On Saturday 13th and 20th November, my partner Su Dennett and I joined others from central Victoria travelling by train to the “Kill the Bill”/anti-lockdown/anti-mandate protests in Melbourne. This essay documents the experience, and reflects on the relationship between permaculture and oppositional activism over more than 40 years.
I also want to highlight the opportunities for permaculture activism in a time of a pandemic to help those in need who have the capacity and motivation to increase their personal, household and community autonomy, resilience and connection to nature. This should be independent of their beliefs, and certainly without the judgemental othering that has accelerated with Covid. In the process, I believe we will all learn to live more lightly on the earth in consideration of fair share and the future.
I was raised in a family at the front lines of the battle to “Stop the War” (in Vietnam). Consequently, as a primary school kid, I knew what it was like to be ostracised as a “commie traitor”. Later, I found my opinions progressively adopted as a symbol of the “generation gap,” also characterised by sex, drugs and rock and roll. If the war had lasted long enough, I knew I would face the prospect of going underground or burning my draft card and doing time.
As a teenager finding a point of difference from my parents was more difficult than for my peers. While I recognised the good fight against social injustice, racism and imperial aggression, I was more interested in creating the world we wanted – by living it each day. Early expressions of that included buying clothes at the op-shop, consciousness-enhancing drugs, hitchhiking and time in nature. These led on to the practical skills of salvaging, building, organic food growing, preserving and cooking.1 For more on my life journey to and with permaculture see my autobiographical piece ‘The Long View’ in Permaculture Pioneers.
Around this time I met Bill Mollison, an academic of my parent’s generation. He had been at the front lines of early Tasmanian environmental activism but had come to a similar conclusion to me. We both saw the need to use the best of Indigenous and traditional self-reliance, ecology and design science to create a “permanent” culture in the shadow of techno-industrial society doomed by the “Limits to Growth.”
Our intense working and living arrangements on the foot slopes of Mt Wellington led to the permaculture concept, and our initial permaculture experiments, during the intellectual ferment that was Tasmania in the 1970s.
While I actively participated in the campaigns to save the Franklin and the old growth forests of Tasmania, East Gippsland and Southern NSW, my interest was always in the creative alternatives, from passive solar design to ecological forestry. During the 80s, I acknowledged valid efforts at resistance against uranium mining, Pine Gap, and oppression of Indigenous and marginalised groups, amongst other important “causes”. But my preoccupation with skilling up to be a guinea pig for the permaculture vision was put to the test, in combination with Su’s commitment to natural living, home birth and home education. In 1985, Su quit her job, I cranked up my micro permaculture consulting business and, with school age kids and a baby on the way, we moved to Hepburn to become owner builders without bank finance.
Walking the talk was always more important to me than proselytising about the promise of permaculture. I left the proselytising to Mollison, with his charisma, polymathy and personal drive.
By the 90s I had enough of a personal track record to immerse myself in permaculture teaching, writing and public speaking. That passion for the positive solutions was punctuated by participation in mass demonstrations against the First and Second Gulf Wars (1991 & 2003) as well as the anti-globalisation action (S11) in 2000. At the S11 demonstration, our banner ‘Permaculture: Local Solutions to Global Problems’ struck a positive note on the festival-like first day encircling the G7 venue. Of course the media massively understated the crowd and on the second and third days, agent provocateurs and police violence triggered a hard line clearing of the ratbag elements from the streets, allowing the global elite to enter by the front door rather than having to come in the back way off the Birrarung (Yarra River).
This experience confirmed that not much had changed since Vietnam; the media trivialises or demonises the nature of the resistance, lies about numbers involved and covers for police-initiated violence. Channelling my father’s big picture historical perspective, I saw this oppositional activism as part of a new wave informed by ecological thinking. In the same way that Permaculture One surfed the first wave and Mollison’s Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual the second wave in the late 1980s with positive and grounded activism, I hoped Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability would surf this new wave. While that did happen, consolidating and deepening the teaching of permaculture around the world, the third wave became a casualty of 9/11. In the post-9/11 madness we joined the 150-200k people in the streets of Melbourne, protesting against Australia joining George Bush’s “Coalition of the willing” invading Iraq. What that protest proved is that when “the system”/”deep state” is really set on a course of action, a huge majority of the population being against it makes no difference.
As the noughties rolled into the teens, my role as a futurist2 See for instance futurescenarios.org inevitably included a more overtly political aspect. However my aim was always to help permaculture and kindred activists understand the bigger picture context within which our focus on the positive nature- and human-centred design responses would play out.
