Creating Nodes of Permanence

Akaido:  a martial studies, philosophy, and religious belief. Aikido is often translated as "the Way of unifying (with) life energy" or as "the Way of harmonious spirit." The goal is to create an art that practitioners can use to defend themselves while also protecting their attacker from injury. Aikido is performed by blending with the motion of the attacker and redirecting the force of the attack rather than opposing it head-on.

“…only the ecological problems created by modern capitalism are of sufficient magnitude to portend the system’s demise.” Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom  (1982).

     Australian is the oldest and driest continent, the only one never to have experienced an ice age. Aborigines have lived on this continent for 60,000 years. There are still Aborigines who live in the dreamtime  when earth and man were one with the animals, the land and plants and their world was dreamed into being. Their society prospered and grew because they followed and learned in songs, tattoos and paintings, the great narrative of nature.

Principles of Permaculture - David Holmgren and Bill Mollison.

Principles of Permaculture Design. David Holmgren
David Holmgren is author: Permaculture Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability.
Assembled and produced by Tracy Dee Cook and Andrew Leslie Phillips
Hancock Permaculture Center.
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Permaculture principles are brief statements or slogans - a checklist when considering the complex options for design and evolution of ecological support systems. These principles are universal, although methods that express them vary greatly according to place and situation. 

Principle 1: OBSERVE AND INTERACT
In conservative and socially bonded agrarian communities, the ability to observe and adapt traditional and modern methods of land use, is a powerful tool to evolving new and more appropriate systems.

Good design depends on thoughtful and protracted observation of people and nature. It is not generated in isolation but through continuous and reciprocal interaction with the subject.

Observing then combining traditional and modern ecological permaculture design will be more successful than fossil fuel dependent systems. A diversity of local systems will naturally generate their own innovative ideas which will interact and cross-fertilize creating redundancy and resilience - a Mandelbrot set of self-replicating sustainable systems.

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.