How permaculture can inspire us to redesign our society
And why this is the tipping point for us to work with nature
For the last few months, I have been spending some time working on regenerative farming projects, communities and courses, and soaking in as much knowledge on permaculture as I can. In the background I have been reflecting on how some of the frameworks that apply to regenerative agriculture or more specifically permaculture (which is the most popular framework and school of thought for regenerative farming) can translate to societal systems. It turns out there are a lot of transposable principles!
The very concept that doing work and investing value creates more richness without depleting any resources is the manifestation of the age-old human dream of perpetual motion.
I believe permaculture is not only a nice-to-have source of inspiration, but that it is fundamental for us to align our societal and personal principles around nature in order to work with it in order to ensure our long-term survival and continued flourishing as a species and planet.
Let me illustrate why this is the case. As Richard Powers said we as a species have become alienated from all other life forms. This distancing has carved out the place for many middlemen. Think of the alienation society has experienced in the 20th century from farming practices, as well as other basic life-sustaining activities, complemented by the over-romanticisation of urban living. The differentiation between blue and white collar jobs and the glamorisation of the service sector.
All these factors mean that the amount of Chinese whispers that occur between links of our production and supply chains lead to the complete disconnect of the end-consumer from how our basic needs are produced and brought to us. This disconnect and ignorance gives more lead-way for us to be destructive as the feedback loops weaken. Nobody is going to hold companies/systems accountable if nobody knows what is going on inside the blackbox. We have fallen into a cycle of mass-production that has required for us to compromise the attention and care for ecosystems within our production chains, hereby depleting the very foundation of our existence. Our production cycles are too big and industrialised and therefore too complex to self-regulate and meet our needs sustainably. They can only be carried out with high collateral damage.
There is however one system that has been able to scale to planetary levels, and that is nature’s ecosystems. We must therefore respect its rules and adjust ours if we are to coexist. So let us observe what permaculture, as a framework to work with (and not against) nature, can teach us!
Fractals and the water cycle
Or how individual sovereignty and eco-systemic stability go hand-in-hand
There is a parallel to be drawn between society and water cycles. The water cycle is mostly known to happen at macro-level between oceans, the atmosphere and groundwater flow and storage. However what is most fascinating about this cycle is that it happens at all scales.
The water cycle can happen at forest level, which in warm climates can create a rainforest with its own climate. Even a garden can have its own microclimate, as well as just an individual tree, through transpiration. What is rich about this idea is that the pattern is replicated at all scales, and it is the consistency of the pattern across scales that makes it sustainable. It is therefore fair to say that the planetary water cycle functions a bit like a fractal. Here is the definition of a fractal for you by the fractal foundation: A fractal is a never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop.
To me the concept of fractal as a pattern in nature, which should be replicated across societies is immensely interesting. Amongst others it inherently contains a concept of sovereignty or self-reliance. Which is the idea that a system governs itself, and has an inherent link to the notion of decentralisation. i.e. Only if a plant regulates its own water cycle can the planetary water cycle function. Because each part of the system is self-sufficient therefore the entirety of it will be as well. This principle can also be applied to relationships, which is why therapists often say that people need to enter a relationship as a “whole” person, rather than a half that needs another half to be complete. A pattern often labeled as toxic or co-dependent.
Strangely one can find many interpretations of this pursuit of sovereignty in our society. Populism is one form, where countries want to regain control and power of their own decisions. Libertarianism also reflects this where people want to keep their individual freedoms and not be told what to do by the government. Even leftist queer and black political movements are a way for these groups to harness enough rights and power to function without being codependent at the bottom of implicit societal hierarchies.
“What is rich about the water cycle is that the pattern is replicated at all scales, and it is the consistency of the pattern across scales that makes it sustainable.”
The quest for sovereignty also is inherently tied with a notion of decentralisation which has also been reflected in the political and governance thinking behind the “blockchain movement” (e.g. DeFi / decentralised finance, smart contracts, etc). Which also mirrors how the permaculture movement thinks of systems of governance. The idea of creating self-regulating and self-sufficient decentralised platforms and farms. Nature does not have headquarters or a single ruling organism. This is perhaps why humans have created the concept of God as a single figurative human ruler that presides over the universe, to counterbalance the unintuitive notion that it is the decentralised universe itself that is intelligent.
It is arguable that our post-war societies have developed a very centralised approach to societal design, without being concerned with replicating global patterns into local ones. Some say this is in part due to the creation of the military industrial complex. Where nations have centralised the production of arms and war supplies, creating a behemoth industry that grows into an ever rising monolith, and replicated that pattern to other industries.
As we restructure our societies it is very important that more self-resilience is given locally to communities. The world has become too complex to be governed in a one-size-fits-all centralised approach where communities outsource all basic needs. With the rise of personalised medicine should also arise personalised governance. If a community is not self-sufficient around the basics, i.e. energy, water, food, shelter, then civic unrest is bound to increase.
This is also true of the centralisation of digital tech companies. The Digital Earth collective referred to the monopole by Facebook and Twitter over social media as a “digital monoculture” that needs to be broken up. Think of how much civic unrest these companies have caused over the last decade.
