One of the focuses of The Last American Vagabond has been to not only properly diagnose all the problems facing humanity at this current juncture, which undoubtedly is important, but also to evolve past that by discussing solutions to these problems. In the end, what’s the point of understanding all these problems, if the alternative community is not going to step up to the plate and do something about it.
One of those real-life solutions that seems incredibly powerful and totally plausible is permaculture. Originally rooting itself in the idea of “permanent agriculture,” the basic premise of permaculture is to build sustainable life systems, whether it’s food and water cultivation, community development, or technological implementation, that work within the natural laws of the universe, as opposed to systems that only benefit humanity, yet harm natural ecological systems. As the founder of permaculture, Bill Mollison, once said,
“Permaculture is a design system for creating sustainable human environments.”
Before getting more into the actual practice, it’s important to understand the three basic ethics of Permaculture:
- Care of the Earth
– This includes all living and non-living things—plants, animals, land, water and air - Care of People
– This promotes self-reliance and community responsibility—access to resources is necessary for existence. - Setting Limits to Population & Consumption
– This means giving away surplus—contribution of surplus time, labor, money, information, and energy to achieve the aims of Earth and people care.
In reality, this is only scratching the surface, as permaculture has a plethora of knowledge, ideas, and practices that would take years to fully comprehend and implement. Despite the initial learning curve, permaculture has the profound ability to transform the world, therefore it is crucial that any serious activist or environmentalist start to comprehend the subject. We won’t change anything if we can’t first sustain ourselves through proper understanding of the environment on which we depend.
To further accelerate the learning curve of those still unfamiliar with permaculture, we brought on Eric McCool. Eric is an activist and permaculture enthusiast who started the Permagora alternative media website, which stems from the idea of merging permaculture with agorism.
In this video, we not only go deeper into the discussion of what permaculture is, we also discuss its paramount importance when it comes to activism and building new systems that can support humanity. This combination of working within the natural laws of the universe and practicing agorism, seems to have incredible potential, if it can get the manpower behind it. I do hope people check out the video as well as Eric’s website because he is a human being that not only has a wealth of knowledge, but is extremely passionate about what he does.
Note: There is complete list of resources in the show notes of the video below for those interested in taking the next step toward self-sustainability. This should set a solid foundation for anyone looking to not only understand the idea, but get involved at a direct level.
