boring, but he has had none of the drill that was the norm for me, not even in handwriting. They've just hit cursive writing this year, two years later than the latest I'd ever heard of it being done. As you can guess, he and his whole class (generation?) spend their free time glued to a screen, sometimes two at once, and their handwriting, to an individual, is abysmal. Most don't know their timestables properly, have problems with arithmetic, and still feel they are given way too much work to do, though they get little enough compared to what I used to get. I'd love to know if there'd be a new take (or old one, or whatever) here. I think that if most classroom learning that didn't require electronic computation was done in a HUSP way, there would be no issues of cellphone distractions, doing internet/social network things on classroom time, or ADHD caused by unknown toxins and pollutants in the deteriorating cheap building materials.

That's my bit. If this has caused you to have ideas, I'd love to hear about them.

-CK

i think i quite like your points and ideas.

Thanks Kadence. As we're trying to foster a dialogue here, specifics are always encouraged. What ideas, specifically, appeal to you and why?

Also, inspired by some browsing on www.appropedia.org, I was wondering about organic waste-derived ethanol for conventional internal combustion engines. Apparently a number of small and medium-sized gasoline engines do really well for ICEs in terms of efficiency without modifications running on ethanol, but a green mechanic would be one to ask about specifics. If this is applicable to any of the three states of being, would it be permaculture, or would it straddle the border between it and symbiculture, as one could use a solar still and design a system that produces an animal feed as a byproduct of fermentation? How would one treat an ethanol fuel cell with this type of setup as a fuel source? Or, properly designed and implemented, might it be possible to use solar stills, appropriate fermenting feedstock, and ethanol fuel cells in place of batteries and traditional photovoltaics? And more importantly, would this be permaculture, or somewhere beyond?

-CK

And then there is this...
the "Pure Salvage Living" movement:

Paul, is this getting close to husp?

here's another person's quest for the future primitive

http://milesolson.net/about/

UNLEARN, REWILD: Earth skills, Ideas and Inspiration for the Future Primitive

Picture a world where humans exist, like all other living things, in balance. Where there is no separation between “human” and “wild.” Step out of your comfort zone and into a healthy, sane and truly sustainable life that is integrated with nature.

Part meditation, part ethical investigation, part hard-core survival guide, Unlearn, Rewild blends philosophy with a detailed introduction to a rich assortment of endangered traditional living skills,

I think that there are a variety of merits to the divisions. I also think that as the years pass, the organic and permaculture chunks will start to get really close to the symbiculture chunk. Due to the need for the husp chunk to be better, and that includes no fire, no electricity and no plumbing, i wonder what sorts of influence that will have on the other chunks.

Yes, but do you envision people deciding what level of energy lifestyle they prefer and just staying there and living with whatever restrictions to activity they impose, or do you think people will move from zone to zone throughout the day according to the energy necessary to do their tasks efficiently? As I opined in an earlier post, the way I would likely see myself using such a setup is to do activities that don't need fire, electricity, and plumbing, like sleep in warm weather (unless the passive solar works REALLY well in the winter) in a husp manner or in a husp zone, most food preparation in the symbiculture zone, where electricity is allowed (is fire allowed in the Symbiculture zone?), and as to permaculture, well, I downplayed it earlier, but there might be more than a parking lot and a visitors' centre. I personally see such distinctions as fitting easier into broad delineations as to how land is used.

I think that this idea might need exposition and development. I understand the reason for it (perhaps I flatter myself that I think I do), but my concern about the husp designation is twofold. First, it doesn't seem to represent a four-season approach to life. Seeing husp as a product of natural human development, the only logical way that I can see it being practical is if the culture that spawned it was seasonally nomadic, or had winter and summer homes. The summer husp home wouldn't need fire for heat, and if they migrated seasonally far enough south, they wouldn't feel the cold either. But how do they get passive solar without fire? Where do they get their glass for passive solar, or so that they don't live in the dark in the winter?

Second, and I am imagining here that the denziens of this land would have to work to eek out a living, if the restrictions put upon them by husp makes providing sufficient food for their families difficult to impossible, my concern is that it will be abandoned as a concept. If I had limited resources and needed to set up in this situation, and was only able to build one dwelling, it would, of necessity, be symbiculture (unless there's no fire there either, in which case the permaculture zone looks better all the time). If I can only build one house, I'm going to have to live in it all year long, so I'm going to need to be able to heat it. Also, if I am out tending and harvesting the food forest and harvesting my own animal food, will I have time in the day to do all that I need to do, including walking buckets of water from the well or stream into the house for washing?

