Un-Learning; A Permaculture Perspective

Learning is brilliant. To keep opening up new vistas of insight and understanding we can apply in amazing and practical ways, to our ever changing lives? That is so exciting!

Neural plasticity is definitely where it’s at.

Our brains are designed to keep learning, un-learning and re-learning. It’s just like the constant growth and die-back of root systems in healthy soil. It’s even called Arborization, because of the branch-like structures. When Mom finds a structure that works, She uses it… a lot.

Learning, Un-learning & Re-learning. This is how we add subtlety, nuance and depth to our understanding. It’s how we keep growing. Our brains are meant to keep disregarding tired, out-dated old ideas, replacing them with new layers of understanding. Like the forest floor. New layers of leaves fall and decompose into the previous decompositions. New layers of complexity feed on what’s dying off.

The bountiful universe of possibilities never disappoints. There’s always more. For every thing we think we know, there are billions of things we can’t even imagine. Which is great!

With academic type learning, however, there comes a time, which will be different for everybody, to start letting some of it go. Maybe even a lot of it. Maybe all of it. Most of it’s indoctrination.

Keep the essence of things learned, but let go of the excruciating minutia. Because, once we’ve achieved our own particular critical mass, when it comes to accumulated information and knowledge, something amazing starts to happen.

If we let it.

We start to see the striking similarities between things that are, presumably very different. Opposite, even. The perceived differences between … enemies, say … no longer seem as radical as we once believed.

When this happens, we’re positioned to become our own experts. Which is what we were designed to be. And un-learning is crucial to our development.

Because, to forever be looking outside ourselves for “the truth,” for what’s right or wrong, for what to think, belive and accept, for sources, citations and “proof” is, quite simply, not sustainable. It does not sustain us to ignore all the other sense perceptions we were born with.

We have them for a reason.

Yet humanity, in it’s collective arrogance, has decided to ignore them, deciding the only way to be right, smart or worthy of other people’s favor is to be ruled by the brain.

Or worse, other people’s brains.

In this dominator culture, our brains have devolved into an hysterically chattering monkey-minded, tunnel-visioned, fear-based, ego-driven … runaway train. This creates a lot of atrocities.

It’s not sustainable on an individual level and it’s not sustainable on a collective level. Letting it go is a huge step forward on the path to real understanding.

Science and logic are fine and good, but they’re far from everything. They only represent a small part of our potential growth. As Professor Einstein said, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Personally? I see the current forms of patriarchal science and patriarchal religion as virtually interchangeable. Each has the potential for doing a lot of good, but more often than not simply reverts to being dogmatic, bossy and downright exploitative. Even murderous. I prefer to paraphrase Einstein’s famous quote by replacing the word “science” with “the brain” and the word “religion” with “the heart.”

It’s the same thing.

Science and religion…or what we’ve been conditioned to believe them to be…are more alike than they are different. There’s a thing humans do all the time, called mistaking the map for the territory it describes. At their core, all science and religion are trying to do is understand the nature of life. Each has been mapping out their understanding. But the map, in both cases, has become more important than the reality supposedly being mapped. They’re both made-up institutions, with made-up rules. They’re not actually real, only imagined to be. But if people believe something is real, they treat it as if it’s real.

Concepts are not forces of nature. They’re not real the way gravity is real. Gravity just is. What we think we know about it, does not alter it a bit. Same with bird migration and volcanoes and photosynthesis. Same with everything that’s real.

But knowing the difference between reality and artifice is becoming as dead as the Dodo.

We study, explore and figure things out. That’s who we are, and it’s great fun. Or should be. But there’s always this arrogance that creeps in, these assumptions. This intense need to make mountains out of mole hills. Because, of course, we have to be right about what we’ve decided the truth is, based on our studies. The best minds have been thinking about this for ages. That has to count for something. It has to be true. And probably a lot, or at least some of it is. But there’s no way to know how many more unseen variables there are. And the arrogance, the assumptions of having a monopoly on the so-called truth is actually a block to … well … the truth.

And this needs to be unlearned.

Superiority/inferiority complexes, the desperate need to be right, to be considered worthy, intelligent and believable need to be unlearned. When somebody comes up with a startling new theory that goes against the current narrative, they better have a safe place to hide. Look at how people reacted to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. They went nuts. It was just a theory. But they acted like it was the end of the world, and really thought it was.

It took a long time for society to assimilate it, fold it into the narrative, in a way that was comfortable and say, “OK. Now we have the whole thing figured out.” No. It’s still just a theory. Just one more possible piece of the puzzle. It’s been pretty much debunked by now, anyway. But it was still a set of extremely interesting questions. It craked open the collective brain quite fabulously.

Temporarily.

The same old arrogance and assumptions re-congealed themselves into an even harder shell.

This initial fear and disbelief of new information is a trauma response. As is taking the new information and turning it into yet another layer of defence mechanisms. This is the natural response of having grown up in an unnatural society. This is how a culture of domination perverts learning. How it turns a word like “Evolve” into an insult.

This perversion of learning needs to be un-learned.

“I have been a seeker and still am,
but I stopped asking the books and the stars.
I started listening to the teaching of My Soul.”

Rumi

Our heart is considerably more intelligent than our brain. But, like the squeaky wheel that gets all the grease, the brain, under patriarchy, is loud and relentless and so, inevitably, overshadows the quiet, introspective heart.

The heart actually has 40,000 neurons that communicate directly to the brain (if the blabbermouth will ever shut up and listen, that is). When there is a proper balance between the two, as Einstein suggested, we prosper, come into our own, easily stepping into the next Great Phase. And, even more importantly, we hurt no person, place or thing in the process. Put another way, when the Heart is the head, and the Brain is the brawn, we can get ‘er done! The boss is the smart one, connected to the Divine Mind, and the worker simply follows her directions.

