Gimme Culture

“Permaculture is thus a natural critic of the capitalist principle of fabricating demand (and thus fabricating unnecessary supply) as it bases its systems on ecological functioning ahead of human desire. It is true that money’s exactly calculated value is efficient, but then constructing the illusion of demand and therefore debt, capitalism’s other great agenda, instantly negates this efficiency creating instead aggregating waste. By mixing human desire with capital ideology and fossil fuels we have enabled tremendous complexity, which has in turn accrued an ecological debt for which subsequent generations will pay dearly. In Life Without MoneyNelson and Timmerman ask: ‘How many contemporary developments and proposals actually make little social, cultural or environmental sense but are assessed as sensible money-making ventures?’ Contrary to its own propaganda, there is nothing lean or efficient about progress-capitalism. Holmgren has suggested many times that instead of endlessly building barely occupied houses we need to retrofit the suburbs and turn them from settlements of pollution into ecological systems. The home mortgage (debt until death, or life sentence, taken from the Latin meaning ‘contract til death’) or the debt we owe to the landlord each week is at the heart of our monetary system. Waste, debt and private property are synonymous with capital systems and all three work relentlessly against the agency of humans to function ecologically.”