We are living in times where a global culture of economic growth and the materially wealthy life it is promising have fundamental effects on the planets ecosphere. The economic system which is based on the linear path of taking from nature, depleting its resources, transforming it into consumer goods or services that are used for a while and then trashed. What we don’t seem to understand is that there is no trash on this planet. That there is no “away” where we could throw or outsource the things, that we don’t need or want anymore. Somehow everything will come back to us.
And it is coming. The continuous disruption of earth’s live cycles and eco-systemsthroughout the last few thousand years of human history, (for example by exploiting resources on one spot and trashing them on another), we face Climate change, wearing the faces of floods, droughts, tsunamis, erosion and many more.
The question is: How can we (re)act on the problems that Climate Change is confronting us with, without going again into the same patterns of behaviour that are producing climate change, social injustice, and any form of systematic violence? How can we overcome the mindset of making fast, direct and way too superficial responses to the problems we are facing? (Like fighting pests with pesticides.)
We need to ask deep questions and dive to the root of the symptoms that we are facing as problems on the surface. Where do these questions lead us to?
Climate Change is the symptom of a deep crisis of values and of our relationship with life. The rise of sea levels, Desertification of lands, war on acces to basic resources for lige, Migration, the rise of Nationalism and Xenophobia on the other side, fundamentalism, domestic violence, epedemic cancer, diabetes and depression, (this list could be contioued endlessly) are crises that we are facing in todays world, wich root in a deep crisis of values. Or rather in the fact that our culture seems to have lost the connection to its deepest values -honouring the sanctity of life- and thus the respectful relationship to all beings on earth. Instead a narrative which puts the (white, male) human in the center of the world, on the top of the evolution, with the imperative to dominate and make use of all other creatures, has come into place, promoting scarcity of resources, concurrence and fight for survival. Closing ourselves to the truth of the interrelatedness and alivness of everything, living the story of separation, our culture draws a picture of the world as consisting of “humans” and the “environment”, understood as a more or less random assembly of unintelligent, unsentient beings with no inherent value besides their usefulness for human purpose.
Permaculture, as a set of principles and tools to design beneficial, nourishing and symbiotic relationships and abundant and healthy eco-systmes can be a guide to answer the questions for radical change which is posed to us today.
Permaculture is peace work, as it creates relationship and brings connection of different elements at a deep level.
Through its systematic and holistic approach to situations, Permaculture enables to ask deep questions and invites us to open our consciousness to the interrelatedness of everything.
to be continued…
This text is inspired by the writings of Charles Eisenstein, Joanna Macy, Derrick Jensen and a lot more…
Permaculture as a Path to Peace 