Permaculture and the beaten path to freedom

Permaculture revisited

Here we have a good example of how a noble proposal and related information may be undermined to pose no threat to the system.  While wondering around the web for practical information about permaculture, one good source is The Permaculture Institute.  As an example (there is nothing in particular that is wrong with the PI but it is representative) of how an idea can be sterilized and be assimilated within the dominant system of capitalism.  Permaculture as a proposal of how land can be utilized in a sustainable way and not as a temporary area of exploitation till it is depleted and abandoned is something that few good willing souls may have anything against.  But in itself does not contain automatically a viable way for people to escape the domination of the economic and political system we all (almost all, or almost all who are not struggling to escape it) live under.  Some would say it does not need to, and may be a good step for people who will engage in such living to take the next step towards liberation.  This is what is troubling us and we can not see clearly.  Does permaculture have a hidden radical agenda?  Who is the keeper of this hidden agenda and who are the innocent victims who will engage in such a practice
and be able to be indoctrinated by the keepers at a later stage?  Should there be a hidden agenda?  What happens to the keepers of the hidden agenda when domination presents a viable route to prosperity for the keepers to abandon their agenda?  Such questions we ask and we end up not being very popular.  Despite of our efforts to present ourselves as not the bearers of destruction of all good and pretty things alternative, progressive,  ecological, revolutionary even, post-modern, etc. we are confronted with hostility.

Come on now, why can't we all get along and be "friends"?  We all mean well, we try to make a good idea better, we are with you, not against you.  Or are we?  Being friends, in solidarity, trying to contribute, does not necessarily mean we are one.  Unity must come with agreement, and the more and deeper the agreement is the better the strength of unity.  That we do not work against someone does not mean we will work with someone, or along with someone.  That we do not work against someone does not mean we should mind our own business and not criticize what it is they are working on.  There are tons and tons of alternative, progressive, new-worldish things going on all around us but cumulatively they have not brought change.  In some cases they have opened up new sectors of the economy to be exploited.  Not only have they not brought change, they have sucked the energy of those who participate, who may initially have wanted real social change, to contribute to something that does not cause change.  Is this done consciously, subconsciously, or unconsciously?  It is a safe way to deviate from the pre-established norm and not really face any negative consequences.  Boy do we ask too many questions?  Do we have any answers?  If we did would we be preaching them?  Instead we want to locate others and discuss such ideas with others who are asking similar questions.  Then together, if we locate some answers that would be meaningful for us who went through this process together, would there be any meaning in implementing them.

Let's face it.  If and when an idea is radical and brings people together in agreement to work for real social change, the boss realizes it is happening by the vacuum it creates in domination and authority.  Those people do not show up for work, do not vote, do not consume, do not listen!  The boss then sends its appropriate units of repression out to distinguish the fire in the lower decks of its vessel of domination.  Not all units of repression are as flashy as the men dressed in armor with helmets, gas masks, clubs, and guns.  If you are doing something so silently and so subversively that the boss is not realizing what it is you are doing, it has to be so isolated by society that at any encounter with society it is perceived as anti-social.  Society itself works as an instrument of repression, either by avoiding it or by attracting authorities to confront it.  If you are doing it out on the open and you have received no repression measures, chances are it is not threatening to the boss, it is under and within the system's domination, it can be assimilated and incorporated within the system.  Anything that can be assimilated is "good" for the system.  Even radical Marxism has lately been evolved into a science and an academic discipline.  It is within the walls of academia, and the Marxian authorities are employees of either government or non-profit organizations.  They know more about Marxism than any Marxist out there on the street.  Who knows, even anarchy may evolve into a discipline someday when they find a way to sterilize it and make it complex enough so only authorities such as academic anarchist philosophers can talk about it.  Really?

