when a climax species loses its niche,,,it is displaced, or worse.

Discussion in 'General chat' started by kimbo.parker, Jan 2, 2014.

  1. kimbo.parker

    kimbo.parker Junior Member

    Joined:
    Mar 21, 2009
    Messages:
    1,441
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    In Western Australia, north of Perth, along a coastal strip spanning a good 30 km, the English having fled their own country due to cultural displacement are establishing New England.


    This in turn displaces Australians who just can't take the Union Jacks, Soccer Flags, and plethora of cultural nuances that make a Pom a Pom....think Barmy Army and you'll get my drift.


    to pick the Pom at Yanchep beach, any Christmas about 15 years ago, you'd look for the ones wearing a santa hat or those red reindeer antlers....in 2013 that is practically everyone.


    jeeze they love it there and they've made it their own....they are the new climax species....the old one, the Aussies have left....displaced by Poms.....displaced by muslims.


    Poms and Aussies are culturally similar. Similar, like Kiwis are similar....but this does not prevent enclaves because like clumps with like.


    In Western Sydney, they have enclaves of Muslims, and bugger all Poms.

    In Malaga, Western Australia and the surrounding suburbs , you find no Aussies (with a choice) as these suburbs are where the Sudanese clump. Poms don't migrate there.


    The whole fkn place is turning into enclavesThis cultural displacement has a domino effect.
    It is multiculturalism - and it is bad design.


    These enclaves are not 'an evolved organic thing. They are artificial, and they have hard edges where unlike cultures in enclaves come up against each other. Not just unlike, but downright hostile.
    All sorts of social shit is suffered as they stand today - but that is nothing to what is going to go down in the future.


    I'm not a racist, i don't like racists....but i am culturally intolerant...i've learned to be, and i'm not the only one, evidenced by enclaves, and massive cultural displacement that spans countries.
    Where will this all end do you reckon?


    I reckon it will end in wars,,,but not as Australians have known wars before - this time it will be cultural wars in our own country....because the mix is toxic and volatile.


    This is all just so un permaculture. In nature, a species in a niche defends it, aggressively with the sole intent of maintaining the niche, because to not do so, results in displacement, which results in more displacement and so on.


    This is bad design. This is madness.


    The affront, that is multiculturalism offers no permanence of culture....
    Australians, are not down on refugees, we are down on Muslims....they culturally displace us of our own ways in our own place.

    The language is all wrong. Are there any refugees that are not Muslims that we are down on - no, i don't think so.

    come to think of it , are there any refugees that are not Muslims period?


    Muslims displaced by Muslims, who go on to displace Poms, who go on to displace Aussies and so on and so forth.
    Why is it not right to stand against this? - spare me the altruistic wank about Humanity.


    Just like some trees do not like other trees, some animals don't like other animals, some bacteria don't like other bacteria - we are also Nature and it is no failing as a species to hold your ground, to actively and aggressively look after your own.
    When Humanity is a single homogeneous culture then we can be 'all mixed in together'.....but that is not now, maybe not ever.


    This is not a failing in itself - Not seeing the blinding obvious and setting the future generations up with conflict and violence; that is a failing!
     
  2. Rick Larson

    Rick Larson Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jun 1, 2013
    Messages:
    743
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    These ideas are, um.., probably won't make a difference generally. You make very interesting points and I'll not disagree, and will have to think deeply before I could agree (to make a stand). Well, at least you generated some thought, so hope you can live with that.

    My long range view is it will eventually sort out to the amount of melanin in your skin, will place your genetic material on the proper latitute, taking into consideration the sub climate effects, unless you are willing to blend in. When fossil fuels no longer can be harnessed to keep you in an artificial environment, you will be just about locked in (blend in or end it)('pends on how much money you have I guess). This is just my opinion that continues to change as the Truth is determined. Or the perception of! Ha!
     
  3. Pakanohida

    Pakanohida Junior Member

    Joined:
    Feb 27, 2011
    Messages:
    2,984
    Likes Received:
    20
    Trophy Points:
    38
    -Bladerunner



    There is the big hint of where we are leading ourselves.... ...Bladerunner world where everyone speaks 1 language due to world wide multiculturalism.

