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Health & Nature

What does Permaculture have to do with Winning?

Permaculture is an interesting way of life, it is made up by two words, permanent and culture, but is however a much wider subject than what the name indicates. It literally covers a huge part of life, and it does so in a sustainable and regenerative way. Created by Bill Mollison and organized by David Holmgren, it is the how-to anyone can be more self reliant with a minimum of resources.

It does not teach you how to, for example, build a house, but it does give you the tools to learn to do it in a sustainable, regenerative and resilient way as part of what is known as Whole System Design. This is a powerful yet simple way to approach problems and design something that is adding more than it takes. In short, if properly done you can apply it over and over and be more and more beneficial to you and your family, friends, society and life on our planet.

It starts with ethics as the foundation. Without personal ethics you may have no reason to evaluate your actions in such a way as to be more beneficial than detrimental. You may, for example, only think of yourself to get maximum gain right now. Not bothering to see what it does long term, not only for you but everything else that lives on this rock we all share.

When society is more driven by money than care for each other and the planet you can say it is off kilter (off balance). Money is simply an idea to make life easier that everyone has agreed to. The alternative is exchanging products and services and with food being the most basic product, it easily becomes a logistical problem to, for example, haul farm products around so that you can exchange it for other things. Much easier to use money for the exchange. Money is not evil, it is the use of it that makes it so.

And like the wobbling wheel on a car, or cart, it tends to only get worse and worse. Society functions in much the same way when personal integrity has left the building. When the scarcity pushes a big enough part of society to be focused on money above all else, then one cannot be surprised to see a society out of whack. To see more upsets and the resulting violence, to see a drive towards helping fewer and fewer people, until only yourself, which is a clear indicator that there are fewer and fewer leaders who are doing any leading.

The progression of making money scarce, has and is creating famine, despair and wars as people try to find solutions in a society which has lost it’s balance. Witness the attack on the US Capitol. Each side being convinced they were in the right. Observe how the storming was the culmination of people who felt disenfranchised, or left out of the process. How their solution was not based on a legal process but on force. It also lacked basic understanding of the laws of the land, specifically who can change the outcome of the votes cast in each state. They sounded like they were willing to hang the Vice President if he did not do what he had No Power To Do. And shoot the Speaker for something she Had No Power To Do.

In other words it was, however baseless, a futile exercise that had no chance to succeed in bringing about the change they so believed in. They felt so in the right that they themselves became guilty of what they accused Congress of.

This was not the culmination of a short term problem but a much longer one. One based on not able to have, not being able to share in the benefits of society over a very long time. So long that any other reality was long lost. You can see how despair on a large enough scale will bring about chaos and war. To our very own society.

What can we do about it?

Permaculture introduces approaches that mitigates the problems we face in our daily lives, it teaches us how by working towards the greater good we can and do win in spite of the problems we face. In short something can be done where everyone can contribute to and be part of. When all are doing well crime diminishes as the unusual solution it is. Permaculture is not a theoretical subject but is based on real hands on solutions that anyone can learn and apply, it is a solution for the people by the people.

An example, pertinent to these days where food is ever more on peoples minds permaculture offers the food forest, a method of growing your own food that anyone can learn. Food safety is important.

Permaculture is likened to a flower where Ethics and Design Principles are the foundation. Spanning it are seven petals:
– Building,
– Tools & Technology,
– Education & Culture,
– Health & Spiritual Well-Being,
– Finance & Economics,
– Land Tenure & Community Governance,
– Land & Nature Stewardship.

I’m fortunate enough to know a world renowned permaculture instructor and designer who is not only on the national board but has trained most of the permaculture designers in Florida, in full disclosure, a person who I joined forces with and am contributing to her classes and benefit from our clients and graduates. The school is called Grow Permaculture and is located in central Florida. We hold regular classes and are delivering the famous Permaculture Design Course (PDC) in both urban and farm focused courses. It comes with a world recognized certificate.

