The Paradox of Our Age

For today a little poem:

"We have bigger houses but smaller families;
more conveniences, but less time.
We have more degrees, but less sense;
more knowledge, but less judgement;
more medicines, but less healthiness.
We've been all the way to the Moon and back,
but we have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbors.
We have built more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever,
but we have less communication.
We have become long on quantity,
but short on quality.
These are the times of fast foods but slow digestion;
tall man but short character;
steep profits but shallow relationships.
It is a time when there is much in the window,
but nothing in the room."

Source: His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

About Great Ideas

Berthold Brecht wrote "Alle großen Ideen scheitern an den Menschen" which freely translates to "All big ideas fail because of the people." It is a quote worth pondering. At first it seems to be contradictory: inherently, big ideas are supposed to be for the benefit of the people, yet he says they fail due to the people. Why does society suffocate brilliant ideas? What can a big idea do by itself? What about a "right" idea? It can be big, it can be good, it can be beneficial to a vast multitude, but that by itself will not be convincing enough, that by itself will not guarantee that the idea will be implemented or will be a success. Often, even an idea necessary for survival will not be accepted. For our context we can let the word "idea" be a place holder for terms like "permaculture", "sustainable life style" or similar. It becomes clear that the idea is just a small piece. By itself it will be heard only by a few and even less will adapt it. The idea will need to be communicated, shared, discussed and publicized. Books, blogs, videos play a key role here. Further on and in parallel, a lot of work will need to go into hands-on convincing people. In this phase, workshops, coops and demo sites come to mind. Any idea, no matter how good, rational, well-intentioned and self evident, is just a starting point. It is the spark. It will need a lot of fuel (work and effort) to start a big fire. Let us not be the people that make big ideas fail in today's society.

Basque Country Coops

There is only limited material available regarding permaculture and related strategies in the Basque Country. Here are articles that discuss the employment form of professional cooperatives that are popular in the Basque Country. These articles look at Mondragon, one of the largest coops in the world. Mondragon is currently used as a case study to create a coop in Australia in the area of permaculture to assist in the hand-over and running of permaculture farms where the owners are close to retirement and seek a successor.

Permaculture Projects

OpenPlans is a nascent platform for social activism surrounding permaculture and climate change. It is an open hub that allows people to create, build, manage and promote projects related to these topics. If you are not inclined to create a project, you might find and join a local project suiting your interests. The platform is still small and currently home to some 26 projects. OpenCore is the underlying technical infrastructure.

Permaculture Coop is one of the projects created on OpenPlans. Permaculture Coop is an affiliated site of Permaculture TV. As the name implies if focuses on cooperative efforts in the area of permaculture at a world-wide level. In a gist this site is working on ideas of how to scale up permaculture from a single person veggie garden to villages, towns and cities. This team studies and develops concepts for a permaculture (worker) cooperative movement. They have analyzed a handful of case studies around the world and work towards creating new cooperative businesses.

Permaculture TV

Here is a new site worth having a look at: www.permaculture.tv. It tries to be a central place or an online hub for videos related to topics like permaculture, transition movement, climate change and cooperation. The site calls itself a free video coop. If you like you you can keep up to date through their permaculture TV feed.