Permaculture 101: What, Why, and How

In this article, I provide a basic overview of this phenomenon called "permaculture" (or what I like to think of as a set of phenomena, rather than a single "thing"). I address the what, why, and how of permaculture in general terms. In the other articles on this site, I dive into the details, nuances, and complexities of these basic aspects of permaculture.

What

Permaculture is a means of relearning to live indigenously in the context of highly unnatural (read: mechanistic - see below) socioeconomic conditions by working with the innate intelligence of nature rather than constructing human systems that work against nature and separate us from the wild. This applies not just to gardens, landscaping, and farming but to all of human life, including social organization, urban design, policy, and economics.

Why

There are many ways to answer the question of "why employ or follow permaculture principles and practices?" Here, I will emphasize one key aspect of the equation that I believe to be at the core of the current situation facing humanity.

The very simplified answer to "why" permaculture is that this is what is desperately needed on Earth right now, because modern industrial consumer commodity society has become a vast machine system that is fundamentally unsustainable and is rapidly destroying the vital life support systems that make life possible for humans and most other species of life on Earth. Essentially, permaculture describes how living systems naturally exist and co-evolve, as they have for billions of years. The social experiment of commodity economy-based civilization constitutes a radical departure from this natural ecological pattern, and it has reached its viable, functional limit. This is because modern industrial society is structured, and functions, as a mechanistic system rather than a living system. While there are some similarities between the two types of system, ultimately they are fundamentally and profoundly different.

Permaculture is uniquely positioned to provide substantive, lasting solutions to the problems inherent in the mechanistic structure of industrialized society because permaculture intentionally incorporates problems and challenges into the design process. For instance, the current arrangement of urban socioeconomic organization features immense resource hoarding among a tiny portion of the population and certain sectors of industry, government, and commerce. This is, quite literally, stupid from a natural-ecological intelligence perspective. If a forest, for example, were structured like contemporary American economics, less than 1% of that forest would control the vast majority of the life-sustaining resources circulating through the ecosystem. This means that a few trees in the forest would thrive and grow large and old, while the other thousands or millions of trees would all suffer and struggle to mature and survive any real ecological challenges.

This analogy is rather problematic, however, because it's actually nonsensical. No such forest would ever -- and has never -- existed. This is the instructive point. There is no ecosystem on Earth structured like modern industrial consumer capitalist society, because that ecosystem would quickly falter and disintegrate. It would not be sustainable, in the most basic and literal sense of that term. A healthy forest ecosystem just is a system that holistically distributes and dynamically balances the life energies -- economic resources -- characteristic of that ecological arrangement, such that the wide diversity of species constituting that system is supported and sustained. When species diversity gives way to a homogenized monoculture, an ecosystem will eventually collapse (except where it is artificially propped up by an inefficient system of inputs from external sources, such as is characteristic of industrial monoculture agriculture).

How

In broad concept, permaculture as a way of living indigenously involves living as part of a network of intersecting ecosystems rather than trying to function in artificial separation or isolation from the rest of nature. Modern industrial society is characterized by the latter approach. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, humans have lived with increasing degrees of separation from the natural environment. As Max Frisch once remarked, "technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it."

Consider a simple example: eating utensils. Without utensils, humans eat with their hands. They feel the texture, density, weight, temperature, and other tactile qualities of the food they eat. With utensils, there is an immediate separation introduced between an eater and their food; they no longer experience many of the sensory qualities that come from eating with one's hands. In using this analogy, I'm not trying to say that utensils are simply bad. Rather, I use the example to illustrate a simple fact of technology: it does, in fact, disrupt direct experience of some aspect of reality.

There is nothing inherently wrong with technology; in fact, humans are dependent on some degree of it for basic survival and existence. Nonetheless, too much of anything is harmful (including water, oxygen, spinach, exercise, sleep, etc.). We are at the point in industrial development where humanity is being harmed by technology more than it is being helped. It still helps is, certainly; it just also harms us far more than we have been led to believe.

So, as I see it, one of the primary ways permaculture accomplishes its goal of supporting humans in relearning to live indigenously is to connect us more directly with nature. This can take countless forms. Generally, it means building cities or other social living arrangements as part of the natural environment, rather than as areas where people are disconnected from nature. This could be as simple as landscaping a residential property with a variety of native plants, rather than landscaping with invasive, monoculture grass and concrete, and maybe some ornamental trees (as is typical of most American properties).

In summary, the "how" of permaculture involves thousands of potential adjustments to modern living, moving in the direction of re-integrating with the natural cycles and fluctuations of climate; ecosystem growth, change, and adaptation; multispecies cooperation; and holistic resource sharing/distribution.

FAQ

• Is permaculture a cult?
• No. Permaculture is an approach to intelligent, adaptive, holistic systems design and maintenance. If there is any real cult to be wary of, it is the cult of the global industrial, commodity-economic consumer capitalism to which the majority of humans and governments are irrationally attached. Most people stuck in this system cannot possibly imagine living any other way; it is the one right way to live, to which all people should conform. Most people conditioned to believe the current global world order is unquestionably "normal" react with fear, incredulity, personal offense, and exasperation when someone suggests that there are other, better ways to live. These -- and many other widespread behavioral and intellectual phenomena -- are classic postures of people involved in cults.
• Do I have to sign up for anything to be part of permaculture?
• No. Permaculture is just a word made up by people to describe a wide range of styles of living indigenously, adaptively, and sustainably. Many people who employ and embody the principles of permaculture have never heard of the term, and would not describe themselves as "permaculturalists." People have been practicing permaculture for thousands of years before the term and formal theory and framework were developed. There is no club, no formal organization, and no official membership aspect of permaculture.