My writings on Covid over the last 18 months chart a trajectory leading to ‘Pandemic Brooding: Brown Tech in new clothing’. While that essay involves a degree of detached fascination, at the same time, my tracking of the action on the streets of Melbourne during the most recent of six lockdowns raised the emotions of past actions against the wrongs of the world. Part of me wanted to be at the two recent rallies in Melbourne to show solidarity with the brave folks at previous “illegal” rallies who had stood up against repressive lockdowns, vaccine mandates and excessive use of force by our increasingly militarised police.
My reasons for not having been at those earlier “violent” rallies had only a little to do with the risks to my 66-year-old body and nothing to do with fear of being associated with so-called right-wing extremists – or even actual right-wing extremists. I understood I could contribute in other ways, including writing. However, once the protests became legal and the police changed strategy from confrontation and provocation to coordination and facilitation, the threats to life and limb moderated. More importantly, the issues morphed from the lockdowns and mandates to the Bill to give unfettered powers to the premier before the emergency powers expire on 11th December.
When Su suggested we go, I got out our 21-year-old banner and packed some RetroSuburbia bookmarks (which include links to permaculture positivity) with the intention of making the trip multipurpose.
First, I wanted to see for myself the people involved rather depending on the “far right” Rebel News or citizen journalists, let alone the mainstream media reports (my childhood and adult experience over five decades having inoculated me against their habitual manipulation of the facts to serve the purposes of “the system”).
For me, the most important observation was the great diversity of participants: families with young children; health and other essential service workers; Aussie battlers from the suburban heartlands and regional hinterlands; migrants from different ethnicities; religious Christians and Muslims and more. It felt there were people from every group, network and sector, but just a minority splinter from each.
I can think of four factors that could account for the massive turnout despite the apparent situation that the vast majority of the population is double vaccinated and happy to be so:
- The deliberate concentration of the adverse impacts of policies on the unvaccinated, making them an oppressed minority despite the mainstream claim that this oppression is self-selected. This expression is a powerful motivation to show up.
- The surge of energy from being with a big diverse crowd all sharing a common rejection of what most people (at least that’s what we are told) willingly accept, is a powerful boost. In the 1966 anti-war march my mother told me that the purpose of a demonstration was not to convince the public or the politicians but to provide a boost of solidarity to the activists to help them in their more difficult, slow and sometimes isolated work in the community, talking to people one-on-one and organising small events informing the interested public.
- Perhaps the most important reason for the large turnout could be that many of the people present were themselves double vaccinated, but are strongly pro-choice and wanted to express their solidarity with the unvaccinated.
- Finally, despite the mainstream media lockdown on debate around increasingly authoritarian governance, the rising general concern about future potential abuses of power.
Of course, the narrative from the mainstream media is focused on the apparently mysterious powers of far-right and conspiracy theorists to fool ordinary people into joining these events that are imported American memes of no relevance to our political context. If there is one thing Covid has proven, it is that despite the diversity of politics around the globe, the same set of policies with minor variations can emerge simultaneously.
While the mainstream media have historically always under-reported numbers at demonstrations against home governments, they routinely over-report demonstrations against enemy or competitor nations. With Covid related demonstrations, it seems the under reporting has reached absurd extremes. We estimated the crowd on Saturday 13th to be between 70 and 100k while some estimates for 20th November were over 200k. Most of the mainstream media reports mentioned “thousands.” That is between one and two orders of magnitude out, hardly an estimation error. But I suppose this needs to be put in the context of a demonstration in London estimated at around 1 million focused outside the BBC headquarters shouting ‘shame’ that was not considered newsworthy enough for the national broadcaster to bother reporting it at all.
The really interesting thing about our experience at the first rally was the positive response of participants and bystanders to our permaculture banner and the 60 or so bookmarks we handed out. This motivated us to return the next Saturday with 200 bookmarks, to the bigger event that was even more festive. We probably could have handed out far more, but the event was exhausting enough as it was. Su had two people politely decline to take one when offered, I had three. Most were curious about any good news, many acknowledging permaculture as what we all need. There were also relatively small numbers of fans who recognised me and were so grateful for my solidarity with the socially excluded, my writing on the subject, or more generally for permaculture, that had changed their lives for the better. Of course there were also the stories about their permie and kindred friends who were on the other side of the divide.
I’m sure some will see this as crass commercial promotion of our products to troubled people searching for answers. These days I am more openly proud that our work in the world is funded by those who gain direct value from what we do and produce, rather than the compromises that come with government, institutional or corporate largess.