That rather long preamble being said, I have to say, I cannot help but see Permaculture from this Un-Learning perspective. And I thought it would be interesting to lay out the Principles in that context.

On the surface, it is a set of Principles to apply, in whatever way you can. But going deeper, it’s really a systematic way to Un-Learn all the nonsense that’s become normalized. It is a set of specific actions that can be adapted to any location, to foster regenerative relationships, from the ground up. From the interplay between soil organisms, right up to a large community supported agriculture organization…and everything in between. Most importantly, it fosters a dawning reintegration with your Self. Healing. And, when you can heal yourself, you have a lot more impact on everything you do.

So, without further ado, here are each of the 12 Principles and the way I see them as fostering positive and constructive Un-Learning.

The 12 Principles

Observe and Interact.

The soft science of anthropology came to understand more could be learned about the people it was studying if field workers stopped being so clinical, objective and separate. By becoming a part of the daily life, the understanding happened quite easily. The subjects didn’t need to be “studied.” Listening and responding to them turned out to be better than studying them, That’s how you get to know people. By living with them. On their level.

The preferred method of writing about the subjects changed, too. It went from clinical monologues to stories. Narratives. The anthropologists themselves actually changed. They went from being weird, creepy guys, spying on people from a distance, thereby demonstrating their complete lack of trust-worthiness, into actual people. People who could be related to. Not surprisingly, it worked much better. The quality of information gathered went from arrogant, faulty assumptions made by people who assume themselves to be superior, to a genuine understanding of the people in question.

Another way of saying Observe and Interact could be Listen and Respond.

Anthropologists un-learned their assumptions and were able to come into a whole new level of understanding. Understanding based on reality is real. Assumptions made by dominators are false. It doesn’t matter how logical they are, along the way. If they proceed from a premise that is false, their conclusions will always be false.

It’s the same with Permaculture. The land you’re working with has all sorts of things it could tell you. But you have to un-learn the straw boss mentality. You’re not the boss. What you say does not go. You’re not separate or above it. You’re definitely not more important. The ownership of private property is just a legal activity, made up by people. It enables you to protect the land, from other people. But the land, being far older than humanity, doesn’t know or care about that.

The land is where all the real information is. The predator & prey relations of the soil organisms, the trees and the creatures they feed and house, all have their own agendas. They can show you quite clearly how they work together.

But first, you have to un-learn your sense of dominion so you can sit quietly and listen. Then you can start to become integrated with it…as a servant leader, not a boss. When you become one with it like that, Baby, How Your Garden Will Grow!

Catch and Store Energy.

I have a very low tech solar electricity system. Just 2 12 volt panels and one sickly car battery. I only have electricity when it’s daytime, and not cloudy. So after 20 years of this, my awareness of the length of the days is pretty well seared in to my brain. Coming home after dark is too much of a pain, so my social activities have been radically curtailed. I used to write with a pen, but now I write with a computer. Being able to write is dictated by whether or not there are clouds. I am the living embodiment of the saying “make hay while the sun shines.”

I’m not complaining.

It serves us well to un-learn the false premise that energy is something that has to be provided, by some faceless corporations, operating gigantic, expensive, over-engineered production facilities. Or that it’s just something you get from the wall plug, or the gas pump, no thought or effort needed on your part. Or worse, that we’ll die without it.

There’s more to energy than meets the eye and it serves us well in our journey to become more independent and in alignment with natural forces to let go of artificial constructs whenever, and where ever we can.

Sure, you still can get energy from wall plugs and gas pumps. Almost everybody in the so-called first world does. But un-learning the dependence on these external sources, as if they are the only forms of energy on earth, which they aren’t…creates a shift. And since this type of energy is controlled by an elite minority, a shift away from this artificially created sense of dependence, is a shift towards independence.

Also, un-learning what energy even is, is a crucial step forward. Energy is Life Force. It’s part of everything. Our bodies. Our imaginations. Our EM fields. Plants. Rocks. Solar Systems. Hurricanes. And while we cannot charge our cell phones off these kinds of energy, un-learning the assumptions that our cell phones are our life is also liberating. Because they’re not.

This Principle is a brilliant way to un-learn the status quo, regarding energy. There are so many free sources of energy. Harnessing them isn’t usually free. But once a system is set up, it’ll pay for itself.

The sun, wind and flowing water are obvious, non-profit, sources of energy. If you live in a city and do not have the autonomy to integrate these into you life, simply thinking about them, as a future plan, actually causes a shift in energy. It shifts you. And this ripples out.

Plants are excellent at storing solar energy. And when plants are eaten, their energy becomes our energy. They say energy cannot be destroyed, it only changes form. Plant energy transforms into prong horned antelopes, monarch butterflies, prairie dogs and, by extension, all the animals that eat antelopes and prairie dogs. The natural movements and transformations of energy never end.

Shit has a lot of harnessable energy. A simple biogas system can capture the methane of decomposing shit (and kitchen scraps) and turn it into cooking or heating gas. It works the same as propane. Not only that, but when it’s gone through the process, the stuff at the end is great fertilizer for you plants. Closing loops all over the place!

Soil actually stores a lot of energy, providing, of course, there are soil organisms galore and lots of humus.

Collecting rainwater is storing energy. As is digging swales to accumulate underground lenses of water. Water is life. And life is not dependent upon municipal systems.

There are many ways to catch and store energy and this Principle, in encouraging us to experiment with them, helps us un-learn acquired helplessness.

Obtain a Yield.

“The yield of a system is theoretically unlimited,
or, limited only by the information and
imagination of the designer.”

