Health & Nature

Permaculture is an interesting way of life, it is made up by two words, permanent and culture, but is however a much wider subject than what the name indicates. It literally covers a huge part of life, and it does so in a sustainable and regenerative way. Created by Bill Mollison and organized by David Holmgren, it is the how-to anyone can be more self reliant with a minimum of resources.

It does not teach you how to, for example, build a house, but it does give you the tools to learn to do it in a sustainable, regenerative and resilient way as part of what is known as Whole System Design. This is a powerful yet simple way to approach problems and design something that is adding more than it takes. In short, if properly done you can apply it over and over and be more and more beneficial to you and your family, friends, society and life on our planet.

It starts with ethics as the foundation. Without personal ethics you may have no reason to evaluate your actions in such a way as to be more beneficial than detrimental. You may, for example, only think of yourself to get maximum gain right now. Not bothering to see what it does long term, not only for you but everything else that lives on this rock we all share.

When society is more driven by money than care for each other and the planet you can say it is off kilter (off balance). Money is simply an idea to make life easier that everyone has agreed to. The alternative is exchanging products and services and with food being the most basic product, it easily becomes a logistical problem to, for example, haul farm products around so that you can exchange it for other things. Much easier to use money for the exchange. Money is not evil, it is the use of it that makes it so.

And like the wobbling wheel on a car, or cart, it tends to only get worse and worse. Society functions in much the same way when personal integrity has left the building. When the scarcity pushes a big enough part of society to be focused on money above all else, then one cannot be surprised to see a society out of whack. To see more upsets and the resulting violence, to see a drive towards helping fewer and fewer people, until only yourself, which is a clear indicator that there are fewer and fewer leaders who are doing any leading.

The progression of making money scarce, has and is creating famine, despair and wars as people try to find solutions in a society which has lost it’s balance. Witness the attack on the US Capitol. Each side being convinced they were in the right. Observe how the storming was the culmination of people who felt disenfranchised, or left out of the process. How their solution was not based on a legal process but on force. It also lacked basic understanding of the laws of the land, specifically who can change the outcome of the votes cast in each state. They sounded like they were willing to hang the Vice President if he did not do what he had No Power To Do. And shoot the Speaker for something she Had No Power To Do.

In other words it was, however baseless, a futile exercise that had no chance to succeed in bringing about the change they so believed in. They felt so in the right that they themselves became guilty of what they accused Congress of.

This was not the culmination of a short term problem but a much longer one. One based on not able to have, not being able to share in the benefits of society over a very long time. So long that any other reality was long lost. You can see how despair on a large enough scale will bring about chaos and war. To our very own society.

What can we do about it?

Permaculture introduces approaches that mitigates the problems we face in our daily lives, it teaches us how by working towards the greater good we can and do win in spite of the problems we face. In short something can be done where everyone can contribute to and be part of. When all are doing well crime diminishes as the unusual solution it is. Permaculture is not a theoretical subject but is based on real hands on solutions that anyone can learn and apply, it is a solution for the people by the people.

An example, pertinent to these days where food is ever more on peoples minds permaculture offers the food forest, a method of growing your own food that anyone can learn. Food safety is important.

Permaculture is likened to a flower where Ethics and Design Principles are the foundation. Spanning it are seven petals:
– Building,
– Tools & Technology,
– Education & Culture,
– Health & Spiritual Well-Being,
– Finance & Economics,
– Land Tenure & Community Governance,
– Land & Nature Stewardship.

I’m fortunate enough to know a world renowned permaculture instructor and designer who is not only on the national board but has trained most of the permaculture designers in Florida, in full disclosure, a person who I joined forces with and am contributing to her classes and benefit from our clients and graduates. The school is called Grow Permaculture and is located in central Florida. We hold regular classes and are delivering the famous Permaculture Design Course (PDC) in both urban and farm focused courses. It comes with a world recognized certificate.

In addition there are design and consulting services that we make for our clients. I recommend you check it out!

There are a lot of us living on this rock going around the sun.

Sometimes we don’t agree on things and get in each others faces. Certainly we don’t have to agree on everything. Allowing each of us to have our own observations and likes is of course a very basic right.

A while back I had a friend that had a very emotional response to something very casual and simple. It was a total surprise to me that something that plain would cause that reaction.

For me I have the experience that says if I have a strong emotional reaction there is something that _I_ have an issue with, not related to the other party in the discussion. In other words my reaction is not that the other person said it but something within me that caused the reaction.

This is good because it opens the door for me to be able to address it, unlike when someone else have an issue.

Why would I want to “address” it?

I don’t know about you but I like being in charge of MY life. I do not agree with being a victim. That does not lead to a happy life. And I do recognize that happy for some could mean not being beaten that day. For me I look at reasons to have a smile on my face. The fastest way is of course to just force yourself to smile and you soon find a reason to. 🙂

I’m talking about smiling from interactions with my fellow man, woman or child. Helping to improve others brings me the biggest joy, and I daresay helping others is the most valuable thing one can do.

