Permaculture is Systems Thinking

 We are often asked: “ What is Permaculture?”  Usually the definition is couched in agricultural terms but the principles and directives of permaculture thinking are adaptable beyond the garden and in fact embrace a far more inclusive hypothesis. 

 To me permaculture is systems thinking.  Systems thinking is a process of understanding how things influence one another. In nature systems thinking examples include ecosystems where elements such as air, water, plant and animals all work together to survive, flourish or perish. In organizations systems consist of people, structures, and processes that work together to make an organization healthy or unhealthy, sick or abundant.

 And, of course, systems thinking is about connections. For without connecting nodes  - creating and maintaining links - we are alone. Understanding that by connecting outputs to inputs within systems, to create webs of connections – including in our economic, social and cultural lives - we slow entropy, conserve and gain more energy to create redundancy and resilience. The model or pattern in nature we mimic is mycelium.

 If we floated high above the Earth and watched from that great distance as night fell, we’d begin to see lights spreading across continents describing settlement patterns and standards of living based on electricity use. It looks like a luminous organism from here, a kind of fluorescent mycelium, spreading along the eastern coastline of Australia for instance,  and growing darker the deeper it ventures inland to the desert and the dreamtime. And then finally it is dark.  And all around the world it is the same; China and India much dimmer than America which is ablaze. Africa is mostly dark. But the dark does not represent lack of people; it represents less resource use. The light shows modern technology’s profligate energy consumption.

When we turn the light switch or boil water on our stove, we become part of the scatter pattern generated from mountain top removal, drilling for resources and polluting earth and water. We become part of the light, which in this case, represents the darkness of our time. Industrialization has divorced us from nature. Therefore we have become less reliant on understanding nature and more reliant on technologies contributing to nature’s demise – which is our demise too.

 But we are part of nature and if we follow nature’s patterns perhaps we can regain harmony and recognize that our prime ethic should be to our children, family and community to the seventh generation. And that nutritious food, clean air and water security are our birthright and the essential ingredients to organizing our lives.

 There is overwhelming evidence that the world as we know it, is changing irrevocably and very rapidly. But even if this were not true there would still be the need and desire for systems more attuned with nature than with machine mentality and television induced stupor; fast-food-YouTube-sugar binge-coco-cola madness-neurosis. One feels a Borg-like mentality infusing our lives.

 For those unfamiliar with Star Trek, the Borg are a fictional pseudo-race of cybernetic organisms depicted in the Star Trek universe. The Borg are in part technology themselves, It is their nature to improve themselves by locating and assimilating technology which is highly advanced, and will augment their own capabilities. It is important to note that the Borg do not assimilate technology or species which they consider inferior, opting to destroy or ignore that which they consider to be lesser species. In face-to-face encounters with other species, the Borg will generally ignore individuals unless they pose a threat to the collective. Does any of this sound familiar?  We are entrapped and enclosed, with nowhere to hide. We need to make a stand and assess our position. Can we find our niche, our safe place to land – our node of permanence?

 Throughout the counties and states where I live in the north-eastern United States lays the Marcellus Shale natural gas deposit; energy to maintain the status quo a little longer. And  its extraction will despoil the land even more. Our very air, water and food systems and health are threatened. It is a kind of attack. An enclosure! How should permaculture respond? Within our systems of design, how should we adapt and change. As mycelium? 

 What can only be called, “an attack on nature” began when humankind found ways to do less manual work to follow the fetish of over more growth. They used and exploited others and then machines and the very Earth itself to grow bigger, more bloated, flatulent, unhealthy, connected to medicine by machines, their food grown by accountants, technicians and machine operators. 

 All this has happened very recently and is the direct result of “cheap” energy from fossil fuels. Most political structures in the world are based on supply of cheap energy. Oil, coal, uranium, water and natural gas provide electricity that drives industry.[2] Growth fed by resource depletion drives capitalism. The accounting system in capitalism is based on fungible money and to a lesser extent, the same applies in communism and both rely on resource depletion as an economic model to drive the system forward.

 David Holmgren, the cofounder of the idea of permanent culture – conflated to – permaculture -  describes four energy descent scenarios, each emerging from a combination of either fast of slow oil decline and either mild or severe climate change over the next 10-30 years:

Brown Tech: (slow oil decline, fast climate change)

Green Tech: (slow oil decline, slow climate change)

Earth Steward: (fast oil decline, slow climate change)

Lifeboats: (fast oil decline , fast climate change).

 Holmgren writes:

I imagine that permaculture – by principle and model, if not in name – will become the dominant paradigm in the Earth Steward scenario. Those with a long track record of achievement will become the natural leaders within new emergent power structures, primarily at the local level, that will be more effective than higher levels of governance and organization.

 The ethical and design challenges will be those associated with leadership and power. Because “power” at this (and all levels) will be very weak, it will be characterized more by inspiration and wise council than the capacity to make binding decisions. Transparent and collaborative leadership that draws from the whole community, and accepts slow evolutionary change, and avoids the imposition of ideology, is likely to be most effective in conserving resources and continuing to build a nature based culture.

 In the system of permaculture, we seek to create alternative, local, invisible structures to bind communities together. The conventional idea of competitive growth is replaced by cooperative sustainability towards local abundance and the necessities of living beginning with healthy food.  Food, family and community are the roots for a healthy node of permanence. Connecting with others can build a sustainable and abundant community. It is not only a nice idea, but a necessity , if we are to create a healthy future for ourselves and our children.

 The social philosopher, Murray Bookchin wrote in the early 1980’s that “…only the ecological problems created by modern capitalism are of sufficient magnitude to portend the system’s demise.” He also suggested that the knowledge that is important to an Earth centered culture – one maintaining its links and connections to the natural world - should protect this vital knowledge. He talks of monks carrying books to the caves during the Inquisition; the need to preserve and protect and fix ideas that maintain our connections to nature and to the full extent of what it is to be human.

 This may sound apocalyptic and dystopian but the crack-down on organics, the proliferation of genetically modified seeds and crops, the manner of agro-business and imposition of regulation by government agencies and an unhealthy, health care system, an unstable financial future and gas drilling under y our feet – does not feel healthy or stable to me. 

 

 Permaculture reminds us that down through time, from cave paintings and tattoos and songs, through observation and accrued knowledge, experimentation and learning, through observing patterns in nature, we can become better humans and continue to contribute and be part of the great narrative of nature. The knowledge we share as we venture deeper into this great experiment we call permaculture;  this system of thinking that helps us structure and connect many different disciplines and threads leads us towards the common goal; the simple yet profound prime ethic of permaculture - to care for the Earth, to care for people and return surplus to both.

Learn more about permaculture at:
Hancock Permaculture Center
Permaculture Design Solutions