    Humans, no matter what 'type' another human may think that other human is, is still human, as such, it will all become one once again like we used to be. 1 tribe, under the clouds of this blue-green ball called Earth. Humans have been attempting this since the 1st emperor of Cathay.

    We are all human beings NOT having (well most of us anyway, I am unsure of the Koch Brothers, Monsanto workers, etc.) a spiritual experience... ..we are spiritual beings having a HUMAN experience.

    Incidentally, there are plenty of refugees from religions other than Muslim. For example, my family fled Berlin after the wall started going up. People still flee N Korea to this day, and other countries were freedoms are opressed.
     
  4. Grahame

    Grahame Senior Member

    Joined:
    Sep 28, 2008
    Messages:
    2,215
    Likes Received:
    3
    Trophy Points:
    36
    Where there are humans the will always be war of some description. Scale is very important though. The smaller the scale the 'better' When you have nation-states doing it, it is pretty nasty.

    The only way we will ever have global co-operation and an absence of human-human war is when the aliens come looking to beat us up. Then we will band together for real. Even that will only last for as long as both species survive or until some kind of uneasy truce eventually develops because the humans and godzillas get to know each other and realise we have some things in common.
     
  5. mouseinthehouse

    mouseinthehouse Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 18, 2012
    Messages:
    782
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    What is an Aussie? What is Australian culture? Are you only Australian if you were born here? Are you Australian if your parents were born here? Grandparents? Great-grandparents? My father in law is Hungarian but has lived here since the 50's having fled Hungary when all the post-war shit happened. So is he now Australian or never will be? He is more alien (to me) in his behaviour than many Asians (including Muslims) that I know. Seven years ago our small town had no Muslims living here. Now we have maybe a couple hundred. All refugees. I have lived here 45 years.....what culture has been 'displaced' by our new arrivals? None to my knowledge. If Australian culture is sport and barbecues then I'll leave it thanks. So what is it exactly? Is it different in the bush here than to the city? I don't have culture as far as I am aware beyond the fact of knowing I have no religion which is a common Australian trait and I like to wear thongs in Summer. I seriously don't give a shit about 'culture' probably because I don't really participate in it. I like having different colours, faces and customs around with one proviso: that anything one person or one group does, does not give rise to what might be deemed a serious impingement on another. For example, if the Muslim people wanted to build a mosque well and good; if they wanted to blast out the call to prayer at 4.45am in the town streets every morning then that would be not cool. Fundamental differences will occur but surely we can with the right spirit work through them if all people are open hearted? Is that the humanity bullshit you don't buy? If we need a paradigm shift in the economic-ecological status quo that is currently fucking up the planet then why can't we have a paradigm shift in the way we humans relate to one another? Can we not continue to evolve in a social sense in new directions?
     
  6. Terra

    Terra Moderator

    Joined:
    May 16, 2007
    Messages:
    757
    Likes Received:
    23
    Trophy Points:
    18
    I remember an interview with a asylum seeker , its awhile ago now maybe 12mths ago and it really upset me . This bloke had a sad story he had been sitting in confinement for around 4 years to enter Australian society and build a new life . Sounds terrific however he had to have an interpreter he hadn't even bothered to learn a few basic words of our language , now that's not good enough I know if I was moving to a new country id make an effort .

    Kimbo makes some good points he mentions (Enclaves with hard edges) people will cluster to support each other that's what happens but it breeds trouble .

    I think down the track we will see hell at high tide , wait until the oil runs out in the middle east all those mostly muslim countries will have nothing but sand and sea water and no money , a handful of poor smashed boat people I don't mind at all but we are going to have millions and millions banging at our door soon that is VERY REAL .

