Elements of PermacultureHistory, Agriculture & Human Beings

Ben KesslerLaughing Crow Permaculture

2The Red Sphinx – Odilon Redon

“…[T]he meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of those misty halos that, sometimes, are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.”

– Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

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Hi, my name is Khasekhemwy and I like grapes.

Our ancestors are people too!

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Nasty, brutish, and short, my ass!

"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building;

no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short." – Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

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Humans are a Keystone Species• Like beavers and elephants, humans deform, reform, and

transform their environment

• “There’s a learning curve in all phases of design. There’s an unlearning curve in how we relate to our habitat - cultural views of humans and nature as separate.”

– Connor Stedman

• “We must make treaties with the land - and keep them.” – Farrell Cunningham

• As permaculture designers, we are building relationship with our role as major actors in the landscape.

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Human History

Fire Stone Tools Homo sapiens Cave Paintings

3 mya. 2 mya 1 mya 200,000 BC 29,000BC 120,000 BC 24,000 BC

Pigments Plant Fibers

Pottery

Lowland Annual Grass Agriculture

Slavery

Warfare

1800 AD

Industrial Revolution

13,000 BC 18,000 BC

Tracking, Stories, Songs, Dance, Oral History, Parenting, Elderhood, Initiation, Magic, Ritualized Conflict, etc.

Today

European History

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The Ice Age- ~ 3 mya: South America drifts into North America, forming the Isthmus of Panama- Circumglobal equatorial currents disrupted, Gulf Stream formed as deflected equatorial waters flow north along east coast of North America- Northern Europe experiences increased rainfall due to abundance of warm water shunted into the northern hemisphere.- Interruption of circumglobal equatorial currents, coupled with more fresh water falling in northern latitudes allows the formation of permanent ice caps on mountain tops and polar continental margins- Ice caps reflect sunlight, cooling the Earth’s atmosphere and allowing glaciers to form at high elevations and latitudes

- New global conditions favor expansion of wild-type cereal grain populations and ranges

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Origins of Western Agriculture~ 20,000 B.C.

Taurus-Zagros Mountains in contemporary Kurdistan (NE Iraq, S Turkey)

Hilly, semi-arid oak savanna

Abundant wild-type domesticates:

Oaks

Sheep

Goats

Wheat

Barley

Ground Zero II – Mati Klarwein

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“Our grammar might teach us to divide the world into active subjects and passive objects, but in a coevolutionary relationship every subject is also an object, every object a subject. That’s why it makes just as much sense to think of agriculture as something the grasses did to people as a way to conquer the trees.”

- Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire

Untitled – Jessie Cohen

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Cereal GrainsBiological characteristics:- Annual- Favor disturbed soils- Heavy feeders- Chemical defenses against herbivory- Embryo is edible bit

Nutritional characteristics:- High carbohydrate- Moderate protein- Full of antinutrients- Small amounts of opioids- Consumption can cause “leaky gut”- Reduces effective absorption of nutrients from

other foodstuffs“…[M]alnutrition, osteomyelitis and periostitis,

intestinal parisites, yaws, syphilis, leprosy, tuberculosis, anemia, rickets in children, osteomalacia in adults, retarded childhood growth, and short stature among adults.”

- Richard Manning, Against the Graini.e. Addictive, not especially nutritious, and

detrimental to human and environmental health in the long run

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“[T]he ingestion of cereals and milk, in normal dietary amounts by normal humans, activates reward centres in the brain. Foods that were common in the diet before agriculture… do not have this pharmacological property. The effects of exorphins are qualitatively the same as those produced by other opioid…drugs, that is, reward, motivation, reduction of anxiety, a sense of well-being, and perhaps even addiction. Although the effects of the typical meal are quantitatively less than those of doses of those drugs, most modern humans experience them several times a day, every day of their adult lives.”

