"This
makes me so mad!" I growl, throwing the
newspaper onto the kitchen table. Another example of
corporate greed, another despoliation, another
"if it bleeds, it leads" news story. My
wife turns her eyes from the busy hummingbird feeder
outside the window and asks, "If it makes you
this unhappy, why do you read it?"
A good question. I had turned to permaculture because
it offered positive solutions. The constant
fire-fighting of environmental activism wasn't for
me, though at first it seemed the only way to offer
aid to a suffering planet. But the fragile victories
seemed so fleeting and ineffectual in the face of
such wholesale rapine. The constant reacting to new
abominations forcing a constant catch-up game, and
the daily misery of watching another forest fall are
too disheartening. Permaculture's constructive
approach suited my constitution, my hopes, and my
desire to avoid a retreat into a Prozac- and
Xanax-induced Lotus-land.
Yet those lists of genetically modified foods, the
lobbyist-bought Senate riders, the battering at the
Endangered Species Act still grab my heart and set my
bile ducts squirting. What good is that anger?
Plenty, I imagine Bill Mollison would tell me. Bill
has readily declared that it is anger that motivates
him to do his award-winning and vital work. Anger is
a powerful force. When Bill regales a group of
students with a tale of a once-healthy Mexican
fishing town reduced to starvation after a pet-food
cannery moved in, and he finishes: "So instead
of buying pet food, you should just murder a Mexican
child and feed him to Fido, because that's basically
what you're doing." Everyone is outraged, feels
a little guilty, and is ready to change the world.
Permaculture, like many revolutionary fields, has its
share of angry, cantankerous men (and generally they
are men). We all know a few of these crucial agents
of change. Their ranks are legion in new endeavors,
whether it's John L. Lewis raging at the miserable
conditions of coal miners, Martin Luther spiking his
95 theses to the Wittenburg church door, or T. H.
Huxley Darwin's bulldog eloquently reducing the
opponents of natural selection to impotent sputters.
These giants inspire, motivate, and create. But their
anger also leaves wreckage in its wake. Trailing many
of these charismatic people, along with their superb
works, are fractured communities, confused and bitter
followers, broken marriages, and often, an opposition
just as motivated to thwart them. When anger is the
propellant, the line between inspiring and
antagonizing is easily broached.
Raging Bulls and Charismatic Curmudgeons
Angry people seem essential for revolutions. But as
permaculture matures and its boundaries grow more
defined, I'd argue that there is less need for raging
bulls and curmudgeons. I respect and cherish the work
and, yes, the personalities, of those angry men. We
wouldn't be here without them, and their place at the
head of the table is always open. But sustaining
revolutions calls for different methods than does
creating them, which is a process of crashing down
the door and raising the alarm. Sustaining them
requires knitting a community and welcoming the
converted, the hesitant, and the opposed. Someone
seething with rage, or with any other unresolved
manifestation of what Jung would call "the
shadow," will continually boil over, spraying
friend and foe alike with venom and poisoning a
healthy network.
I don't mean to single out angry men. We each have
our challenges, our sharp edges that can wound those
whom we care about and work with. Many communities
and movements, though united by a common vision,
stumble when personality our fears, anger,
insecurities, or ego rears its head. Recently, yet
another set of my friends left an intentional
community. "We spent all our time in
meetings," they lamented. "Just deciding to
fix the washing machine took six hours of
consensus-building. Nothing ever got done. I couldn't
take it."
Successful communities possess, or are forced to
develop, more than just a common vision. Their
members also devise techniques for working with each
other. Often this means calling in a counselor or
other specialist to give them tools to identify the
personal conflicts and motivations that underlie
their community's dynamics, and to separate personal
issues from community needs. Only then can they make
progress usually independently on either the
interpersonal or communal front. Those six-hour
washing-machine meetings are often group-therapy
sessions in disguise, a cacophonous roomful of inner
children, shadow selves, and unconscious
coping-mechanisms wrangling over deep, unspoken
issues. No wonder nothing ever gets done. If I think
I'm discussing washer repair when I'm actually
battling the ghosts of a neglectful father and
mercurial mother, we'll be in meetings until I've had
a psychological breakthrough. Fat chance, under those
circumstances.
The Enlightened Permaculturist
With this in mind, I make a plea for more personal
work, for more conscious and mindful action in
permaculture: Enlightened permaculturists, if you
will. A trend toward this is already underway, seen,
for example in the evolution of permaculture
teaching. Initially the design course was a lecture
series often taught by one or another charismatic
curmudgeon and although the material was far more
holistic and vital than most college curricula, the
format was straight from an airless classroom. Early
permaculture students recognized that the
community-building aspect of the design course was as
powerful and motivating as the content.