    Imagine if we had 500,000 people take up arms and were prepared to die so Labour could resume government this is what is happening overseas its beyond belief
     
  7. mouseinthehouse

    mouseinthehouse Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 18, 2012
    Messages:
    782
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Enclaves exist in a vacuum created by lack of friendship being extended; understanding and kindness and empathy MIA. And yes, it is a two-way street. Here in our town those locals that have extended that hand of friendship (and those who have accepted same) have forged new relationships and community bonds. They are piloting a way forward in which with a truly open heart and mind groups of people with differing cultures can respect each other, enjoy each other's company and share parts of each culture (like amazing food). There are always going to be those (on both sides)who find the transition or way forward difficult. My Hungarian father in law's mother refused to learn a word of English for the entire rest of her life that she spent in this country. Go figure....she was a sad, bitter person apparently who couldn't find that new way forward in a new land. The new arrivals here are learning English (in fact it is proving hard to meet demand for classes), gaining their driver's licenses (men AND women) and eventually finding their way into the workforce when they are finally allowed to work by our useless government. We can't change geo-politics in a hurry, but we can extend kindness and understanding and empathy to fellow humans regardless of what they look like or what customs they follow and in return we have the right to expect the same. Fostering these relationships is the responsibility of every single person. Worrying about what might or might not happen in a few decades in the middle east is for me rather pointless. Cultivating the sort of attitude I want to extend to people who live in my town and region around fairness and equality is what has meaning right now.
     
  8. pebble

    pebble Junior Member

    Joined:
    Apr 24, 2007
    Messages:
    2,721
    Likes Received:
    7
    Trophy Points:
    38
    Location:
    inland Otago, NZ
    Climate:
    Inland maritime/hot/dry/frosty
    "This is all just so un permaculture. In nature, a species in a niche defends it, aggressively with the sole intent of maintaining the niche, because to not do so, results in displacement, which results in more displacement and so on."

    Wow, I'm kind of stunned to hear you have such a warlike view of what nature does. There plenty of ostensibly 'violent' things going on in nature, but plenty of co-operative, mutually beneficial things too.

    Australia is built on the elephant in the living room that is racism (terra nullius). Until the people there deal with that directly, there will be problems around race. From the outside it looks like many of the problems there now are due to decades of treating some immigrants as 'other' or worse as almost subhuman. Any reason why those immigrants shouldn't then form enclaves?

    "Cultivating the sort of attitude I want to extend to people who live in my town and region around fairness and equality is what has meaning right now."

    Lovely, mouse. Seems very permie to me too :)
     
  9. kimbo.parker

    kimbo.parker Junior Member

    Joined:
    Mar 21, 2009
    Messages:
    1,441
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    is that the best yous can do by way of refute? - dear me :)

    pak - blade-runner; one super culture,,,millennia away, if ever....and not under the governance of humans, A.I. would need to run the show - and then I see less of the Blade-Runner and more of the Iain M. Banks "Culture" scenario.

    until then, it is probably a good idea to take our cues from nature.


    mouse; whilst we wait for humans to evolve into one big happy family, ( probably by effectively destroying all the other families ),
    you propose that we all strive to think loving thoughts, and that is your solution to the current quagmire of dealing with different humans.

    and, if i'm reading you correctly.....you are basing this on the fact that we are all one species, therefore it is within our capacity(?)
    you are not going as far as to suggest prey should embrace predator, or that different species should all just get it together with love.....so because we are all Homo sapien we are capable - and it's just personal programming aka culture that is getting in our way. You propose we change our negative cultural elements?

    or we could do what we observe in nature

    pebble; come on dear, my 'war-mongering focus' ?? citing the co-operative elements of nature !! - the community of 'nature' ?? -

    why not just fess up to the fact that there is no 'community of nature' where co-operative elements out number and out weigh opposing elements.
    why not state it clearly that it is 'communities (plural) of nature?
    and these 'communities' are such, not because they are all inclusive - en contrare, Community is mostly about exclusion, if not totally about exclusion. This is pretty basic, beyond argument, proof is in the maths. How does one recognise and identify community; because it patterns in the greater chaos - who is not in a community is always bigger than who is in the community. Community is made by/through/with exclusion.

    Communities co-opting = small
    Non Communities not co-opting = the BIG picture.

    Communities co-opting, with synergistic relationships, often between different species is what evolution uses to determine certain successes. Not everyone wins. Maintaining the environment that sustains the community, involves the community co-opting to exclude the non community ( the bigger / greater element ), This exclusion, fundamental to community is something that has to be 'worked on'. It does not happen accidentally as it were. That would be too 'happen-stance', too fluky, too chancy, too risky with something so important , literally the existence of the community.

    so; it really is about exclusion, defence, allies, and a pro-active approach to deterrence of those other communities that would seize the niche.

    we really should; do what we observe in nature.

