Not even necessarily that, which is why I’m trying to push this in the direction of discussing means and ends. Your garden isn’t my problem. Clearly there’s a matter of scale here.
But the “medium is the message” still applies to other degrees. We know that gardening carries the logic and practice of agriculture, so even when permaculturalists are trying their best to make their gardens more ecologically sound, it’s still often drenched in anthropocentric thinking.
Is the garden the pathway, the end point or just a hold over until we get beyond it?
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The means-ends question is where all of the discussions between Feral Farm Matthew and I have… eh hem… ended.
My position for a couple years now has been that permaculture should be a tool toward IR HG ends, his position is that some kind of sedentary horticulture should be the end. I haven’t been swayed, so KT and I probably basically agree.
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I guess this is the question I’m getting at. Obviously the group started under the banner of permanent paleo/permaculture community and feralculture will no doubt be kind of stuck with that. Using feralculture is going to be seen as a nod to permaculture, hence the need to clarify or at least think out loud on the subject. But seeing as how there is some really entrenched emotions and connections to the subject, this is the kind of thing that will make the term either more appealing to some or less appealing to others.
I ask about this out of sincerity because I don’t see permaculture as a vital or solitary alternative. And I find that many use it simply as a “well this is our way out” kind of failsafe, but have increasingly disregarded any critique or nuance about the actual history of the DR world that horticulture creates and that permaculture, at best, hopes to attain.
I haven’t seen that, but at the same time, this is what I’ve been getting at as well. Permaculture is established and has been well before anyone was trying to sell it into Wal-Mart. My first introduction came over a decade ago by people telling me they were going to save the world by planting fig trees in their yard.
The problem isn’t that there is no one in the permaculture camp who gets the bigger picture, it’s just that there’s nothing about permaculture that necessarily lends to one direction over the other. There’s a chasm between your application of it and someone like Matthew’s, but as long as those divisions are going to be claiming a right to the use of the term, it’s just a mish-mash and one that is completely unappealing to a person like me.
Permaculture unquestionably comes from a backdrop of “permanent agriculture” and it’s not going to shed that without serious intentionality. But those waters are very, very muddy and in need of clarification if there is any use.
I get that this seems like I’m prodding an out of sight wound and beating the shit out of a dead horse, but if “feralculture” is the genesis of discussions about the direction permaculture can or should head in and a discussion about the synthesis of rewilding and things like the anarcho-primitivist critique of civilization, then it’s best to say that now then to have another discussion five years from now about whether feralculture was meant to imply permaculture or die hard rewilding.
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Could you somehow see what I was typing as I was writing it?
But does this not highlight the importance of making this distinction off the bat?
Previous discussion about endpoints including @feral1, @js290, @greenwood, et al.: Permaculture comes from permanent culture
So do you feel that this definition is still fitting:
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I don’t think it’s a good definition. It was more like a tagline to get the ball rolling.
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Fair enough, but I think the continued use of the term and the life it might get on the outside is still pretty firmly in your hands. And maybe in your trademarked usage rights too.
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It seems to me that the best of the brains behind permaculture are self-critical and adapt to new information, and those defending the agricultural interpretation are more inclined to defend an ideology fixed in the late-80s to early 2000s.
That’s just too say that I think we’re in good company by using a critiqued view of permaculture as a foundation (edit: maybe more like inspiration or influence)even if we let the term drift out of focus.
##Principles & Pathways reviewed and updated
“As ever I remain one of permaculture’s strongest internal critics in insisting that for permaculture concepts and teaching to remain relevant, it must be grounded in practical action that regenerates nature and improves the lives of ordinary and especially impoverished people. In addition, it must remain open to influence from parallel and complementary concepts, movements and ideas…” – David Holmgren, April 2015
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to @primalwar’s point though, does it matter if a small minority within a culture are critical of it?
How does the “greater public” perceive an association with permaculture?
It might be elucidating to start off with trying to define / update values in relation to permaculture rather than try to tackle the relationship to an umbrella which we’re having a hard time pinning down. https://feralculture.com/values
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I suspect that more than a small minority will be critical of our project. It’s my read that permaculture mostly isn’t on the radar of the public at large, but that many permaculture folks are more or less self-selected to be open to what we’re up to, at least on the axis of ecological concerns and value alignment.
