“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris
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I'm really surprised you liked the second article, as full as it is of the kind of passive apocalypticism I learned to expect of USA permaculture and peak oil ideologues. Not to mention the ontotheology of the "Web of Life" that will magically repair itself when the "low-energy future" forces us to leave it alone over there in the exo-human "Zone 5" of untouched wilderness.
Sorry to be ungentle. If my own failure to heal from trauma is any excuse, them I offer it as such. But the above is an example of how established American permaculture will have to be scrapped in favor of methodologies that are not quite so glibly sure of their own goodness if caring people will ever be equipped to face the challenges that exist. Some offshoot of established permaculture might work, but only if/when it deals with the following problems:
1. Lovelockian webs of life in which everything happens by itself and for its own (good) reasons.
2. Myths of a happy future prompted by resource scarcity.
3. Utilitarianism. This is something permaculture has always been confused about. Though some concession is made to the "intrinsic value" of objects in the basic principles, this is almost totally forgotten in the design implementation modeling phase. Which leads into:
4. Zoning. There is nothing wrong with the permaculture zones at all, provided that we remember that every object is the center of its own "Zone 0", and also that even "Zone 5" (what we call "unotouched" wilderness) is actually very touched and exists within the sphere of human responsibility, as was well understood by Native Americans and other indigenous folk.
Will this changed idea of permaculture (we could call it "Dark Permaculture") ever be realized? I find it unlikely, given my own very disappointing history with American permaculture. The "movement" (as it calls itself meaninglessly) appears to be far too socially homogeneous and class-centered. But I don't believe it's impossible. Something like permaculture may have a significant part to play in the creative acceptance of human ecological responsibility. The answer is in our collective hands.
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