Permaculture: The Design Arm of a Paradigm Shift
Here’s how it happened to me: Back in 1990 I was playing hooky from my unsatisfying biotech job in Seattle by browsing the homesteading shelves in the public library. I pulled down a thick black book I hadn’t seen before calledPermaculture: A Designers’ Manual. As I perused the pages, suddenly my previously fragmented life made sense. I had been fascinated for years with ecology, appropriate technology, economics, gardening, evolution, construction, energy systems, social justice, and a raft of other seemingly disconnected fields. But I didn’t want to specialize in any one of them, and I had been watching with some envy as my friends dropped into successful careers in various niches. Now, finally I knew what was going on. What a relief to find that a whole-systems approach could tie together the many disparate pieces of my life. This is, I know, a familiar and exalting experience for many when they first encounter permaculture.
Another familiar and not-so exalting experience for most of us is trying to explain permaculture to our friends and families, and receiving blank, confused, or condescending looks in response. I’ve explored this problem in the past, as have others. I’ve continued that journey, and want to share some of my latest thoughts on how we can explain permaculture to others and where it fits into a larger picture.
Just as permaculture helps umbrella many seemingly unrelated disciplines and places them into a larger context, we can understand permaculture better by seeing where it lies, in turn, in its own larger context. Much of the difficulty and confusion around permaculture stems from its protean nature: It can be many things to many people. It’s been called a philosophy, a movement, a design approach, a set of techniques, a practice, a worldview, a land use ethic, a science, a pseudoscience, and even a religion.
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