At this point, is everyone here in agreement that permaculture is a nice idea, and that we don’t really need to define ourselves in relationship to it generally, but that it makes sense to provide some comparison somewhere so that permaculture folks will have some sort of idea about why they might want to come play with us, even if it’s in a non-mutually exclusive to permaculture way?
I would welcome further development of the articulated values.
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I think so. Except that I don’ t know what “a non-mutually exclusive to permaculture way” means. :-/
Otherwise, I got a little lost on what the question was. But FWIW, personally, I’d keep it simple with a statement like:
“The plan is to move as close to IR HG lifeways as possible. To make that feasible, in some places we may need to undertake some land restoration activities, not as lifeways but as time-limited, regenerative interventions. So if you have an interest in HG ways or in, say, permaculture or “indigenous land management” practices for restoration purposes, this might interest you.”
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Just meaning that we don’t assume the orientation of: don’t practice permaculture or you can’t play with us.
Whether we as a group, or individuals among us, like or practice permaculture, we don’t have some kind of renunciation or purity directive with respect to permaculture. Holmgren and Hemenway both practice criticism of permaculture without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Does that make it somewhat clearer?
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I like where this is going. Would you find it acceptable to, for the purpose of the public-facing communications, replace terms like “IR HG lifeways” with something less technical? …perhaps “wild human lifeways” or something along those lines?
Of course the IR HG stuff will be explained elsewhere, but it’s a lot to ask people to understand what hunter-gatherer implies, let alone Woodburn’s technical descriptions right out of the gate.
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Just personally again, I think I would, in fact, have in place some kind of purity directive, or just a clear line, if you will, in terms of “permaculture as a time-limited, restorative tool, but not as a lifeway.” The idea would be to head off potential efforts by horticulture enthusiasts to change the fundamental direction of the project.
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Of course the IR HG stuff will be explained elsewhere, but it’s a lot to
ask people to understand what hunter-gatherer implies, let alone
Woodburn’s technical descriptions right out of the gate.
Yeah, as long as there’s a pointer letting people know where to look to understand more of the detail. I mean, I would just be careful not to leave it wide open for people to interpret something like “wild human lifeways” any ol’ way they want. e.g., many Quinnians think all humans, for all time, practiced horticulture (just not “totalitarian” agriculture).
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Further clarification: I’m not talking about people on our land, but engagement with the public, and would-be participants or collaborators. I don’t think it’s helpful to set up many ideological preconditions for allies.
I agree that the project should be structured in a way so as to preclude a shift from means to end in relationship to horticultural/permacultural practice. As per Diana Leafe Christian’s work on intentional community success, I think those functions are attended to by mission statement so focused that it precludes such efforts, and a set of goals to reinforce and clarify.
I think Nassim Taleb’s anti-fragile concept is worth considering. I think most communities attempt to set up fragile or resilient structures hoping their communities will escape problems through their own uniqueness and loveliness. I think we should expect catastrophic forces, assume they will be challenged, and frame things in such a way that those challenges strengthen group cohesion.
From the website currently, and open to discussion:
###Mission:
“To create and expand a global network of community land as a living laboratory for the ethnogenesis of a renewed hunter-gatherer culture and the regeneration of landscapes necessary to support it.”
###Goals (derived from mission statement)
- To liberate land from the agricultural-industrial State system by “purchasing” properties to protect with land conservation trusts
- To shift anthropocentric lanscapes to regenerative wild ecosystems with permaculture nudges.
- To replace reliance on things and technology with earth skills.
- To remove ourselves from the commodified and industrial food systems.
- To remove ourselves from the economy based on abstract measures of value.
- To replace complex technologies with DIY tools individuals can make themselves.
- To shift human social existence from agricultural (control) norms to hunter-gatherer (play) norms.
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@samuelsycamore @alexander Lots of previous discussion on a question I think you’ve both asked. Thoughts?
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Doing some back reading. Thanks.
As @primalwar successfully rallied the immediate-return hunter-gatherer view, the conversation is a bit one-sided. That’s still the perspective I’m most attracted to, but I also realize others live in places where permaculture type things are probably required if people want to stay fixed to those places and feed themselves.
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