Bill Mollison

This quote by Bill Mollison is so true. And nothing demonstrates the truth of it better than the mentality of Big Ag type farming operations. Big Ag is operating on false information and a total lack of imagination. As big as their machines are, and as potent as their chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, they are fight a losing battle. Soil erosion gets worse, not better with these practices, as does pestilence, as does the degradation of water quality, as does the lack of nutritional value in crops grown like this…not to mention desertification. The spread of death and destruction is Biblical in its scope.

Big Ag operates on a purely utilitarian, bottom line basis, which shows an incredible lack of imagination.

Yes. You definitely want a return on your investment of time, money and work. They’re not wrong about that part. You have to at least produce enough food to feed yourself. To keep going. Or medicinal herbs to stay healthy. Or firewood to stay warm. Or something. You have to have something tangible to show for it. And it needs to feel like enough, at least for the time being, until it gets better.

But there is so much more to the meaning of a yield than what can be accounted for in a book-keeping program. This quantitative approach is very objective, very limited. You want quantity and quality. Because limitations in understanding and imagination tend to spread out like a plague, wantonly killing delicate new possibilities.

Besides getting a return on your work, you want the work, itself, to feel good. You want to feel satisfied with what you just did, pleased. Productive. When your work gives you that satisfying dopamine hit, you know you did good. It’s important to feel like you’re doing good. You want to know your work is as useful to the birds, deer and earthworms as it is to you.

Intangible yields are as important as edible and monetary yields. When you plant a fruit tree, the fruit is the obvious reason. But the biomass it adds to the soil in the form of leaf litter, and the burrowing of the roots, with all their life enhancing properties are an important yield for the soil organisms. And, if it’s good for the soil organisms, it’s good for you. This same fruit tree also provides oxygen, humidity, shade, beauty, and a carbon sink. It’s also a wonderful yield for birds and insects, in the form of habitat, food and a whole new layer of predator/prey relationships. It could even act as a trellis for grape vines. How much does a trellis cost at the garden center? A hundred dollars saved, is a hundred dollars earned.

By learning to think of a yield in terms of the intangible benefits as much as the tangible, you will grow something solid, strong and self-sustaining. If you consider every plant, building, drip-line or what-have-you, in these terms, you will constantly be building a web of relevance that gets stronger and better with every season. It’s a creative process. And it applies to every aspect of your life. It’s about relationships. Because the individual elements in your design are nowhere near as important as the relationships between these elements. The synergy. That’s what makes it a Living Thing.

Obtain A Yield is analogous to Pay Yourself First. It’s an aspect of self-care and self-reliance. Because you can’t give what you don’t have. It’s not selfish to take care of yourself. Quite the contrary. You cannot take care of anybody else if you’re depleted and exhausted. You cannot form satisfying or productive relationships if you’re running on empty.

So what does this principle help us un-learn? Martyrdom. Monotony. Slavish devotion. Poverty mentality. Over work and under pay. Exhaustion. Starvation. Malnutrition. Spiritual decay.

And good riddance to all of that!

Apply Self Regulation and Accept Feedback.

Dysregulation is a trauma response. Overly intense reactions to relatively minor occurrences can, literally, ruin our lives when they become the norm. Being unable to recognize our emotional reactions for what they are can lead to wildly impulsive and/or destructive behavior. Whether it’s raving at a stranger, online, because of something they didn’t even say, having temper tantrums in a grocery store because there’s no persimmons, always feeling like an outsider, being unable to make and keep friends, or binge watching your favorite TV show in order to avoid reality, dysregulation makes it quite difficult to manage our behavior. Which, in turn, makes it difficult to manage our life.

Enter permaculture.

It’s impossible to not make mistakes when embarking on a permaculture adventure. There are so many variables, there’s no way to have them all thought out before starting projects. Even if you’re more of an OCD character than anybody you’ve ever known. Applying all the other principles forces us into self regulation and accepting feedback mode.

When a bunch of Lamb’s Ear plants shrivel and die, despite being famous for being so easy to grow, it’s upsetting. But it’s not as immediately triggering as social interactions, among other humans. At first, the plants look great and you feel good about your days work. Then, gradually, they get more and more spindly and just shrivel up and die. It happens over the course of a few weeks. The sinking feeling grows slowly. By the time it’s clear they’re not going to make it, the opportunity for a conniption fit has passed.

But then, the research you were doing, on another front, gives you the answer. The straw bales you thought you were so lucky to have are, in fact, riddled with herbicide. Aminopyrilids, to be exact. You find out that this persistent killer of broad leaf plants is so persistent, that even after cows eat the grasses sprayed with it, digest it and poop it out, and even after their poop is composted…it’s still deadly!

Unbelievable!

When you find out it’s so widespread, even store-bought compost can’t be trusted, you can’t believe it. You’re infuriated. How can so many people be so complicit? You feel sick.

This is a totally normal reaction. It’s not dysregulation.

The slowness of the dawning understanding, makes it easier to accept. It’s feedback. The lesson is simple. You can’t grow broadleaf plants in poison designed to kill them. This is obvious enough.

You learn you can test straw by germinating pea plants in it, to see if they’ll live or not. You learn that mushroom compost is ok to buy and that wood chips are safe, too. You learn you can remediate the beds you’ve already made that are full of this toxic straw by planting grasses like corn or rye in them. Nobody can eat any of it and it can’t be used as chop and drop biomass, as the poison is now in the grass. The only thing to do is burn it. Such a waste. Also, you learn that high levels of soil bacteria and fungus will fix it too. That’s good. At least there’s a way around it.

So now you start revising your plans.

That’s self-regulation.

You’ve been able to expand your perspective, without getting dysregulated. Nature gives silent, non-verbal constructive feedback that’s slower and easier to accept than what we’re used to in the human world. Nature adapts, self-regulates and finds ways to thrive, non-stop. And when we start to engage with Her in an on-going and intensive manner, such as practicing permaculture, we learn how to do that as well.

