First post- here we go.
I decided to start one of these to add to the little anti-civ blog world, both to help me save my thoughts and to maybe get feedback as I work through questions and observations, and to give a little more visibility to people on the ground who share these sentiments.
Where to begin? How about with the permaculture seminar I attended this past weekend at the Sixth Street Community Center? It featured Albert Bates, and covered where we're at ecologically, particularly in terms of Peak Oil and global climate change. He has a book coming out, The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook, which he had an advance copy of and which looks pretty cool. The second part of the talk looked at what permaculture can offer urban spaces in terms of food production and sustainable systems more broadly. Bates doesn't like the term sustainable, but for a slightly different reason than the reason I often have a problem with it. He points out that ultimately, nothing sustains; everything changes, and it only just depends on what sort of time-scale you're looking at. Presumably, he'd emphasize that we can have a role in that change, and work to preserve more or less that which we desire or don't, rather than looking at creating something that will last forever.
All that is fine in my book, and I think it's a good point to make. But it does ignore the more vernacular use of sustainable, which is a practice or system which does not intentionally endanger its ability to continue on in perpetuity. I guess it's tricky, because what does 'in perpetuity' mean, and is that precisely what Bates is pointing out? Anyway, the qualm I have with 'sustainable,' is one expressed by a friend's instructor; he points out that sustainable in some ways is the bare minimum that we have to do to ensure that we can keep up a particular practice, and it doens't mean ecological integration, which is perhaps the more desirable aim. We might be able to sustainably continue to deforest , for example, such that that forest will continue to be there and we can keep cutting it down, but to what end? Does that integrate us into the ecosystem there?
He has this example of a rocket (missile). He says we can look at all the waste and unsustainable elements of this rocket. It produces emissions, maybe, so we can wipe those out of the picture by using the cleanest fuels, maybe, and putting some solar PV cells to provide the tracking system rather than polluting electrical sources, and the rocket can be made out of completely recycled metals rather than virgin-mined materials, and so on and so on. This rocket has maximized efficiency and now we can produce these rockets with a minimal and sustainable ecological impact level.
But it's still a rocket.
Point is- what ends are we pursuing and just because it's not going to do farther harm ecologically doesn't mean we should do it.
And as Ran Prieur pointed out, what we want to sustain in the dominant discourse is usually something as close as possible to life as it is now for those who advocate it, usually 20th century industrial middle class life. As the title of my blog suggests (an illusion to Jerry Mander's book of the same name), I don't think it's desirable to live in man-made environments divorced from the rest of creation.
I think that's good for a first post. More later about permaculture and cultivation, and some thoughts on it.
Where to begin? How about with the permaculture seminar I attended this past weekend at the Sixth Street Community Center? It featured Albert Bates, and covered where we're at ecologically, particularly in terms of Peak Oil and global climate change. He has a book coming out, The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook, which he had an advance copy of and which looks pretty cool. The second part of the talk looked at what permaculture can offer urban spaces in terms of food production and sustainable systems more broadly. Bates doesn't like the term sustainable, but for a slightly different reason than the reason I often have a problem with it. He points out that ultimately, nothing sustains; everything changes, and it only just depends on what sort of time-scale you're looking at. Presumably, he'd emphasize that we can have a role in that change, and work to preserve more or less that which we desire or don't, rather than looking at creating something that will last forever.
All that is fine in my book, and I think it's a good point to make. But it does ignore the more vernacular use of sustainable, which is a practice or system which does not intentionally endanger its ability to continue on in perpetuity. I guess it's tricky, because what does 'in perpetuity' mean, and is that precisely what Bates is pointing out? Anyway, the qualm I have with 'sustainable,' is one expressed by a friend's instructor; he points out that sustainable in some ways is the bare minimum that we have to do to ensure that we can keep up a particular practice, and it doens't mean ecological integration, which is perhaps the more desirable aim. We might be able to sustainably continue to deforest , for example, such that that forest will continue to be there and we can keep cutting it down, but to what end? Does that integrate us into the ecosystem there?
He has this example of a rocket (missile). He says we can look at all the waste and unsustainable elements of this rocket. It produces emissions, maybe, so we can wipe those out of the picture by using the cleanest fuels, maybe, and putting some solar PV cells to provide the tracking system rather than polluting electrical sources, and the rocket can be made out of completely recycled metals rather than virgin-mined materials, and so on and so on. This rocket has maximized efficiency and now we can produce these rockets with a minimal and sustainable ecological impact level.
But it's still a rocket.
Point is- what ends are we pursuing and just because it's not going to do farther harm ecologically doesn't mean we should do it.
And as Ran Prieur pointed out, what we want to sustain in the dominant discourse is usually something as close as possible to life as it is now for those who advocate it, usually 20th century industrial middle class life. As the title of my blog suggests (an illusion to Jerry Mander's book of the same name), I don't think it's desirable to live in man-made environments divorced from the rest of creation.
I think that's good for a first post. More later about permaculture and cultivation, and some thoughts on it.
posted by Archangel at 10:26 AM
2 Comments:
I share your sentiment on sustainability, and Bates' as well. Sustainability is ultimately a bunk term when everything is in a constant state of flux. Not to mention that the frame often invokes one of the most highly prized values of civilization -- attempting to spite impermanence by trying to make everything as permanent as possible. Of course, though, the systems that are the most permanent are those that embrace impermanence, so civilization is failing miserably at permanentifying itself.
This is what I hate the most about "sustainability". Leftists in particular will often talk about "sustainability" in the context of using so-called renewable energy and so-called green technology to make civilization sustainable. UGH. About the last thing I want to be a part of is a sustainability movement with a bunch of "let's convince other people to change so that we don't have to" leftists dedicated to sustaining their American middle-class lifestyles. The very thought of it makes me gag. I want civilization to collapse! And the sooner and the slowish-but-not-too-slow-so-ecosystems-don't-collapse-er, the better. I certainly don't want civilization to be sustainable. I don't think it's possible to sustain civ at this point, though, which is something of a relief. The people who are dedicating themselves to this sustainability movement aren't exactly dumb. Many of them are attempting to work with the dynamic flow of impermanence rather than try to spite or control it, something guaranteed to give them better results.
Anyway, I'm still interested in learning and incorporating some permaculture stuff into my approach, I'm just doing it for completely different reasons -- that of diversification and empowerment.
- Devin
For sure, Devin. For me, I think a lot about how much I'd like to be a forager, but like you, I value having many tools in the toolbox. Let's diversify and have as many options as possible available to us, and yes, in practice. Sure, forager diversity is and can be astounding, but I see nothing wrong with small scale permacultural societies, at the very least for the transition.
Diversity, indeed-the very antithesis of civilization.
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