- G. Wadley & A. Martin, The Origins of Agriculture- A Biological Perspective & A New Hypothesis

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Annual Grains

“Weeds” & “Pests”

Declining Nutritional Diversity

Sustained Ecological Catastrophe

Sedentism Extension of Growing Lands

Declining Biodiversity & Biome Diversity

Declining Health & Sanity

Incursion & Land Theft

Exhaustion of SoilExtirpation of Soil Builders

Land not Given Adequate Rest

Trauma

Extirpation of Inconvenient Species

Land ‘Lost’ to Natural

Catastrophe

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“Farming transformed man into an entirely different kind of organism: one with many other organisms- plants and animals- subjected to his will. His first hesitant steps in

this direction produced amazing results. No longer did he merely adapt to the natural environment; now he began to alter it, and in major ways. Farming gave him the

power to shift the balance of nature so that his own ecological system would provide more of what he needed.”

– Jonathan Norton Leonart, The First Farmers

“Many a hillside do the torrents furrow deeply,And down to the dark sea they rush headlong from the mountains with a mighty roar,

And the tilled fields of men are wasted…”- Homer, The Iliad

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“[I]f we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down until that tribe is exterminated… they will kill some of us; we will destroy all of them." – Thomas Jefferson

Abel

AbelAbel

Cain Abel

Abel

Abel

CainCainAbel

Indigenous CultureInvasive Culture

“Fertile Crescent” (approx.)

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Interruption of Keystone Ecological Behaviors Interruption of Keystone Cultural Behaviors

Ecological Catastrophe Invasion

Emergency Social Measures

Warrior Societies Patriarchy

Sustained Catastrophe

Keystone Behaviors Suppressed Until Forgotten

Emergency Normalized

Ecological Destruction Endemic Trauma Endemic

Agriculture Urbanism

Public Murder of Healers

Disr

egar

d of

Eld

ers

Female Infanticide

Access to Nature Limited/

Limited Nature Accessible

Effective Healers AbsentPlace-Based Knowledge Absent

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Keystone Ecological BehaviorsBush Gardening & Plant CultivationMulti-Generational Land Care StrategiesModerated PredationAbortion, Contraception & InfanticideControlled BurnsAnimismSeasonal CeremoniesGift-giving to Consumed OrganismsAesthetic EthicWorship of Non-Human EntitiesRespect for Other CulturesCyclical Historical SenseHolistic ScienceHuman HumilityBiodegradable Goods & ConstructionRecognition of Totem or Ally OrganismsSeasonal MigrationAcceptance of Death

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“The magical arts are Dagara technology, a technology characterized by practicality- what is needed, what is useful. When one of our elders carves a double-headed serpent or an amphibious mammal, he is not just creating an image out of his imagination, but cooperating with the spirits of those beings for the maintenance of the natural order.”

– Malidoma Patrice Somé, Of Water and the Spirit

Goanna Dreaming – Janet Nakamarra Long

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Keystone Cultural BehaviorsStorytelling/-singingMentoringRitualized Conflict & WeregeldMatchmakingCommunal Child-rearingInitiationHolistic Medicine & PsychiatryRelaxed Attitudes Toward SexualityOral Knowledge-KeepingGift EconomyHospitalityUndesirable Leadership RolesIncest, Rape & Murder TaboosEntrenched Male & Female PowerTolerance of Strong EmotionsLife-stage Transition CeremoniesVeneration of EldersMediation & PeacemakingCelebrated Traditional Dress

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“…But Porcupine said, ‘Do you really want me to go to the Man yonder, who eats bushes? He will come and swallow all the sheep, as they stand in the kraal. You need not think that even these bushes will be left, for we shall be swallowed with the sheep. A Man who devours things as he does- walks along eating the very bushes among which he walks!’”

