A Social Permaculture: A Contribution towards Sustainable Society

The urge to control, to give orders and to rationalize things man has treated everything like a machine for decades and extended the machine metaphor to the living world. The results are prominent as we see the technocratic behavior all around the globe. The similar kind of machine cities is developing for humans now treated as robots like they have no cultural values. Humans are humans, every living organism behaves differently unlike a machine. Their needs differ, their perspective differs, their definition of things differs, and their lifestyle pattern differs.

Stupidity is an attempt to iron out all differences, and not to use them or value them creatively.
― Bill Mollison

Permaculture is a term that is  related to permanent agriculture (sustainable ways of farming). It  puts emphasis on going back to natural ways in landscape. When this is applied to urban scale terms like urban permaculture and social permaculture evolved. All these terms are interrelated and have an impact on each other.

One of the most important things about permaculture is that it is founded on a series of principles that can be applied to any circumstance—agriculture, urban design, or the art of living. The core of the principles is the working relationships and connections between all things.

Also

Permaculture land-use ethics invite us to protect intact ecosystems where they remain and, where ecosystems have been destroyed, to help restore them. Permaculture design also suggests that we take care of the earth while taking care of people.
― Juliana Birnbaum Fox, Sustainable Revolution: Permaculture in Ecovillages, Urban Farms, and Communities Worldwide

Permaculture is as much about society and groups as it speaks the truth scenes. Where the social and natural associates is the place we have to search for supportability. We live in such a specialized world, so far cutting edge, yet so behind regarding the matter of making strong and solid groups. Maybe our reality appears to make divided societies and groups.

In permaculture you are taught to read, observe and understand the behaviors, examine our scenes and comprehend the factors and energies that impacts it. The same thing applies to working with gatherings or groups. Effectively watching and being mindful of social contrasts, sexual orientation, power, abilities, limitations and information educate how to function with the groups and guarantees that any work is participatory and comprehensive. In our multicultural world, it additionally suggests being conscious of social contrasts and grasping diverse methods for knowing and being. This perception is personally connected with mindfulness and care of our own dialogue and associations.

Being attentive and heedful is additionally connected in with self-regulation and criticism, it’s all about supporting each other without all the odds and maintaining flexibility, for example the thought of adapting equally applies to permitting each gathering and group to characterize their own standards of involvement and their own particular system with the goal that they feel responsible for.

The basic thought is to outline the detail in the social connection focusing on the importance of beginning with an extensive structure to work from and later permitting the group to fill in the subtle elements themselves. These elements will depict their association. It is our duty that we let people do what applies to them and incorporate their learning, giving them a chance to fill in the colors in the harsh guide we have drawn.

Trust is built in many ways: by creating opportunities to share something of our lives and feelings, by encouraging people to argue passionately for their ideas and positions while still respecting their opponents’ right to differ, by meeting responsibilities and building a track record of dependability, and by sharing risks together.
― Juliana Birnbaum Fox, Sustainable Revolution: Permaculture in Ecovillages, Urban Farms, and Communities Worldwide

Christopher Alexander, an Austrian urban planner and architect support this concept of social realities as these are built by people themselves. Adding people’s opinion to urban structures helps in retaining the essence of society.

In Bill Mollison’s and David Holmgren’s permaculture book of the scriptures, ‘Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual’, they discuss visible and invisible structures of society. The visible structures include water and organic frameworks, infrastructures and other structures while the invisible structure includes legal and financial factors, ethics, and trust. These invisible factors were treated as they have no importance but actually visible factors have no value in the absence of these. These are the true essence, without these the society will become monotonous losing its true essence. It’s the ‘invisible structures’ that Rosemary, a female permaculturist has connected and adjusted to her work in war torn nations for a long time or more. After the war there is not a great deal of noticeable structures left. To re-construct the noticeable structures the invisible structures should first be set up. If not, the process, regardless of what it is or how enormous or little it is, will come up short.

In todays mechanized world we underestimate the power of invisible structure of society (legal, finance, trust & ethics). They are masked away in the establishments of our social development, however, they are a key and important piece of making society work and for societies to develop and flourish inside of it.

The idea of utilizing reasonable and little changes applies to the  procedures of social change. The thought that one needs to thoroughly watch and actualize environment, stepping out of dependence that the industrialized world has created for processing plant style generation and a wide scale environment.

Permaculture as a developer has the vast majority of the learning, that we have to make a regenerative society in the physical sense. Simply

• Give up Control
• The Problem is the Solution
• Different Functions
• Work inside of Nature
• Minimize Change, Greatest Effect
• Utilize and honor various qualities

The same kind of intuition has been connected to work in the social division, one size fits all arrangements are frequently connected with the conviction that what has worked in one spot will work all over the place. However, this is not applicable in social biology, similar to the environment of nature which is complex and dynamic in need of constant change. The same size fits all formula works better in machine not humans who are in a constant phase of evolution. Again, this takes us back to the significance of perception, versatility and adaptability in our work. Which will eventually result in a sustainable society. The solutions to problems are simple, we just need to develop a sense of care and sensitivity towards others.

Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.
― Bill Mollison

All credit goes to Maheen Zakir (National College of Arts Rawalpindi Campus) for this wonderful article.