Re: Call for impartial Democratic International Permaculture Teaching registration body [guild].

["John Schinnerer" <johns@eco-living.net>]

Aloha,

So the acronym would be DIPTRG?  ;-)

As far as calling it a "guild," be careful what you ask for...Webster says
"an association of people with similar interests or pursuits; especially :
a medieval association of merchants or craftsmen"
...so it's not entirely inappropriate, although those medieval guilds
tended towards monopolistic, exclusive, undemocratic organizations of
humans...easy enough to replicate in permaculture circles but not what I'd
like to see.

My question is:  what would be a "permaculture approach" to instructor
registration (if indeed "registration" is appropriate)?

I doubt that it would involve increasing centralization and control, at
least not without being increasingly hypocritical.

How do we embrace wisdom "outside" of permaculture and incorporate
"external" insights so as to avoid the dead-ends of specialization and
inbreeding that already afflict medicine, architecture, engineering, , etc.
etc. ad nauseum?

As for "globalization," there is no necessity for permaculture to jump on
that bandwagon.  It is a choice whether to be (bio?)regional, ecologically
local, locally appropriate, or to think that we must organize (often a
semi-subconscious synonym for "control") on a global basis.  There may be
more drawbacks than benefits in embracing the multinational corporate
myth/model of "globalization."

As for the internet, jolly good ideas for the 3% of the world's population
that (like us) have ready access.  I don't know if those Vietnamese for
whom $30 (is that US or AUS?) is a huge sum of money are sitting at their
computers waiting for online registration, but I doubt it.

In short, I favor a low-tech (bio?)regional approach of some sort, modular,
with connections between regional groups (traveling
liaisons/instructors/??) forming some sort of a web of consensus and
providing for sharing of methods, techniques, and "standards" (such as they
may be - obviously a hot topic) within the realm of permaculture.  I don't
favor a centralized hierarchical approach, because it has proven
pathological countless times over, and because the patterns in nature we
eulogize in permaculture don't seem to work that way either...

John Schinnerer
---------------------------
Cultural & Ecological Designing
Human Habitat Design
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net