Sketches on Permaculture and Society - Pt. 3
Exploring Evolution in Community, Effective Working Groups, and Right Livelihood from Bill Mollison's Permaculture, a Designers Manual.
How to Change the World is a weekly blog about reversing American decline. I will (1) study successful models of governance throughout history, primarily in the West, (2) highlight what’s going wrong leading to institutional decline or ‘political decay’, and (3) present models of democratic innovation that could lead us into a prosperous, peaceful and abundant 21st century.
This is part 3 in a series looking over the final chapter of Bill Mollison’s Permaculture Designers Manual titled The Strategies of an Alternative Global Nation. You can find parts 1 and 2 here.
The purpose of my analysis is to understand his values and consider how they sit in today’s political and social climate. I don’t go into detail in his prescriptions and designs. If you’d like me to, let me know in the comments.
Bill Mollison continues to impress me with his thoughts around community and how it could be organized more optimally for the thriving of the human, society, and the natural environment. Again, he represents a view of practical organization that was much more prominent in previous generations but which has left the mainstream entirely in the present day. He’s more communitarian, smaller in scale, and more concerned with the environment than modern conservatives, but values individual production and responsibility, and utterly rejects centralized, coercive, top-down systems unlike today’s progressives. His guidance derives both from values which were more widely embraced before the boomer era, and his own experiences working with groups and communities.
Below we’ll go over excerpts from the sections “Evolution in Community” and “Effective working groups and Right Livelihood.”
Evolution in Community
No group can achieve financial self-reliance overnight, but within 5-7 years of a determined start, a cooperative group using their creative talents can succeed in making a living for themselves and building up a strong business sector in their community. Any person can feel a sense of social cohesion and group spirit in such a situation. The danger point of "going under" is past, and now it is time to think of diversifying and disinvestment before the group gets too affluent, or too big. At some point, therefore, a decision must be taken to take some positive action (and avoid the fate of affluence).
So the group grows and becomes successful, and what comes next? Right as it’s beginning to experience success in the eyes of the world (size, wealth), Mollison says pivot. Size and affluence are seen as liabilities. Let this be an indication of just how counterintuitive are Mollison’s ideas on community. Avoid the fate of becoming rich and powerful! A man must have already conquered some of his base nature to choose to pursue a life that doesn’t have wealth, power, and size as its end goals. The good news is that a community of permaculturists should sort for this type of personality.
“Most of us do not have large appetites; we wish only to have a shelter, enough food, some small luxuries, money to travel, and friends. These are modest needs to achieve; beyond them lies adventure in helping others get on a firm footing. The only real security in life is a secure society of interdependent people, thus the only valid "defense" is aid to others.
Mollison challenges and addresses our values on the deepest levels. Achieve modest needs and then move on to the adventure of helping others. You will see this is a theme in his writings today. You generate abundance not for personal enrichment, but so that you may help others do the same. As with practicing Permaculture on the land, one feels an almost spiritual aspect to these teachings.
Village coalitions can fund and operate larger systems such as mutual investment funds for special purposes, engage in manufacturing … purchase and manage a foothill farm for food production, … towns and regions own pilgrim houses for voyagers. All these strategies enrich village or regional life, and give access to a wider world; this is particularly important for children and young people.
I find the idea of “pilgrim houses” enchanting, and love that it’s seen as a way to “enrich” village and regional life by giving access to the wider world and helping develop young people. When I marinate on the above it occurs to me that the simpler life that Mollison espouses is not a life of poverty by any means. On the contrary it is a life deliberately designed to provide for your physical needs and then be rich in community and experience.
Effective Working Groups and Right Livelihood
Working in the ‘democracy field’ (like I do at Civic Trust) one comes across a lot of confounding aspects of group decision-making. One is that majorities easily tyrannize minorities, but also tiny extremist vocal minorities can tyrannize everyone else, and there is no easy solution to this problem.
Thus, decisions reached by boards, parliaments, and consensus groups either oppress some individuals (votes) or are vetoed by dissenters. In either case, we have tyranny of a majority or tyranny of a minority, and a great deal of frustration and wasted time.
It’s good to know at the outset that Mollison is sensitive to this issue. He has a bold solution.
Abolish decision meetings and abolish consensus… In this way, all group meetings can therefore be social and convivial, and for information exchange.
So meetings are convivial, informational (and sparse), and work is assigned and tracked in working groups.
There is work to do. This work needs to be set out clearly, as jobs or tasks. Tasks fall into two categories: creative, productive or constructive, hence pleasing, and those which are basically maintenance.
He then goes in depth on how to assign people to these roles, use volunteers or hire contractors. He suggests most tasks can be done by individuals or groups of around 3 people. This isn’t a small thing, but dictates a lot of the downstream culture as time-wasting and political meetings are pushed aside in favor of individual initiative and getting things done.
As even very small numbers of people (4-6) can be very effective, it is better to set up independent but friendly alliances of small groups than to coalesce into groups of 600 or more.
Hyper-local self organization. Close bonds forming a group which allies with other groups rather than everyone coalescing into a single group. This makes it much harder for free riders to operate, and for rent-seekers to parasitize. I appreciate that this mode of thought addresses an acute problem we’re suffering from in the United States right now - over identification with mass culture, large scale organizations, and divisive federal politics. Unsurprisingly, this leads to mass insecurity of the citizenry.