However I have mused on the fact that we are proselytising, in the way that radical left and environmental activists have always done at any gathering of the disaffected. My parents did so on behalf of the Communist Party for almost a decade before I was born, and as a kid I handed out literature written and printed by my parents (co-founders of the Vietnam Action Committee WA) aiming to recruit those opposed to conscription to the more radical cause opposing the war of aggression against the Vietnamese people.
At the first Melbourne march, I imagined the radical left were having a severe case of FOMO. The following week, the promotion of a counter demonstration by Antifa arced up the fear of nasty conflict. While it apparently numbered a few hundred, they were very angry and the police kept them somewhat removed from the festive march of the “extreme right”. It was unclear whether the police action was more intended to contain the Antifa anger from spilling over into some Don Quixote attack on the assembled masses, or from stopping the much noted “neo-Nazi element” engaging in contact sport with the Antifa crew.
Of course the focus on angry minorities wanting to blame other angry minorities is the perfect divide and rule strategy of “the system”, a fact that was no doubt behind one banner which said ‘Restore Unity’ above the anarchist symbol. I complemented the blokes carrying it as I handed them a RetroSuburbia bookmark.
Beyond the missing radical left green fringe was another gaping hole in the gathered multitude. There were no unions, professional associations, environmental organisations or other mainstream civil society groups officially present. The complete abandonment of people by the civil society groups is opening fertile ground for the formation of new unions, other civil society groups and, of course, political parties. Obviously parties of the right, including the far-right, will gain enormously from this and the left, if that still exists in politics (this includes The Greens) have only themselves to blame. The hysterical focus of the left on some extreme version of identity politics and their increasing alignment in support of authoritarian and corporatist solutions to the climate emergency leaves them more and more as serving “the system”. Let us hope that does not continue far enough to create some version of Mao’s Red Guards driving some ideological transformation of society from above, in response to the ever-worsening Limits to Growth crisis.
Awareness of the dark nature of the world is a psychological burden that can pull one down into a vortex of despair and paranoia. The best antidotes I know of against these hazards are unmediated communication and exchange with diverse others around simple things, such as shared food, spontaneous play, art and grounded productivity. Where those activities extend beyond the human-dominated built environment to unmediated interplay with nature, the sources of understanding and faith in the larger cycles of life can ameliorate, if not erase, the darkest parts of the human psyche. For so many survivors of trauma, ranging from personal abuse to war, connection with nature has been their salvation. When our modest connections to nature are also the sources of our material needs and bodily sustenance, we begin the process of rebuilding a benign nature-centred human economy. This in turn leads to the organic unfolding of household, community and wider bioregional economies adapted to challenging realities.
Increasingly strident articulation of what is right and wrong does not assist this permaculture vision. Instead, it is the cross fertilisation and hybrid vigour of ideas, subcultures and humble lifeways that provide the hope for new recombinant “cultures of place” that respect and build on ancient lineages fused in a new synthesis where the values and achievements of western, now globalised, modernity are just threads in a new tapestry of life. In nature, new ecologies and genetics can burst forth from the breakdown and dispersal of long established ecological and genetic norms. In the same way that recombinant novel ecosystems regenerate degraded landscapes using newcomer and ancestral species and genetics, human cultural evolution comes from the unregulated wild fusion of multiple lineages and spontaneous creativity in a context of cultural chaos and degeneration.
So beyond these flowery generalisations, how does this help navigate relationships across past and emerging subcultural and normative divides that are both widening and closing with remarkable rapidity? Am I not concerned, as the co-originator of the permaculture, that my association with people labelled extreme right, conspiracy lunatics or simply me-first-egotists will destroy my reputation and through that, permaculture more generally? You have got to be kidding!
At the age of 9, I had the internal resources to refuse to stand for ‘God Save the Queen’ at the Bicton primary school ANZAC day assembly (in 1964 as the excitement of “our boys going to Vietnam” was hotting up). I was the lone resister in a school of 600 working and middle class kids. At 66 my life is, by conscious design and hard work against the tide of social norms, ignoring the red herring rewards, less dependent physically and psychologically on “the system” than the vast majority. Whatever the social odium, media targeting, financial and other loss that is likely to fall on my head from loss of reputation or status in these tumultuous times is hardly enough to silence my voice. Compare those risks with the suffering of fellow Australians being persecuted out of their jobs and society for upholding their right to bodily autonomy and raising their children by their values rather than those of corrupt national and global elites.
