At a recent discussion I was asked how we can facilitate discussions around socio-ecological transition with people who aren't necessarily very worried that the world's burning.  My reply:

make sure they have eaten well

if you want people to feel you have a warm personality give them hot drinks

ensure that they know the place well, their local Bars and Pubs are often good for that

a room with a blue colour and reasonably high ceiling

a view out the windows of some trees and shrubbery

give them comfortable chairs, unless you want them to see you as a tough cookie.

really make sure that the room smells nice.

If you can get them to wash their hands before the talk even better.

use simple language and good colourful metaphors.

avoid creating a sensation of disgust in people. This is a nasty strategy used by some to create and reinforce us/them dichotomies.

Given the right conditions people become more open to new ideas, they allow themselves to be more imaginitive and creative. They are less conservative. They may even go on to invent the type of social organisation and decision making process that is the most adapted to them and their particular context. Maybe!

If you want to go further and develop your Permaculture in the area of peoplecare I suggest studying social biology, neuropsychology and psychology . 

Peoplecare and contextuality

Whats the most fashionable thing about permaculture where you are? Forest gardens? Herb spirals? Raised beds?

Here in France its the latter. Now people are getting very exited about "la permaculture humaine". Human permaculture, yes a tautology but "peoplecare" works out as "prendre soin de l'être humain". And that looks less good on a T shirt or book cover.

Peoplecare is widely talked about in different countries and unfortunately has taken the same fashionista path as the gardening/agricultural aspects of permaculture.

So what are the problems?

Lack of understanding. People love herb spirals but don't understand what they are for nor where they would best be installed. I have a 7 ha farm, I don't need a herb spiral. Where I work in Tunisia anything raised up, like a herb spiral or potato tower simply dries out.

Here is an example,  a "potato tower I saw in Tunisia

Whilst this is a strategy that I have frequently used in urban areas, what we see here is a technique unadapted to the climatic context in which it is found. Th summer temperatures go up to the low 40° c so we have enormous levels of evaporation and the towers simply dry out.

Techniques need to be understood, when this is the case they can be adapted to the different contexts in which they will be used/installed. It also means that inappropriate techniques will not be used in contexts to which they cannot be adapted.

During my 30 year career as a designer in numerous different countries I have all too frequently come across techniques and strategies being used in areas for which they are not adapted. In Albania a school had been equiped with PV panels, they were on the east facing roof, they were insufficient in numbers for the needs of the school. In several hot and dry countries .. raised bed gardens, surrounded by the traditional sunken bed gardens which work very well, the raised beds simply dry out. 

Context, context, context!

People care is going the same way. Non-violent communication, consensus, sociocracy have become a sort of mono-cultural norm for PmC peoplcare and social permaculture.

Lack of contextuality. This is probably worst sin that can be committed by a permaculture designer. Everything depends on the context, from farming techniques to social organisation strategies. What works here won't work there. People in general and especially permaculture designers most really take this on board. I work in several different countries and that means I work in several different cultures. It beholds me to really observe the people that I work with and how their culture operates. This is a fascinating part of our work and sometimes/often tiny differences emerge that, like that famous butterfly, can have huge consequences on the development of a project.

Binary thinking. Years of research in neuropsychology, social biology, anthropology have shown that only very special cases show any binarity. For the vast majority we have to think in terms of continuums. Men/women, conservative/liberal, north/south ..... The woman/man dichotomy is a particularly good example of how not to analyse a group. For the vast majority of abilities most human beings group around an average competence with some individuals either very good or very poor at accomplishing certain tasks. (In this context a special case is that most women (XX) can give birth, we haven't yet found a man (XY) who can. The continuum kicks in again though as one person in 1,666 are neither  XX nor XY, (plus Klinefelter (XXY) one in 1,000, births Androgen insensitivity syndrome one in 13,000 births, Partial androgen insensitivity syndrome one in 130,000 births ... etc)

So where does this lead us? The knowledge sets needed to be a competent permaculture designer working with growing systems is wide and various, the same is true with social permaculture and peoplecare. As a designer with 30 years of experience my social permaculture skill set includes neuropsychology, social anthroplogy, history, nutrition and social biology. These branches of science give us important information about the nature(s) of human beings that are essential if we want to create viable and durable human societies. These knowledge sets then need to be complemented with knowledge about human systems. Economics, architecture, energy production and more.