In addition there are design and consulting services that we make for our clients. I recommend you check it out!

When a subject drives you angry

There are a lot of us living on this rock going around the sun.

Sometimes we don’t agree on things and get in each others faces. Certainly we don’t have to agree on everything. Allowing each of us to have our own observations and likes is of course a very basic right.

A while back I had a friend that had a very emotional response to something very casual and simple. It was a total surprise to me that something that plain would cause that reaction.

For me I have the experience that says if I have a strong emotional reaction there is something that _I_ have an issue with, not related to the other party in the discussion. In other words my reaction is not that the other person said it but something within me that caused the reaction.

This is good because it opens the door for me to be able to address it, unlike when someone else have an issue.

Why would I want to “address” it?

I don’t know about you but I like being in charge of MY life. I do not agree with being a victim. That does not lead to a happy life. And I do recognize that happy for some could mean not being beaten that day. For me I look at reasons to have a smile on my face. The fastest way is of course to just force yourself to smile and you soon find a reason to. 🙂

I’m talking about smiling from interactions with my fellow man, woman or child. Helping to improve others brings me the biggest joy, and I daresay helping others is the most valuable thing one can do.

So when a subject comes along that has that “out of control” reaction, I view that as something not desirable. I prefer to analytically look at something, let’s say an injustice, and work out how to best resolve it. Analytically, not reactively!

When I have a strong emotional reaction I don’t automatically jump on the bearer of the subject but how come _I_ have that reaction? I may ask what was the intention of the person with that communication, which might be to bring me down. Generally I can tell who my friends are and they don’t have that kind of intention. If they are not my friend – why should I get upset? Why not just recognize the communication as something someone else made and if upsetting to not allow it to continue having that effect?

I saw a mime that suggested to hold a grudge or upset is simply allowing the other person to live in your head. Someone else suggested that the biggest secret of all might be the ability to forgive in spite of.

We are very occupied with what others may have done to us, rarely do we look at how our actions may have hurt someone else. There’s something behind every strong emotional reaction, 99% is from what we have done to others, not the other way around. I’d suggest think twice before yelling at someone else. Instead try to understand WHY they did and if your words/actions will help them.

Treating other the way you want to be treated is a healthy attitude.

For many that can be hard to follow but it is so very remunerative! Your reward is an increasingly happier life with fewer and fewer things getting you unhappy.

How Fear and Force Undermine Each Other

The physical universe is based on force. There’s gravity pulling you down with force. There’s matter telling you how you better get out of its way or get hurt. There’s wind trying to push you over, earthquakes tossing you around. There’s the stronger guy in school not getting beaten up because he’s the strongest. Guns, batons are all saying use me and win! Over and over we are reminded how force rules the day.

Or does it?

The physical universe has no intelligence. Does not care nor is aware of who’s affected and is merely held together by a design which is based on the attraction matter has towards itself.

Man has actually conquered the physical universe to a very large extent. The bully is conquered by a combination of intelligence and force. Earthquakes are similarly imposing itself, but our buildings are designed to bend a bit and hold together. We have a group of people that keep an eye out for strong winds and issues warnings. We have planes that fly into the eye of the storm to see how it is made up to keep us abreast of what might be coming our way. We walk upright and do the most amazing motions in spite of gravity. The bully is simply insecure and is trying to shift attention away from himself and onto the impression that he should not be messed with, or questioned, which may reveal his insecurity.

Smart use of force between people is to only use it to the extent it is needed to get someones attention, then it serves no further positive value.

A child who has eaten a lot of sugar may not respond when you try to stop him from running on the walls breaking all in his way and may need to be physically stopped before you can get his attention. But once you got it you better back off, or you are simply telling him how you are bigger and stronger, which will not earn his respect, as you would just have become a bully in his eyes. That would teach him that force wins the day, and the cycle starts over.