    Grahame (poet)...first, let me say how much i love your work!,,,and then let me take you back to Frith (remember?) Frith defines the bottom line in community. As Kenny Shopsin
    ( I Like Killing Flies ) accurately points out - we are all pieces of shit who will sacrifice many of 'the others' just to keep our mob doing what it likes.
    Imagining the 'common threat' with the power to unify us, in your example space aliens, is romantic poet stuff......and lovely.....but not 'cutting' enough to form a guideline, or perma policy on how we design Human Settlement modelling nature.

    Clear language that says ' Permaculture design is modelled on nature' - we observe in nature, community defined by exclusion, and we observe climax species engaged in pro-active deterrence of others not their own, and most importantly , the strong relationships with synergisms.

    when we observe in Nature, some acute association of Hostiles - we know it is because Nature and its warring parties are influenced and manipulated by a third party, evolution.
    sure, evolution is part of nature; but it is handy to isolate the two such that we can see the stability of Nature ( what the contemporary communities want ) with the dynamic of evolution ( the challenges the contemporary communities don't want and must surmount to survive).

    as part of one of those contemporary communities,
    I really wish we would model our systems on nature.

    so chaps, come back strong because the spectators must imagine i'm co-opting with you guys to teach basic Permaculture....and we know how wrong this is.

    k
     
  10. andrew curr

    andrew curr Moderator

    Joined:
    Jun 1, 2010
    Messages:
    1,194
    Likes Received:
    4
    Trophy Points:
    38
    Jackie French makes the same point in her recent book re melanin,havnt read it yet but apparently some interesting thoughts
     
  11. andrew curr

    andrew curr Moderator

    Joined:
    Jun 1, 2010
    Messages:
    1,194
    Likes Received:
    4
    Trophy Points:
    38
    "Weeds are like hard workin immigrants!

    Willin to do the work the natives wont!" Geoff Lawton
    I think hes' gr8 letting us have this conversation ,,,,, It would be moderated on Wheatons site in the land of the free




    Having seen the very worst illegals (who wernt that bad,just a little misdirected)
    I think we need a permaculture detention centre, where you dont leave without a PDC and the ethics that go with it!
    They probably wouldnt need enclaves then!


    There can be bit of a lord of flies thing happening in some enclaves where the kids are the only english speakers T these troubled youth just need direction?:blush:
     
  12. mouseinthehouse

    mouseinthehouse Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 18, 2012
    Messages:
    782
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    mouse; whilst we wait for humans to evolve into one big happy family, ( probably by effectively destroying all the other families ),
    you propose that we all strive to think loving thoughts, and that is your solution to the current quagmire of dealing with different humans.

    and, if i'm reading you correctly.....you are basing this on the fact that we are all one species, therefore it is within our capacity(?)
    you are not going as far as to suggest prey should embrace predator, or that different species should all just get it together with love.....so because we are all Homo sapien we are capable - and it's just personal programming aka culture that is getting in our way. You propose we change our negative cultural elements?


    Yep. It is not only possible it is the ONLY way. If every person treated every other person with compassion and empathy and kindness then we wouldn't need to talk about countries, defence, boundaries, 'illegals' (by the way Andrew, boat people arrivals are NOT illegals) or any other divisive crap to defend either physically or intellectually.

    What is it you are actually afraid of? Because it is fear first and foremost that drives this type of thinking, nothing more and nothing less.
     