Meanwhile the suffering of our greatest fellow Australian, Julian Assange, continues to play out through Kafkaesque legal and psychological torture for daring – and succeeding – in showing the corrupt abuse of power that underpins our lives of apparent privilege and complicity. Permaculture and Wikileaks are both creative design solutions that undermine centralised power in very different ways.
The transformative promise of permaculture is still to be realised; whether it can remain open-source, emergent, adaptive and inclusive while avoiding being co-opted, emasculated or demonised remains an open question. Creating a permanent culture has always involved a dance between regeneration and resistance.
David Holmgren
November 2021
Melliodora
Djaara Country
37 thoughts on “Protesting Permaculture: the last five weeks and the last five decades”
Dear David
Thanks once again for a “Life well lived”. For me, the most challenging aspect of your example is the heights of the standard you set for me.
Best wishes
Dr Peter Heffernan
Consultant Psychiatrist
“…the most challenging aspect of your example is the heights of the standard you set for me.”
I couldn’t have said it better…!
To David – thank you again! You’re writings right now in this time are some of the most comforting and inspiring words to be heard. You always seem to echo our family’s sentiment to the T.
We feel though that the term “global elites”
ELITE definition – a select group that is superior in terms of ability or qualities to the rest of a group or society.
…is not correctly applied for this group of people and should be more correctly termed….a man of your scholarly like writing would be able to rename this mislabel correctly I’m sure….
We are on the far north coast of NSW with great distance from you, however standing in parallel with yourself and Sue and, Artist as family we feel such a closeness in your community.
I think what we are in the midst of is a distilling or tempering of Permaculture wereby the facade of “Permaculture” used by so many is being shelled or cracked so to speek to reveal the “nuts” inside (the true source of sustenance…).
Please keep up the writing David…thanks again.
Adam & Roxanne
I loved this, “Permaculture and Wikileaks are both creative design solutions that undermine centralised power in very different ways.” What an eloquent article altogether! I am sorry about the online abuse. I agree that you have every right to protest under the permaculture banner and that you are perfectly in your rights to share your informed opinion from your position. Your Julian Assange analogy segways to the fact that Julian Assange would not be being persecuted by the west if he only exposed Chinese war crimes (which he did) he would instead be celebrated. In the same light I wonder if those who criticise your speaking out now would have done so if you chose to promote and moralise about the importance of taking a jab for the team?
David, thanks for your considered response to this issue. I respect you for your historical work but on this issue, I firmly disagree with your protest action USING THE PERMACULTURE BRAND. The difference with the pandemic is that no single person, group of people or government body wanted this except for the possible reason that it started due to human experimentation and lax confinement of the virus or sinister intentions to develop and release it (in Wuhan, China). Community and government responses to manage the safety of individuals and communities around the world using vaccines and lockdowns are proven ways to manage pandemics. These are unpalatable and inconvenient to individuals and businesses but are proven to save lives, assist economies with longer term viability (compared to NO management of pandemics of viruses) and assist in keeping communities intact.
The difference with wars and environmental issues as opposed to pandemics is they are intentionally engineered and progressed by governments for their philosophical and economic gains at the expense of death and huge destruction and suffering of communities and the environment. These are regressive and morally wrong and protests to stop or influence them show the people in power that the local and world sentiment is against them. On the other hand, when a pandemic is being managed, the intent is for the protection and stability of individuals and communities.
I reiterate my disagreement of your actions only in relation to your use of the permaculture brand which, while largely started by you and Bill Mollison, is now a recognised concept of living and stewardship of communities and the environment. In my opinion, the brand you started is not owned by you but shared by all who follow permaculture principle and should not be used at protests. This then involves a huge number of people who may or may not agree with your actions.
I humbly ask you to abstain from using placards and symbols that adevertise the permaculture brand at future protests you intend to attend.
Back in 2006 my PDC project at the Food Forest (with David in attendance at the course) explored the question of whether permaculture could or should be “branded” we came to the conclusion that it couldn’t/shouldn’t.
This whole debate about who should and shouldn’t be able to use the name and the myopic attempts by a section of the community that David has so eloquently responded to here who are trying to regulate and control ‘permaculture’ has starkly brought this memory back.
The actual project has likely been decluttered in the meantime, but I’m glad to hold its story.
Hoping you’ll be back at the Food Forest again next year David so that my now adult children can spend time with you.
Gail Tverberg’s most recent blog post (at Our Finite World) has an interesting take on the elite’s motivations for the global lockdowns, namely to mask the current energy supply crunch that started at the end of 2019 and the need to shut down the economy and make an excuse for plunging the world economy into more debt. She also speculates that anti-vaxxers are being set up as scapegoats, similarly to the Jews in the 1930s, so that they can be excluded from access to goods and services – essentially demand destruction – as the economy crashes. Interesting reading and food for thought.
