Laura Oldanie wrote:
Along the way I met another person in the permaculture space also bridging permaculture and FIRE in his content – Mike Hoag from Transformative Adventures. Last year Mike & I pooled our knowlege co-wrote Growing FREE (Financially Resilient & Economically Empowered) Building the Life of Your Dreams Without Losing Your Soul or Destroying the Planet. In it we outline a path to FREEdom instead of FIRE that is steeped in the wealth building principles inherent to permaculture (such as community, skills, green businesses, and other regenerative assets).
We essentially took the teachings of Jacob from ERE, Vicki's Your Money or Your Life, and a bit of Mr. Money Mustache and mixed that together with permaculture tools and thinking.
I haven't read it but it looks interesting. Related posts:
I'm 140 pages in and, so far, it's mostly raging against the machine (particularly corporations). The main premise seems to be that one should exit plato's cave (not their terminology) in order to stick it to the man. While I don't disagree, it's a limited/targeted audience. Just FYI for those thinking of reading it.
I'm hoping they get to the actionable stuff soon. I'll post again when I finish it.
Ok, so 3 pages after my post he mentions ERE and jacob lol.
Still, I'm almost done and it's mostly a rant. If you don't mind decent financial advice sprinkled in with mostly back to the land/gift economy ideas, then you might like it. I appreciate what they're trying to do, I was just thinking it was something else.
It's the same problem I have with some permaculture authors -- I want the info without all the proselytizing (see Holmgren for someone who does it right imo). I think I'm getting too cynical. I'm so tired of having to wade through ideology no matter the circumstance. Even that Deluge book is full of it (disaffected vet, disillusioned career woman who grew up on a farm in Iowa ... crikey, what a pile of tired tropes). I think I'm going to hide under a rock until all the righteousness clears from the ether.
Last edited by jennypenny on Wed Sep 20, 2023 9:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
@jp - One of Mollison's original tenets of permaculture was "fair share" of the output, so there's a strong SD:Green attractor in the social culture of permaculture. Likely this attractor has become a "failure-mode" in the sense that those who prefer this tenet for ideological reasons believe that permaculture (and forming community) is the solution to this [SD:Green] ideology.
I understand. And I shouldn't complain since I'm a huge proponent of permaculture. But I can't even get through the grocery store without several 'buy this to save/support X' messages anymore. It's mentally exhausting.
One of the aspects of ERE that originally appealed to me was the elegant simplicity of it. The web of goals seems complicated to some, but IMO if you grind your way up the wheaton levels, an almost silent mode of ERE emerges that's honestly lovely. I wish more permaculturists could get to that state (a la Holmgren). It's not a state of giving up ... it's more like the quiet whirr of a perfectly tuned engine at full speed.
I agree that the 3 Ethics of permaculture are kind of weak compared to the Principles of permaculture. In fact, I think the ethics are sort of naturally derived from the principles, but the inverse doesn't necessarily hold true. For instance, you are bound to engage in People Care if you take an interest in your local water-shed, and observations of boundary behaviors/qualities in nature will likely impress you with the wisdom of Fair Share, and Earth Care is basically a redundancy. But. otoh, you can evince the 3 ethics all the day long and never produce a yield or close a loop.