  13. kimbo.parker

    kimbo.parker Junior Member

    Joined:
    Mar 21, 2009
    Messages:
    1,441
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    smart ask

    i applaud the divisive crap.....i resist the emotive plea to expand my morals to include unnecessary threat.
    i don't take chances with my people.

    i am scared of muslims - and whilst the rest of you media consumptive monkeys may have de-sensitised to the threat, i have not!

    amid the bleeding heart progressives devoid of enough imagination ( foresight ) to recognise the threat, i remain acutely aware.
    still, hardly wanting to be 'fear motivated', i use intellect to counterbalance emotion - and after applied intellect i just get more fear.

    i think (design) at a local systems level - i speak at a local systems level - i live in a local systems level and i design for control and maintenance (holding) at a local systems level.

    i identify synergists and i identify antagonists - i carefully sort the benign from malign - and i do not do group think :)
    nothing as transient as fashion gets to screw with my design.

    i model nature when i chose to design for the most energy conservative way to effect my desired outcomes-

    and this demands prevention over cure, such that we conserve more energy by avoiding problems.

    i design human settlements around homogenous culture using Frith to organise who goes where....

    i also design for disaster....disaster in many forms.

    again - energy conservation, again modelling nature.

    ____________________________________________________________________

    bottom line question; if you want 'in' to my designed settlement, what is it about you makes you qualify as 'one of us' that can be counted on for synergy?

    _____________________________________________________________________

    attitude; why should i take your 'won't budge' attitude to your religion, what offends you, how you dress, and how you live, as any indicator that you are synergistic to my people and our rome.

    if you are coming from a good place of the heart, and you are indeed just a poor shat upon muslim with honourable intentions to synergise with us - the village you want in to -
    why do you look, act and be these culturally uncompromising arseholes who are not known for any desire or capacity to assimilate.

    what we see is bad attitude - with no lets be like those, and for those in the niche.

    what we see is uprisings, threats, violence- even Buddhists have problems with you guys -

    i don't see enough contribution to include these components in the design.
    let others.

    k

    ps who am i to be asking these question, demanding of this and that.....i am the permaculture designer, i have a license, i have training - and i design for place and people in place

    if you don't like my design, do your own, and find a place....but not mine....else design elements click in to play and you'll meet my opposition.

    if you're really in a life death situation - i could offer you brotherhood and sanctuary - but you don't want my brotherhood- you just want my sanctuary....mine.
     
  14. mouseinthehouse

    mouseinthehouse Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 18, 2012
    Messages:
    782
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Wow, that is incredibly sad. That perception and distrust of Muslims is not something I can relate to in any way. We have two choices in this life: one can choose to have compassion, kindness and empathy for fellow humans or.....not. You can have groups or individuals of any mix, race, colour or persuasion and the only thing every single person will positively respond to is compassion and kindness. It doesn't matter who they are or where they come from. We are ALL the same in the need for compassion and kindness from others. You could set up your Frith communities based on a homogeneous gathering of 'like minded', look-alike individuals; do you think that sorts everything out? Do you think there wouldn't be the potential for conflict, division, envy, rape, murder, theft....? When each person treats every other person with compassion, kindness and empathy all that other shit is finished, done. Arbitrary groups or boundaries or other identities are moot. End of story. THAT is what we should strive for. Not, this is my patch and my like minded people's patch and you can either act and dress and eat like us or fuck off cos I don't trust you and I don't like you. Does that sound like a good way to exist?

    You say: 'if you are coming from a good place of the heart, and you are indeed just a poor shat upon muslim with honourable intentions to synergise with us - the village you want in to -
    why do you look, act and be these culturally uncompromising arseholes who are not known for any desire or capacity to assimilate.'

    I don't know anyone in my community who is a culturally uncompromising arsehole known for a lack of desire or capacity to assimilate. (except maybe me) I see people who buy stuff in my supermarket like me. I see kids who play football, netball, drive around in commodores, talk on mobiles, work in the Vineyards alongside anyone else, normal stuff just like every other joe. I bought the most incredible vegetarian food from a friendly Middle Eastern Muslim woman and her husband at the farmers market last week and had a wonderful conversation with her. Is she one of your uncompromising arseholes?

    So.....What differs between YOU and one of 'THEM' that says YOU are not to be labelled the culturally uncompromising arsehole?

    I don't participate in community much, I'm a loner. But when I do pop my head up in town I would rather not bump into people spouting the kind of views YOU outline. THAT is what scares ME.

    Harbouring and cultivating and defending mistrust and fear and dislike of any particular group/s of people has no place in this world. Not now, not ever.
     
