Notes:
Permaculture, I’ve learned, is not only a method but a philosophy, one that emphasizes the relationships among all the elements of the environment rather than its individual parts in isolation. The opposite is big-farm monoculture.
The goal in permaculture, however, is to have an almost perfectly closed system that reaches a natural maturity and sustains itself there with minimal human help.
Regardless of how viable permaculture is as a widespread farming method, it raises interesting philosophical questions. One test of the validity of a philosophy is how universally it applies.
First, the contrast between agri-business’s commodity monoculture and permaculture parallels the contrast in economic models currently – well, I wish I could say currently battling each other, but I’m afraid that one model has won. The economic monoculture, like the agricultural one, treats its place as a barren field over which profit-creating commodities are shuffled.
This whole process is called progress, and the measurement of its success is called growth. It might not be inaccurate, however, to perceive ongoing growth as metastasis and the long-term result as death, not health.
An economic environment that models permaculture would look very different. Once such a system is established, the majority of its inputs – raw materials, labor, and knowledge – would be produced locally and continue to cycle around without leaving. The town, like the garden, becomes largely self-perpetuating; the goal is stability, not growth or "progress" as ends in themselves.
(I realize that in both nature and economies, stability is an abstract concept and is really only seen on the largest of scales. Local environments are always changing. A tree falls down in a mature forest, and new life surges into the clearing to compete for the sunshine and soil; a business fails, or a new idea or invention is introduced, and economic activity boils up to take advantage of changed conditions. But on a planetary scale, healthy environments recover even after changes and settle back into a fragile but enduring balance. I don’t see our current economic system expressing either stability or balance, however, and I wonder what changes – to our thinking, our actions, and our environment – will be necessary before it does.)
Permaculturists point out that our lawns and farms require such big inputs of time, money, and energy because we are trying to keep them immature. Nature strives for maturity, and in much of our temperate farmland, that maturity means forest. Every dandelion, chicory, and mulberry – every weed – is a scout going ahead to prepare the ground for the ultimate forest. If left alone, the weeds will surrender to the red cedars, maples, hickories, beeches, or oaks that follow them. But we mow, dig out, till, or poison the scouts in an endless attempt to arrest the natural growth of our environment, to reduce the complexity and richness that would result if we left it alone. The result is topsoil degradation, pollution, changes in the water cycle, and a loss in biodiversity that affects everything from honeybees to planetary climate.
In this aspect as well I wondered if the permaculture philosophy had wider application. Are there any other areas where we spend unreasonable amounts of time, money, and energy trying to maintain an artificial immaturity?
I’m not sure if he was always right about wearing shorts or eating ice cream cones, but I still mull over what he said as I look around at all the hair dye, cosmetic surgery, implants, make-up, toupees, push-up bras, depiliation, air-brushing, and photoshopping. We spend hugely on leisure activities such as college and professional sports that are only possible or relevant to a few young people who will shortly have to quit – many of them as damaged as a leached field after monoculture farming. Even the widely accepted use of chemical and surgical means to interfere with pregnancy subverts the natural processes that we are subject to. What would our lives and our culture look like if we accepted the natural stages of maturity more gracefully?
My third thought is what spiritual applications the permaculture mindset has. If I make two columns on a piece of paper, and in the one labeled Permaculture I write sustainability, balance, stability, and maturity, what do I write in the one labeled Inner Life? Is my inner life a monoculture that constantly consumes inputs and leaves waste behind, or is it an abiding source of richness and life? Am I struggling to maintain an unnatural immaturity by selfish sensation-seeking, or are the economy and ecology of my inner life healthy, balanced, and sustainable?
Perhaps if I spent as much time on my inner life as I spend on economic speculation or gardening catalogs, I’d be better off. But I find I’m as damaged by unsustainable and artificial profit-seeking as the surrounding depressed towns and eroded farmland are. I stand in the mud and litter that the winter has left behind, surrounded by photoshopped pictures of abundance, and long for resurrection, healing, and life.
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