To get out of the vicious circle we need to set a good example. Society is constantly showing itself by example how it needs to live in order to survive.

Fear is usually based on not being able to face the unknown, and will usually result in being afraid of something that does not exist. The fear itself will help create the condition of that which one is afraid of. Fear results in no inspection and less communication. And when man goes out of communication with man fear comes in to warn you of the threat of the unknown. If you were looking for a vicious circle look no further!

One of the most simple things ways of solving problems, by the way, is to look. For example, I had a air conditioner that stopped cooling. My immediate thought was it had run out of coolant. Now I was facing calling an a/c guy to come out and fix it. But before I got to the phone I thought I should look and see if there was anything obvious I could see. I opened the outside box and looked inside. It had a couple of relays and other components.

Triggering the a/c to start I noticed how one relay did not appear to fully close. Using a voltmeter I could see that it was indeed not closing. A quick visit to a store and $10 later I had a new relay and the a/c was working again. It took maybe 15 minutes of my time to discover what was wrong. OK, so I understand electricity, but that just tells me that what you don’t know you can be in effect of. In other words education is quite valuable as a general tool. And if you live life willing to look and learn you can handle more of life.

All I had to do was to be willing to look and see what I may see. In my mind I had drawn up a wait for a technician to come out and certainly a bigger cost to get it operational. You see how easy it resolved once I looked?

This is not a unique example, simply how it gave a live example of the value of looking. Take the child afraid of what may be lurking under the bed! Once you gather enough to look, and maybe a flash light or two, you can establish that there’s nothing there and you can rest.

Here’s another example of force. Have you ever held a child on your lap. When you do he or she, will squirm and try to get down. While it will be perfectly content simply sitting there if it can leave on it’s own self determinism.

That tells you something else of value. In dealing with humans, things work easier if they can have their own self determinism. Your only issue is getting compliance in some situations where some control of the environment is needed.

Most people then will respond well if allowed to execute self determinism, and are not controlled by force anymore than is needed and a bit of good positive communication.

Good communication is dependent on the ability to communicate which in turn require you to be there and be able to look and observe others and how things change. If you act with certainty and respect you can get almost anything you need from others. Most people are very willing to help. It is a basic trait of man, his willingness to help.

If you bypass his willingness then you are probably using force and not so much respect. A real authority is a person who can control the environment or the subject at hand. An apparent authority is someone who is taken at face value without inspection. Looking was missing to allow the observation of the person’s ability and knowledge of the subject or situation.

Man is actually a simple animal who’s sometime trying to be complex to appear more valuable than what he or she thinks of themselves.

OK, so we learn that treating others how we ourselves wish to be treated is a way to happiness. This is indeed needed by society at large to function well.

In a military situation the use of overwhelming force is a good practice which saves lives. However it is not a good tool to build a society for mankind.

When protecting people it becomes vital to have an understanding of man based on observation of proper application of force and respect, which with it needs a healthy dose of compassion. It does also require a bit of courage to look and deal with what is going on.

A man held down by overwhelming debt, maybe an equally upset wife from her goals being squashed and neither being able to look and discover what is behind their problems, might get disillusioned enough that he momentarily gives up. Which could manifest itself in loud and disturbing actions. Possibly with the show of force to counter the pressure he feels.

To calm down and stop the destruction such a person may demonstrate does not require more use of force as is so commonly done. Simply a proper acknowledgment usually does the job.

So what is a proper acknowledgment?

It is that which shows the person that he or she have been heard and have been duplicated. In other words the person feels he or she is understood. Once understood the person feels there is someone else who shares the burden. That can be a very big relief and should not be underestimated. In fact you can entirely disarm someone with a proper acknowledgment. I’ve single handedly, purely with a few words, handled a really large man that a number of bouncers could not handle. All I had to say was that he’s really large and the others are acting the way they are because they are afraid of him. He instantly stopped and got in good verbal (vs physical) communication with me.