So when a subject comes along that has that “out of control” reaction, I view that as something not desirable. I prefer to analytically look at something, let’s say an injustice, and work out how to best resolve it. Analytically, not reactively!

When I have a strong emotional reaction I don’t automatically jump on the bearer of the subject but how come _I_ have that reaction? I may ask what was the intention of the person with that communication, which might be to bring me down. Generally I can tell who my friends are and they don’t have that kind of intention. If they are not my friend – why should I get upset? Why not just recognize the communication as something someone else made and if upsetting to not allow it to continue having that effect?

I saw a mime that suggested to hold a grudge or upset is simply allowing the other person to live in your head. Someone else suggested that the biggest secret of all might be the ability to forgive in spite of.

We are very occupied with what others may have done to us, rarely do we look at how our actions may have hurt someone else. There’s something behind every strong emotional reaction, 99% is from what we have done to others, not the other way around. I’d suggest think twice before yelling at someone else. Instead try to understand WHY they did and if your words/actions will help them.

Treating other the way you want to be treated is a healthy attitude.

For many that can be hard to follow but it is so very remunerative! Your reward is an increasingly happier life with fewer and fewer things getting you unhappy.

Yes, what is food sustainability?

There are things that can and does continue on and on, they simply never stop. The reason it continues is that it is workable, it does not cause problems along the way which later ends up working against it.

Simple examples to make the point would be if you throw wrapping paper and anything else you discard on the street rather than in a proper location such as a dumpster, others would need to clean up after you or the street would end up a mess. Which would eventually lead to attracting rats and other vermin. It would attract more garbage and causing ever more problems.

Or, if you always offered a friendly and helping hand to your community whenever you could, that would lead to goodwill and others helping you when you needed it. It would set a good example and other would follow.

The first example is clearly not a sustainable way, whereas the second is.

When an activity is in harmony with everything else and it is in turn helped by the environment you could say it is contributing to the survival of the environment.

Growing tropical plants in a cold environment would be another example of not being sustainable. They require a hot humid climate which without it, would make it very hard or impossible to grow.

Nature has a wonderful design that when left alone will survive just fine by itself.

We on the other hand wish to conquer our environment, make it just the way we like it to be. Which does not have to be wrong, it’s actually very good to be in control of ones environment. But what does that mean?

Being in control does not necessarily mean you bend things backwards and eventually stress it beyond it’s capability of bending, thereby breaking it. Requiring more and more work to just to keep up.

There is good control and bad control.

Yelling at people who are already listening is normally bad control as force is only needed to get their attention, once you have it you back off. You communicate with a person on their level of reality which would allow you to have positive control. For example, martial arts are mostly based on utilizing the existing momentum and to simply redirect it, not directly stopping it head on. That is an example of good control.

Growing things which naturally grow in that environment makes it easier. But there are more to the equation. When you only consider one very localized thing and ignore everything else it tends to end up not very successful in the long term. In other words something is missing. When things are not working out as intended you can say that there is a lie there, the lie being one or more missing datum. If you had all the data needed and how to do it, it would work, would it not?

So how much is needed?

When we engage upon an activity it is handy to see how that fits into the overall picture. By understanding how the activity does or does not fit, we can predict the success rate of our activity.

When talking about, for example, growing food we have a number of factors that immediately comes to play. As a starter we have climate with temperature, humidity, the soil, it’s pH value, wind, and the directions, animals and insects not to mention other humans and then change and rate of change on each of the above. They can each play a vital role on the outcome of growing food. If the food is an animal then even more factors come into play.

Food sustainable means it can go on and on forever. To reach that type of success you will do well to consider how it affects everything in your immediate environment, the environment beyond that and then on the whole grand scheme of the planet as it will in turn affect you. If all are ignoring others we do it at our own peril as it does come back to bite us.

Are you using something that is not natural part of life? Such as chemicals to help food grow? What is the short and long term impact of those chemicals on your immediate environment and the larger picture? Where does it go when you spray or pour it? What does it affect, maybe your soil, the ground water, other living things? What changes are you actually making when applying those changes?

Thinking very locally, such as just yourself or the tree you are growing is likely to create other longer term problems, as we have seen with things such as DDT, a chemical thought to be very helpful but is now banned due to the high toxic content. It is not usually easy to be aware of, never mind understand all these factors. But they do come into play!

We like to think of ourselves as being more valuable than destructive. We help our neighbors and maybe that stranger who dropped something. However it requires a bit more understanding of how things work than simply following others lead as that will end up with people who don’t know or understand leading others afoul. Kind of like the lemmings that follow each other off the cliff. Neither knowing what is actually going on, but continuing in some direction because everyone else does. Trust me doing something because others do it is not a safe way to go as many can and often definitely are wrong at the expense of their own success and survival.

We need to have a better grasp about how creating and supporting sustainable methods will improve life conditions and avoid following clueless, and maybe unintentional, leaders off the proverbial cliff. Educate our self, be in control of our own future and survival.

Fortunately one such piece of technology is in existence and is called Permaculture, from permanent culture. A way of growing that is based on coexisting with the natural environment that surrounds us.

Go to growpermaculture.com and get in control of your food supply!