Rather, it helps us un-learn the old unproductive, destructive patterns of thought, response and reaction we had normalized and internalized because of trauma. And we can do it in a way that is gentle, compared to what we’re used to. This starts changing everything for the better.

Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services.

If we truly value a resource, can we waste it? This principle gives us the opportunity to un-learn the dismissiveness of rampant consumerism.

Using as little water as possible, re-using grey water, collecting rainwater and giving up toxic detergents and cleaning products are behaviors that demonstrate an understanding of the value of a necessary resource like water. Protecting aquafers is everybody’s business.

Actively participating in the natural process of decomposition by constantly feeding it our waste products in order to feed the soil, which feeds the plants that feed us is a behavior that demonstrates an understanding of the value of a natural service like decomposition. As is the planting of green manure cover crops to feed the soil, retain water and lower surface temperatures.

Setting up a solar oven and using it for all our cooking when the clouds don’t get in the way, demonstrates an understanding of the value of cooking fuel. And using the sun for as much of our electricity as we possibly can demonstrates how much we value, not only self-sufficiency, but the reduction of burning fossil fuels in order to generate electricity.

Turning off lights to save electricity. Closing doors to not let out the heat, Wearing sweaters in the winter. Driving infrequently. Car pooling. Taking the bus. Reusable grocery bags. There are so many ways, big and little, to conduct our lives that demonstrate a sense of value for renewable resources.

Un-learning the assumption that everything is ours for the taking is regenerative in so many ways. It takes us out of the artificially created hierarchy and puts us back into the web, where we belong. It’s a much happier, healthier and well adjusted place to be.

Produce No Waste.

“It’s pretty amazing that our society has reached a point where the effort necessary to extract oil from the ground, ship it to a refinery, turn it into plastic, shape it appropriately, truck it to a store, buy it and bring it home, is considered to be less effort than it takes to just wash the spoon when you’re done with it.”

David Holmgren

There was a time, not that long ago, when craftsmanship was important. Everything was considered a resource and frugality was a virtue. Not so today. It’s now considered “radical” to view wastes as opportunities and resources.

But it’s considered “normal” when the inputs are greater than the outputs, as in the case with this “disposable” plastic spoon.

The truth is, there’s no such thing as waste in Nature’s design. Every aspect of Nature’s design exemplifies this, as everything is recycled. The water cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the phosphorous cycle, the life/death/regeneration cycle. From the tiniest soil organisms with their on-going predator/prey relations and constant renewal of bacteria being turned into plant food, to the explosions of stars seeding galaxies with the material for new stars…it’s an eternal truth. From hydrogen and helium, down to running mycelium, there’s no such thing as waste.

But since our culture has turned into an insane, perpetual motion, produce-consume monster and 90% of what is produced and consumed is, literally, garbage…from the “food” people eat, to the trashy entertainment they intoxicate themselves with, to the mountains and mountains of “disposables” they believe they need…a Principle that says, “Produce no waste” has become necessary.

Produce no waste is an opportunity to un-learn the greed and stupidity of wanton consumerism.

Things can be used more than once. Donate stuff you don’t want to the thrift store. Buy new stuff from the thrift store. Things can be used and put together with other things in alternative ways. Who cares about what’s “in fashion?” That’s just more wastefulness. Make your own fashion. Don’t be afraid to be quirky or different. Make a braided rag rug from old wool coats. Feed your soil with kitchen scraps and grey water. Don’t eat too much. Don’t eat fake food. Share your excess tomatoes and zucchinis with your neighbors, or the foodbank.

When we un-learn the greed and stupidity of the dominator culture, we become infinitely more intelligent. Like Nature.

Design From Patterns to Details.

It’s absurd how so many people continue to believe humanity has risen above Nature. They devise their gardens, their five year plans, their entire life trajectories on foundations built on this lie. It’s most commonly expressed as acquisition. I Want What I Want, When I Want It. They do this, in good faith perhaps, but without the slightest clue about the larger patterns they are pitting themselves against.

Reality, in other words.

Then, they wonder why everything is such an on-going battle, such an uphill climb, and so damned expensive, on top of it.

Whether they are trying to plant a garden of delicate species in an area where the wind rips everything to shreds, because that’s what they think they want, regardless of what’s actually possible, or they keep attracting variations of the same abusive treatment, from every single new boyfriend, it’s the same thing. Persistence, in these kinds of scenarios, is futile. Like beating your head against a brick wall.

When we design from patterns to details, however, it helps us un-learn the oblivious and backwards thinking imposed on people born under patriarchy. This culture, with all its false premises, has been dumbing humanity down for a long time. So much so, that what should be obvious tends to feel shockingly new and innovative.

You have to start with the Big Picture, then work your way down to finer and finer details. The plate tectonics, wind currents and water flow have to be understood on a site before you start putting together an artistic mosaic of flowering ground cover plants. You can certainly have an artistic mosaic of flowering ground cover plants, but that’s the kind of refinement that comes long after all the waterways, patios, walkways, boulders, swales, hügelkultur mounds and appropriate trees and shrubs are in place.

The Big Picture creates the main, interlocking shapes, which create the little nooks and crannies for the fine details to fill out.

Getting back to that windy spot. You could build a huge, sturdy brick wall, to protect the area from the gale force winds, in order to provide a safe place for your delicate plantings. But that would be working against Nature. Which is a study in futility. And a lot of back breaking work. And really expensive. A better course of action would be to recognize this area is unsuitable for these fragile darlings and plant some really scrappy, nitrogen fixing trees there, instead. They will be just as beautiful, although in a completely different way, but with an important difference. It’ll work. They’ll thrive there. Then the delicate darlings can go into a nice, perfectly suited little micro-climate. Or live as house plants. In a lovely terrarium, maybe…

In this way, I Want What I Want, When I Want It, becomes I want what works, is good for the plants, builds soil, attracts pollinators and also pleases my aesthetic sensibility. Which is totally do-able.

