00191 Accidental or Intentional?

Don't think you're on the right road just because it’s a well-beaten path. — Unknown.
  • No one is an island. No action is without consequences
  • Our inactions can be as critical (for good or for ill) as our actions.
  • Design or be designed?

Too many people lead “accidental lives.” That’s the default option of the Excess Consumption System Design. We go forward out and about without a lot of thought as to the ways and means of our daily doings. We do things because —

  • that’s the way we’ve always done things,
  • our family, our neighbors, our friends, or advertising campaigns influence us.

If we want water, we turn on the tap and out gushes pure water. If we want heat, we turn up the thermostat. If we want cool, we turn on the air conditioner. We don’t spend even a moment thinking of the context of our actions.

No one is an island. No action is without consequences.

No action exists in and of itself, by itself, without consequences. Each human action sets in motion a chain of events.

Turning on the water draws down the city water supply, which causes pumps to move more water, and purification systems to increase their activity and energy loads. Pumps and purification systems require electricity and machinery, and their maintenance and capital investment set in motion another chain of manufacturing, transportation, and energy events extending to the far corners and deep depths of the earth.

Turning up the thermostat in winter, or turning on the AC in the summer, increases the load on energy production and distribution systems. These activities require fuel, workers, resources, capital investments and maintenance, each of which sets in motion a myriad chains of far-reaching events that delve deep into the earth and stretch across the continents.

Our inactions can be as critical (for good or for ill) as our actions.

Sometimes the things we don’t do have as much, perhaps even more, impact as the things we actually do.

  • When we don’t support the supermarket standard diet, we don’t contribute to the ecological devastation it causes.
  • When we don’t conserve energy, we increase the pollution burdens on the biosphere.
  • When we don’t eat pesticided and herbicided vegetables, we protect our health and safety.
  • When we don’t eat organic and local or organic and fair-traded foods, we subsidize pollution and social injustice.

Design or be designed?

There is no option to not follow a design pattern in your life.

The question is — will you follow the default Excess Consumption System Design pattern prescribed by the invisible structures that impact us (politics — culture — economics)?

Or will you, as a matter of personal ethics, compassion, wisdom, and enlightened self-interest, develop and follow a conscious design for your ways and manners of living that cares for the Earth, cares for people, and cares for the future?

iPermie is potentially your first step toward a conscious permaculture design for your life that you will develop together with other people who are meaningful to you.

A Comment about the Chapters to Follow

In the chapters that follow, you will meet permaculture ethics, principles, concepts, methods, strategies, techniques, and tools. At first glance, it seems somewhat complicated and the question is obvious: why do we need all this stuff? That’s a fair question and it deserves an answer before we jump off the diving board into the pool and go for a permaculture swim. Here are four reasons:

We want to be systematic. We don’t want to miss anything. We want to cover all the bases, find and solve the problems, and create energy conservative and regenerative systems that operate in accordance with the permaculture ethics. We need structures to take us through the process to make sure we don’t miss anything.

We need to be holistic. We have to see the whole picture, not just the parts. The various concepts we will meet over the next few chapters help us to this. Principles, concepts, aspects, and methods help us see the whole picture.

We don’t want to reinvent the wheel or the flat tire. These design concepts embody the learned experience of permaculture communities over the past forty years and incorporate wisdom handed down over thousands of years.

We need to observe and understand nature and replicate its methods in human structures and systems. If we carefully observe and come to understand nature, it will be easier for us to replicate nature’s successes in our design work. Permaculture design offers us tools to help us do this.