Too often people are presented with solutions that are non-contextual, overly simplistic, based on out-dated science (or research paid for by Industry) or just downright lies. As permaculture designers we are faced with a cunundrum, we work to design and build complex and durable systems. The difficulty is that faced with a choice between simplistic explanations/solutions and complex explanations/solutions it is much easier for people to accept the former. (This is one of the reasons for the lack of massive adoption of permaculture by people. We have made enormous strides but as the world starts to burn there is much left to do.)

When I run permaculture courses my most frequent response to a question is "it depends on the context". I will then go on to give examples of different approaches but always with the same caveat, "this worked here, it might work there but will probably need to be adapted". Not a message that is easy for people to absorb. Luckily we have the principles elucidated by Mollison and then re-interpreted by Homgren. I continually bring everything back to them. Clear guiding principals well explained help people absorb the art and science of permaculture. It also encourages them to understand before acting. 

So back to social permaculture, there is no "one size fits all". People from countries based on rice cultivation engage automatically with the context within "something" is to be found. The opposite is true of wheat cultivating people who fix on the "something" itself and much less on the context. And of course thats binary, in truth its a continuum and depends on the indivduals, at the same time it is generally true. People in China have a different way of looking at the world as compared to people in say Sweden. A social permaculture approach that works in China may well be the opposite of what can be accepted by a Swede. Its a good thing that we in the permaculture world love diversity so much.

Peoplecare is also about our bodies, and of course those of others. Its no good me running an amazing farm that "earthcares" if at the same time it reduces me to a groaning mass of aches and pains. Ergonomy can help us design production systems that look after our bodies and neuropsychology when applied to (people centered) architecture can help us design buildings that encourage good health.

Complexity, contextuality, non-linearity, non-binarity key concepts at the heart of many scientific researchers and many permaculteurs. Which is a good thing.

(Inrokyo no Tenren)

In order to understand it we can take the term Permaculture as a noun and a verb, as the end result and as the process. It is important not to confuse the two so I will use the term a Permaculture to refer to the end result and Permaculture Design to refer to the process.

They are both remarkably easy to describe

A Permaculture has:-

Everything connected to everything else

Every element serving more than one function

Every important function supported by more than one other element.

 

The Permaculture Design will:-

Connect everything together

Ensure every element serves more than one function

Ensure that every important function is supported by more than one other element.

 

Nothing complicated or difficult there, the process of designing involves as few or as many

methodologies of design and techniques as are strictly necessary and these are nicely and clearly laid

out in the main Permaculture books.

Yet we become confused and have a tendancy to mistake the simplicity for a sort of concealed

complicatedness, perhaps nervous at the idea that the problems and conditions that we see around us

everyday and in which we live could so easily be sorted out.

One reason for this is that we confuse the ’10,000 techniques’ one or many of which we will use in

our design, for the design process itself. I read an article recently where it was stated categorically that

Permaculture design was using 40 cm of straw as a layer of mulch, we can see that this is a technique

and it must be said one that is often inappropriatley applied. At other times I have read that a Forest

Garden is a Permaculture, we can see that it is actually gardening strategy and one that is often mis-

designed. On a recent course at L’Academie Bretonne de Permaculture Phil Corbett pointed out

succinctly that people often confuse plant height with shade tolerance, Robert Hart himself mentioned

that in cool-temperate areas a forest garden should dip in the middle to give light to the centre.

 

I mention the above to add weight to the notion that Permaculture Designs are done by Permaculture

Designers. These being people have gone on from basic courses to gain years of experience and

observational, hands on knowledge. Landscapes, people and situations are too varied for this to be any

other way. A good Permaculture Designer will be thoroughly steeped in the ’10,000 techniques’ and

will have a profound understanding of the art of strategy and the way of design, will be, to quote

Tomi O’Tani sensei,

 

“A Jack of all trades and a Master of one”

 

It is also clarity at all times which is needed and it is long experience which will allow this. A

Designer may have a favourite technique (mulch?) and a preferred strategy (Coppice-orchard?) back

at home but it would be unfortunate to carry these around and apply them carte blanche as has

happened in the past with mandala gardens, herb spirals and more recently forest gardens. A Designer

may hate working indoors in an office but there are many who enjoy this and hate working outside

getting wet and dirty.