This un-learning of the dominating, push through ’til you get what you want mentality will also help you to see the patterns you’ve been working against, on the boyfriend front. That may be a bit trickier and more emotionally painful to figure out. But that’s the thing about un-learning falsity. It has a tendency to spread into other areas. Like pioneer plants! 🙂 After you’ve re-wired your thought patterns enough to figure out the windy area, you’re a slightly different person. Now you are more likely to see the life-long pattern of always finding yourself involved with men who you realize, in hind-sight, are an awful lot like that gruesome old uncle…

When you can see the patterns, and un-learn your attachment to working against them, you can start creating healthy situations in which the appropriate details fall, more effortlessly, into place.

Integrate Rather Than Segregate.

“By putting the right things in the right place,
relationships develop between them,
and they support each other.”

David Holmgren

Our world is increasingly fragmented. Belief systems separate us into Us and Them, which are expressed as artificial boundaries. Conceptual. Ideological. Spiritual. What-have-you. New boundaries, both externally and internally, are being created all the time. Every generation of new refinements on old ideas creates more fragmentation. Segregation is now the norm, the default position. Us and Them is the only way under a dominator culture, and being creatures who love to invent, improve and develop things, we’ve taken fragmentation, segregation and compartmentilzation to an absurd degree.

“Issues” exist in isolation and cannot be compared to other, analogous issues, for fear of “diluting the message,” even though seeing connections to and similarities with other issues, expands the message. But no. Tunnel vision must be maintained at all times. No distractions.

Disciplines and professions exist in isolation and cannot be allowed to cross-pollinate each other because…why? Physics, economics, theology, architecture, psychology, literature, herbalism, medicine, geology, stellar cartography, microbiology…and everything else…all have very clear boundaries.

It makes no sense.

Except that it does.

It’s a continuing spectrum of results spinning out from the belief that Spirit is pure, perfect and wonderful, while Matter is corrupt, loathsome and base. And since Matter is so irrelevant, machine-like and inert, the only way to “understand” it is by killing it, cutting it up into pieces and separating the pieces by category. Yet, if Matter is so disgusting, why would something so magnificent as Spirit constantly be embodying it? And if it is so base, why the desperate need to understand it…even to the point of bloodying yourself up to the elbows in all that loathsome gore?

Under the old Newtonian view, the only reason for trying to “understand” Nature is to be able to “conquer” Her.

As if!

Intellectually, people are coming to realize this is hogwash. But on a gut level, it is still very firmly internalized. Intellect, logic and math are still seen as the true signs of intelligence that cannot be denied. And it’s still all too easy for the analytic to overshadow feelings, intuition and poetry. Easy and mostly encouraged.

Our minds have been artificially separated from our bodies. It’s only a concept, of course. If they really were, we’d all be dead. Decapitated. But the subconscious will, literally, believe anything. All the more so if there are long-standing traditions, religions, and institutions that support the belief. And there are. Huge income streams, too, that must be maintained, at any cost.

The acceptance of Mind/Body is starting to gain traction. It goes hand in hand with the realization that Earth is a living system. See? Psychology and Geology as reflections of each other! These kinds of reflections between different seeming bodies of knowledge are everywhere. And it’s important to find them and integrate them.. Because Life is One. It’s not cut up into pieces and wrapped in plastic.

But the damage that’s been done by thousands of years of falsely worshipping the mind and falsely demonizing the body, is a long way from being healed. Deforestation. Rape culture. Colonialization. Mountain top removal. Genocide. Hydraulic fracturing. Industrialized agriculture. Transhumanism. These hideous things, and more, are only possible from a position of despising the spectrum of Matter, Body, Planet.

This is where Permaculture comes to the rescue, again. The principle of Integrate Rather Than Segregate allows us to unlearn all this internalized nonsense.

When we design our spaces with integration in mind, it starts calling all that old segregationist junk up out of our subconscious and into the light of day. Gently. One design project at a time. Shadow work is not easy, but having physical projects focusing on integration is like a hand reaching down to pull us up. If you’re tuned into the healing frequency, it’s impossible to not see the similarities. Integrating the subconscious with the consciousness is necessary for real healing. And we cannot heal the Planet or Humanity without healing ourselves. Because we’re part of it. And integration leads to more integration.

When we make a hot compost pile to heat the water for the outdoor shower, and the grey water from the shower is piped into the peach guild, we have integration. We have the beginning of a functional web of interconnected relevance. And we made it ourselves! Not only is this very pleasing, but it lets us start seeing ourselves as part of a Web of Relevance rather than an unnatural, disconnected Chain of Command.

When we get a biogas system in place so our own poop can be turned into both cooking gas and fertilizer for our garden, we close a circle and can see ourselves more clearly as part of the circle of life, rather than separate from it. We’re literally feeding our gardens from our own substance. When we start bringing up the stuff hidden away in our shadow, the shame, lack, unworthiness, self-loathing, the fear, hatred and anger into the light of consciousness, we transform it, heal it. We take the shit we’ve had imposed on us and finally use it for good, becoming free of its detrimental influence. When we can bring up the old lies, and love our selves for devising a way to protect ourselves, we finally let go of it…it’s no longer in charge of our lives. We become able to use that energy for good.

And the more elements we integrate in different ways, the more integrative we become. Physical projects are totally analogous to the psychological projects. Integrating shadow work with regenerative landscape work is meta-integrative! It’s not possible to practice regenerative landscaping without also regenerating yourself.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious,
it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” 

Carl Jung

Use Small and Slow Solutions.

“Make the least change for the greatest possible effect.”  

Bill Mollison

“Small and slow systems are easier to maintain
than big ones, make better use of local resources,
and produce more sustainable outcomes.” 

