Building sustainable communities

...and so it came to pass that I discovered permaculture design, for the uninitiated the most basic and simple description of permaculture is understanding how natural ecosystems are working through careful observation and using this knowledge to design human settlements and agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in natural ecologies, sorry that still sounds a bit of a mouthful...seeking to work in a co-operative way with nature, seeing it as a friend that provides for us rather than an enemy that's out to get us that we must try and shape and control with technology. This belief has permeated every aspect of society and has led to a loss of knowledge about nature we'd had for thousands of years in a few generations.

This knowledge was completely missing from my education as I was being educated or conditioned depending on how you look at it, to enter the industrial workforce. For me the sustainable communities course presented a whole new way of thinking about humans relationship with the natural world, as someone who spent the previous 10 years designing humans interactions with the virtual world, it was great to find a design philosophy that reflected the value of people care I had tried so hard to instil within the technology industry with little success. Earth care and fair shares complete the trio of simple but powerful ethics of permaculture.

In the world I had come from the majority prescribed to the techno-utopian vision that designing more and more tech, quicker, smaller, faster was taking us to a 'better place' with no thought for the ethical and environmental effects of this focus on improving the already high standard of material comfort for western consumers. I found myself on the edge of two very different worlds and as the permaculturists reading this will know the edge of two ecosystems is a very productive place which sparked a lot of new ideas about how permaculture principles could be used to help the corporation think about sustainability in new ways.

I really enjoyed the course, especially the feeling of being part of a like-minded community as it's always inspiring to be working with other people who share your values and the 'pot luck' lunch was always a highlight of the weekend. I even managed to organise my team at the corporation to do a pot luck lunch which they all really enjoyed. It was quite sad when the course was over but I knew I would find ways of continuing on this path...

corporate 'pot luck' lunch