Darren Dubois

Hi,
I finished a book last week that resonated - hard. I couldn't find a "Book" forum...
It was listed in Geoff Lawton's Friday Five. Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics: 7 Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist. (Google will get you to a nice review by The Guardian)
She makes the case that our current teaching of economics has carelessly left out the sources of wealth and depots for waste as externalities in their models. She points out that the idea that only growth will lift us toward social justice has been debunked. A new model is needed.
With lots of research and consideration a new model has appeared. It is of two concentric circles that look like a doughnut. That represents the sweet spot that humans can thrive in. The outside boundary includes measures of the capacity of our planet that sustain us. The inside circle has the measures that we strive for as happy and healthy people. She demonstrates that we are way outside of the boundaries on both sides. She advocates for a doughnut to be the shape of all tables where decisions are made so that we can strive toward balance rather than growth.
She points to using nature as a place to find examples for systems we can mimic.
It is very permacultue-ish. It's got me very excited and I want to share it.
Use your favourite Amazon link to support a friend while you're at it.

So-I poked around the forums to find out just what a gapper is supposed to be and I end up watching a video there about permaculture bricks given in California. The idea of husp became instantly imprinted into my own imagination. (From Ontario, I get to thank Polkaroo instead of Mr. Rogers)

My urge to reply comes from Paul's imaginings resonating with a recent bit of imagining that I've had rattling around in my noggin the past month.

I've been thinking that our First Nations people could be the leaders who save us all from ourselves. If we could get in touch with the fact that we are very much connected to Mother Nature we'd be in a much better place. I'm just learning bits and pieces about permaculture through exploring other topics of interest to me. But for sure - observe and interact is something that was common 400+ years ago right here in North America. I've had a deep respect for what my grade school teachers called "Indian Spirituality" ever since grade 2.

I have imagined slipping intentional community and growing food and sustainable self supplied energy and earth integrated building into the governing bodies of the First Nations communities here. I can see pockets of healthy, sustainable and (likely) prosperous communities would be a model to follow. It would be awesome if some high profile examples would lead to broader adoption of a society working within it's place in nature.

And it isn't far fetched. Young aboriginals here are searching for a connection to their heritage. There is growing demand for healthy food alternatives. Permaculture grows good food, offers better use of resources and highlights the inter connectedness of all. We have a sort of nation to nation relationship between Canada and First Nations so there's lower friction with Departments of Making You Sad. And our current government is making all the right noises about needing to try new solutions.

Again I feel a resonance.

We've imported stupid culture to the world. It would be great to find an ancient wisdom and add to it all that's been learned! Then even more can be learned and we could infect the world again.