Good Life Revival: Permaculture, Rewilding, Homesteading

"You have to learn how to take care of yourself. No one is going to do it for you. You can wallow in despair with the knowledge that help is not on the way, or you can accept reality as it is and learn how to provide for yourself."

This is the motivational speech I wish I could've heard when I was an adolescent or a young(er) adult. I can only hope that some impressionable youth will stumble upon it.

Does the permaculture movement have a political agenda?

In this episode of the Permaculture Lifestyle podcast, I explore a wide range of opinions and perspectives on the question of whether practicing permaculture is an inherently political act.

Is it a leftist extension of the environmental movement? Is it perhaps libertarian, anarchist, or anarcho-capitalist in nature? Is capitalism a valid tool in the toolkit of the social permaculture designer?

One of the most appealing things about permaculture, for me, is that it appeals to a wide range of people from all across the political spectrum. But I do see ideologies butting heads from time to time within this space, and so I think it's really important that we confront these differences of opinion head-on and with an open mind.

One reason the idea of homesteading is so appealing to us is because we all instinctively know that we way we organize our work lives—and thus, our lifestyle as a whole—just doesn’t make sense.

Why on earth would any of us want to give up the majority of the hours of the majority of the days of our lives to do something we don’t want to do, isolated from the people we care about? Who would agree to that?

And yet that’s exactly what we do, because it’s what we’re told we have to do.

Well, homesteading offers an alternative.

In this installment of the podcast, I outline what I see as the 4 pillars of modern homesteading: working with the land, taking care of your own needs, and minimizing interactions with government and market forces – all while remaining where you live.

Listen through the player at the top of the page, or subscribe to the show on iTunes.

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What are the stories, traditions, rituals, beliefs, and rites of passage passed down to you by your family and your culture?

We can change our world, and we can start right away.

In this special audioblog edition of the podcast, I share my thoughts on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as it relates to our dysfunctional modern culture -- and how we can respond as individuals in a meaningful, productive way.

What is an "audioblog"? Well, you could say it's kind of like an audiobook, except that instead of a book, I'm reading my blog post Leaving the Modern World Behind to you. Get it?

This was the very first post I wrote for the blog when I launched it on July 1, 2016. Seems like I only embarked on this journey just the other day, and yet so much has changed over these months!

Why do we practice permaculture? Because we feel a moral imperative to improve the world around us, and we recognize that change begins with the individual. In this live presentation from the Louisville Permaculture Guild, I explain how I came to permaculture as a terrified ecology student, and I offer my definition of “permaculture” from the perspective of ecological awareness. From there I share my views on the three core ethics of permaculture, and propose a fourth ethic that I believe is implied in the literature – and that we’d all do well to acknowledge. Finally, I discuss the importance of defining intentions for ourselves as individuals, and suggest a 4-step process of self-assessment for better aligning actions and values. This was my first time attending a meeting of the LPG and I’m really looking forward to more! Many thanks to Ray Ely for inviting me to come speak to the group, and to everyone who came and listened and had sweet things to say at the end. :) This was my also my very first speaking gig ever, and I hope it’s not the last! I really enjoyed the project from start to finish and I’m grateful to be able to share this work with my podcast listeners!

What does it mean to be illegible and irrelevant to the dominant culture of destruction and exploitation?

It means reclaiming a greater sense of autonomy, a self-directed lifestyle, freedom from the rat race and the pursuit of financial capital. It means rejecting the distractions and false narratives that are manufactured to divide and conquer the non-elite classes of the world. It means rebuilding our divided communities and taking direct interpersonal action to achieve harmony through the common goals and values that we all share. We can design intentional systems and lifestyles for ourselves which generate yields that the system doesn’t understand. We can generate non-monetary forms of capital that can’t be taxed by a system that only knows how to rationalize financial value. If they can’t measure it, they can’t tax it. I think that making ourselves illegible is a very practical, pragmatic way of responding to the bizarre and dysfunctional zoo of civilization. If we don’t wish to participate in our own annihilation, then we need to put our money where our mouths are — which is to say, we need to generate and exchange value in ways that don’t involve money. That’s liberation permaculture: the fertile intersection of ecology, anthropology, rewilding and anarchist theory. (Please don’t let the A-word scare you off!) Sustainable land design and resilient communal networks will never be organized from above. It’s up to us to make the spaces we occupy into the world we wish to see — and we can start today. Enjoy the show? Do me a huge favor and spread the word by sharing via social media — I’d really love to connect with more likeminded people like you who are interested in having these kinds of conversations. And please get in touch with me if you have any feedback, or if there’s anything I can do to help you out in your journey.