So I was reading a post on Diane Kennedy’s wonderful Facebook page about corn and people.
It is not that long and I suggest you look at it now.
https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1174068439274649&id=100000145136797&set=a.194732157208287.54613.100000145136797
And I decided to google the phrase
Why sir,” said the farmer, “Didn’t you know? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbors grow inferior corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbors grow good corn.
There were thousands of hits. There were books, PDF articles, blogs, websites. There were many Christian sites. The word Hindu caught my eye, and then Muslim, and I decided to do the same search with some of the major religions included with it. Buddhist, Shiite, Sunni, Judaism.
Just like the movie Groundhog Day, all the major religions say “oh that’s us!”
Sure would be nice if we acted like it.
But I think this is the perfect illustration for why I just recently posted … that I believe open source software is such a Permaculture concept. And it’s also why I tell people as much as I can … as much as I know, about how they can have a chemical free pond or pool.
Community: community has never been about “I’ve got mine, and I’m going to keep it just to myself.”
And community is also the reason why I am critical of specific organizations.
I have received a variety of concerned comments about my posts regarding permiesdotcom and most recently Deer Park.
I very much appreciate all the concern and give the following response:
How beautiful to work _with_ the world instead of against it. I think this corn post is beautiful. It _is_ all of our responsibility to encourage those around us and try to increase the happiness in the world — and decrease the hatred!
And yet at the same time it is difficult to find a line in our lives to _not_ support something.
If we simply support everything, we ultimately support primarily the easy things. The weeds of the world… Weedy solutions such as Pesticides, GMOs, Herbicides, –make everything get out of my way — poisons. The quick and easy solutions. The careless solutions!
If Permaculture is truly a community we need to be free to tell our own people that they might be wrong.
And to promote something or someone just because it has the name “permaculture” on it will give us the same thing in the long run as “organic” does today.
I don’t hate the people I criticize. (I do hate seizures, autism, muscular dystrophy, muscular sclerosis, ADHD, Parkinson’s, mad cow disease, Alzheimer’s, other neurological dysfunctions, etc, etc).
And I don’t tend to criticize people that I don’t believe are capable of thinking about the criticism.
Happy 2016 to all!