  15. kimbo.parker

    kimbo.parker Junior Member

    Joined:
    Mar 21, 2009
    Messages:
    1,441
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    i love it when you lock on...

    you are mistaken;
    my proof;
    we teach our children about stranger danger - because strangers, the unknown offer the potential of threat.
    that is all we need, potential.

    i design for culturally homogeneous human settlement - and you call this thinking, doing and looking like every body else - huh? that is a bit of a stretch mate.

    my culturally homogeneous design features different ethnicities - so we don't all look the same.

    different ethnicities from different Friths, built upon frith-weaving by daughters into different tribes.

    Frith sorts us into synergies that combine to form the prevailing homogeneous culture of the village.....and most importantly ,,,,Frith and its organic sorting of people provides cultural gradients.....

    dig it,,,,,cultural gradients.....so there are no hard edges.

    i'm not talking eugenics here.

    just doing basic old school permaculture.

    k

    let go - you'd like it.
    plenty of variety, but if you want more, you can always go visiting away and beyond.

    i don't design prisons - i design sustainability.

    k
     
  16. mouseinthehouse

    mouseinthehouse Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 18, 2012
    Messages:
    782
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    homogeneous
    ˌhɒmə(ʊ)ˈdʒiːnɪəs,-ˈdʒɛn-/Submit
    adjective
    1.
    of the same kind; alike

    So you want culturally homogeneous communities that can be composed of people of different ethnicities?

    ethnicity
    ɛθˈnɪsɪti/Submit
    noun
    1.
    the fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition.

    That is contradictory but anyhow let's go with the first bit: culturally homogeneous

    Can you spell it out? Do they have to dress alike, eat alike, speak alike, worship what/whoever alike (or not), act alike? And who determines what is acceptable in a culturally homogeneous sort of way? This is all bullshit as far as I'm concerned. I have a whole heap of relatives which I guess in your version could help form our kin type Frith community. Except that would only work really well if all members treated each other with compassion, kindness and empathy. In my experience family relationships are no guarantee of peaceful co-existence. I have very few personal relationships with family because of a lack of treating each other with compassion, kindness and empathy from some members. I have received more kindness and caring from people I have nothing culturally in common with than my own family in much of my life. See, that is the crux. You can come up with all sorts of arbitrary constructs and call it whatever the hell you like, but if every single individual doesn't make a concerted effort to treat every other member of your immediate community and indeed neighbouring communities with kindness and compassion then it aint sustainable no matter what or who you stack your Frith built groups with.
     
  17. Grahame

    Grahame Senior Member

    Joined:
    Sep 28, 2008
    Messages:
    2,215
    Likes Received:
    3
    Trophy Points:
    36
    Sorry Kimbo, it was a lazy response. I should have known better than to post without deciding that I really wanted to post it. As you say, I am a romantic but that wasn't really my intention in that post. I was thinking of the Godzilla's as invaders and that we would only come together in a kind of temporary and surface unity to face the current threat. But that it would not be a real unity. I didn't mean to infer that it was at all useful. ;)

    I totally get what you are saying with regards to exclusion - It's what keeps a pride of Lions strong. I think that society is already operating as you say by exclusion, the problem is those in charge of the exclusion are the wrong ones. And the ones who really should be doing the excluding have some moral objection to excluding anybody. I'm happy to exclude people from my community, but the problem is (like you I suspect) I have to exclude such a huge collection of people that i appear as a hermit.

    I'm not really a hermit, I just have to exclude almost everyone. And I'm just not a good enough designer to design for others to be attracted into my community. It takes leaders of some calibre. A New-Age Despot? An Anarchist Dictator?

    I think this has been one of the sticking points of Intentional Communities in the past, that they didn't have the luxury of excluding a large number of applicants.

    As for the Frith swapping, I agree. It's a beautiful little pattern in nature that has been a big part of human societies in the past. I saw a great documentary about some kind of Baboon, where the troupes get involved in territorial dust-ups and in the fracas, they try to steel wives from each other. Nature wants this kind of genetic trade, even if it doesn't specifically call for the Frith trade. Surely it is better to do in agreeable ways than to resort to rape (used in history as an enforced frith infusion through genetics) etc.