David Holmgren

I’ve always been one to make Big Plans. I’d want them done, right away, too. I would push myself through to exhaustion and become completely overwhelmed. Big Plans have a way of getting bigger and Bigger and BIGGER. Inevitably, I would give up in defeat. There was too much working against me to pull it off. Not enough money or technology…or whatever. Impatience was the biggest part of this recurring bad outcome. Now that I’m old and everything hurts, I, literally, cannot push through to exhaustion. Exhaustion happens very fast. I have to pace myself. Go slower.

And dang! I can get so much more done, this way!

Now, I don’t know about you, but I can see, in the 20/20 vision of hindsight, that my impatience was an expression of not believing myself to be “good enough.” Good enough for what? I don’t know. Anything.

This feeling of lack is quite common to those of us born into domination culture. And since anything and everything can be weaponized, and used to push us down, even while pretending to be nice, it is expressed in myriad ways. Wanting to show the world how creative, inventive and amazing we really are, becomes important. If we can demonstrate it to the world, we might be able to believe it about ourselves.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t make Big Plans. We should. The creative urge is the best thing there is. But we need to be realistic about how much we can actually get done, with the resources we have. And plan accordingly, making alterations as we go, based on what we learn in the process. Because it never unfolds in the way we imagine it will.

My current Big Plan is to make a magnificent Food Forest in the desert. It’s a regular death zone here. No water, I have to haul it. No dirt, even, just alkaline sand. Fierce wind. Blazing sun. And some winters, it can get as low as -30º F. Not every winter. And not for long periods. Once the sun gets high enough in the sky, it’ll get up to +20º F. But that’s long enough to kill anything that can’t handle it. On top of that, I’m all by myself, old and physically weak (but getting stronger!).

There were plenty of times … before I actually started … where it all seemed like too much. An insurmountable mountain of impossibility. But a huge part of the beauty of going slow, is that you can make obvious progress and the feeling of impossibility simply goes away. Working on one small aspect of a very Big Plan, means … It’s Working!

I’m putting together a large hügelkultur bed. It has swales and vermicomposting incorporated. I’m experimenting with different vegetable ferments to compost. Once the loads of woodchips start arriving, hot composting will be part of the scene. And when I get me some firewood, bio char. It will cover a fairly large area…maybe 60 by 40 feet? Approximately.

I’ve got my little pocket chainsaw, my loppers and a few more 5 gallon buckets. There are trees near the river and I go around collecting dead, and living wood. I also fill buckets with dirt. A ditch was bulldozed out among the trees, along the road for flood prevention, and the dirt dumped up along the side of the road. It’s quite black, and probably has earthworm eggs in it!!!

It doesn’t go very fast. I don’t have a pickup, I have a van. But every small load of branches and dirt makes a noticeable difference.

I had a pound of red wigglers coming. So I focused on just that. On making them a nice, safe and secure spot where they can get things going. It’s not that big of an area and I got it done before they arrived. Now, I’m planting comfrey. I have some here, in pots and more on the way. So, again, I’m just focusing on one more small part. Expanding the hügel out, around the worm area, into a good area for the comfrey.

I plan on spending the winter making this hügelkultur as large as it will get, going slowly, not hurting myself. Extending it out a few feet at a time. The worms will find the new loads of food I add into the newest sections and the comfrey can be divided in the summer. Maybe I’ll buy more rootstock before then, maybe I won’t. I can play it by ear.

But, the point is, going slow is what’s making it happen. Within this context of plodding, slowly along, I have design revelations everyday. And they’re good revelations, based on the reality of this place.

That makes for a very solid design.

If I had the money to dig a well, bring in dump trucks full of dirt, rocks, logs, mushroom compost, herbicide-free straw bales, a full forest of large trees, shrubs and herbaceous perennials, and the labor to get it all put together, it would not be as good. It would look nice, at least at first, until the problems set in. The design would not have the inherent strength built into it as it does from going slowly, from the ground, up. And the yields, both emotional and in food, would never be as good. Not in the long run.

The other thing that’s good about going slowly is how respectful it is to the neighbors. Smack dab in the middle of where one of my swales is going, there are a bunch of prairie dog holes. Prairie dog holes make walking difficult. Your foot frequently breaks through the surface and you sink down to the ankle. Digging is easier, because the compacted sand has tunnels in it. I do have a fear that a rattle snake will come up from one of the holes as I dig through it. So far, none have.

Prairie dogs are excavators. But a backhoe tearing through their colony would be traumatic for them. The thought of that disturbs me. Me with my shovel is easy for them to deal with. They can just dig off in another direction. No loud or scary machinery vibrating the ground. Dogs and coyotes dig down to find them, so it’s no different from what they’re already used to. So that’s a good thing.

Unloading some branches the other day, I realized I’m using small and slow solutions. And it made me smile. Going slow puts you squarely in The Journey. Right Here, Right Now. Which is so much better than fearfully racing towards the future. It’s easier, more pleasant and satisfying. And I realized, in my Journeying process, I’ve finally un-learned that “not good enough” nonsense. Going slowly is filling the vacancy where “not good enough” used to reside, helping me create a new paradigm by simply placing one foot in front of the other. And using slow and small solutions naturally includes a new element in the plan … taking care of myself. Like, automatically. What a concept!

Use and Value Diversity.

“Diversity isn’t involved so much
with the number of elements in a system
as it is with the number of functional connections
between these elements.
Diversity is not the number of things,
but the number of ways in which things work.”

Bill Mollison

Mother Nature’s processes are teeming with life. Billions of tiny organisms in one small spoonful of healthy soil or pond water. Trillions of organisms in your own body. You’d die without them.

