From Tom Atlee of the Co-Intelligence Institute:
"Permaculture teaches us -- those of us who have forgotten -- how to work with nature, to become a partner to Life, so that plants and animals and dirt and water and weather yield us food and clothing and shelter and meaning freely and vibrantly without having to be hacked, yanked, forced and poisoned. Permaculture systems are resilient, because they use the natural tendencies of things to do what they naturally do, all arranged so that they are all useful to and supportive of each other. You don't have to poison the slugs; the ducks will eat them. The ducks will swim in the pond you made by digging out earth with which to build your aesthetic, well insulated home, whose greywater flows through a marsh you built -- complete with lovely cattails -- to purify it before it arrives in the pond where the ducks swim above the goldfish.I saw this very thing on my first visit to an actual permaculture site near Point Reyes, California. It had a profound impact on me. It was more Eden than farm, more work of art than constructed development. It was not planned and built. It had grown and evolved for several years, with the equal participation of the land, plants, animals, and humans. The humans brought to the dance their conscious observation, thinking and caring. Next year that site won't be the same, because it will have led to something else, equally beautiful and productive, ever new.
People like I met there don't generate technological problems. They don't create global warming, racism and toxic wast dumps. Their spirit is collaborative, patient, spiritual, eager to give as much as to take, happy to belong and co-create, loving the wisdom that grows so deeply all around them and curious to see what it will do next.
If we can learn this gigantic lesson -- if we can see that it is the brittleness of our systems, the shallowness of our relationships, the impatience of our lives that is pulling us down -- not just a problem with technology -- then any technologically-induced crises we live throuigh will have been worth it. Even if a lot of us end up suffering. Because then our grandchildren will know what life is all about. And they will carry it on, they will belong to the Earth again and to each other. We will have made it, as a culture. And perhaps we won't do this again, this waste of life and meaning.
To the person with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
To the person with a song, a drum and a dream, every problem looks like a dance."
Comments