– Mantis & The All-Devourer, !Kung Old-Time Story

American Progress – John Gast

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Sustained Ecological Catastrophe

Sustained Trauma

Distancing

Agricultural Necessity Societal Forgetfulness

Inflated Population

Emergency Social Measures Absent Keystone Roles

From Spirits From Neighboring Societies From Land From Aspects of Self

Identification With Abusers Redirected Violence

At the Land At Other People At Self

Coping Mechanisms

Abstract Religion

Invasion

Sustained Adolescence

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“…Stung with my loss, and raving with despair, Abandoning my now forgotten care, Of counsel, comfort, and of hope bereft, My sire, my son, my country gods I left…”

– Virgil, The Aeneid

Aeneas’ Flight From Troy – Federico Barrocci

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“When a family is subjected to chronic, sustained anxiety, the family begins to lose contact with its intellectually determined principles and to resort more and more to emotionally determined decisions to allay the anxiety of the moment. The results of this process are symptoms and eventually regression to a lower level of functioning… The same process is evolving in society… We are in a period of increasing societal anxiety…[and] society responds to this [in the same manner as families sometimes do] with emotionally determined decisions to allay the anxiety of the moment…” - Murray Bowen,

Family Therapy After Twenty Years

“Our behavior is a function of our experience. We act according to the way we see things. If our experience is destroyed, our behavior will be destructive. If our experience is destroyed, we have lost our own selves.” - R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience

Soul of Civilization – Ahmed Nawar

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Mechanisms of DistancingDeforestation & Deliberate Ecosystem DestabilizationWritingDestroyer HeroesAnthropomorphic Gods & MonotheismLeaders Given Special PrivilegeGranariesGrid Layout for Population CentersPoliceUnmediated Conflict & WarfareDemonization or Rejection of Land Spirits & Old GodsDepersonalization of Other SpeciesDepersonalization of Other PeoplesBinary Gender ConstructsDualistic Cosmologies, Ethics, etc.Linear Historical SenseElevation of Reason Over ExperiencePreference for Novelty Over HistoryMind/Body/Soul SeparationMonetary EconomyThe Ancient of Days – William Blake

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“People understood my kind of literacy as the business of whites and nontribal people. Even worse, they understood literacy as an eviction of a soul from its body- the taking over of the body by another spirit. Wasn’t the white man notorious in the village for his brutality, his lack of morality and integrity? Didn’t he take without asking and kill ruthlessly? To my people, to be literate meant to be possessed by this devil of brutality. It was not harmful to know a little, but to the elders, the ability to read, however magical it appeared, was dangerous. It made the literate person the bearer of a terrible epidemic. To read was to participate in an alien form of magic that was destructive to the tribe.”

– Malidoma Patrice Somé, Of Water and the Spirit

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“We behold a stratified society in which the governing classes enjoyed great power and almost unlimited opportunities for the indulgence of their whims. Despite the glamour that auroral tints and the fancy of inspired bards have cast on this dawn of civilization, the pictures presented by the Homeric epics, by the Greek tragedies woven about half-mythical events already some centuries past, by the Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions, by the historical passages of the Old Testament, or by the Mahabharata of ancient India- these pictures are profoundly disquieting. Whether we read of the rape of Helen, Achilles’ wrath, Clytemnestra’s vengeance, the unspeakable deeds of Pelop’s line, the vainglory of the pharaohs, the Assyrian despots’ craze for bloodshed, the good Yudhishthir’s disastrous addiction to gambling, or the sinful concupiscence of worthy King David, we receive glimpses of a world in which the most memorable events were motivated by inordinate disruptive passions. If we suspect that the motives for some of the events reported in our oldest literary treasures were simplified or exaggerated for artistic purposes, it is only necessary to recall how much of the political history of later ages has been the result of similar passions.”

– Alexander Skutch, Harmony & Conflict in the Living World

26Diagrams from Bill Plotkin’s Nature & The Human Soul

Human MaturationManagement Pasture & Playtime

Conforming

& Rebelling

Primary

Socioeconomic

Training

Obedience Training

& Entitlement

Training

Secession

Capitulation Failure

Death

BirthSoul

Suppression

Exodus

Riot

Parent Liberation

Promotion

Retirement

Withdrawal

Diagram 3-6: The Egocentric Stages of Development

W E

N

S

“The archetypes, values, and goals of the egocentric stage of Conforming and Rebelling illuminate the fabric of the patho-adolescence within which Western societies are mired- a way of life that emphasizes social acceptability, materialism, self-centered individualism, and superficial security rather than authenticity, intimate relationships, soul-infused individual service, and creative risk and adventure.”

– Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul

“For those in whom a local mythology still works, there is an experience both of accord with the social order, and of harmony with the universe. For those, however, in whom the authorized signs no longer work- or, if working, produce deviant effects- there follows inevitably a sense both of dissociation from the local social nexus and of quest, within and without, for life, which the brain will take to be for ‘meaning.’”

– Joseph Campbell, Masks of God

“I am blestwith this wound, Ma Kilman, qui pas ka guérir pièce,Which will never heal.”

- Derek Walcott, Omeros

The Message of Odysseus – Marc Chagall

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“This is the story of how we begin to remember This is the powerful pulsing of love in the vein After the dream of falling and calling your name out

These are the roots of rhythm And the roots of rhythm remain”

- Paul Simon, Under African Skies

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Keystone Behaviors can be recovered via contact with indigenous societies

Obstacles:

1. Abreaction in invaders

- Grief noticed, then suppressed

- Agent of grief emergence violently attacked

2. Destruction of Ecological Keystone Behaviors prior to contact

- Relations with the land strained or eroded

- Land-based spirits and gods reviled

3. Destruction of Cultural Keystone Behaviors prior to contact

- Elders marginalized or killed; initiation interrupted

- Healers marginalized or killed; trauma recovery interrupted

- Women marginalized; sensible governance interrupted

- Warriors marginalized or killed; cultural autonomy interrupted

4. Suspicion and distrust of invaders

Remembering Through Osmosis

“No European who has tasted Savage Life can afterwards bear to live in our societies” – Benjamin Franklin

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Many elements of Keystone Behaviors persist in contemporary Western society, either as fragments or nearly intact cultural rituals.

What Keystone Behaviors might the following be aspects of?

Vegetative motifs in architecture & advertising

Houseplants & pets

Synaesthesia while reading (i.e. ‘hearing’ the written words)

Camping

Word etymologies (e.g. ‘animal,’ ‘science,’ ‘grandmother,’ etc.)

Christmas

Vacations

Astrology

“Green” products

College semesters abroad

Veganism

Ghost stories

Remnants in Contemporary Society

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We experience many echoes of ancestral trauma and grief, but also many echoes of ancestral joy and praise.

“Every person alive today descended from nature-based peoples. We evolved within the rich tapestry of the natural world. Every one of us has something unique to contribute to that tapestry. This knowledge waits within like buried treasure, a soulful seed of quiescent potential.” – Bill Plotkin, Nature & the Human Soul

Internal Memory

Ancestors – Majka Sadel

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Pay attention to animal and plant encounters, dreams, recurrent symbols, coincidences and synchronicities, etc. What is this place telling you about what needs to be done?

“We are situated in the land in much the same way that characters are situated in a story… Along with the other animals, the stones, the trees, and the clouds, we ourselves are characters within a huge story that is visibly unfolding all around us, participants within the vast imagination, or Dreaming, of the world.” – David Abram, Spell of the Sensuous

Remembering Through Landscape

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Challenges to doing awesome stuff:

- Sustained Ecological Catastrophe

- Normalized Emergency Culture

- Sustained Trauma

- Sustained Immaturity

- Fragmented Keystone Behaviors

On the other hand…

- 3,000,000+ years of healthy human history, knowledge, and experience

- Your ancestors, all 150,000 generations of ‘em

- A vibrant and helpful biosphere

If you can grow beans in Flagstaff soil, you can grow a life in Western culture!

Contemporary Design Challenges

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“The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is

ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”

- John Muir

Appendices

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“As long as we keep ourselves busy tilling the earth, there is no fear of any of us becoming wild.”

- Michel Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur, Letters From an American Farmer

“The deterioration of the soil is the inescapable injury of agriculture to the environment.”

– Stephen Stoll, Larding the Lean Earth

“In the history of civilization… the plowshare has been far more destructive than the sword.”

– Daniel Hillel, Out of the Earth

“With the progress of civilization, man has developed many skills; but rarely has he learned to preserve his main source of food, the soil.”

