I first learned about Permaculture from reading my parent's copy of "The Next Whole Earth Catalog", which reviewed Mollison's "Permaculture: A Designers' Manual" (which, BTW is one of the greatest books on design that I've ever read, not just for farms!)

So, to me, it's mixed up with things like Christopher Alexander's "Pattern Language", and Bucky Fuller's synergistic "Dymaxion" worldview.

Basically, in a nutshell, there is a possible (technically and economically feasible) world that's much nicer than ours, just on the other side of an imaginary barrier that exists only in the human mind. Or so I believe...

We can provide for ourselves the lower levels of Maslow's Hierarchy, "Physiological needs" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs ) in a way that is fun, easy, harmonious with other living things, deprives no one, etc. "and nobody has to get nailed to anything". I don't know if this is true, but I don't see any physical reasons why it wouldn't work. (Everybody always says "but what about human nature" at this point, and I'll get to that in a moment.)

I have finally, at long last, acquired some land with the express purpose of testing out this hypothesis. (Twenty acres in N. California.) I'm going to employ a mix of Permaculture, Syntropic Agriculture, Alexander's Pattern Language, Bucky's ideas, etc. and robots and automation to create a kind of bubble of this alternate reality, or a time-warp (just a little one) to the Star Trek-style future.

Assuming this works out, the idea then is to facilitate more people and land living this way. I see this as a kind of economic phase change that has to happen (I believe we have to live in harmony with Nature or our civilization could collapse.)

If this sounds interesting to you, and you more-or-less have your act together and would like to help out, let me know. sforman@hushmail.com

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In re: the "but what about human nature?" argument against the possibility of a better world:

First, as I get older I get much less sympathy for that in general. Get over your bullshit and act like a decent human being. It's not that hard and the rewards are worth the effort.

Second, I suspect that's what's really going on here: this is a sim, and the win condition is just not to be quite such a shithead. Good Character is the only thing you take with you when the game ends, so build it up now while you can!

Third, even though they don't get a lot of fanfare in the mass media, there are numerous protocols and techniques for better communication and mental and emotional healing. Things like Non-Violent Communication, or the Core Transformation Process. I have high hopes that the new talking computers will make inexpensive, inexhaustible perfect therapists. I think the computers will talk us down off the ledge, so to speak.