Dave Jacke is award winning author who speaks nationally.  His book Edible Forest Gardens, now in its 4th printing, has been described as 'a superb primer on ecology' by the New York Times. 

 What is your working definition of permaculture?

    I define permaculture as the conscious application of ecological principles and patterns to the design of human cultures that meet human needs while regenerating healthy ecosystem function.  The word "conscious" is a critical piece of that equation.  I also call it "regenerative design" or "ecological design" and in some ways I prefer those terms over "permaculture" because I think they are clearer and more explicit about what we do.  Permaculture co-founder David Holmgren speaks of permaculture as having three aspects: a vision of humans living as harmonious, mutually supportive parts of nature; a design approach that helps manifest that vision; and a movement or evolving culture of people committed to using that design approach to create that vision. 

     I agree with David Holmgren that permaculture is NOT about sustainability!  As David says, given the current trends, no one alive today or even in our children's generation is likely to achieve long-term sustainability.  Rather, our species needs to gracefully and ethically descend, together, from the current exponential peak of energy and resource consumption, population growth, and ecological devastation in ways that heal the planet, ourselves, and our communities, so that future generations can live sustainably.  Our species now stands on a dramatic, windy, and dangerous mountain top, with the world spread out at our feet.  Yet, storms lie on the horizon, if not overhead and nearby, threatening our very survival.  Permaculture is a tool for our regenerative descent from this exciting place to a protected valley where our children's children's children can live in abundance, peace, and security.

  How does permaculture relate to nonviolence?

   To answer that question, let me say more about the design of human culture, because to design a healthy culture, we have to understand what a culture is.  

   First, in an ecological sense, culture is our species' primary adaptive mechanism.  Our bodies are still evolving physiologically, but cultures can evolve and adapt to environmental changes much more quickly than can our physiology.  Let's hope that's true!

   I think of culture as having four key parts.  Resources are natural elements that we perceive to be useful.  Technology is what we turn resources into and how we access the resources we perceive.  Early permaculturists and most environmentalists have focused almost exclusively on these first two pieces of culture, but they form less than half of the "culture pie."  In my thirty years of experience doing ecological design,  I have found that if we don't deal with the third part, the social and economic structures, we cannot sustain even well-designed technologies and resource-use patterns.  Social and economic structures are more challenging to design because they are somewhat invisible, and not well understood as design elements.    But social system design is the key limiting factor in ecological design in my experience.  And the key limiting factor to good social system design is the last element of culture - the inner landscape.  The inner landscape gets even less attention from ecological designers for a host of reasons, foremost because it is even more invisible than the social and economic systems, but also because people tend to have little self-understanding and shy away from it.  Yet, the inner landscape is the DNA of the "cell" of culture and determines all of its forms and functioning. 

    These four elements of culture are interrelated.  We cannot separate them from each other.  And we have to design cultures as a whole system if we are to succeed in creating the vision of humans living regeneratively in harmony with nature for the long run.

   Now, the problems we face as a species are due almost entirely to different forms of violence.  Physical violence, for example, is very concrete and visible, but other forms of violence are potentially even more devastating.  Economic and social violence also occur, and are built into our cultural system in numerous ways.  However, in looking at the four elements of culture, the most important form of violence that we're dealing with has to do with the inner landscape.  In my opinion, the most fundamental form of violence we're dealing with is the belief that humans are separate, both from each other, and from nature.  I believe this fundamental error in thinking lies at the root of virtually all of our current major problems.  Individual humans cannot be separated from each other, and we cannot be separated from nature, nor can culture as a whole be separated from nature.  Humans and human culture are subsets of nature.  We form but one part of the larger system of planet Earth, indeed of the Universe.  So permaculture, at its root, aims to shift our paradigm, to design our lives and our cultures in ways that acknowledge our essential unity with the Universe, and to heal the many kinds of violence begotten from the belief in separation.  I believe this is a very deep form of non-violence. 

 We're delighted that you are giving a talk in April called "Peace and Permaculture" at the Gandhi Institute.  Do you have a wish or goal for people who attend?

  My wish would be that people come with an open heart and an open mind, and that they listen and respond deeply with their whole being.  That they integrate what I say and respond to it in their own way and with their own thoughts but that they take it into their whole self.This is not just a mental exercise. I also hope that folks leave with some practical, concrete things they can do in their lives to embody the deep philosophical message that I will offer. I'm looking forward to sharing and listening with all of you!

Naomi Tutu

"Our Shared Humanity: Creating understanding through the principles of MLK"

EARTH DAY  APRIL 22, 2011

The Science of Nonviolence: Theory and Practice

Workshops
 

                                Dates: April 30-May 1 & May 7-8, 2011
Location: Berkeley, California
Conducted by:  Metta Center for Nonviolence in partnership with the National Peace Academy

 This course will give participants a grounding in principled nonviolence, which Gandhi called "the greatest power mankind has been endowed with."  Students will be exposed to an inspiring vision of this power and its many applications, and familiarize themselves with its logic, history, and potential future.  For more information, click below:

Nonviolence Workshops