That said communities should still remain open, communicative and exchange other specialised resources to enhance themselves. I am not calling for isolationism, but rather in-shoring basic services complemented by supplementary exchanges. In the same way the macro water cycle also complements the micro-water cycle. An oasis in the desert survives mostly because of its micro-water cycle, but if a forest can exchange resources with is surroundings, it will be even richer.
The world has become too complex to be governed in a one-size-fits-all centralised approach where communities outsource basic needs.
Respecting ecological succession
Or how different lifeforms can create synergies to increase value
Ecological succession is the process through which forests are formed. The arrival of of small organisms prepares the soil and give rise to the growth of bigger organisms. These systems then reach what is called climax, which is when biodiversity and “lushness” peaks, and the system is in balance.
Natural succession is very different to how monoculture (growing one crop in a field) works and disregards the various ways in which the diversity of species give way to a stable system. Agroforestry (agricultural method combining trees, crops and livestock) as an approach tries to mimic natural succession by drawing yield from the synergies and complementarity of the species planted. Possibly the closest thing to a forest (Western) people have managed to artificially create and obtain a yield from.
To me natural succession truly exemplifies the connection between all living beings and how sophisticated synergies that have formed have led to the notion of life as eco-systemic intelligence. This means that I as an individual am alive, the bacteria in my gut are alive as well, but above all, the planet also functions as a macro-organism. The awareness of the highest level was labelled “eco-system awareness” rather than “ego-system awareness” in a theory called Theory U, developed by C. Otto Scharmer an author and professor at MIT.
Highlighting this brings us to consider the alienation of humans from non-human life forms as absurd. I am not implying that our sole role as humans is to graze the grounds of the Amazon with our fluids, however the yield is greater the more synergies between us and other life forms are present. Both in ways we understand and ways we do not yet. Life can only prevail if humans exist in relation to other life forms.
The metric nature optimise for is biodiversity. Not profits from the timber sold, nor units of carbons stored. This brings us to different forms of capital we ought to consider.
To me natural succession truly exemplifies the connection between all living beings and how sophisticated synergies that have formed have led to the notion of life as eco-systemic intelligence.
Different forms of capital
Or how we need to institutionalise all forms of value in order not to deplete others
After doing a permaculture course, Ethan Roland suggested that the world has 8 forms of capital, and that we have only institutionalised two in our society: financial and material. And that the rest is being drained by those two, which explains why the world seems to have excess materialistic and wealth-obsession tendencies.
Social capital has being drained as communities have kept dissolving as people moved to bigger cities and trust has eroded via political polarisation. Intellectual capital has eroded as the intellect does not always sell, and people would rather be entertained than be challenged mentally. Craftsmanship and agricultural skills have eroded as digital, financial and administrative skills have developed through the service sectors. The list goes on, but you get the idea; If we focus only on some forms of capital, the other ones naturally die out, even if they are fundamental to our wellbeing.
However in response to this reality, we are slowly seeing the rise of the recognition of living capital through the creation of the carbon markets. This is only a first step. It will probably give rise to the inclusion of other ecosystem services, such as the capability for plants to clean water or other ways for forests to regulate and attenuate climate change and other environmental instabilities. It is very important for us not to halt at the carbon market stage but extrapolate into the numerous and complex metrics that nature optimises for in order to reach balance and stability.
Spiritual and social capital is being regenerated through a lot of communities emerging around the world (e.g. eco-communities emerging in the countryside in Costa Rica or Portugal) that are countering the every growing size and transactional nature of our metropolises and depletion of the countryside. Now institutionalising spirituality has proven ineffective through previous models where state and church merged, however it will be interesting to observe how this develops.
In summary, our society has satisfied itself with optimising for very narrow and non-diverse forms of capital, which were often measured by single metrics (e.g. social media platforms optimising purely for user engagement). However if our systems cannot function sustainably without depleting what isn’t measured, we then have to measure and bring into awareness other forms of capital in order for our approach to be more holistic (and the list will probably grow!). Only then can we share some common ground with other ecosystems. That common-ground is our planet.
If we only focus on some forms of capital, the other ones naturally die out, even if they are fundamental to our wellbeing.
Conclusion
After looking at both individual sovereignty as a factor of eco-systemic stability and yield when thinking of the water cycle, we also thought of how once individuals are self-reliant, diverse coexistence increases their value via proximity and connection. Finally we looked at the diverse ways to assess the richness of a system through various forms of a capital and to think of these holistically to ensure these are balanced so that growth does not lead to depletion.
It will take us a while to rethink all of our human systems, which is why we need to think of the forthcoming period as a transitory one. It is key to not uphold ourselves to the standards of our 50–100 year / long-term vision today, as this is unattainable. In other words, we must differentiate end vision and strategy to get there.
We must find a way to live, acknowledge our dated ways. We must not vilify them and still respect how they have served us, whilst moving away from them at a sufficient pace for us to course correct to avoid disaster.
We just need to observe and interact with what is around us — which also happens to be the first permaculture design principle.
