blog

Wesley Roe, one of the longtime leaders* in the permaculture-design and bioregionalism movements, started a thread on his page where he asserts that permaculture has gotten an undeserved bad rap. Many people claim that permaculture is cultural appropriation, but he asserts that is not the case. Many people, including myself, have chimed in on this thread with other viewpoints. The thread is public and you can view it here.

(*Permaculture is a non-hierarchical grassroots movement, and we don’t have “leaders” in the conventional Anglo/Eurocentric sense. When I refer to a leader in the permaculture or bioregional communities, I am talking about a person who has assumed a greater level of care and responsibility for the collective, via such means as teaching, advocacy, and activism.)

Excellent and very important thread, definitely go follow the original post and comments.

Here is a bit of one of the comments; and my response:

Excerpt from comment by Farmer Rishi Kumar: “If permaculture was a ‘decolonial’ framework, why doesn’t it start with focusing on real decolonial changes like advocating for land return, reparations, actually democratic systems? Instead we get a focus on private gardens, swales, homesteads <nausea and vomit emoticons>, self-reliance.”

And my response:

Yes! <five stars> Exactly!

Actually, when I first started studying permaculture, my understanding of it was more along the lines of what you described.

And I think it got corrupted into this private “private garden / homestead” movement which is totally not what it is supposed to be about, based on what we were taught.

It’s gotten really bad, to the point where most people who join permaculture groups are just really focused on their own private food forest and not even focused on any other aspect of permaculture such as energy cycling. And when I or others bring up the ethics, talk about land back and decolonization etc., people accuse us of communism. (Not that there’s anything wrong with communism per se. It’s very telling that that’s the worst insult in their book.)

The things we were taught in class had to do with solving “modern society problems” together using nature-based practices from other places and times. And we were taught where the different practices originated from.

The Permaculture classes that I took were very much focused on collective resources, taking care of community as top priority.

And my response to a fellow anglo/euro person who reports that he is teaching permaculture in Africa:

One thing missing from these kinds of conversations, I often find, is that colonialism is the original culprit in how people lost their indigenous practices in the first place and became vulnerable to mass starvation and other disasters.

We, by which I mean white colonizers, oppressed them and made them dependent!

We deprecated traditional building methods, farming methods, etc. — and traditional structures of governance — as being “primitive,” and sold the idea of the “modern” mechanized, hierarchical, centralized, standardized way as being great. So-called “modern” industrialized Anglo/Euro-centric culture is brutish and uncivilized.

It doesn’t mean that there is no place for technology or industrial equipment etc.; but the oppressive structures need to be dismantled. It’s work that needs to be part of Permaculture. I have sometimes thought that if Bill Mollison knew these concepts he would probably have written them into the book. I didn’t know these words and concepts back when I first took my Permaculture courses, but I did get that feel from the Permaculture courses back then.

Maybe if we acknowledge this more, it would help.

You can view the original thread here, and I highly recommend it!

A topic I have posted about a lot.

A lot of people recognize the harmful aspects of investing in Wall Street — even a lot of the so-called “socially responsible funds” are problematic — but some people feel like it’s their only option since retirement is not so secure these days.

As an older person who has had it a lot easier than the younger generations, I feel I’m in a position to resist the social pressure to amass a large lump sum for “retirement.” Maybe others in a similar boat will feel emboldened to resist as well, and find other ways to face their later years. 

A lot of people dread having to work till they die. 

Regarding “retirement,” I actually prefer to work until I die. Because I really like my work, and have various categories, some of which are possible to continue well into a very old age. Such as writing and teaching.

Knowing that I’m not going to retire helps let me off the hook from having to deal with these grisly investment dilemmas which I am not willing to compromise on.

I am not willing to participate in investment funds.

I do have a paid-for house*, which I share with other people in various ways as much as I can.

My needs are simple, and I minimize my monthly expenses so I don’t need to go out and earn a bunch of money, and also, I am at peace with death so the medical industrial complex doesn’t have much threat to hold over me. (I love my life and I wouldn’t want to die anytime soon, but if it’s my time to go it’s my time to go.)