I like what Singapore did about this. They have single payer health care (which we in the USA do not have). But if someone requires hospitalization for covid due to being unvaccinated, the patient is required to pay the cost of the treatment. So people can refuse protection, but society doesn’t have to pay for their choice if there are consequences for that choice.
Here in the US (and most if not all places) nearly all of the hospitalized and dead have not been vaccinated, whether before vaccines were available or because of refusals.
Destroying wild Nature has spread many other diseases, so SARS-CoV-2 is not really a surprise. Some speculate deliberate intention behind the pandemic, but this is scapegoating.
“Future scenarios” said that recession was the only means that energy reduction has happened. Covid closures were even more effective, at least in 2020. Now, depletion lies ahead but there are no vaccines to reverse entropy.
I am happy to have you represent permaculture in any setting you see fit. We need all the options, all the diversity, in whatever form they take. You have previously demonstrated the quality of your thinking, if you think this is an appropriate place to “spread the good news”, I support you.
Personally, my lived experience has not matched the narrative being handed to us. In that case it seems prudent to follow the precautionary principle, to wait before taking any irreversible actions.
Thank you David you are an inspiration 🙏
As someone who was born to and raised amongst world leading Permacultue teachers and experts it is so heartening to see you take this stance and continue to bring Permacultue to where it is so very needed. The corporate globalists are trying so hard to destroy everything that Permaculture stands for, and their phycological war has indeed divided us deeply, but there is so much change happening in the world now that we can never go back to the old broken system, we can either allow the globalists to dictate a new future for us (that I don’t much like the look of) or we have an opportunity to create a new and better future for the world that incorporates the Permacultue principles into a new truly regenerative society.
Unfortunately David – this isn’t just your call. And to rally alongside right wing skinheads, neo-nazis, and other such fascist inclined anti-vaxxers – is particularly repugnant to me. Sounds like this was a captains call. Not the right decision in my opinion.
No offence, but what is your basis for assuming that the demonstration was a right-wing event? Did you attend? At what is the exact ratio of skin-heads to pot-heads required to make a demonstration right-wing or left-wing? And if it isn’t David’s call, then whose is it? I mean the guy is the only remaining founder of the movement for heaven’s sake! His take has to count for something…
Markov. I am wondering if you have read the article you are referring to because David gave some very clear images of what the population of the protests look like. How do you know who was there?
Su was certainly right! You should be marching in the streets and every man and woman should be too! Never before has the media been so inept — silencing any alternative narrative, censoring, and spinning information to the point that a possibly good soul like Corinne has become so vile and full of hate. How to forgive Corinne and those so confused for their ignorance is a great challenge.
Thanks David, wonderful to get context and nuance around action. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to have a respectful conversation on this issue.
Your call on a brown tech future looks more valid every day.
I have to have a chuckle at the commenters suggesting you don’t have the right to use permaculture in this context. One of the foundation principles we stress at the courses I’m involved in is that Permaculture is an application of thought processes, not a set of defined rules.
Cheers, Jamie
Love to you and Su. Stay well and strong.
Living in Berlin, Germany, I’d like to contribute an outside view to David’s essay and this discussion. Before I do that: I only heard about permaculture about two years ago, in our Parents For Future group here in Berlin. From what I’ve learned about it since then, it seems to me, as a biologist, that permaculture is the only way we can survive on this planet without destroying the life living on it, including ourselves. I’m so grateful for all the work you’ve done for mankind in all those years!
Here’s the Covid situation in Germany (around 83 million inhabitants) as of today:
New infections since yesterday: 74 352
Active cases: 925 800
Currently in intensive care: 4 797
(there are 5000 intensive care beds for such cases in the whole country)
Total deaths: 102 568
% of people fully vaccinated: 68,8
For comparison here’s the Covid situation in Australia (around 26 million inhabitants):
New infections since yesterday: 510
Active cases: 15 997
Currently hospitalised: 511
Total deaths: 2 032
% of people fully vaccinated: 87,7
I completely respect, understand and share your thoughts about big politics and the media. In general. We’ve experienced similar things here.
