00051 The Invitation of Permaculture

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems. — Mahatma Gandhi

The invitation of permaculture is to —

become intentional in your ways and manners of living,
be engaged with and aware of your surroundings — your community, your family, your ecosystem — and
commit to incorporate into your life ethics that care for the Earth, care for people, and care for the future by being aware of limits and putting surplus into circulation.

At first glance, it seems complicated, but that’s true of most skills or fields of knowledge when we initially encounter them.

Nothing in permaculture design is completely outside of your field of reference or experience. What is unique is the way that permaculture studies the process of developing human systems and structures and proposes a way that lay people, without university degrees, can become intentional about the designs of their lives, their activities, and the systems and structures that are part of their lives.

Everything you actually need to know about permaculture is within the 350 words of `00021 Hacking Permaculture <{filename}./00021.rst>`_. The other 380,000 words of iPermie are simply commentary on the themes presented in those first 350 words.

The unique contribution to humanity of Bill Mollison, David Holmgren, Dan Hemenway, Scott Pittman, Toby Hemenway, and other permaculture thinkers and teachers is to find, collect, recover, remember, synthesize, and then present cultural and ecological knowledge so that we can learn to make better decisions about how we live together on this planet.

These times require a conscious decision to invest the effort it takes to incorporate the permaculture ethics into your life. Once you make that commitment, many previously confusing situations will be clarified for you because your priorities fall into their proper order. With the ethics of people, earth, and future care first, then follows the application of those ethics to the real world situations in which you live, move, and have your being. A lifetime of permaculture learning, experience, dreaming and risk-taking opens up before you with opportunities you never before thought possible.

This will be a transformative experience for you and all you love.

Even if they never read a word about permaculture, the changes you make in your life because of your study of permaculture design will propagate waves of beauty and compassion and hope outwards from you like ripples flowing from the drop of a pebble into a pool of water.

"Hah," you’re probably thinking, "that will be the day" and will think I am letting my rhetoric run away with my imagination. And I certainly confess to using a certain amount of exaggeration in my writing. Even allowing for my sometimes florid style, the statements simply report the experience of many people who study permaculture. When you find this happening to yourself, just remember that you heard it here first. Be warned — if you don't want hope and beauty and compassion in your life, stop reading right now, because . . .

. . . Permaculture helps you design your life so you can experience more beauty, health, happiness, freedom, security, and cooperation, with less work, consumption, injustice, danger, conflict, and waste.

Through permaculture design, we can work together to increase the safety, security, well-being, and happiness of our families and communities.

Permaculture tells us to “start at your doorstep” so your own life and being is the place for you to begin.

We humans have an irresistible urge to categorize. That sometimes has its issues, but it can be a way of learning to recognize opportunities. As you look at yourself, you can perhaps recognize four aspects of your being that come together to make “you the human person.”

mind (rationality, cognition)
soul (spirit, beliefs, your personal agenda and sense of mission)
doing (your hands, your feet, physical actions involving your body)
feelings (intuition, heart, affective interior movements, emotions)

Permaculture is holistic. It’s about mind, soul, doing, and feelings! You bring together and involve your entire being in your permaculture learning plan.

What we know and don’t know.

There are certain things that we know.

We could say that there is a “sum of the total knowledge of humanity.” However big and mighty we think that might be, it pales before the “sum of the total unknown knowledge.”

We are one planet, in a small star system, on the outskirts of one galaxy, in a universe with perhaps as many as one hundred billion galaxies.

There is a lot out there that we do not know.

Throughout history, one approach to that great “cloud of unknowing” has been wisdom and intuition.

Most of our learning experiences focus on knowledge and data. Wisdom and experience are harder to get at. There isn’t a Wisdom-Wiki that we can access online when we need to find some wisdom.

"Most wisdom cannot be supported by just data. It involves working with the unknown — most of what is — not only the limited known; it must involve intuition, gut feelings, etc.; our over-emphasis on ‘evidence-based decision making’ undermines this, with predictable outcomes." — Dr. Stuart Hill

Dr. Stuart Hill is an Australian social ecologist with a deep knowledge and understanding of permaculture. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, a reporter asked for a comment. He said —

"All those who have it figured out, from whatever angle, are the problem; if the world is going to change, it will be by enough of us being willing not to know, so that a new kind of knowing might emerge."

Read more of his wisdom at http://www.stuartbhill.com/ .

Knowledge and learning could be compared to a spiral, which begins with unknowing and proceeds to learning and on to knowing. Spirals are common features in permaculture designs because they are a common natural pattern. Much more will be said about this in chapters to come.

From learning comes knowledge and from knowledge comes action.

Afterwards, we immediately spiral back to a reflection on what just happened:

What do we know?
What do we not know?
What are we doing?

This gives us an opportunity for more learning with proceeds to more knowledge. And so it comes to pass that the process repeats, over and over and over again.

This is praxis — which is action coupled with thoughtful reflection and feedback. It is an essential aspect of hacking a permaculture design for your life.

We will learn to use principles, strategies, techniques, and certain concepts, methods, processes, and patterns of design. These things are real and important building blocks of permaculture and it will be helpful for you to understand them.

But they aren’t everything when it comes to permaculture design.

Cognition and rationality are important. So are wisdom and intuition. We won’t understand permaculture design unless we can act-with-reflection (praxis) upon a full and complete (holistic) vision that brings practical evolutions to our lives, our households, and our communities.

Learning permaculture design is ultimately a matter of experiencing wisdom. As we develop our ability to understand and work with both the unknown and the known, our wisdom increases.

So it comes to pass that the invitation of permaculture is to open the door upon an ethical lifestyle that in its wisdom cares for people, cares for the planet, and has a care for the future — by being aware of limits and putting surplus into circulation.