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Podcast 495 - Big Black Book Session 2 - Part 2

posted 5 years ago

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Summary

Paul Wheaton and Alan Booker continue their review and discussion of the big black book, Bill Mollison's Permaculture - a designers' manual.

1.2 Ethics (continued)

Would it have been better if the ethics had been implicit, not explicit? Paul tries to change things from the demand side. For this, you need explicit ethics. In the Book of Eli, the antagonist believes that if he has the Bible, he can control people through faith. Any powerful tool can be reduced to dogma when written word is all they have. The people who aren't doing things first hand create cognitive dissonance, which allows dogma. Hands-on approaches keep you from reducing stuff to dogma. There is no single answer. No powerful tool is perfect. Reality intrudes on theories and keeps them from seeming perfect. Do-ers can use a tool despite the theory and dogma, and, if used wisely, get a lot done with it.

Possible to have both ethics and profit. Ethics feed the soul when you first discover permaculture, but it drives people away too. Two ways of looking at profit motive: 1 - all about short term gains; 2 - make whole systems more profitable. Sepp did this. Humans are a keystone species, but everyone/thing can benefit. Is it possible to apply the ethics and have many more people have a richer and more abundant life? Yes! Culture needs to be richer, not just us. We can do more together than apart, and community is vital, but challenging. Get 100 people to help figure out how permaculture grows beyond Mollison. Maybe throw out 20% of it along the way else our growth will be impeded and we arrive back at dogma.

Success is not just short-term profit. How do we agree how to move forward? If permaculture were only for single individuals, would be possible for only implicit ethics. But scaled up, they need to be explicit. Paul wants to arm people to defend themselves from the 'that's not permaculture' people.

Relevant Threads

"Permaculture - a designers' manual" forum

The Big Black Book - summary, reviews,and where to buy

Ethics forum

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COMMENTS:

Joshua Myrvaagnes

pollinator

Posts: 2220

Location: Massachusetts, 5a, flat 4 acres; 40" year-round fairly even

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posted 5 years ago

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This was illuminating! I recall seeing an intro of Bill Mollison's to a PDC where he laid out the ecological problems, problems with human manipulation of nature and imbalances reaching tipping points, and said you need to understand this before you can get to the part about swales and techniques. He didn't present it as joy, but just as the pill you have to swallow first before you get to the fun part. This prologue addressed ethics.

It was interesting to hear that this initially brought you joy. I think if you ever taught a PDC you could just say what you said here: this is how Bill wanted this taught, it used to give me joy, it's given me much more pain over time. And then people can learn from Bill's words and from your experience as well. That's double the value.

As for the question of whether people become productive when they are given all the money they need, it seems there's an apples-to-oranges comparison there to the Lab. You've talked about people whose parents paid for their tuition at the bootcamp so they could get them out of their house, since it was monetarily incentivized for them more than for the mission. Who's been attracted to the Lab is a different set of people in some quality from a group of people who were just living their lives and then had a contribution of money given to them in their place. It brings to mind the concept of non-doing.

Community Building 2.0: ask me about drL, the rotational-mob-grazing format for human interactions.

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Joshua Myrvaagnes

pollinator

Posts: 2220

Location: Massachusetts, 5a, flat 4 acres; 40" year-round fairly even

306

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posted 5 years ago

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The cooperation vs. watching out for ignobility conversation seems to be apples to oranges. With nature/non-human elements, there's no problem with anticooperative elements. They're always both self-interested and providing yields to the system. Only humans have a unique ability to be anticooperative.

In the big picture, it's a learned behavior rather than an innate one. I believe people are good at heart, but that doesn't mean I trust most people off the bat--they have to build that trust with me.

We also haven't had education in cooperation. There is one MBA program that includes cooperation in its degree options, according to Carl Ratner, one on the planet. Cooperative cultures around the world have been attacked and trust has been broken. It can be rebuilt, though, using slow and small solutions and recognizing the problem as the solution.

Community Building 2.0: ask me about drL, the rotational-mob-grazing format for human interactions.

Alan Booker

instructor

Posts: 108

Location: Huntsville, AL

posted 5 years ago

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Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:The cooperation vs. watching out for ignobility conversation seems to be apples to oranges. With nature/non-human elements, there's no problem with anticooperative elements. They're always both self-interested and providing yields to the system. Only humans have a unique ability to be anticooperative.

In the big picture, it's a learned behavior rather than an innate one. I believe people are good at heart, but that doesn't mean I trust most people off the bat--they have to build that trust with me.

We also haven't had education in cooperation. There is one MBA program that includes cooperation in its degree options, according to Carl Ratner, one on the planet. Cooperative cultures around the world have been attacked and trust has been broken. It can be rebuilt, though, using slow and small solutions and recognizing the problem as the solution.

Joshua, I agree that modern educational systems teach competition instead of cooperation in most cases. I have been studying how approaches like sociocracy can help people set up cooperative systems, but I haven't heard of the drL approach mentioned in your sig line. Any pointers to more information?

Executive Director and Lead Instructor, Institute of Integrated Regenerative Design

Joshua Myrvaagnes

pollinator

Posts: 2220

Location: Massachusetts, 5a, flat 4 acres; 40" year-round fairly even

306

I like...

posted 5 years ago

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Thanks Alan. They haven't put the info on the web just yet, but I can purple-moosage you a copy of the document I have written up on it. Anyone else welcome to too, they just "launched" things today for using drL in pandemic/telecommunications times.

Alan Booker wrote:

Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:The cooperation vs. watching out for ignobility conversation seems to be apples to oranges. With nature/non-human elements, there's no problem with anticooperative elements. They're always both self-interested and providing yields to the system. Only humans have a unique ability to be anticooperative.

In the big picture, it's a learned behavior rather than an innate one. I believe people are good at heart, but that doesn't mean I trust most people off the bat--they have to build that trust with me.

We also haven't had education in cooperation. There is one MBA program that includes cooperation in its degree options, according to Carl Ratner, one on the planet. Cooperative cultures around the world have been attacked and trust has been broken. It can be rebuilt, though, using slow and small solutions and recognizing the problem as the solution.

Joshua, I agree that modern educational systems teach competition instead of cooperation in most cases. I have been studying how approaches like sociocracy can help people set up cooperative systems, but I haven't heard of the drL approach mentioned in your sig line. Any pointers to more information?

Community Building 2.0: ask me about drL, the rotational-mob-grazing format for human interactions.

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