Listen Online
Download
Get all of the Podcasts in convenient, giant zip files
Subscribe on iTunes
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
Support the Empire
Help support the empire and get all of the podcasts in a bundle
here in the digital market at permies.
To support production of these podcasts, make a donation
here at Paul's Patreon page.
This podcast was made possible thanks to:
Dr. Hugh Gill Kultur
Eivind W. Bjørkavåg
Suleiman, Karrie, and Sasquatch
Bill Crim
anonymous
Kerry JustTooLazy
Jocelyn Campbell
Wade Luger
Sasquatch
Kyle Neath
Chris Sugg
havokeachday
Bill Erickson
Dominic Crolius
Julia Winter, world's slowest mosaic artist
G Cooper
Penny McLoughlin
Ash Jackson
Mehron Kugler
Lisa Goodspeed
Mark
Pasquale DeAngelis
Sean Benedict
Greg Martin
Rita Bliden
Dana Martin
Candace Dahlk
Keith Kuhnsman
Eric Tolbert
Ruwan Nanayakkara
Polly Jayne Smyth