But, comparing these numbers and the Australian and the German approach to this pandemic, it seems to me, that your government has done something right in this case (maybe only in this case, I don’t know). Even taking into account that Germany, situated in the middle of Europe, could never have such low case numbers as Australia. Here in Germany, there have been violent demonstrations by a right-wing anti-mask, anti-lockdown, anti-vaccination movement (they call themselves “Querdenker”=sideways-thinkers or across-thinkers). One of the reasons why we have such high numbers of Covid 19 cases and deaths is, that our government was too afraid of these “Querdenkers” and of ‘dividing the society’ to impose potent and consistent measures to manage the pandemic. They ignored the advice of the scientists from our universities and research institutes and of the medical doctors at our major hospitals: for example, lockdowns were started too late and stopped too early and sometimes harsh measures were imposed in the wrong places. So a lot of damage has been done to small businesses and the well-being of children – without really protecting the population against the disease.
At the moment, regions where the “Querdenker” movement is strong and vaccination rates are low have such high numbers of (unvaccinated) Covid cases that patients have to be flown out to hospitals in other regions – this exacerbates the division of the society.
Perhaps the right-wing/neonazi people in Australia are nice people. But here in Germany they are violent and cruel. Climate scientists and activists for example get death threats on social media from them regularly.
On this background, how shall we explain here that Permaculture is a good thing, when the Co-founder of it walks with such people?
The concept itself is of course as good and as valuable as it has always been and the world is so much in need of it. But it’ll be so much more difficult to talk to people about it now. This makes me very sad.
Thank you, Ingrid.
Your perspective from Germany is very helpful to the conversation over here.
Much love to your country in these frightening times.
This “pandemic” could be seen as a “pcr-test pandemic”, too, and I’ m afraid, that it is all about control, power and a lot of money, nothing else. The official narrative could be a Trojan horse to introduce a worldwide_totalitarian_control system. I don’t want to live in a country like China, and I am very sad to see that so many people still believe in everything the mainstrema media is telling them. Fear is a very powerful weapon. I still see so many children with masks on, here in Germany, and people without vaccination are not allowed in trains, busses, shops and even churches. I do not want people to be excluded, defamed and discriminated against. This makes me very sad. And I think that it is important to stand up peacefully for our rights, for freedom, democracy and justice. Thank you so much, David for your courage.
Excuse me for butting in, but have you seen the photos of the demonstrations NOT published by mainstream media? Do the people in them look like right-wing neo-nazis?! Do you not think it highly likely that the press and politicians have a vested interest in making the public think that such demonstrations are organised by right-wing extremists so that they stay away and resistance is controlled? Did you read this article in its entirety? Do you not think it more likely that the demonstrations are not as they are portrayed in the media than that the co-founder of permaculture, an undeniable left-wing greenie, has suddenly veered off on a right-wing-extremist tangent?! as someone outside of both Australia and Germany, let me also add that the most glaringly right-wing-extremist tendencies I see right now are being exhibited by these two countries not by permaculture activists, let alone by the co-founder.
Thanks David for your on the ground observations and personal reflections. 200K! That’s a massive protest. Even if your estimate was totally off and 50K people protested, it would still be a big protest by Oz standards. Heartening to read the crowd, by your reckoning, seemed to represent a broad cross section of the community. Which makes sense given the numbers. There’s just not that many folks on the extreme right in Vic (who’d be willing to travel to Melbourne to protest).
I’m in solidarity with people’s right to choose (provided that people are also willing to take responsibility for the consequences of their choices). I’m double vaxxed but there are no silver bullets and if we truly had a health system other health strategies would have been openly discussed and promoted by authorities. My motivations are about being able to visit my mum and dad at the nursing home in WA (I also had to get a flu shot). I’m also travelling to the USA and Europe on agroforestry research and now need an International Vax certificate to enter countries.
Thank you so much for this inspiring article <3 Love to you and Su.
Thank you for publishing this contemplation David and thanks to those who have commented too, an interesting read this morning. Permaculture principles and your living example of permaculture establishes a much needed faith in the collaborations with nature and each other. An important message during what is looking like a global coup and it’s associated uncertainties, instabilities, hostilities and hysteria.
Australians can be proud of their largely calm, good natured and peaceful expression of protest.
David,
I was made aware of your article by a very most atrocious and unhinged article against you, personally, by someone who called you a Nazi and made many other allegations and was full of self agrandizementing among other things. That article generated a not inconsiderable amount of backlash, and the woman wrote a long winded and incoherent reply to placate the people who responded to her unanimously in favour of your right to have an opinion which may differ from hers, also to inform her she was not as important as she seems to think the is, a few days later, to no avail. She has since deleted it, which is perhaps for the best.