In this way, every person who wants to work controls their work, and non-involved people have no say. This eliminates control by inactive people in tasks they are not familiar with, and nullifies power seekers.
Observe these values: people who work control their work; non-involved people have no say; no control by the inactive; nullify power seekers. In short, this is a pro-work, anti-bullshit agenda. A path to both self-direction and abundance. This should only bother those who do not (or suspect they do not) contribute meaningfully. Just the other day I was considering how toxic and corrosive is this class of power-seekers in every society. They see what the productive have achieved. But rather than seeking to be productive themselves, they seek to direct the resources that flow from the work of others. Values like this would obviously put Mollison severely at odds with with the modern progressive movement which seeks mass redistribution without understanding where wealth comes from.
Mollison goes on to address the former ‘exit’ movements of motivated and skilled families in the 1890’s, 1930’s, and 1960’s and what made them work.
Studies of such groups reveal that those who were effective adopted a set of values which ensured their continued internal and external interdependence; of those, perhaps the most important factor was that the group adopted "voluntary simplicity" as an ethic.
Voluntary simplicity. The idea of choosing a simple life implies that a more complex one, likely one of more material consumption is on offer but denied. Simplicity is chosen providing space for richness and depth which would otherwise be crowded out by material concerns.
Thus, the legal and ethical basis for successful community cooperation must stress sharing, trusteeship, and modest consumption; the latter is the more important, as individual power over land, real assets, finance, or group membership leads inevitably to power over others, and we are back where we started.
On the point about modest consumption - I was a member of a Christian entrepreneurs group in New York a while back. One Saturday, we did a course called a Journey of Generosity. It highlighted extremely successful business owners who gave away, not just 10% of their income (average tithe), or 50% (not uncommon among very well-heeled Christians in NYC), but >90%. Or more specifically, gave themselves a $200k annual salary to provide for themselves and their family, and gave away everything else. That course and this chapter are perhaps the only two experiences in my life where the accumulation of wealth is actively discouraged, but not the work involved. A talented business owner is able to run a large business offering employment to hundreds, but can avoid the extravagance which alienates him from others. He can fully exercise his gifts and ambitions while maintaining brotherhood with his community, which the wealthy rarely receive.
The habit of frugality is perhaps the most important of those assisting other life forms.
It’s good to remember that frugality is not scarcity. You can have enough and still be frugal, depending on the depth of your appetites. I consider Bitcoin, one of my main passions but one which requires lots of electricity. Is this un-frugal? Perhaps and perhaps not. Providing a decentralized, consensual, and peace-promoting currency (Mollison would approve) to the globe requires infrastructure, and Mollison was not against that. The ultimate answer is linked with the degree of positive impact from Bitcoin and it’s too early to tell.
The only people who are self-defined are those who are self-employed, or who work in community work cooperatives. The consumers pay for their products or services directly, and their houses, products, and choice of work is self-determined.
Mollison encourages people maintain an independence and a relationship with their consumers directly. One can only imagine he would have smiled upon the journalism renaissance brought on by Substack.
We can all seek for right livelihood to do work that assists in caring for the earth or other people, work that is congruent with our beliefs. When we discuss the principle of "commonwork", or study the varied roles of an individual in a village, we can see that no person is just a miner, or clerk, or banker, but that on different days one can be a banker, forester, bee-keeper, writer, printer, or carpenter. It is only the combined pressure of trade unions and mono-culture industry that keeps people bound with the invisible shackles of custom to those unguarded slave camps termed industrial suburbs, with all their malnutrition, poor housing, and human suffering.
This quote highlights the dynamism of activity present in a permaculture community, rather than the “mono culture industry” of conventional work culture. It’s also interesting to see that Mollison is apparently not a fan of trade unions, which is yet another trait that would separate him from modern progressives. Finally, it’s interesting to note his utter condemnation of the “suburban” lifestyle. Of course I assumed it, but it’s interesting to see it written explicitly.
In boring work, or where people are deprived of intellectual life, emotional life may dominate and so their lives become a drama or series of dramatic events.
In my experience living and working on permaculture farms the richness of the intellectual life was a total highlight. There are always new problems to solve and clever ways to design the solution. Your sphere of responsibility is vast, you help others and they help you. There is much labor but done at a leisurely pace, and much satisfaction in it’s completion. You create solutions and benefit from them directly. I love Mollison’s quote above as it describes the life of tabloid intrigue and political fandom that appeals to those whose lifestyle suppresses the intellect. It could almost be a bumper sticker.
A balanced life has all three outlets, so that contented people may spend part of their time in: physical exertion (walking, gardening, sport); intellectual pursuits (design, research, education); and emotional-sensual areas (celebration, contemplation, love).
I’ll leave you with this very permaculture quote. It’s about the right inputs in the right balance to create thriving. May we all design lives with an abundance of all these elements.
I’ll be back next week with the section “Money and Finance.” I’ll consider how well Bitcoin fits into Mollison’s model of good money as well as, hopefully, learning about local currencies.
Until then, if you like this content please like, share your thoughts in the comments, and subscribe.
Matt Harder runs the public engagement firm Civic Trust, where he helps cities strengthen their civic environment by helping residents, civic organizations, and local government work together to create public projects. Follow him on Twitter.
Great reflection. And, man, those quotes are great!
What do you envision being examples of "pilgrim houses"? In my mind, I have something like a L'Abri house.