Non-Hierarchical Permaculture Designed Community

> ...real or wants manufactured...

Seems like "want" is always made up from experience and societal conditioning. W/the exception of physiological stuff like food, air to breath, good health (although apparently people don't really "want" good health - at least not enough to eat and exercise well and eschue poisons like tobacco, drug abuse, et all). So maybe just food and air to breath.

Is it a "want" if you never do anything or try to get it?.... Just wondering.


Rufus

Andrew Scott wrote:The very idea that wants are elevated above functional examples is part of the mythology of control culture.

For me, Permaculture means: "Hold on! While we all know what we want, we should review how we actually get it. The current way is lacking, so let's try other ways, as well, and here are some ideas: " etc'.

In other words, the point of Permaculture is in having the freedom to try different ways, so we can improve. I look at the wild tribes with much envy, indeed. Never the less, I do not wish to live with them or like they do. I want to live in my own way. The way that is reflected by my past and personal experience. I want my life to be a new adventure, and not an insistence on doing it like "they" do. I understand that you don't take it to that extreme; but, when push comes to shove, that is what it comes down to: my way, or somebody else's way.

Permaculture shows us ways to improve our lives, without changing our personal aesthetics and views, immediately. Technical ways, that are mostly without aesthetic bias (not that there's anything wrong with aesthetics.) We can create a village design & method that proposes technical solutions, without walking over anyone's feet, so to speak. A sort of calling it the "Gathering Hall" rather than the "Temple" or "Church", if we wish to keep that sort of flexibility, in any village.

We can design a village through consensus, so that no one person is utterly responsible for the results. I'm coming into the conclusion that whatever happens after the design, and how powers are organized, is not relevant for the Permaculture village design.

Earlier I brought up all that legal / schmiegal stuff not to be a cynic or naysayer . It seems that should be a part of the initial planning phase . We cannot predict all of the complications that arise when people come together in voluntary association but we can look to precedent for the most common ones . Good legal planning at the outset might act as a mediator-in-advance preventing the need for the heirarchy of courts and lawyers imposed upon you .

Bill Mollison on planning :

"Steps in total planning are roughly in priority:

1. Assess market; future; prices; potential for processing to higher value; labour; shares, legal systems; social necessities and local self-reliance needs.
2. Analyse and get advice on soils and necessary nutrients.
3. Plan ground layout and windbreak, access, and water. Detailing can follow later.
4. Plan and carry out essential earthworks.
5. Establish nursery and use selected varietal forms for new or replacement crop.
6. Commence broadscale placements with or after windbreak and nurse crop.
7. Continue by constant assessment, consultation, feedback and innovative trials. Fill niches as they evolve. "

As an aside - Bill Mollison on consensus :

"In any group endeavour, there are practical and effective, or impractical and ineffective, ways to manage a complex system. Impractical, frustrating, and time-consuming systems are those governed by large boards, assemblies, or groups (seven or more people). These "meetings" have a chairperson, agendas, proposals, votes, or use consensus, and can go on for hours. Consensus, in particular, is an endless and pointless affair, with coercion of the often silent or incoherent abstainer by a vociferous minority. Thus, decisions reached by boards, parliaments, and consensus groups either oppress some individuals (votes) or are vetoed by dissenters. In either case, we have tyranny of a majority or tyranny of a minority, and a great deal of frustration and wasted time. The way to abolish such systems is to have one meeting where the sole agenda is to vote to abolish decision meetings -- this is usually carried unanimously -- and another where a consensus is reached to abolish consensus -- this too shouldn't take long."

People are so complicated !

Wayne, you do see where Bill negates himself, right? On one hand, he says we should plan and design. On the other hand, he says that we should work without agreement among ourselves. We cannot design anything if a conflicting design is taking place!

While I do strongly agree with his criticism, I don't think that consensus is an abstract construct. We work by consensus naturally, even as children. Some children will lead, and if they choose to play soccer, then soccer it is. Those who dissent will either follow or leave, in each case, without causing any meaningful conflict. It's how we work as groups, and it's how villages and communities function in the most basic level.

Assaf Koss wrote:
For me, Permaculture means: "Hold on! While we all know what we want, we should review how we actually get it. The current way is lacking, so let's try other ways, as well, and here are some ideas: " etc'... I want to live in my own way. The way that is reflected by my past and personal experience. I want my life to be a new adventure, and not an insistence on doing it like "they" do.