    You won't find a beef with me on the need to actively design communities and I am yet to be convinced that exclusion isn't part of that.

    Having said all of that, the Australian government doesn't give a stuff about Frith when it talks about 'Stopping the boats'. This community design discussion is a completely different one to the so-called Illegal Immigrants political 'debate'.
     
  18. Grahame

    Grahame Senior Member

    Joined:
    Sep 28, 2008
    Messages:
    2,215
    Likes Received:
    3
    Trophy Points:
    36
    Mouse, I agree that if everyone could 'be excellent to each other and rock on', the world could be a really great place. But they aren't, they aren't even close to being like that. I'm not convinced that human society could ever actually achieve that. The world is too fluid and the nature of us is that when threatened with our very existence we will fight to survive, it is a quirk of living things, as a general rule we want to keep living at all costs. For such a society to exist and remain a constant (sustainable) then nature would need to be static. As we know, nature is not static. Eventually, there would be conflict and people being un-excellent to each other.

    Change is constant.

    A more sustainable design would be smaller communities of people living in Place and being more or less respectful of the Place of other communities. I postulate that communities being respectful of each other is perhaps more important than all of the peeps in the individual community getting along famously with everyone else in that community. Not to belittle the value of all the things you say, but to put that into perspective of the Bigger Picture.

    I also suspect that the reason it seems like all of these disparate people within the broader 'community' seem to be getting along peechily is that it is really a non-community and the scale of it is so large it is sometimes difficult to detect the currents within it. I think we can all agree that there is nothing sustainable about these big communities. Big cities would need a complete redesign to ever approach anything like sustainability regardless of how much we tell each other that balcony gardens are going to cut the mustard.

    A healthy organism will comfortably handle a certain population of harmful bacteria, but once that organism is wounded or weakened it will soon fall ill or the wound will turn septic. Especially when it is immuno-compromised to begin with.

    I agree with you that love and compassion and kindness are vital all ingredients in a healthy community, but are they really enough to create a community from a cesspool where those things don't already exist? Human evolution is a great thing to aim for, but in its absence surely we need to be realist about how we are going to manage the interim? Isn't it reasonable to consider Kimbo's thoughts on Designing our communities using the examples nature shows us?
     
  19. helenlee

    helenlee Junior Member

    Joined:
    Nov 9, 2006
    Messages:
    1,519
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Where is the rotfl icon when you need it? :)
    Well I think we've established why most of us are here on this forum ... & I think we have enough hermits to start an intentional hermits community :) :) :)
    I bags living next door to kp :) ;)
     
  20. mouseinthehouse

    mouseinthehouse Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 18, 2012
    Messages:
    782
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    'Designing communities' is just another euphemism for creating enclaves. Go to South Africa and see their 'designed communities'. Oh, but wait I hear you say these will be 'nice' permaculture communities. Who decides what and how such communities are designed and made up. Who gets excluded? And what do THEY do....form their own enclave of bitter rejected people from other enclaves...er designed communities? Who is kidding who here? Reality is only made up of what you and you and you and you and you and I and you and you ad infinitum decide to make it and project into it. Are there always going to be arguments, points of difference etc. within communities? Of course. Does that negate my argument? Not at all. We manage the interim by in the very minimum doing no harm to others. Care of People* = *with exceptions? (only those we choose for our particular community and other communities we deem compatible?) That is just another form of fortress mentality. Smaller communities would indeed be something beneficial but that will probably only happen after an economic crash and the disintegration of our current global systems. What we have is right now and what we have to offer is our attitude towards any other person. We don't have to like everyone and indeed I find it incredibly difficult to interact with a growing proportion of the population but I can still extend kindness and compassion to them. I can do them no harm and treat people well when I come into contact with them no matter who they are. They may not reciprocate but that is neither here no there. That is all there is and all there ever will be. If a growing number of people elected to do the same the world would eventually become a much more peaceful place. But if one decides that because it has never been achieved because it is apparently fundamentally unachievable then we have no hope of progressing beyond the current paradigm. That is no catastrophe, after all we are just another species who will be extinct at some point. Just depends how much angst one wants to generate deliberating on these issues. In the meantime it is chop wood, carry water.
     

Share This Page

-->