Do we really want to live by someone else’s design? Ethics enable us to find our core values, consider consequences and fuel our resilience. This design facet reveals the feelings and values behind the design goals. Here, we consider how ethics and values can influence choices and actions. And by asking about ethics of each person involved, we are building understanding and enriching the channels of communication.
Ted Trainer notes[1] “Our society is unsustainable. There is increasing environmental damage, dwindling resources, third world poverty, resource wars and falling quality of life. There is too much resource use” … So, “we have to change systems, not just lifestyles”. Ted goes on “We need to transition to new ideas and values”. Ultimately, “the point of life must be enjoying it without wanting to become rich.”
An attitude of simplicity, of moving away from one of acquiring wealth, benefits 99% of the world’s population. Only the mega rich 1% will hindered. But let’s not assume everyone understands the impact of this unsustainable economy. Because if everyone did understand the causes of inequality, the system would change quickly.
Ted also talks about rejecting ‘perfectionism’. He says near-enough is good-enough, “as in my video”. Ted continues to be entertaining into his golden years.
Change Starts with Ethics
There is no great mystery about how we might change architectural practice to minimize present and future harm. Technically, we already know how to build in ways that are not only less harmful, but that can be actively regenerative. Amica Dall So, where is our will to change? The will to change comes from our core values.
Amica Dall writes “Architecture is powerfully life-affirming, but the life that it affirms is uniquely human, and severs us from that which we depend on. Looked at from a distance, its power is not quite illusory, but also not quite solid either. It only holds so long as we continue to ignore everything that is outside the boundaries of the drawing, all the thousands of interlocking transactions and processes required to bring any single element to site and all the harm embedded in them, both now and in the future. Along with mass manufacture and industrial agriculture, architecture is one of the practices that is most responsible for creating and sustaining the collective illusion that we have mastery over the world and can bend it to our will.“
Dall continues “The challenges that are harder to overcome are social, and have to do with the legislative and financial instruments that support and enable construction.” We must reset cultural expectations and embrace retrofits, like the art of Kintsugi. We need to invest in elegant retrofits. And stop striving for perfection. There is joy in simplicity and contentment.
Set Your Goals Last and Build Values First
Stuart Hill urges us to be driven by our ethics and values, feelings and passions rather than particular goals or resolutions. By revisiting our ethics and values at the end of the year we can keep the positive fire burning.
By listening to our feelings and passions we give ourselves the energy to create a better future. Though acknowledging our passion we formulate a vision, purpose. Once our passion is invested in our future, we can find energy to develop goals, and sustain the plans and activities.
- Question your ethics and core values
- Acknowledge your feelings and passions
- Research your ideas, visions and design (doing this permaculture course is a critical tool in developing systems thinking and building your own design)
- Create action plans
- Finally start the regular activities that will help you realise your goals. At the end of each day, set goals that help achieve the actions you set in your plan.
Hill urges us to: “Act from your core/essential self – empowered, aware, visionary, principled, passionate, loving, spontaneous, fully in the present (contextual) – vs. your patterned, fearful, compensatory, compromising, de-contextual selves”
Core Values for Social Permaculture Design
Every person is different. No two permaculture designers will have the same passions and goals. Here are two different applications of Hills suggestion to act from your core self.
Enjoy your personal journey of regeneration. Start with your inner landscape. This transforms our interactions with others and the world around us. And ultimately, leads to cultural change – a more permanent culture.
Learn more with us at Permaculture Visions