01051 Invisible Structure Zones

If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable. — Louis D. Brandeis

One of the useful tools of permaculture is the concept of zones.

When applied to permaculture design, we “start at our doorstep”, as Mollison advised, with Zones 1, which are your dwelling and the areas of most intensive use surrounding and including the dwelling. The zones move outwards from there, to Zone 7, which is considered wilderness.

In permaculture design, the areas closest to the doorstep — Zones 1 — are the most intensely designed aspects of the site. There are many things going on in Zone 1 and their interactions, needs, and yields must be carefully accounted for.

Zone 1 contains the areas that are under the most control of the householders. Once one gets to zone 5, a person has no control over the situation.

Applying permaculture zone concepts to invisible structures depends on the angle formed by the position and purpose of the observer.

Starting with the “doorstep” — the area closest to “home” — and going outwards from there, I find a total of 8 possible “zones” of invisible structure activity:

Zone 1: Memes

Zone 2: Habits/behaviors

Zone 3: Structures

Zone 4: Systems

Zone 5: Communities

Zone 6: Cultures

Zone 7: Peoples

Zone 8: Species

This could be read as follows:

Memes of individual human beings —

  • support habits and behaviors
  • that build structures
  • which combine into systems
  • that constitute communities
  • which create cultures
  • that become the peoples
  • who constitute our species.

We could look at it a different way, beginning at the "other end" —

Our species

  • gives rise to peoples
  • who create cultures
  • that constitute communities
  • which are combinations of systems
  • that are composed of structures
  • which are built by habits and behaviors
  • supported by memes of individual human beings.

Memes are the ideas and thoughts we carry around with us, consciously and in our subconscious. We interact with others, and others deal with us, on the basis of the memes (beliefs, ideas, thoughts) we have internalized in our thinking.

Based on the ways we think, we have habits and behaviors. We do things in certain ways. Maybe we drive large cars fast, and use a lot of gasoline. Perhaps we deliberately trash the environment and pollute. On the other hand, we could have habits of conservation and frugality, where we consciously work to heal the biosphere.

As we go about our lives, we create structures to help us do what we want and need to do. The family is such a structure, based on both biology and adoption. Other structures help us do good. They are structures of beauty, wisdom, joy, conservation, frugality, peace, and serenity. On the darker side. . . There are structures of gluttony, violence, destruction, domination, crime, covetousness, and anger that enable us to do evil and which drive unsustainability.

As a matter of both spontaneity and intentional work, structures combine into systems, such as —

  • Economics
  • Politics
  • Education
  • Science
  • Technology

Again as a matter of spontaneity and intentional work, systems become the integral components of communities, in which people, systems, and resources interact in complex and often chaotic ways.

Communities are the foundations of cultures, which unite people in large and complex structures much bigger than the individual, the family, and the community.

From there we go to peoples, which could also be known as nations, and over all is our existence as a species, Homo sapiens, “thinking person.”

How to use a zone system for invisible structures.

Permaculture design helps people make changes in their lives towards sustainability. It’s not simply a focus on the personal. Permaculture is just as applicable to larger systems as it is to a personal household. It’s one thing to say that, however, and another thing entirely to have some influence on people organized in a large system — such as the United States of America.

I can’t even imagine what that would look like and fortunately, I don’t need to know that because even if I did know it right now, there is nothing I could do about that reality. When something happens to change the United States government in a more sustainable direction, it can only occur as a result of a succession of events and happenings that creates the situation as it unfolds and progresses.

This is a journey that creates the destination.

What I need to know is: What do I do right now? What’s the next thing on my To-Do list?

Generally, major political attention focuses on our national politics. Meanwhile, municipal elections have the lowest turn-outs of voters. This is ironic, because people have more control over things and situations at their municipal government doorstep than they ever will at the national level.

Besides pointing us towards our own doorsteps, permaculture teaches us to prefer small and slow solutions and to use natural succession to achieve goals.

When you begin at your doorstep — working with the memes that animate your actions, and thus changing your habits and behaviors — you learn what works and doesn’t work.

With this knowledge, you are better positioned to make recommendations that will be useful and productive for yourself and others.

First we learn and become competent, then we can teach. This gives authenticity.

And in today’s marketplace of ideas, authenticity is worth its weight in gold.

This leads to the creation (or re-creation) of structures, systems, and communities, which can have great influence on cultures and peoples. If we don’t start at our doorstep, with our own memes and habits and behaviors, we’ll never get to a place of influence at the level of culture and people.

This focus on the individual doorstep is true even if we contemplate the resilience and sustainability needs of a metropolitan area of millions of people. The path towards sustainability and resilience for such large conglomerations is through the individual commitments of the great majority of its inhabitants to reduce the resource footprint of their individual households and enterprises.

This can’t be imposed from the top down. It must be lived from the grass-roots up. While it will be driven or constrained by circumstances, even so the initiative rests with each individual person and the household or family where he or she lives.

The path towards sustainability is paved with broadscale grassroots work, that creates hope in the midst of alienation, abundance instead of scarcity, and cooperation in place of competition. This is the way we will avoid the ash heap of history.