You know force is not simply physical actions. Your voice can also demonstrate and at least threaten physical force. It depends on your ability to demonstrate intention in any one direction. You can enter a room full of with violent action and simply give a simple command with a strong intention and stop everyone in their step.

In fact you merely showing up with a calm presence and being there able to look and duplicate what is going on can stop violence. It looks like magic of some sort. But it is simply being a larger presence than the confusion. Being the stable datum that everything else can align itself with. You cannot be sucked into the confusion and have to be able to hold your position.

You hold a position with certainty and competence. Your competence will come from, you guessed it, being able to be there looking and observing. Knowing what you are doing and having demonstrated enough competence in the past. In turn that will give you certainty. Which comes right back giving you more ability to hold that position stably in spite of the tumbling confusion.

A confusion is only a confusion until a position, or viewpoint, can be held and be used to sort out the random particles in it.

That position is your certainty of self and the situation. If good enough would cover any situation.

The subject here is how fear and force undermine each other.

Fear undermines you and your ability to handle force. You will not look and observe what is going on. For example a fighter depends on being able to be there and look at the motion of others bodies and any particles involved, and take split second steps to handle them when they become a threat, or even before they can become a threat if you are good.

Fear depends on uncertainty and not looking or understanding, the present situation. It will feed on itself and if not handled ruin your day.

Force also depends on uncertainty and not looking or understanding the present situation. It too will feed on itself.

Compassion and love of your fellow man is actually your foundation that will make life a lot easier and return a lot of value to your life, and others in your environment. It too feeds on itself. Compassion breeds compassion. Care is part of that.

Indeed it looks like you will get what you put your attention on.

If all you look for is motion and your general attention is on finding and stopping motion before it moves too fast you will end up a miserable problem yourself.

Police and security people are at risk of falling into that trap. The way to stay well is to look at everything going on. Society has far more positive things going on than negative. When you see an upset or disorderly person don’t insist on immediately stopping him or her. Be willing to let the person be upset. Be willing to understand that person so that you can properly acknowledge them.

If you have enough care for your fellow man it will show. It will allow you to approach each person as a person with respect, which will make a positive impact, even if it is not immediately obvious. There might be more upset that you need to discharge. Simply be a safe terminal for the person to share his or her upset with. Presenting force does not make you a safe person. It simply adds more force, or promise of force which will simply escalate things.

True, you can scare people with enough force that they cave in and are subdued. But it is not a good general way of operating, again only use force until you get their attention.

So what do you do if you cannot get their attention?

You may need to have a good balanced use of enough force that you can control the person until such time that you can reach them. I’m thinking of drugs and maybe earlier show of force that made them hide so deep that you cannot easily reach them.

When a person is armed with deadly force it easily becomes a huge liability to society, unless that person is balanced enough and able to be there and communicate verbally and only use enough force to handle the situation. The first action cannot be an automatic draw and fire. If a person is afraid of other people and cannot be in their shoes and have care and compassion for them they are not suitable to keep us secure. They will end up being a bigger threat and undermine the people they are suppose to support and help.

If someone is upset they usually have a reason. Caring enough to hear and trying to understand them will make them hold you high long after you have left.

Let’s talk about criminals.

A child will as soon as they can try to contribute to the family. By not allowing them to contribute you will end up fostering criminal behavior. I believe man needs to be able to contribute to feel good and be happy. When a man cannot contribute he thinks himself not very valuable. If not valuable and you cannot make a positive impact then it does not matter what you do.

Add some experiences where some of those impacts will be actions against the common good of society. Robbing someone, for example. If they succeed then they have learned they can be good at something. It may be the only option they feel they have since they cannot or are not allowed to hold a job and have some common decent respect of self and others.

That child which is not allowed to help with dishes is being taught their contributions are not wanted. They are completely the effect of the much bigger bodies around them and can only try to upset you to get even. Bed wetting, breaking things, screaming are all indicators of having disagreements. You could ask yourself if some broken dishes are more valuable than the child?