When these students emerged as a second generation of
teachers, they doled out some of the curriculum in an
experiential and team-building format, adapted to
diverse learning styles. Some of these new teachers
went to non-traditional schools themselves, and many
have pursued spiritual paths or deep personal work.
They have brought a different consciousness to the
design course.
A second example of permaculture's evolution is in
the growth of the concept of Zone Zero. Originally
defined in the zones-and-sectors-design-scheme as the
house itself, Zone Zero rapidly enlarged to include
the home's occupants. More recently, the definition
has shifted in some circles to mean the mental and
emotional state of the residents, the designer, and
of permaculturists in general. "Working on Zone
Zero" means getting your act together. It's an
eminently useful concept that can serve as a call to
more conscious design and living.
Last summer's "Build Here Now" convergence
among permaculture, natural building, and
spirituality at Taos-based Lama Foundation highlights
the trend. Lama's small spiritual community was
nearly overrun with a hundred mud-daubed builders and
pontificating permies. But Lama's constant reminders
of life's higher purposes fluttering prayer flags,
the wail of early morning devotional song and the
nurturing, enfolding atmosphere created by the
community fostered a level of meaning and connection
I've never experienced at conferences, even in
permaculture. I had a glimpse of a world in which our
inner selves, spiritual hearts, and activist hands
were united.
Evangelists or Listeners?
Permaculture has always argued that acknowledging the
cultural milieu of the design client is critical for
success. I'd apply this principle to our field in
general: Unless permaculturists explore the matrix of
psychological forces that unconsciously motivate and
rule us, and we resolve the hidden sources of our
anger, need for recognition, or other manifestations
of inner conflict, we'll continue to sow the seeds of
our movement's destruction and be ignored or
disdained by the mainstream world. To create
sustainable communities requires the highest form of
self-reliance: emotionally healthy people.
What would the "enlightened permaculturist"
look like? Perhaps this: Say a large corporation
wants your help in designing a new office site. If
you go to them, fired up with the dogma of
sustainability, and say, "You guys are doing
everything wrong, and I'm going to tell you how to do
it right," they'll dismiss you out of hand. Many
of us regard the mainstream with just this contempt.
However, if you begin by listening to them, asking
them, "What are your goals?" you'll find
that their aims aren't "to destroy ecosystems
and enslave the world," but more likely,
"to have more productive employees and avoid
waste."
Let's think about the phrase "more productive
employees" and see how helping a company achieve
that goal can serve a larger purpose. Back in the
days of manufacturing-based business, higher
productivity simply meant giving a worker a better
machine and ordering her to make more widgets per
day. But many businesses now run on ideas. Managers
can't say, "I need 20% more creativity from you
next year." They must foster an atmosphere that
nurtures creativity. This is where you, the designer,
come in. Your marvelous office design includes more
windows, less fluorescent light, a cafeteria that
serves organic food grown in the once turf-bound lot
surrounding the building, and 50 other elements that
enlarge the lives of those who work there.
Now those employees are not just working in a healthy
climate that inspires creativity, they're entwined by
an ecological, holistic way of living. They begin to
see the possibilities for their own lives. Who knows,
maybe some of them will be inspired to chuck the
corporate rat race and live a meaningful life. All
this simply because you helped a corporation achieve
its goals, gently implanting a larger agenda as you
did so. Turning our backs or shouting in rage won't
do this.
Permaculturists are bursting with a new message. We
want to tell the world. But nobody likes being told
they're wrong; proselytizers are notoriously
unpopular. The hallmark of much of what I'm
describing here teaching permaculture differently,
helping communities survive, working with the
mainstream requires that, though we're bursting to
talk, we get quiet and listen. This theme echoes
throughout this magazine: listenening to our
archetypes, returning to our earliest desires yields
good design, describing circles in which we hear the
concerns of others, and learning to work together
deeply.
Permaculture is based on observation. I ask that we
observe ourselves our hidden, internal ecosystem more
carefully, so that our actions with one another may
be more conscious and less the product of old habits.
By the simple act of careful, mindful listening to
what speaks within us, listening to what others need
to have us hear, we can dispel anger, open doorways,
and forge lasting alliances.
Toby Hemenway
is the author of Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale
Permaculture, associate editor of The Permaculture
Activist. This article originally appeared in
Permaculture Activist #42. Subscriptions to The
Permaculture Activist are $19 (3 issues plus
newsletters) from P.O. Box 1209, Black Mountain, NC,
28711.