What I think permaculture brings to the pandemic is resiliency, a focus on local food models and above all, and the singlest most important aspect of permaculture, community. The mandates cause by the pandemic has been very disruptive and lack of access to vaccines to the global south has led to inequalities. While I am vaccinated and wear a mask when I am amongst people from outside of my home, I do not think that denying people the right to see their family will help. I understand that in Australia you have had inability to visit and closed most social events. This is sad.
I am so sorry you had to deal with this. Please continue to share your thinking with us.
Best wishes to you,
Ramdi
Since when did protesting laws that are clearly leading us down a very slippery road to authoritarianism amount to being a Nazi? Does marching alongside a skinhead make us more like them, or them more like us? Perhaps our political identity matters less when our humanity can unite us. Why are so many smart folks who pride themselves on being anti-authoritarian asking us to swallow an insidious pill that is possibly the greatest threat to democracy we have faced in our own country? Why do people support the ostracising of the new dirty and diseased underclass with little evidence of increased risk to the vaccinated masses? (unvaxxed are considered transmissible for 7.5 days, vaxxed for 5.5 days (CDC data), not much difference really?) I think we should all read history a little more carefully, humanity has a distinct and all-to-common propensity to embrace unbridled authoritarianism. Dave, gimme a call for the next one, I will come. along.
Hi David!
I ask this with much respect for the work you have done in the past and will do in the future.
Do you think that perhaps your stance on this is majorly influenced by the fact that for as long as you can remember – i refer to your previous writings on this – you have been on the edge of society? Or part of a small group rallying against something? In my experience the older organic growers / permies had to fight for our legitimate place in society ( and i thank you for that!), but look at us now, Costa is leading the charge and we are not the edge of society anymore, we are very much a part of the mainstream understanding of best practice growing, many people look to you and other permies for guidance now. How does that sit with you now? Perhaps you’re used to fighting, and you feel uneasy?
I also understand that it is hard to trust and put your power into someone else’s hands (in this case the majority of government / top scientists and doctors across the world ) could you be blinded by your natural state of being as someone who feels at home on the edge? And do you see there could be a potential danger in the allure of the fringe, perhaps not for you and your family, but perhaps due to your standing in our community and your ability to lead people to where you are?
Valerie, your comment doesn’t make much sense, but in any case, read his books. Read the 9/11 post script in principles and pathways. You’re out of your depth here.
Do you really think an intellect like that is going to fall for some fringe theory and fight a battle for the sake of being on the edge?
Hi David, thanks for standing proud in your stance.
As one with training and an interest in science I am saddened by the use of anti-science as a form of derision. Science has always been about levels of confidence in theory, has always been contestable, and always will be – that’s how it advances. When it becomes ‘The Science’ it has become religion, and religions have a bad history of creating violence. It’s all a bit confusing to see those who have often been our friends and colleagues in social and environmental change, join the religion of ‘covid science’ and now deride us.. But the derision is nothing new, it is part of the territory of challenge. Somehow we are challenged to ask of those deriding us, – why are you feeling so hurt or afraid, that this leads to you to want to attack me?
Ultimately the resolution of this is not about competing ideologies/positions, but about resolving subconscious fears, many of which are being ‘stoked’ by those with vested interests.
I don’t have any clear answers as to how best we resolve this, but ‘bearing witness’ peacefully is often a good start
The discussion and debates you are bringing forward are deeply appreciated, all power to your pen
Kia Kaha
Bob Corker
Hi David,
I was here in December 2021…overthinking a reply of thanks to you…In the midst of all the negativity I wanted to eloquently articulate my support of you, in all you do.
I thought I would have got back here sooner …4months later – shheeesh! Time flies!
Thank you Sue, David & Artist as family.
I hope you are all well.
Love & respect to you all.
Myself Mal, John & Matt sat with you in your kitchen 3+ years back, we came to ask a question & you shared your thoughts with grace & care. Thank you for your time that day.
Meg xo
As a relevant follow up (9 months later) to the issues raised in this post, the following article by Patrick Jones at Artist As Family blog in response to a piece by Terry Leahy Wayward Growth: Permaculture, Low Tech and the “Freedom Movement” in Arena Quarterly #9 earlier this year, is well worth a read to better understand some of complex issues about Left/Green responses to Covid and its discontents.
https://artistasfamily.is/2022/08/12/the-left-got-covid-almost-entirely-wrong-and-why-it-matters/
Fear can create the monster but the vaccinations might inevitable kill the beast.
Thank you for having a voice of rationality and common sense in a time of insanity. You are an inspiration to me.