For that matter give them some plastic ones to clean. Maybe their own plates.

A gang member is a person who does not believe themselves able to contribute to society. A criminal is a person who have lost their self respect.

The way to turn both around is to allow them to get some respect back to learn they can contribute to our society and they will happily do so.

But it will require care and compassion to get there as the road may not be an easy one to walk down. It will also require a healthy dose of courage and belief in your fellow man. But it will ultimately be more rewarding than the other option.

I for one think a society based on care and compassion would be more pleasant than one based on fear and force. What do you think?

First Amendment Rights?

Intended to those in charge.

As someone who has visited Auschwitz as a young man while traveling through Europe, who met people who were deformed from being concentration camp guinea pigs and saw the horrors that came because nobody would do anything about it before it became too late, I was utterly stunned to see how my all time favorite service appears to actually be taking a stance supporting extreme violence hate sites.

I’m guessing it has something to do with the 1st amendment which is generally a great thing to support, though one has to be aware that it only refers to what the government is not being allowed to violate:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Clearly free speech is a crucial part of society, but common sense can step in and say if, for example, you want to insult my wife in my own house, you must leave. If you want to proclaim death to my neighbors, you can’t stand on my stoop to do it from. If you try to promote violent rhetoric using my company – it will be removed.

Doing anything less is supporting what ultimately becomes criminal activities which at the very least is bad for business in the long run.

I also find it shameful. Certainly ignorance and stupidity alike can be very dangerous given the right situation. When I look myself in the mirror I much prefer to feel strength from doing the right thing, and not having acted from ignorance or misinformation.

There is a very real situation where people don’t bother to investigate what they are being told. They are commonly not very well versed with the world outside their own nor have a solid education. Thus being at a disadvantage frequently find themselves not finding any road to success but reasons to be unhappy. Some take advantage of that to misdirect their unhappiness towards people and activities that actually seek to help society. These “some” are stuck wanting to take the world down with them. Meanwhile the lesser educated and informed, but not automatically less valuable, fall pray to the lies and propaganda and with little to loose stand up ready to fight the false evil. Others even less educated about life become willing to meet the vestigial virgins supposedly waiting for them once they click the detonator. The price for freedom is constant alertness and willingness to fight back, not blindly supporting any activity or “right”.

Thus, I frequently assess who I associate myself with and as someone who has so far been a staunch supporter for a decade am now wondering what is your intention visa vie Nazi hate propaganda, and similar sites?

Gray Body Text Is Non-Optimum, Try This:

A number of developers and designers have gotten the idea that having dim text is the way to go. And I can see for a number of youth that stares on the screen all day long it might be annoying, even infringing. Especially if you sit in a dimly lit room where the only light comes from the monitor(s).

May I make the suggestion that black on white is not my first choice either, but rather than making it hard to read for a good percentage of people, use a different color, for example, a blue.

Blue would immediately change the impact to those with sensitive eyes. Not to say that dimming the monitor would create the same effect across the board.

It appears that too many developers are not fully considering who their public might be. Which of course also applies to any designers that use the same.

Now, I’m not at all totally against using gray to separate a section of text, or copy for marketing people. It does not require much change to stand out either, as you saw there.

How about a site function where you can store the color value in a cookie ensuring everyone can read it the way they like! Much like we can often choose different languages. Which is very handy when traveling to a country with a language you are not fluent in.

Point being making websites available for as many as possible is the goal for most websites wanting maximum return on investment, by attracting people with all kinds of eyesight on normal monitors. I’ve yet to try this out on the new 4K monitors, but I’d bet it is still true.

We have come a long way in making the web a universal tool that everyone can use, lets not go backwards by making it hard for a good swath of the population.

What Is Food Sustainability?

Yes, what is food sustainability?

There are things that can and does continue on and on, they simply never stop. The reason it continues is that it is workable, it does not cause problems along the way which later ends up working against it.