So how does "a system" assimilate permaculture, because we almost forgot what we started writing about.  The usual formula seems to be commodification.  An idea and a proposal for human activity usually once examined in detail it contains so much information that only experts can handle the amount and the level of complexity.  Those experts become the authorities of the proposal, they are the teachers, the holders of the ultimate information that needs conveyors to be implemented.  The information itself becomes a commodity.  The tools for implementation become a commodity.  Even those poor radicals that started it all aiming at real social change through the sale of their idea at some point, inside the difficult path for liberation, and while struggling to keep going with the few around them that bought it, find themselves tempted to get of the jungle path, and into the highway.  At that point they catch a bus, a cab, or even a limo.  No matter how far and deep you are into the wild, if a good idea has sold to some there will always be a limo waiting for you "off the beaten path".  Because the longer you stay in the path, and the more resilient you are, you will be beaten in the path.  Yes, my "friends" (as we are not comrades yet are we?), it is not the beaten path, it is those on the path that are beaten!  come and play come and play & lyrics

Often ideas originate within radically minded people and are utilized by others who may get excited of all those original ideas but have no vast interest in social change.  They help form a commodity of the ideas with all the radical action left outside of it.  They portray themselves as those who do not want people to engage in illegal activities and show a way of how these ideas isolated from everything else can be implemented in a way that those that implement them do not get in trouble.  We would call this the sterilization process.  This is a summarized technique of a legal struggle where those that lead this legal struggle become the experts and the authorities.  And it is not a legal struggle because it ends up in court to decide on the right to do something, but a struggle that has no legal repercussions for those that engage in it.  Those than engage in it first often use representation of the followers on their way and therefore become their leaders.  Once the system makes contact with those that struggle through their representative leaders and is able to satisfy in a personal way the demands of the leaders, all struggle has been lost.  The sterile prototype has been evolved into a ready to be mass-produced product for the "alternative" market.

The managers of the struggle have cashed in their position as leaders and representatives and have diverted all attention in materializing the initial goals of the proposal.  The cause has been fully transformed into a sellable commodity and the mediators have been transformed into merchants and directors of this mass production process.  Too many of the causes that originate within leftist circles of political action have traveled on the same path.  It is the path that leads back into a circle where everything started from, only those that lead the circus into the path jumped out of it, into the highway, and the "limo" picked them up.  Like we said earlier, even if you get off the "beaten path" to catch a bus, there might be a limo waiting for you instead.

Permaculture is such an idea and a proposal.  It originated out of studying pre-capitalist societies and how they dealt for many generations with their environment.  How both communities and their environment were stable.  A stable eco-system able to sustain life balances in circles for great periods of time, unlike the way land is utilized and depleted today.  Permaculture has incorporated this primary idea of ecologically sustainable living and has left out the social relations of those that participate in such practice with those outside.  The idea that the more people engage in it the more freedom and autonomy will be produced is infantile silliness. The ground which permaculture is practiced on is either private (a contract with the state for the exclusive use of land) or public with the a specific government permit granted which can only come with conditions.  None of which is producing liberation for those that practice it.  As an experiment and production of data and modification of the initial proposal is valuable nevertheless.  For us it provides a safe way of collecting data and storing it for those who will collectively attempt liberation and autonomy.  We remain nameless not out of fear of repression but out of respect that we will not be in a position of selling what we produce and make available to all who are willing to attempt what we like to attempt.  None of what we accumulate here as information will be used as a commodity.  It can be used as a commodity but not by us, and this does not prevent some to use it as a non-commodity.

With those that use the information collectively and not as a commodity we are willing to work side by side and collaborate.  We do not even have to be friends, referring to the idea of friendship as mentioned in the beginning of this essay.  We do not have to even be together, or as one, but walk on similar "beaten" paths to freedom.  And yes, permaculture, is a good idea, how else would it be?  It is what makes sense in physics, and in physics we define the system we analyze.  The system is earth, life, humanity.  Anything less of that system is a subsystem that needs to identify its purpose of subdivision or it is irrelevant.  A proposal that can not be true for the system is not a proposal towards a solution for the system.

Hell, why do all the work, if you have money you can go out and buy a ready created and developed permaculture farm, even hire some people to play farmers on your back-yard.  You and your farming team will be leaving zero-footprint on the environment.  Just pay the annual property tax, call the police if someone steals from your produce, sue the ones dumping chemicals on your front yard, and make a blog about your success for others to follow.  Maybe even sell a package of information on your achievements.  It is all for a good cause, the environment and its preservation.  Preserving poverty, pain, hunger, child labor as a social environment isolated from your farm.  Your own private Idaho as the B-52s use to say.