More Mollison stuff
Aug. 4th, 2006 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
helen99I just started reading "Introduction to Permaculture" by Bill Mollison. I love this old coot. Here's what he says in the Preface:
"I grew up in a small village in Tasmania. Everything that we needed we made. We made our own boots, our own metal works; we caught fish, grew food, made bread. I didn't know anyone who lived there who had only one job, or even anything that you could define as a job. Everybody worked at several things.
Until I was about 28, I lived in sort of a dream. I spent most of my time in the bush or on the sea. I fished, I hunted for my living. It wasn't until the 1950s that I noticed large parts of the system in which I lived were disappearing. Fish stocks started to collapse. Seaweed around the shorelines had thinned out. Large patches of the forest began to die. I hadn't realised until then that I had become very fond of them, that I was in love with my country.
After many years as a scientist with the CSIRO Wildlife Survey Section and with the Tasmanian Island Fisheries Department, I began to protest against the political and industrial systems I saw were killing us and the world around us. But I soon decided that it was no good persisting with opposition that in the end achieved nothing. I withdrew from society for two years. I did not want to oppose anything ever again and waste my time. I wanted to come back only with something very positive, something that would allow us all to exist without the wholesale collapse of biological systems." From Introduction to Permaculture, Bill Mollison
Whatever solutions he developed, for whatever reason, the above puts words to how I feel a lot of the time - and I never had the opportunity to 'live in a dream' as he describes - but I know it should exist ... somewhere.
"I grew up in a small village in Tasmania. Everything that we needed we made. We made our own boots, our own metal works; we caught fish, grew food, made bread. I didn't know anyone who lived there who had only one job, or even anything that you could define as a job. Everybody worked at several things.
Until I was about 28, I lived in sort of a dream. I spent most of my time in the bush or on the sea. I fished, I hunted for my living. It wasn't until the 1950s that I noticed large parts of the system in which I lived were disappearing. Fish stocks started to collapse. Seaweed around the shorelines had thinned out. Large patches of the forest began to die. I hadn't realised until then that I had become very fond of them, that I was in love with my country.
After many years as a scientist with the CSIRO Wildlife Survey Section and with the Tasmanian Island Fisheries Department, I began to protest against the political and industrial systems I saw were killing us and the world around us. But I soon decided that it was no good persisting with opposition that in the end achieved nothing. I withdrew from society for two years. I did not want to oppose anything ever again and waste my time. I wanted to come back only with something very positive, something that would allow us all to exist without the wholesale collapse of biological systems." From Introduction to Permaculture, Bill Mollison
Whatever solutions he developed, for whatever reason, the above puts words to how I feel a lot of the time - and I never had the opportunity to 'live in a dream' as he describes - but I know it should exist ... somewhere.