13031 Walk Your Talk
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. — Henry David Thoreau
Having written the design, now comes the fun part — living your design!
Yes it’s true. This work you’ve been doing isn’t just an intellectual exercise. It’s purpose is to help you live an authentic life that cares for people, cares for the planet, and cares for the future by being aware of limits and putting surplus into circulation.
Community is the make or break issue. Maybe you can live a permacultural life all by yourself but that’s not the way to bet your cards.
Just as we learn permaculture better in a community of support, we will live better, more sustainable lives, in the context of a community of support, interdependence, and understanding. When the going gets rough, the tough may get going. The way to win through the rough times is through community. That’s the essential difference between the Unplugged story and other such ideas for changing the future. Unplugging worked (in that fictional alternative universe) because people came into an existing community, with established ways of doing things. They did not have to invent everything for themselves.
That’s what we aim for here. We want to cast this iPermie net as widely as possible. From those seeds, the goal is the birth of community that is intensely local, while at the same time committed to the universalist permaculture ethics of caring for people, caring for the planet, and caring for the future by being aware of limits and putting surplus into circulation.
Persistence and fortitude are the critical virtues. It takes courage because when people do permaculture design they find lots of changes to make in our lives. This is partly a function of how unsustainable the lifestyles are of most of us who come to permaculture. We never make changes just for the sake of being busy and making changes, but we don’t shrink from decisions if they are necessary. It takes persistence because change is rarely easy. We often stumble at first. I bet I quit smoking a hundred times before I finally learned how to quit and live as a non-smoker.
Do not attempt too much too fast. If you pile up too much stuff to do at any one point in time — or pulse — or cycle — then BOOM you shoot yourself in the foot and don’t get anything very useful done. You may take one step forward and then four steps backward.
This leads to discouragement which lays the groundwork for failure.
Before long you are back living a life that cares little for people, cares less for the planet and its future, and eats, drinks, and is merry in the present because neither you nor the planet have much of a future.
So it’s better to be realistic about what and how much you can do and when the work gets done. You’re not doing this for someone else’s approval. This is your design for your life. You are the one who has to be happy with the results. If you over-commit yourself to too much work too fast, you will not be happy. Nor will those who love and care for you.
Don't follow the standard worldly script. The domination and control programs of the ruling authorities have plans for you. They understand that people will try to break free. It happens all the time. That’s why the system makes it difficult to go against the domination/subjugation program of consume and excrete, consume and excrete, consume and excrete.
You won’t lack for messages encouraging you to Just Give Up. People will say —
- Those environmentalists are whackos anyway.
- There is plenty of oil and gas. We can use all we want and never run short.
- You ask too much of yourself.
- What you do is irrelevant in the greater scheme of things.
What you do — how you live your life — matters! It impacts you and all you love and care about, your neighbors, and the planet we share. Your life has meaning, purpose, and consequences. Never doubt that, not for a nano-second.
We got into this present impasse as a result of myriads of bad decisions made by billions of people over long periods of time. The only way out is for people to learn to make better decisions. Your permaculture actions are part of that process.
Your actions have impacts far beyond your geographic neighborhood. Each bad decision you make sets in motion a series of negative events that may stretch across continents to the other side of the world, where the consequences of your works may enable oppression, injustice, and even murder, rape, and genocide.
On the other hand, your works of sustainability, wisdom, justice, and beauty, as they propagate across the planet, may free peoples from oppression, make justice possible, end tyranny, and halt genocide. Don't shake your head and roll your eyes. Every good work is a good work and a necessary building block of a future of justice, wisdom, sustainability, and beauty. We cannot do it without you.
Authenticity is a source of wisdom. As you walk the talk, you live an authentic life. We all know plenty of people who live lives of fakery and confusion. They always attempt to be someone they aren’t and they fail miserably. Our goal is to be who we are, to live life with authenticity. Over time, this constant praxis in your life — the combination of action and contemplation — leads to the development of wisdom.
One of the tragedies of our time is that wisdom has been so scarce. The wisdom-deficit is not something that can be legislated. We can’t just call up a broker and order two truckloads of wisdom.
We can choose to live our lives in authenticity, keeping our focus on the ethics of permaculture, as applied to the actual realities of our lives. That is the path of wisdom. We take the red pill.
We can choose to turn our backs on truth and remain as slaves of money, power, and violence. This is the path of domination and subjugation. We take the blue pill.
It’s much easier to take the blue pill of delusion and excess consumption and just not think about these things. The problem is that is truly a road to destruction. Sooner or later, unsustainable systems crash and burn.
In the meantime, the system begets an itchy angst and anomie. No matter how much you consume, it is never enough. That monkey stays on your back, driving you away from family, from community, from all that is truly good and beautiful, in favor of accumulating ever larger piles of cheap junk, at a price of injustice and environmental degradation.
Some may think that the red pill of a life lived in accordance with permaculture ethics is a hard road to walk. This is simply not true as long as we are careful in our design work. The ethics lead us towards sustainability and peace. It is a life that avoids chaos, violence, and the mega-deaths of human beings. And its journey begets wisdom and peace, as the dawning hope of sustainability becomes an ever-growing reality across the planet.
This promise given at the beginning of this literary journey is true:
Permaculture can help you design your life so that you experience more beauty, health, happiness, freedom, and cooperation — with less work, consumption, conflict, injustice, and waste.
If that’s not what you want out of life, all I can say is go in peace. I hope you will be warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and well fed in all seasons.
For the rest of us, let’s get to work.