...a
theory of permaculture that shows care for people as
well as the biosphere...But the dynamics of an
ecosystem are not that of a social system, or are
they?" Rob Scott, student, School for Designing
a Society
Patch
Adams: Susan Parenti and I work together on
two distinct but connected projects: The Gesundheit!
Institute in West Virginia, and The School for
Designing a Society in Illinois. Both are based on
premises foreign to the current social system; thus,
we consider these projects revolutionary. For a long
while I spoke, publicly, of creating a social system
"based on peace and justice." Now, for the
past year, I've added "and based on care."
This is because care medical, social, political,
environmental has long been ignored as a requirement
for humane life. In the following article we present
our projects-- their premises, their hoped for
consequences and our attempts to design care.
"I ain't gonna study war no more"
Susan Parenti: In the past eight
years I've been an organizer and a teacher at the
School for Designing a Society, as well as a
performance partner with Patch Adams. The School,
located in Urbana, Illinois, is an on-going
experiment in making temporary living environments in
which the question, "What would I consider a
desirable society?" is given serious yet playful
discussion. This discussion then forms the basis for
a variety of creative projects. Rather than orienting
participants to find a comfy spot in the current
social system, the School offers tools, time,
ambiance, and company in which people can imagine and
design a system they would prefer. Participants live
together cooperatively, discuss, write, take and give
classes, make performances, and do experiments.
Through these means, they explore the consequences of
making their desires a basis for both learning and
action. The concepts and skills developed through
these activities are brought together in "design
groups." In these groups we challenge the
assumptions of contemporary society in order to
explore how a better society might be designed. One
of the ways we do this is to make "false"
statements based on our desires. These statements are
untrue in the present system, but would become true
in another, differently designed, system.
Patch and I have given a lot of attention to the
matter of care and how society's beliefs about it
impact the choices we make and the institutions we
create. Care is a human need. Permaculture takes Care
of People as one of its ethical foundations. But what
do I mean by care? Care occurs when one person
temporarily becomes part of another's
(social/emotional/personality) structure. And what do
I mean by need? I use the word "need"
whenever I wish to speak of conditions that must be
met continuously and unconditionally if living
organisms are to be motivated to maintain themselves,
their identities, their existence. "In
Permaculture, everything works both ways."
PA: A good deal of my passion for
care comes from my mother and my friends, and from
the circumstances surrounding my growing up. I spent
my childhood and youth on army bases overseas while
my father was away at war. Nothing about the military
made me interested in it, ever. But my mother gave me
tender loving care; she fully cared for me. A
propensity toward science led me to think about
medicine, a profession to care, and in my early teens
I read the books of Tom Dooley, M.D., about his work
helping in places where there was no medicine. These
books were a hymn to caring. I liked his language,
how caring is "thinking to do," and not
with the implication that the cared-for were a
burden. I believed (a misunderstanding, I later
learned) that his being a doctor made him a caring
person. After I became involved in medicine, I
learned that a doctor's practice defines the healing
interaction more than his profession.
My father was a soldier. Fighting two wars broke
first his soul and then his body: I became a war
orphan at age 16. I had already learned that violence
is never intelligent, when, moving from Germany back
to the U.S. and to the South in 1961, I became
immediately aware of the racism in Virginia. I
naturally took part in the Civil Rights Movement and
still find it incomprehensible that every citizen
didn't rise up and say: "We are all in this
together. Stop this hatred!" During that time I
realized our society was in a crisis of lost caring.
This shout rose from every novel I read of the 20th
century. Tom Dooley had shown me that it was possible
to express care through one's actions, and from his
example and from my own interests I was drawn toward
a career in medicine.
When I finished medical school I began to see the
strict, hierarchical, white-male-dominated
institution only recently integrated, that lay ahead
of me: I knew I could not work in it. Fun and love
were excluded, as well as any discussion of
compassion or care. So far away from care was the
medical system that care grew to mean the best
machines and drugs, and not an experience and action
of compassion, generosity, intelligence, art, and
foolishness.
SP: It doesn't take much to go a
stretch and notice how in our society receivers of
care are perceived as burdens. For, after all, what
are they doing but taking? Burden permeates all
language around care. It's assumed. Well-meaning book
after well-meaning book asks how can we deal with the
burden of care, who shall have the responsibility for
care, how can we pay people enough to take on the
burden of care. Care does not move in one direction
only from generous giver to unfortunate needy
receiver, but in both directions at once; the giver
becomes a receiver, and the receiver a giver. When I
use the word care, I understand it as going in both
directions at the same time. "In Permaculture,
everything works both ways."
PA: Looking closely, I saw many
glaring examples where loss of care- turning care
into a burden as Susan would say- did horrible things
to the practice of medicine: it became greedy; it
became a business, with insurance companies and
pharmaceutical and hospital suppliers swarming in for
their share of the profits. Care is never where greed
is.
The only saving grace within the greedy medical
system was the health professionals who still cared.
Yet whatever real care I found came from the nurses,
orderlies, cleaning people, or volunteers- mainly
people in lower paying jobs, most of them women. The
rude, top-of-the hierarchy doctors got the most money
(anyway before corporate medicine) but gave the least
amount of care. Care was clearly devalued. There was
no insurance reimbursement for it. I believe care
even got in the way. Yet, women are so reluctant to
stop caring that many heroic women continue trying to
bring care even to corporate medicine.
I knew that if I was going to play doctor, I would
have to create a context, a hospital, where care
wouldn't be penalized, a place where--as Susan
would say- my need to care wouldn't be suppressed,
indeed, would be an essential expression of the
healing situation. With the Gesundheit! Institute I
wanted to address every problem in health care
delivery and suggest alternatives based in care. I
knew that individual health was inseparable from
family, community, and social health. Therefore
community problems, societal problems, and
environmental problems all fell within the domain of
health care delivery. And so from the perspective of
giving care, poverty and justice became concerns of
the Gesundheit! project as surely as illness, for the
one could not be addressed without regarding the
others.
SP: Care happens by design: when the
needs to receive and to give care are linked.From our
students at the school, who study and apply
permaculture ideas jubilantly, I've learned about
that relationship called companion planting- plants
help each other thrive when rooted down next to one
another. So, for example, a plant that needs to grow
in the shade and offers protection from beetles is
placed next to another that offers to grow tall and
can't abide beetles. Or, in the animal world: a
garden offers a chicken room to scratch, seeds and
bugs as food, shade, home range; while the chicken
offers the garden aerated soil, fewer weeds and bugs,
manure. This linking of needs and offers in the plant
and animal world points to a method of design for the
social world as well. Permaculture invites us to look
at every element in all its functions. This leads
naturally to understanding the way things work both
ways. Design that links needs and offers ensures
stability and sustainability, as the components of
the system provide for each other. In the social
world no one wants to be a burden- no one. Older
people willingly incarcerate themselves in nursing
homes, in order to avoid seeing themselves as burdens
to their children. Bi-directionality or mutuality
eliminates the possibility of burden, because in a
mutual system, each component plays the dual roles of
benefactor and recipient. This idea of companion
plants and animals has influenced my thinking about
care. Are there other ideas from permaculture that
show care for people as well as for the biosphere?
Susan Parenti
may be contacted at sparenti@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu.
Patch Adams
at the Gesundheit Institute, 6855 Washington Blvd.,
Arlington, VA 22213. (Yes, this is the same Patch
Adams whom Robin Williams played in the movie,
"Patch!"). This was reprinted with
permission from the Permaculture Activist.