It’s not a chaotic free-for-all, either. They’re not free agents, acting in their own self-interest. Well, they are. But it’s symbiotic, within the larger context of a brilliant design, that functions for the betterment of the whole. They’re interconnected with each other, in multiple ways, important ways, and their interactions produce the stuff of continued life and health. Whether they’re eating bacteria and feeding plants with their poop, maintaining the health of a digestive tract, or keeping the Ph levels of the pond water at optimal levels, they’re all doing their jobs. There’s a lot of redundancy, too. A lot of subtle and nuanced variations of each process. There is no one right combination of species in a healthy microbiome. The right combination is the one that works. The more species, redundancies and subtleties, the better. Health, stability, vigor, fecundity and brilliant, verdant abundance are the result of diversity.

“Uniformity is not nature’s way; diversity is nature’s way“

Vandana Shiva

Monoculture, of course, is the exact opposite of this.

Following Old Testament style practices, jacked up, as if on steroids, by vast acreages of uniformity, enormous tilling, sowing and reaping machines, and barrels of toxic chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, it has become increasingly efficient at creating disease, pestilence, death, infertility and scarcity. The huge food surplusses it produces can’t be considered abundance, when the food is tainted. Or when distribution is biased.

Being a direct result of monotheism, monoculture is a one-dimensional, sterile (in the metaphorical sense, actual sterility is not possible outside of a vacuum.) and highly destructive way of growing food. Food is the most personal and the most political thing there is…but it’s not just about food production. It’s about everything. It’s a top down imposition of how to conduct every aspect of one’s life, with no regard for anything but its own dictates.

And it has infected every aspect of life.

“You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, lest the whole yield be forfeited, the crop that you have sown and the yield of the vineyard. You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together. You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together.

Deuteronomy 22:9-11

“You shall keep my statutes. You shall not let your cattle breed with a different kind. You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor shall you wear a garment of cloth made of two kinds of material.

Leviticus 19:19

Clearly, these impositions were some sort of misbegotten attempt at “purity.” And living in this way, a demonstration of the purity of one’s devotion.

Science, or rather scientism, is no better. While natural systems use redundancy, diversity and endless nuance to create stability, an axiomatic system – made up, conceptual, sterile, if you will – is completely unstable. Remove one element from it, and the whole thing collapses. That’s the monoculture mentality in action. Big Ag. Big Pharma. Big Politics. It’s all part of the same long, “Nature Conquering” spectrum. The jealous god must be so proud.

When germs were finally discovered, the automatic reaction was to kill them all…and to be horribly afraid. Science devised all kinds of nasty chemicals to do just this. And they’re killing off everything in the process. This is the modern rendition of that same misbegotten idea of purity. Sterility remains part of the modern mythology. Scientists know perfectly well that it’s not possible, yet everybody pretends it is.

Even atheists are influenced by this mindset. They believe the narrative that says religion is stupid and science is smart. So, by believing in science, they “prove” themselves to be smart. But they’re just as dogmatic, zealous and as unquestioning in their belief system as any Jehovah’s Witness pounding on your front door. They use the word “Science” as a trump card. All they have to do is say it and they win. No research, no questioning, no actual science is necessary. This is scientism, nothing more. Real science questions everything. Most especially, itself. But when there are billion dollar income streams at stake, all questioning will cease.

And the devotees are fine with this.

It’s the fear. It keeps them in their place.

Fear can be as persistent as any aminopyralid, infecting anybody, regardless of their belief system.

This is the great thing about Use and Value Diversity. Learning about soil organisms is fascinating, If you had fears about micro-organisms before, learning about them will alleviate that. Sure, the anaerobic ones are potentially dangerous, but they’re easy enough to prevent. This kind of learning allows us to un-learn, in a very practical and real way, the jealous god’s fear-based lies we still carry within us.

Use Edges and Value the Marginal.

In polite society, edgy, marginal people are considered scary, untrustworthy, criminal, perhaps. They are best avoided at all costs, if one desires to maintain the status quo. But the Permaculture Principle of using edges and valuing the marginal creates an opportunity to un-learn that archaic and divisive mindset.

On the surface, it speaks to physical edges in landscapes. The places where water meets land, where garden border meets lawn, where forest meets meadow. These edges create some amazing and unique possibilities. Something brand new will emerge when two widely divergent communities come face to face with each other. What kind of interactions happen between Meadow soil organisms and Forest soil organisms? Is it their interface that attracts Poison Ivy, who is so famous for keeping the humans out of the woods?

That’s a rhetorical question. I don’t claim to know.

What I do know is that the physical realities of border areas are profound. They add whole new levels of diversity, fecundity and abundance. But the physical reality is only the beginning. Physical realities speak to us in ways book learning cannot. They impart certain inalienable realizations about the world, our place in it, about who we really are and what’s really going on.

Borderlands are home to Trickster, who so adores upsetting the applecart…for the lessons in the upset. Practicing Permaculture automatically puts us into the margins, simply for questioning the status quo. Even more for talking about it. And acting against it? Look out. You better value the marginal, because the marginal is you. Unlearning the assumption that you’ll always have a place in the world, assuming you have that assumption, is a huge shift. Painful cognitive dissonance cracks open our worldview and allows new, truer realizations to flood our minds.

You can’t exist purely in the margins. You also have a foot in the dominant culture. Even the most hermit-like cave dweller has a foot in the dominant culture. For we all carry it within. Where ever you go? There you are.

Even if you despise Every. Single. Thing. About the dominant culture. You still carry it within you. Maybe it’s just remnants, at this point. But it will never go away completely. We’re social animals. We have no choice. This is what we came here to do.

To whatever degree you have un-learned the negative assumptions of the culture, you still have one foot in it and the other in your beautiful permaculture reality. This is a bizarre balancing act. Me against the world. Me against the world I hold inside myself. Me against myself. However it expresses through your life, is unique to your life. What’s not unique is the difficulty in straddling two completely different worldviews and being forced…literally forced… to let go of what does not serve. And good riddance!