I am a boomer, and even though I dropped out of the middle class starting in the early 2000s in order to be a full-time artist and activist, with a big drop in income, I still consider myself to be in the very privileged class, and I am making my choices accordingly. I will not participate in investment funds, and I generally avoid accumulating money beyond a bit for house repairs.

My choices aren’t an option for everyone, but since they are an option for me, it is one way that I am trying to move the needle.

As part of this, I am trying to encourage my fellow Boomers to explore how they might also be able to reduce their need for money. And therefore to reduce, at least a bit, the collective pressure on people to invest in blood money just to get by.

In a couple of years I will be starting to collect Social Security, which will probably be about $1000 a month and that will be a lot for me. And if Social Security doesn’t remain solvent, then a lot of us will be in the same boat and I will be focused on helping others weather the storm as much as dealing with it myself.

And right now, one of my favorite activities is helping people get free of dehumanizing jobs and or just jobs that demand too much of their time. Almost any job is tolerable if we don’t have to spend too much time & life-energy doing it. I learned that over the years as an artist activist who has taken many gigs to pay the bills but never been forced to take full-time jobs just to get by.

It’s way harder for younger people, so I feel an obligation and a calling to help younger people especially. Sometimes the help is just offering a really cheap or free place to stay. Or supporting their side business by spending money with them and sharing their posts etc. It’s all little things but I really think it adds up.

And thank you Laura Oldanie for mentioning our book in the SC-FIRE community. This is one of the ways that we are trying to help people get free of these dreadful dilemmas.

• Full disclosure: the paid-for house is only because I inherited money when my mother passed. Before that, I was a precarious renter like so many of us. And I will always and forevermore be a housing activist, for life! I have been strongly activating for various forms of naturally affordable housing to be re-integrated into our neighborhoods, towns, and cities. A big reason why things were so much easier financially for us white boomers is that the housing ecosystem hadn’t yet gotten massively tainted by behemoth “investment funds,” as well as NIMBY ism / single-family- zoning elitism and other ills.

BTW I have found that one of the main things they give a person leverage, besides radically reducing their overhead expenses, is having such a strong calling that they will do whatever it takes to be able to pursue that calling fulltime (or close to fulltime).

Every choice has trade-offs; that will always be the case. But having a strong calling can make it feel a lot easier and less sacrifice-y to do things like share an apartment; forgo “vacations” (it’s amazing how little we need a “vacation” if we don’t have a life we need to escape from); share a car or go car-free altogether.

I love love LOVE being in my 60s — but I kind of like it that a lot of people think I look younger than 60s. So I’ve kind of been enjoying the best of both worlds until recently.

So I was wondering how I would react when somebody really didn’t question my senior citizen status. And now it is official … I HAVE experienced that, and I officially do not care! Hey, $1.85 is $1.85! Thank you Votran!

Officially, we have to be 65 to get the $1.85 bus pass deal. Otherwise it is $3.75.

BTW I was not trying to scam. I didn’t know this info until afterwards, when I looked up the fine print on the bus schedule. I was just assuming the age cutoff was over 55 or something. But, I don’t even care. I’m only 61. I don’t care that the driver apparently naturally just thought I was 65, $1.85 is $1.85!

One good thing about looking my actual age (or maybe apparently older than my actual agr?) is that I seem to have noticed a reduction in getting hit on by 30-year-olds who think I am rich or a cougar ha ha. No young man, I’m not buying you that new iPhone, you should have listened to your mom and finished your chores.

Things have gotten to a point where I was just about to have a T-shirt print it up that said, “I’m not rich, I’m just old”!!!

PS. Public service announcement: we need more cross-town bus routes, and they need to run past 6 PM. We don’t want a bunch of elderly people driving around at night, do we? I sure don’t! <laugh emoji; haunted scream emoji; cocktail emoji>

#normalizenotdriving #supportpublictransit

Update: Last weekend when I had occasion to use the bus again, I just casually put my dollar 85 into the slot and waited. Just to see what would happen, not to try to scam. The bus driver looked at me, I looked at him.