Are these restrictions method-based, or results-based? What of a completely husp-sourced plumbing system, like one made of bamboo that's gravity-fed? What of the use of solar in a non-electrical context? Where do solar air/water heaters fit, considering the higher energy requirements of any glass needed as glazing? Are things made outside of husp, with inherently larger energy costs, going to be allowed inside husp? Where would biochar, the result of natural material passing through a high-energy process, fit in?

I suppose a good question to ask would be, Paul, do you see the inhabitants moving from zone to zone during a normal day, or would that be prohibited?

Good to see you back,

-CK

I think it is going to be different for each person. I think most people will never see symbiculture or husp land. There needs to be a certain level of respect to get there. I think it will take time to measure whether a person has that level of respect. So it isn't just a free-for-all where anybody can wander around whenever they want.

The buildings on husp would be wofati - so they don't need heat in the winter.

I do see people living on symbiculture having open access to the permaculture and organic lands.

I suppose there might be some people that don't give a damn about internet or cooked food. Or light at night. So they are more likely to be comfortable with husp.

Just listening to the "Getting Land" #189 podcast and was reminded of an interesting historical bit on human culture, involving sleep. In the podcast you speculate over the habits of people at night when there is no electricity. I've included the link below to the radio piece I first heard this from, but basically it has to do with "segmented sleep". Apparently it was common for people to hit the hay once it was dark for a "first sleep" and wake in the middle of the night for various activities, productive or not and then go back to bed for a "second sleep" before dawn. I imagine when awake during that window there would be very little need or desire for a lot of light. Internet would be nice but it could also be a time for simple chores or of course, sexy time. There are plenty of resources a Google click away on this topic (not just sexy time). All in all it relates back to time management. I struggle myself with accomplishing all of the projects in my head because I have no real control over my schedule working in the system. Once out of the system ones day can be shaped in a whole new light... or dark.

webpage

As I sat and reflected on what has been written here and in the other thread about HUSP what percolated to the top of my noggin was that in essence HUSP holds central the notion that the HUSP area be shown the greatest respect possible at all times. I am struggling with being able to maintain this very high level of respect and adding horticulture to the mix. Anything that involves the active cultivation of the area seems to add the element of "how much should I make nature my bitch?"

Paul, what do you think about this....keep HUSP as an area that we can go in as human animals and interact with nature as much as possible as the natural animal that we are. Not seperate and above nature, but part of it. No tools, natural fiber clothing or clothing optional (dear god please people wear clothes or leaves covering the bits) all that goes in is as you described, and then surround the HUSP area with symbiculture....and as much as possible surround symbiculture with permaculture. This way you could end up with a "distillation" effect coming into an area that is in symbiosis with the area surrounding it only to the degree that nature decides, not man. Seeds from the symbiculture area would come in on the breeze or on the foot, or in the faeces of the animals that enter. Those that nature decides will take root, those that don't were not meant to be there. That way when humans enter the area they are choosing to be one with it without the dominion over the area. The distillation of the phiolsohpy travels with them as they move through the zones. They enter and eat what is growing there, raw and as natural as could be.

It sounds like a place for, and of, the future, a place that we have been...long ago. A place where our humanity and all of our connections to that which is around, and in, us can be acknowledged and celebrated.

To me this sounds both beautiful and doable. Just thoughts.

I love your thought games.

Mahsi cho.

bump

Tyler,

I like the idea that there are a thousand places across the US that are doing something similar to this project where they have "organic; ten times better than organic; 100 times better than organic; 1000 times better than organic" and what "better" means is slightly different for each of the thousand places.

While I have some ideas on what I want the fourth section to be like, I have much stronger ideas that those ideas will evolve over the years. After all, the fourth section is SUPPOSED to be an ideal that is so extreme that it is difficult to work with. Something that will challenge us.

At this time, I can imagine some people living there. I can see us introducing seed there. I can see people nurturing that space with seed and soil.

paul wheaton wrote:
husp

- zero paint allowed
- no plastics
- no galvanized stuff
- stainless steel and glass are okay
- no electricity
- no plumbing
- nothing is ever burned (no fire, no candles)

No fire, no steel.