Simple examples to make the point would be if you throw wrapping paper and anything else you discard on the street rather than in a proper location such as a dumpster, others would need to clean up after you or the street would end up a mess. Which would eventually lead to attracting rats and other vermin. It would attract more garbage and causing ever more problems.

Or, if you always offered a friendly and helping hand to your community whenever you could, that would lead to goodwill and others helping you when you needed it. It would set a good example and other would follow.

The first example is clearly not a sustainable way, whereas the second is.

When an activity is in harmony with everything else and it is in turn helped by the environment you could say it is contributing to the survival of the environment.

Growing tropical plants in a cold environment would be another example of not being sustainable. They require a hot humid climate which without it, would make it very hard or impossible to grow.

Nature has a wonderful design that when left alone will survive just fine by itself.

We on the other hand wish to conquer our environment, make it just the way we like it to be. Which does not have to be wrong, it’s actually very good to be in control of ones environment. But what does that mean?

Being in control does not necessarily mean you bend things backwards and eventually stress it beyond it’s capability of bending, thereby breaking it. Requiring more and more work to just to keep up.

There is good control and bad control.

Yelling at people who are already listening is normally bad control as force is only needed to get their attention, once you have it you back off. You communicate with a person on their level of reality which would allow you to have positive control. For example, martial arts are mostly based on utilizing the existing momentum and to simply redirect it, not directly stopping it head on. That is an example of good control.

Growing things which naturally grow in that environment makes it easier. But there are more to the equation. When you only consider one very localized thing and ignore everything else it tends to end up not very successful in the long term. In other words something is missing. When things are not working out as intended you can say that there is a lie there, the lie being one or more missing datum. If you had all the data needed and how to do it, it would work, would it not?

So how much is needed?

When we engage upon an activity it is handy to see how that fits into the overall picture. By understanding how the activity does or does not fit, we can predict the success rate of our activity.

When talking about, for example, growing food we have a number of factors that immediately comes to play. As a starter we have climate with temperature, humidity, the soil, it’s pH value, wind, and the directions, animals and insects not to mention other humans and then change and rate of change on each of the above. They can each play a vital role on the outcome of growing food. If the food is an animal then even more factors come into play.

Food sustainable means it can go on and on forever. To reach that type of success you will do well to consider how it affects everything in your immediate environment, the environment beyond that and then on the whole grand scheme of the planet as it will in turn affect you. If all are ignoring others we do it at our own peril as it does come back to bite us.

Are you using something that is not natural part of life? Such as chemicals to help food grow? What is the short and long term impact of those chemicals on your immediate environment and the larger picture? Where does it go when you spray or pour it? What does it affect, maybe your soil, the ground water, other living things? What changes are you actually making when applying those changes?

Thinking very locally, such as just yourself or the tree you are growing is likely to create other longer term problems, as we have seen with things such as DDT, a chemical thought to be very helpful but is now banned due to the high toxic content. It is not usually easy to be aware of, never mind understand all these factors. But they do come into play!

We like to think of ourselves as being more valuable than destructive. We help our neighbors and maybe that stranger who dropped something. However it requires a bit more understanding of how things work than simply following others lead as that will end up with people who don’t know or understand leading others afoul. Kind of like the lemmings that follow each other off the cliff. Neither knowing what is actually going on, but continuing in some direction because everyone else does. Trust me doing something because others do it is not a safe way to go as many can and often definitely are wrong at the expense of their own success and survival.

We need to have a better grasp about how creating and supporting sustainable methods will improve life conditions and avoid following clueless, and maybe unintentional, leaders off the proverbial cliff. Educate our self, be in control of our own future and survival.

Fortunately one such piece of technology is in existence and is called Permaculture, from permanent culture. A way of growing that is based on coexisting with the natural environment that surrounds us.

Go to growpermaculture.com and get in control of your food supply!