With that perspective, you should be able to see that you are very likely doing it like they do, just that "they" is the civilization bestowed upon us by agriculture. I think there is a massive disconnect between wants driven by a culture built on agriculture and a hypothetical life influenced only by permaculture. It seems that viewing permaculture as a means through with we may acquire agriculturally defined ends is missing the elusive obvious.

I still get the impression you are conflating the idea of modeling the social characteristics/relationships of egalitarian hunter-gatherer (anarchist) cultures with their specific material and socio-cultural expressions.

Because it's rather long, I've made an initial attempt at describing my perspective in another thread.

Andrew Scott wrote:
With that perspective, you should be able to see that you are very likely doing it like they do, just that "they" is the civilization bestowed upon us by agriculture.

I really like your new thread about nomadic life, but I just couldn't go along with it. Naturally, I gave it thought, and tried to take what I can from it. Salvage the knowledge. Still, it just isn't an option in every situation. I live in the most devastated-by-empires land in the world. No natural forest. Great pollution. Endless war and impassable fences. Hostile deserts. Mesopotamia has had foreign empires chopping down its' trees and enslaving its' peoples, since the age of Gilgamesh and the empire of Uruk.

As long as there is conflict, or war, people can't rely on their environment. That's how tribes die-out - like the American tribes. However, those who sow seed and milk beasts, every season, can always adapt.

That's why I'm stuck with this lesser option - as long as I'm here. And it is a lesser option. A less free option. I need a more organized community, for the sake of survival. Olive oil, milk and wheat. It's all about the flexible hardy nutrition. Reliable calories.

So, I'd like to keep this thread about necessity, rather than idealism. It is a necessity to have organized communities that work with the governments that control the land, and it is necessary that we make new communities, inside this social structure, that improve on our modern miserable state of enslavement.

The goal this thread has is to discuss on how to reduce our enslavement.

We already have everything we need, technically. Permaculture isn't here to solve a lack of food or water or shelter, for modern societies. Permaculture is here to let us live more free, within the bounds that restrict us. Permaculture is a cheatsheet, for us. It's a way of gaining more freedom and self-reliance, in a state of enslavement and conflict.

If we were all nomads, then Permaculture would be meaningless.

Assaf Koss wrote: I live in the most devastated-by-empires land in the world. No natural forest. Great pollution. Endless war and impassable fences. Hostile deserts. Mesopotamia has had foreign empires chopping down its' trees and enslaving its' peoples, since the age of Gilgamesh and the empire of Uruk.

As long as there is conflict, or war, people can't rely on their environment. That's how tribes die-out - like the American tribes. However, those who sow seed and milk beasts, every season, can always adapt.

That's why I'm stuck with this lesser option - as long as I'm here. And it is a lesser option. A less free option. I need a more organized community, for the sake of survival. Olive oil, milk and wheat. It's all about the flexible hardy nutrition. Reliable calories.

So, I'd like to keep this thread about necessity, rather than idealism. It is a necessity to have organized communities that work with the governments that control the land, and it is necessary that we make new communities, inside this social structure, that improve on our modern miserable state of enslavement.

The goal this thread has is to discuss on how to reduce our enslavement.

i can dig what youre saying, we have to start where we are.
and we have to recognize that we have been living in a system of enslavement, we have to see the problems and their root causes, and have all of HIS STORY influencing us, and not influencing us positively.

but i dont see the alternative being presented as being "idealism" thats just my take on it anyway.
to me its about finding our real nature, finding alignment, which wants to be in alignment with the earth, as we ARE THE EARTH...finding the WAY of things which is actually much simpler than it seems...and from this orientation things will flow naturally into place. things become much simpler when i do see those alignments.....

i do agree with what i feel your basic premise is- set up a community with the right framework, right kind of structure and ideology behind it, and the community would then of its own accord fall into this right alignment, not needing centralized domineering leaders. this, i also feel, is a way to avoid many of the problems that commonly happen in community, the problems of incorrect understanding and exercising of power and leadership. and especially that it is taken for granted that this is- just the way it is, or the only way to go, etc. but what does tend to happen is that because people are enculturated with the values of these off balance cultures, and are so used to gross misuse and abuse of "power" (so called), they go into community thinking they can create something different and better, and only repeat those same patterns in a microcosm. and this is even the people who are living with high morals and integrity, who REALLY WANT TO CHANGE and could possibly create something truly different and much more balanced and stable.