Un-learning old beliefs, be they yours or your larger community’s, is a frequently painful, but thoroughly profound way to move forward. We can find ways to help both Culture and Nature. To productively balance them in ways of that actually work. Will it be easy? No. But Trickster is there, in the borderland, laughing at our struggles, yet showing us the way. All we have to do is un-learn our fear of the edge. Because anybody who’s not on the edge? Is taking up too much room.

Creatively Use and Respond to Change.

Change, they say, is the only constant. This is an understanding that’s existed for as long as we’ve been this species. Longer, really. Because all the other creatures seem to understand it. Only humans, living now, in an artificially constructed, hermetically sealed, anti-biotic reality, are afraid of change.

It’s the fear of change that makes it so hard.

We fight so hard to resist change. We become habituated to the familiar and thus, come to hate the un-familiar. Yet the un-familiar is what enables us to see differently, which enables us to think differently, which is what results in those fabulous Eureka Moments. In fact, de-familiarization is an excorsize used by great artists, to facilitate the creative process. It’s said that Leo Tolstoy did this all the time. He constantly described things from strange perspectives and refused to use normal words for things. Making things strange enabled him to create heightened effects in his writing. You don’t have to be a writer to use this exorcise. You can do it as an on-going thought experiment. Perhaps a way to write on facebook. Start by saying dorky little things like “un-close the door,” and see how you can expand from there. Just to mess with people. To mess with yourself, really. Un-learn your attachment to standard forms of language. It’ll create useful changes in your brain. Our language alters our thought patterns as much as our thought patterns alter our language.

Imagining the worst case scenario is another way to un-learn your attachment to rigid old thought patterns and become able to embrace change. Stoicism has some still-famous advise. Imagine the most negative outcome to a situation you possibly can. Something completely out there.

Example.

You were hoping to sell all your microgreens at the Farmer’s Market. You actually need to sell them all, because you need the money to buy more trees. But it rains and nobody comes to the Farmer’s Market. Now you’re stuck donating all the greens to the food bank. Dammit!

This sucks. But instead of wallowing in the misery of how unfair the weather gods are, you do this Worst Case Scenario exercise. You spin it out into a complete farce. An absurdly disaterous situation. To break the cycle.

Might go something like this.

God dammit! Now I can’t get those trees, which means the whole hillside will erode down into the sea, taking the house with it. We’ll be homeless. We’ll have to go to the food bank to eat, and find a bridge to live under. Then, having no clean clothes, Little Johnny will be kicked out of school, taken by the state, made to grow up in a series of foster homes, where he will certainly be horribly abused. He’ll grow up to be a derelict, doomed to forever living under a bridge and being shunned by society. He’ll undoubtedly turn to drugs and crime. Everything I’ve hoped and worked for will be gone. Just like that.

Now, two things happen when you make up an absurd fiction like this. 1, You start laughing, because you know it really isn’t that bad. You actually have plenty of time to get the trees. And 2, you can see what you’re secretly afraid of. It’s probably a secret you’ve been keeping from yourself your whole life.

Or try Inversion. Take your most cherished principles, theories, conclusions, decisions, beliefs…whatever…and subject them to the scrutiny of an imaginary jury trial. You play both parts, the defense and the prosecuting attorneys. Make the best case you can, both for and against. Really appeal to that jury. Put some theater in it. See if you don’t start letting go of some old assumptions. It’s a great way to loosen up your biases, which is un-learning at its finest.

What about the ultimate change? Climate Change. Can you un-learn your fear of change enough to creatively respond to that? Yes. With your resilient, change loving brain, you can do anything.

The Right says the climate is just changing, because that’s what it does. That it’s not because of us. We should just continue doing what we’ve been doing, and not worry about it. The Left says it is because of us and it’s too late to fix it. Even if everything went green today, it’s too late. We’re doomed.

Which is correct?

There really is no way to know.

Plenty of people will scream and say there IS a way to know. But, left or right, that’s just their self-importance talking.

It seems likely that Neither/Both are correct. Apparently, the Earth goes through cyclical climate changes and that’s normal for Her. They’re long cycles, compared to our puny lives, so to us it seems catastrophic. It’s not catastrophic.

But that doesn’t mean we should keep behaving in such a disgusting manner.

Filling the atmosphere with billions and billions billowing tons of toxic fumes is disgusting. It needs to stop.

Because it’s disgusting.

Sure, there are numerous scientific reasons describing all the problems it causes. But the simple fact of how disgusting it is, should be enough. Nor should we keep producing and dumping mountains and mountains of plastic garbage into the oceans. Again. Because it’s disgusting. It’s horribly disgusting. And so rude. Such an insult to Our Beautiful Blue Planet. How dare we behave so disgustingly?! Would you drive a garbage truck to your mother’s house, smash through the picture window and dump it in her living room?

Is knowing the difference between right and wrong such a big change?

Climate Change is an incredible opportunity for creative response. While everybody else is running around fighting, screaming and expressing their fear of change … so hard … you, my friend, will be cool as a cucumber. You’ll be like Woo Hoo! Bring it on! Responding with beautiful creativity. Without a drop of fear. In myriad ways. And that is, literally, as good as it gets.

Un-learning all these old lies enables us to dissolve the internalized complex of barriers to True Freedom.

Thank you, Permaculture. Thank you very much.

In Conclusion.

I don’t claim to have all the answers. I know what I know. I’ve been learning about the superiority of natural processes, compared to the many artificial “replacements” of them, my whole life. From being a homebirth mom, a full term breastfeeder, a radical unschooler, an artist, a re-wilder and a regenerative gardener. And the time has finally come to start passing it along. Hopefully, what I know will cross-pollinate with what you know and we can make yet another new connection in the Web of Relevance. I look forward at any and all constructive comments.