 

In Alexander Technique we find the useful notion of ‘end-gaining’, this is our attempts to achieve

good ‘posture’ by sitting in or standing in what we think is a good posture., trying to get to the ‘end’

without going through the process of re-teaching the body/mind good habits. This is often true of our

approaches to the creation of Permaculture’s and why it is fortunate that we have our few and reliable

golden rules. Their strict application will allow a Permaculture to unfold as the design is implemented

and matures, this latter implemenation will be accompanied with changes and learnings on the part of

the participants which will enable a good ‘fit’ between human inhabitants and their Design. Liken this

to a tadpole who shares 100% of its D.N.A. with the frog it will become yet the lifestyles of the two

are radically different, the one would at best be unhappy trying to live the lifestyle of the other.

 

Strategy

 

We can in some ways see a Permaculture Design as a time and space dancing mosaic of techniques

and strategies. To elucidate this let us consider the Coppice-Orchard pioneered by Phil Corbett of

Nottingham (www.cooltemperate.co.uk). This is a mix of vegetable beds, own-root fruit trees and

nitrogen fixers, periodically a North-south row of trees will be coppiced giving light to the N-s

vegetable beds they are growing in, the fertility of these beds is then exploited for crop production

until shaded again by the regrowth of the fruit trees. Over the subsequent 8-10-12 years of the coppice

rotation the shaded vegetable beds with their shade tolerant cover of plants will regain fertlity ready

for the next coppicing. So we get cereals, vegetables/salads, top and bottom fruit, firewood and

carving wood, nuts, honey, fungi, fertlity rebuilt and fruit trees which tend to stay in a young phase

and will long outlive their grafted and non-coppiced cousins.

 

What I have just described is a small part of the big strategy of the coppice-orchard, within it we have

mosaics of techniques and their strategies. Composting is a technique, the way it is to be done is the

strategy, how this connects to everything else is design. Here with our small coppice-orchard we

intend to compost through anaeobic decompositon in a bio-gas plant which will give us compost for

the gardens and gas for the cooker and fridge in the house (and perhaps sufficient for the odd trip in

the car). Another composting strategy might be to use the Jean-Pain system or even a windrow.

 

We can use the art of strategy to examine plants themselves, what is it that a particular plant does

during its life, what is its shape, what niches has it come to occupy in terms of height, leaf shape,

flower, seed, transport? When we fully understand the plants life strategy we will be able to fit it

correctly into our bigger strategies of gardening, food use and its storage. This same approach holds

true when we consider buildings, what strategies were used to allow the building to breathe, to hold

heat, to be lit. Here we have a 200 year old stone building with walls 1 metre thick, this latter enables

walls to be built without the use of cements which act as glues, mud is used as a filler and leveller but

doesn’t hold the walls together. The finished walls were rendered inside and out with a mix of muddy

clay and lime.This meant that buildings could be made with mainly local materials, indeed the stones

come from the fields, could be easily repaired and extended. In terms of modern understandings we

have a high thermal mass house which holds its heat in the walls but tends to only have small openings

so is relatively poorly lit inside.

 

A lack of understanding of the original builders strategy and the nature of stone means that many of

these buildings have had their thermal mass destroyed by, more recently, insulating and plaster

boarding the inside of the walls and previously by using a thick cement render. Most are also pointed

on the outside or even fully rendered with cement, one now has a low thermal mass house inside the

shell of a high thermal mass building with walls that can no longer transfer moisture away by capillary

action as the cement blocks this effect, where cement render has been used inside we have walls which

are more than 3 C cooler than the ambient air so we have a feeling of cold. An understanding of the

original builders strategy means that we render with clay and lime or lime and sand, keeping the

thermal mass and allowing the walls to ‘breathe’.

 

We can use an understanding of the art of strategy to shine a bright light into the dark corners of

practices and behaviours to illuminate and help us find a correct path through the myriad techniques

available.

 

 

Aikido and the Attactive force.

 

I am here referring to the teaching lineage of Morehei Ueshiba ( the founder of Aikido ) to Hickitsuchi

Michio (10th Dan and student and close companion of Ueshiba for over 45 years) to Gérard Blaize (7th

Dan and student of Hickitsuchi Michio). It is thanks to the translations, interpretations and proficiency

in Aikido of Gérard Blaise that we in the West have been given access to the real understandings and

Way of Ueshiba.

 

“ A human being must achieve a harmony of three elements : the spirit of the heart (kokoro), the body

itself and the Ki which unites them.

There are three studies :

-training to achieve a harmony between the spirit of the heart and the activity of the universe;

-training to achieve a harmony between the body and the Universe;

-training to harmonise the ki, which unites the spirit of the heart, the body and the activity of the

Universe…….”