Hi David,
I’ve only just come across this article, and only just become aware of the divide that has occurred in permaculture circles (I have long been a lover of permaculture concepts but only recently become actively involved).
As a long-standing green, leftist, nature-based health-oriented person, the last two years and the aftermath has felt like I’ve been tossed around in ideological chaos. The footholds I found in which to orient myself were shared by folk with historically divergent views to my own. It was disconcerting and strange, and on some level I am still reeling from being uprooted from my imagined social framework.
I find myself perplexed, sometimes to the point of distress, by what I see as the blindness of many on the left to the interdependence and overlap between the ecosystems within our skin and those outside. The poisoning of our precious earth with pharma-owned glyphosates etc runs in complete convergence with the poisoning of our bodies with largely unnecessary pharma-owned chemical interventions. Both are designed to line pockets at the expense of the true and wild health of the planet and its beings. Both destroy the commons of our shared earth/human external/internal ecosystems, where the barrier in-between could be said to be only a matter of perception. The same forces are behind the destruction of both the internal Amazon in our guts and the external Amazon. As permaculturists, surely we are opposed to genetic modification of the natural world… why then is there an embrace of mRNA injections into our own bloodstreams?
From my perspective, the Covid narrative is so obviously a manipulation by powerful corporations/entities that I find it challenging to understand how anyone aligned with permaculture principles could stand to swallow it. To separate ourselves out from nature and imagine that gene therapy is a solution to a virus is the very opposite of following nature and respecting its integrity. Lockdowns by their very nature promote disconnection and isolation, both hallmarks of a dying ecosystem. I don’t understand how people who embrace permaculture cannot see the inherent contradiction in their thinking.
I am frightened by the extent to which leftist values have been captured by ‘the system’, twisted to be virtually unrecognisable and now swamp our society from every angle. The unwitting and eager cry of ‘neo-nazis’ and ‘far-right extremists’ is completely laughable to anyone who actually attended the protests, which were full of mums, dads, kids and grandparents. I went to several protests; I didn’t see a single skinhead. But the media puppets cry ‘neo-nazis’ and the woke left gobble it up and somehow believe it. I mean… what the…?? Since when did lefties EVER believe the mainstream media!?!?
I was incredibly grateful to read your article, David, and find that one of the co-founders of Permaculture has his head screwed on straight, his eyes wide open and will not crumple in the face of opposition. Thank god! This in itself is an inspiration, and your stand in the world is symbolic in a way that resonates on so many levels… it rips out complacency, detoxes cultural congestion and inserts a firm ‘fuck you’ to the authoritarian forces which hide behind the facade of flashy health scientism advertising, politicians sans balls and co-opted ‘news’ media. The very same forces that pillage the earth and that permaculture, by its decentralised, ‘open source’ nature and ethics, is in natural opposition to.
Thank you for standing tall.
Sorry, I realise that was incredibly judgy. Working on my tolerance.
Also medically wrong – vaccines are not injected into bloodstreams.
Dear Fiona, thank you so much your comment, there’s nothing wrong with it. 🙂 In view of the outrageous extent of the hypocrisy and lies all around us, your displeasure is more than understandable. Exactly my thoughts. It’s comforting that there still seems to be a small bunch of sane people in this crazy world. Lets try to save the world, by speaking out the truth! 😉 Greetings & all the very best! Kerry W.
Fiona,
thank you for your commentary on the general issue of capture of left green politics by the very forces it has historically fought against and your personal observations of the cross section of people who attended the lockdown and mandate protests. Your frustration and judgement at how permaculture networks have also been divided rather than unified is understandable but as you imply it behoves those of us who find ourselves systemically demonised outsiders to work on our tolerance of those following the dominant narrative. Finding the balance between, on the one hand, the energising effect of outrage and solidarity with those most punished and harmed by the system and, on the other, maintaining connections across family, community and networks that require avoiding if not accepting the latest version of reality spewing from mainstream and social media, is difficult but necessary.
No more masks, even in Germany, today, fortunately , but all the demage that was done by the experimental gene therapy come to light now. And our society still is not healing, people are divided, theres a lot of hate, conflict and the defamation of dissenters continues, while the impoverishment of the people is progressing.
And now it is the peace demonstrators who are pushing for talks and diplomacy that are supposedly “right-wing”. And the Greens, formerly a peace party, are the ones who shout the loudest for tanks and rockets. What madness. The only place where I find some peace and hope is our permaculture garden.-
I love the simplicity of the answer to war and lies and division….
– get in the garden & grow communities!!!