And I said, I’m just waiting for the day pass to come out of the slot.

Oh, he said, if you want one of those half-off day passes you have to show ID and prove that you are 65.

So, just FYI! 3 1/2 more years for that sweet senior day-pass deal!! I hope the previous driver didn’t get in trouble for not asking me for my ID! I didn’t mention that a previous driver had unquestioningly given me the special deal.

When I wrote my book, back in 2017, and then started this blog in 2018, I considered my target audience to be “people in the industrial, wealthy, consumerist nations — mainly people in the USA, but also, for example, Australia and Canada.”

However, as time went by, it became clear to me that there was a more specific audience that was the rightful focus. I started calling it “Anglo Euro North American culture.”

Then I realized that my work rightfully has a core target audience in generational terms as well.

So I have started saying “Eco Boomers.” And more recently, “Woodstock Boomers,” to encapsulate what I mean by the core demographic. The tribe that I identify with, and the tribe that I am trying to encourage to pursue a simpler life, in order to help reset society.

And talking much outside my core demographic — particularly trying to tell younger people and people of color what they should do to fix problems that they have not caused — is outside my lane.

Boomer generation is the most resourced in history, and we have done a lot to trash the planet even long after we started waking up to what we were doing. So I feel like it’s on us to really be the change.

That said, everybody who cares about the planet is warmly and lovingly welcome and invited here. I am so happy you are here!And I hope you find my content useful! It’s just that I recognize I don’t have any business telling most of you what you should do.

Useful information for my fellow eco activists, particularly us “Woodstock Boomers,” who still engage in air travel. (I say “Woodstock Boomers” because that’s basically my core demographic “tribe” that I identify with. And talking much outside my core demographic — particularly trying to tell younger people and people of color what they should do to fix problems that they have by and large not caused– is outside my lane. Boomer generation is the most resourced in history, and we have done a lot to trash the planet even long after we started waking up to what we were doing. So I feel like it’s on us to really be the change.)

“Flight booking platforms are giving customers a new number to think about when they buy a plane ticket: the expected greenhouse gas emissions of their trip.
If you’ve searched for plane tickets on Google Flights in the past two years, you’ve probably seen a little green number that compares each route’s climate impact. Google began predicting flight emissions in 2021, using data about flight schedules, airplane models and how full a flight is expected to be to come up with an estimate for each passenger’s carbon footprint.”

(“How you should think about those Google Flights pollution numbers”; Washington Post; https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/03/15/google-flight-emissions-estimate/ )

Also: Another tool for people who fly is carbon offsets. Basically you pay a bit extra and the money goes toward mitigating the footprint of your flight. Examples include treeplanting projects.

Carbon offsets aren’t perfect, but it’s a start. When I quit flying some years back, I additionally purchased carbon offsets to retroactively offset every flight I could remember taking in my adult life. (Most of them for work but some of them were purely recreational.)

If you want to learn more about carbon offsets and how you can use them to help mitigate the impact of your flights and any other travel as well – I’ve used them for Amtrak trips too — check out this website:

https://www.goldstandard.org

Gold Standard is the choice of the most dedicated climate activist I know, when they have felt they needed to fly for work or some family emergency etc. (A lot of us have subsequently quit flying altogether. But in the meantime, carbon offsets offer some mitigation.)

Purchasing carbon offsets only adds a few dollars to the ticket price, and if we can afford to travel we can afford to purchase carbon offsets.

Still, as the Washington Post article points out:

“But you should take this carbon price with a grain of salt. It’s hard to put a dollar figure on climate damage, and economists disagree on the final number. To come up with an estimate, scientists model how much each additional ton of CO2 will heat the earth and contribute to sea level rise, droughts, wildfires and other calamities. Then economists determine how much those disasters will cost in terms of property damage, crop failures, hospital visits and so on.
“There are many, many links on this chain, and there’s a lot of uncertainty at each link …'”

There’s a lot of nonsense floating around out there, and given the volume of information-sharing made possible by the Internet, the quantity of nonsense may be larger than at any time before in history.