and i was thinking on that after we were first discussing this and i was posting, then afterwards noticed your locale, especially since i had been talking about exile and exclusion, which seem to be particularly important concepts to those regions....i have known a good friend who was from isreal, he had grown up on a moshav and spent some time explaining what it was like, because i was intrigued by this community structure. previously i had been somewhat familiar with the kibbutz, but that to me seems off, especially for someone like me coming from a very different culture and having grown accustomed to a high degree of autonomy and independence.... although truly there is no where near the kind of freedom, and autonomy as what is claimed to be in america....

Assaf Koss wrote:
So, I'd like to keep this thread about necessity, rather than idealism. It is a necessity to have organized communities that work with the governments that control the land, and it is necessary that we make new communities, inside this social structure, that improve on our modern miserable state of enslavement.

The goal this thread has is to discuss on how to reduce our enslavement.

Is it idealism to model non-hierarchical human communities on 2,000,000+ years of non-hierarchical unenslaved human communities, or on zero years of non-hierarchical enslaved agricultural communities with a couple permaculture tweaks? Is there an amount of contrary evidence that might persuade you to integrate new information into your position? If not, the problem here may not be idealism, but commitment to ideology.

Assaf Koss wrote:We already have everything we need, technically. Permaculture isn't here to solve a lack of food or water or shelter, for modern societies. Permaculture is here to let us live more free, within the bounds that restrict us. Permaculture is a cheatsheet, for us. It's a way of gaining more freedom and self-reliance, in a state of enslavement and conflict.

If we were all nomads, then Permaculture would be meaningless.

Hm. I tried to make it clear that I view permaculture as an absolutely necessary step to bridge our current agricultural culture with something better for the First and Second ethics of permaculture. Further, I forward that the Second ethic is violated by attempts to design agricultural people systems into permaculture earth systems. I think this is a cultural bias that all of us indoctrinated in agriculture from birth will have a hard time thinking our way out of, and that the body of permaculture knowledge would be aided by more people thinking more deeply about it. Perhaps it wasn't articulate enough, but your recounting above does not represent my thinking.

It is not any amount of contrary evidence that I need to change my opinion. It is relevant and reliable contrary evidence; and then, even one such item. I dispute the qualities of proposed evidence.

Permaculture is not an Earth system. Permaculture is about people. Nature does its' thing just fine. We need Permaculture to integrate ourselves into nature in the best way for us. Also, old agricultural practices work in many places on the planet for many communities, even now. Rice cultivation in the east is a strong example of its' reliability.

Permaculture is just expanding our Horticultural horizons, rather than "fixing" or reinventing anything. The idea that a bunch of moral standards are the solution, and that they actually represent Permaculture, is as unacceptable as the idea that religious ethical rules are reliable. I know there is a lot of debate about the practicalities versus the moralities, but it seems rather obvious that ethical systems have failed people for millennia, while practical systems are only becoming more reliable with the advent of science.

Also, in a more relevant note to the thread itself, I feel that Permaculture is about experimentation and breaking through old ideas. If Permaculture people - the brave pioneers - won't try a Non-Hierarchical community, with all their tools, knowledge and passion, then nobody will. The hippies surely made a mess out of it, with their idealism and strict ethical notions.

Interesting account, I really find this stuff fascinating. It's a tough call. How would you engage someone like me who is good at making tough and usually effective decisions but prefers to be distant wrapped up in his own head most of the time and cannot abide constant meetings.  

eric fisher wrote:
Interesting account, I really find this stuff fascinating. It's a tough call. How would you engage someone like me who is good at making tough and usually effective decisions but prefers to be distant wrapped up in his own head most of the time and cannot abide constant meetings.  

It's funny to be reminded of this post after 5 years. Gotta love how online conversations never have to go stale.

Some community designs may plan long term to reduce regular meddling in the community's functions, with the increased risk and penalty of being slower to adapt when issues are discovered or argued about. With that said, any community that doesn't have a place for both the very social and active (usually the young) and the more isolated and thinking (usually the old) isn't wholesome and won't last into its second generation stable.