- Vernon Gill Carter, Topsoil & Civilization

Alamut- Mati Klarwein

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Castalia Spring, Delphi, Greece Tarkeshwar Sacred Grove,

Uttaranchal, India

The Chapel, Akron, USA

Great Ziggurat, Ur, Sumer

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The March of Progress – Robert Lawson

“They stood in awe at the footOf the green mountain. PleasureSeemed to grow from fear for Gilgamesh.As when one comes upon a path in the woodsUnvisited by men, one is drawn nearThe lost and undiscovered in himself;He was revitalized by danger.They knew it was the path Humbaba made.Some call the forest ‘Hell,’ and others ‘Paradise’;What difference does it make? said Gilgamesh.”

- The Epic of Gilgamesh

“A few years ago I had the opportunity to ask Grey Reynolds, second-in-command of the Forest Service, ‘If we discover that industrial forestry is incompatible with biodiversity, what then?’… I mentioned it that day to a high school jumper I was coaching, who said: ‘What a stupid question! Everyone knows they’re incompatible.” Reynolds’ non-answer that evening unintentionally validated the teen’s response: ‘What do you want us to do, live in mud huts?”

– Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words

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“Reports say that in the schools of the druids, they learn by heart a great number of verses, and therefore some persons remain twenty years under training. And they do not think it proper to commit these utterances to writing, although in almost all other matters, and in their public and private accounts, they make use of Greek letters. I believe that they have adopted the practice for two reasons: that they do not wish the rule to become common property, nor those who learn the rule to rely on writing and so neglect the cultivation of the memory; and in fact it does usually happen that the assistance of writing tends to relax the diligence of the student and the action of the memory.”

- Julius Caesar, Commentaries on the Gallic War

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“One day a man who was going to UrukStopped to eat at the shepherd’s house.He told them he was hurrying to the marketplaceTo choose for himself a virgin brideWhom Gilgamesh by his birthrightWould sleep with before him.

Enkidu’s face was pale.He felt a weakness in his bodyAt the mention of their king.He asked the prostituteWhy this should be his birthright.She answered: He is king.”

- The Epic of Gilgamesh

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ca. 3000 B.C. ca. 1918 A.D.London, England

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“The problem we are facing with you is not about an individual. It is about a community trying to learn from the past. Everyone has suffered at the hands of the white man, whether it be at school, in his church, or on the roads, working for him. The spirit that animates the whites is extremely restless- and powerful when it comes to keeping that restlessness alive. Wherever he goes he brings a new order, the order of unrest. It keeps him always tense and uneasy, but that is the only way he can exist. It took our community a long time to come to understand this. The white man is not strong- he’s scared. His whiteness is made of terror, or otherwise he would not be white. He is consumed by terror and wrestles with it to stay alive. Until he is at peace with himself, no one around him ever will be.”

– Malidoma Patrice Somé, Of Water and the Spirit

“Our goal should be not the emulation of the ancients and their ways, but to experience for ourselves the aspects of human existence out of which arose those ancient forms which when we see them elicit such a feeling of…longing. Otherwise the modern will remain forever superficial while the real will remain ancient, far away, and therefore outside of ourselves.”

– Dolores LaChapelle, Sacred Land, Sacred Sex

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Nature and the Human Soul – Bill Plotkin

Spell of the Sensuous – David Abram

A Language Older Than Words – Derrick Jensen

Endgame – Derrick Jensen

Of Water and the Spirit – Malidoma Patrice Somé

The Way of the Human Being – Calvin Luther Martin

Secrets of the Talking Jaguar – Martín Prechtel

Ishmael – Daniel Quinn

The Vegetarian Myth – Lierre Keith

Columbus and Other Cannibals – Jack D. Forbes

World as Lover, World as Self – Joanna Macy

Cannibal Culture – Deborah Root

The World We Used to Live in – Vine Deloria, Jr.

Female Power and Male Dominance – Peggy Reeves Sanday

Conversations Before the End of Time – Suzi Gablik

Omeros – Derek Walcott

Print Resources

Collector – Dan HIllier

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Thanks toConnor Stedman

&The Internet

for words and pictures

Contact Informationbkessler@gm.slc.edu

www.laughingcrowpermaculture.wordpress.com