And unfortunately, at the same time, our “modern” society has killed peoples’ BS filter by deprecating the arts and humanities. A study of arts, history, anthropology makes a great BS filter but a lot of people have not had that opportunity.

Ditto for learning pattern literacy. Modern industrial societies don’t encourage pattern literacy; I would even say they actually DIScourage it. A quick mini reboot can be had by taking a permaculture design course with the full original curriculum, but it’s not a complete fix.

Interestingly, something that for me has turned out to be a great way to cultivate a BS filter has been reading a lot of fiction. What it basically does is imparts generational knowledge in the form of story. That’s how generations have always shared knowledge in the past — via family stories handed down. And other peoples’ written stories can serve as a most excellent supplement — or as a somewhat serviceable stand-in, if you don’t have the good fortune to be connected with your generational stories. And books offer us the bonus of hearing voices from many different cultures and across many millennia.

I tried and true way of developing a BS filter is to listen to your own heart and body. Although, our so-called modern culture (which is actually very brutish and primitive in many ways) actively discourages us from doing that, and there are many impediments. And if one has spent a lifetime avoiding that, one’s first forays can bring surprises and even pain. We can ramp up to it by taking walks, doing some kind of meditative thing like sewing, or just sitting quietly in a room where we feel safe and comfortable. If there’s no whole room where you feel safe and comfortable, you can start to cultivate a portable pocket that goes with you wherever you are.

In some of my posts, and in my book, I adopt a light humorous tone. I do it in order to increase the receptivity of us “first worlders” — in particular my core audience of fellow “Woodstock Boomers” — to the project of radically curtailing our consumption, voluntarily.

I talk about “prepper home ec”; “doomer style files”; being a “doomer boomer”; hosting the “Zombie Apocalypse watch party.”

Humor can be very helpful. But too much of it can backfire. I recommend carefully curating one’s intake of humorous material, fun creative “deep-green lifestyle” content, and scary news. Adjust on the fly according to your ability and willingness to confront the situation.

I also recommend regularly just walking outside (to the degree that you feel safe doing so) and being in your body, and checking in with how you’re feeling both physically and emotionally.

If you don’t feel safe walking outside in the public space, create a little nook in your indoor space. Ideally with some connection to outdoors, even if it’s just some rays of sunshine, moonlight, a bit of sky. If you are able to open a window, all the better. Even in very dense urban areas, nature makes herself known. Tune in to birdsong, the sound of wind, the music of rain.

The fact is, things are really serious. It’s not funny at all what a lot of people around the world are experiencing. Particularly in less-developed countries. The countries where the people have made little or no contribution to climate change, but are suffering the worst of its effects.

As David Gelles reported in the New York Times “Climate Forward” email newsletter yesterday:

“This week, the heat index in Rio de Janeiro reached 144 degrees Fahrenheit, or 62 Celsius, the highest ever measured in the city. The national government issued health warnings because of extreme heat in multiple cities.

“In South Sudan, temperatures were forecast to reach 113 degrees Fahrenheit, far above the 90-degree highs typical of the dry season from December to March, as my colleague Abdi Latif Dahir reported.

“In Bengaluru, India, water supplies are running low, and last month Ghana and Nigeria issued heat warnings to the public.

“We don’t yet know whether all these events were caused or worsened by climate change. But we do know that human-caused global warming was behind many of the extreme heat events that helped make last year the hottest on record. A recent study also concluded that climate change made the extreme heat West Africa experienced in February 10 times as likely …”

Voluntarily curtailing one’s consumption is not easy at times. Particularly if you live in a place where you pretty much have access to everything money can buy, as we do here in the USA. It takes self-discipline, and it takes a powerful “WHY.” Reading about the seriousness of the situation is a good way to remind ourselves of why we are embarking on this path of radical reduction.