07031 Civil Society

“People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other. — Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

Civil society is the area of human endeavor that is outside of the family, state, and the market, where people freely associate with each other in groups and organizations to advance mutual interests.

The purposes of civil society organizations can be good or bad from the viewpoint of permaculture ethics.

Civil society organizations may be repositories of social capital, mutual aid, and solidarity. By participation in such organizations, individuals magnify their voices and unite with others of like mind. Thus, civil society organizations can be important mediating institutions, that may protect individuals from the power of the state and the market, and that help individuals to communicate with the state and the market.

Civil society organizations may be instruments of social control and domination. They can enable people to oppress themselves and assist rent-seeking elites in plundering the common good for private enrichment. They can support systems of injustice and violence and drive nations toward war.

As we develop the ability to think more permaculturally, one of the processes we go through is an examination of conscience regarding our voluntary participation in civil society organizations.

Do our organizations and groups support the permaculture ethics? Or are they integral components of the system of domination, destruction, and greed which drives us toward the ash heap of history?

Is our participation consistent with the permaculture ethics?

Do we give aid and assistance to institutions that support political criminality and economic irrationality and drive environmental catastrophe?

Living in accordance with permaculture ethics is as much a matter of what we don’t do as it is what we do.

Refuse to participate — or change your participation — in civil society organizations which support the domination and destruction system.

Involve yourself with civil society organizations that act in accordance with the permaculture ethics.

Cultivate your discernment abilities to understand which is which. "By their fruits you shall know them."