(Aikido magazine, no 18, 1985, p.14.)

 

We can understand “the activity of the Universe” as being the activity of creation through cycles,

actions and activities which are destructive go against this general principle. Ueshiba realised that the

human world was one big family and that the notion of strangers was false, he also saw that the

Aikido he created was not an end in itself but would enable practitioners to find their role in the world

and to act creatively and correctly.

 

It is interesting that many true Ways have very few rules, in Aikido we have three. The term partner is

used as the world is a big family there can be no enemies or attackers.

 

n Never look into your partners eyes, if we do our spirit can be taken by the forces that motivate

them, can be troubled by the anger or fear that moves them.

n Always be ahead of your partner, if we wish to help someone so that their destructive impulses

don’t hurt them or let them go against the creative flow of the universe and come to harm we must

act first with firm gentleness.

n Never have any openings, as we act we seek to harmonise our ki with that of the partner, if our

movment is not true our ki ceases to flow in an area of the body leaving an opening which the

destructive impulses of my partner could exploit.

 

In terms of Permaculture design we can directly adopt these rules in not only our activities in

Peoplecare but also in the way we perceive designs and their evolution. With regard to the first rule,

how many of us have gazed despondantly at a problem trying to find a solution, a light at the end of

the tunnel? In Permaculture Design it is said that ‘the problem is the solution’, by training in Aikido

and following the first rule we can come to realise the truth of this and acting boldly step to oneside

and see the solution, as training continues eventually both terms will fade away to be replaced with a

deeper understanding.

 

The second rule is well known to good gardeners, we are part of, partners with the natural world and

must act accordingly, there is timing in everything and overlaying an artificial timescale onto the

world is perhaps an unproductive approach. Being in the swim of things enables us to perceive the tiny

fluctuations that means movements are changing. Studying this rule in Aikido means we come to

understand that movment is continuous, Nature doesn’t stop and start, things flow from season to

season, gardening shouldn’t stop and start either, rythms and tempo change. Our personal lives don’t

have stops and starts, there has obviuosly been a flow which brings us to a point where a change

happens, what brings someone to do a Permaculture course? It is very important for us to understand

this, we don’t keep getting in and out of a swimming pool we are continuously more or less immersed

in the flow of a river.

 

The third rule and its study has profound implications in Permaculture Design. On a personal level if I

am moving, perhaps to do work, in a way that stops energy flowing in a particular area I will

eventually damage that part of my body: in terms of Design an opening is an opportunity to increase

productivity and if left unfilled will be filled by something that may be unproductive and cause us

work. A study of Fukuoka’s work from this viewpoint can prove fruitful. An opening can lead to

energy flowing away from our site, perhaps as pollution or just as the loss of a potential resource.

 

Inrokyo no Tenren, the attractive force.

 

In Aikido one studies to move correctly, with a timing that comes from the continuous flow, to lose all

fear, nervousness and trepidation, to be completely and continually relaxed. As these come to fruition

one can discover that the ability to lead others, gently and firmly, away from destructive action

becomes easier and easier, the partner finds themslves swept up and held by what is referred to as ‘the

attractive force’, we have all experienced something of this, in Aikido we can train to develop it.

 

As a general principle the concept of an attractive force can fundamentally transform our approach to

the world and how designs and change can be implemented. Too often we try and push things in the

direction that we think we want them to go, surely it would be easier to create the conditions that will

allow that which we want to form itself. We see, after all, ecological succession in natural systems,

perhaps gorse and broom giving way to birch then oak etc. each changing the conditions of the soils,

air and water and making the area more attractive for other species. It is easier to set up magnets than

to try and bulldoze things our way. This approach enables us to find a low input way of achieving

designs, it will perhaps generally take more time, but this is not a difficulty as too many mistakes get

made in haste and too much damage gets done by pushing and forcing. In a Permaculture Design then

much of it will be there to create the conditions that will allow ecosystems to form, that will allow the

complexity of interactions and connections to develop.

I have tried to show something of the nature of Permacultures and Permaculture Design and to present

ways in which given sincerity and commitment we can help ourselves develop as Designers, I am

convinced of these and also that there are no doubt others of equal validity. I hope that what I have

written doesn’t seem to be too unpragmatic, those who know me will, I hope, attest to my pragmatic

and practical approach as to my general skeptiscm until things are proven by time and experience.