Gaia University and Permaculture Design 2010

[jasonJ]

Permaculture Design Course

There are two parts to the course: a 3-day intro, and the continuing 8 days of the design course. Both are described on this page.

3-Day Intro to Permaculture
Location: Carothers Crossing, Nashville, TN
When: August 12- 14, 2010

This introduction, sponsored by the Financial Permaculture Institute and Design Recouse, lays the foundation for the full 72-hour design course, with introductions to ethics, principles, and tools for combining old country know how, natural patterns, and conscious design. Permaculture is a design science that takes a whole-ecosystem approach to sustainable development. The term, “Permaculture”, means “permanent agriculture” and “permanent culture”. Permaculture developed in Australia in the late 1970’s, by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, and has since spread throughout the world. Leaders of the sustainability movement are applying Permaculture principles and design methodologies to everything from gardens, home sites, village designs, businesses, and entire regional economies. Includes classes on creating healthy soils, and garden design. Check out the tentative schedule for more topics. Instructors include, Matthew English, Kevin Guenther, Cliff Davis and guests!

Location: Carothers Crossing
When: August 12-14 2010
Price: $200 with early registration, $250 after July 23 2010
Registration: Register online at www.financialpermaculture.com (coming on June 25)
Contact: For questions contact info@financialpermaculture.com or 888-878-2434 ext.2

Permaculture Design Course
Location: Carothers Crossing, Nashville, TN
When: August 12- 24 2010 with Sundays off

Full Permaculture Design Course continues from the 3-day intro to the full 72 hour certification course. Permaculture is a design science that takes a whole-ecosystem approach to sustainable development. The term, “Permaculture”, means “permanent agriculture” and “permanent culture”. Permaculture developed in Australia in the late 1970’s, by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, and has since spread throughout the world. Leaders of the sustainability movement are applying Permaculture principles and design methodologies to everything from gardens, home sites, village designs, businesses, and entire regional economies. Class participants will learn to use a unique tool that incorporates natural design systems into problem solving on multiple levels. This 72 hour course is vigorous and in depth. Students who complete all segments of the course and individual project assignments will receive an internationally recognized Permaculture Design Certificate. See tentative schedule for topics. Includes class lectures, interactive class participation, design exercises, field trips, and dynamic learning opportunities. Instructors include Matthew English, Kevin Guenther, Cliff Davis, and guests.

Location: Carothers Crossing
When: August 12- 24 2010 with Sundays off
Price: $700 with early registration, $800 after July 23 2010
Registration: Register online at www.financialpermaculture.com
Contact: For questions contact info@financialpermaculture.com or 888-878-2434 ext.2



Gaia Southeast is now accepting applicants for September 2010!

Take your action learning and sustainable living to a new level by joining us September 5-15 for the Gaia University start of year immersion.

Your year in Gaia Southeast will begin and end with a residential intensive at our regional venue in Tennessee. During the first intensive workshop, you will go through an orientation where you become familiar with the Gaia University system and clarify your project and learning goals for the year. The purpose of the initial orientation is to introduce you to the tools and processes you will be using throughout your enrollment and to help you clarify your goals for the coming year. During this period, you will meet your peer guild and Main Advisor, be introduced to the Gaia University framework and philosophy and be trained in action-learning methodology. You will also begin training in the use of our e-learning environment! We’d be happy to talk to you about our enrollment process.

Event: Gaia Southeast Orientation

Led by: Jennifer English, Greg Landua and guests

Dates: September 5-15, 2010

Where: The Farm Community, Summertown Tennessee

Contact: Feel free to give us a call at 888-878-2434 x 1. or visit us at Gaia Southeast

[Michaelangelica]

Can you post some pictures of the course in action when it gets going please?

[purplepear]

I think purple pear is too cheap - they are big prices but good luck with it guys

[PeterFD]

Well, well, ………. so the second time this year the “Gaia” concept has been used to try and dupe the unwary!!

I suppose that you are aware that the independent climate scientist, James Lovelock, is largely responsible for our current understanding of the Gaia hypothesis??

“Lovelock is an interdisciplinary scientist and he challenges the orthodoxy that the physical earth - the rocks, the oceans and the atmosphere - evolved by purely physical and chemical principles, with life then evolving as icing on the cake, having to cope with whatever the planet threw up in the form of ice ages, meteorite strikes and huge volcanic eruptions, but never itself being a player in the geological drama.

That this was wrong became clear to Lovelock in the 1960s, when he was working for Nasa's project to determine whether there is life on Mars. He realised that sampling Mars's atmosphere would show life's presence or absence. The atmosphere on earth may seem to us like the most natural thing, but its composition - 21% oxygen and 79% nitrogen - is very odd. These gases were generated, and are maintained at an equable level for life's processes, by living organisms themselves; if the biosphere died, oxygen and nitrogen would disappear with it, leaving a greenhouse atmosphere similar to that of Mars and Venus (around 95% carbon dioxide and hundreds of degrees hot). The Gaia theory proposes that the atmosphere, oceans, rocks, soil and all living things constitute a self-regulating system that maintains favourable conditions for life - but not necessarily the life that is comfortable for human beings.

One of Lovelock's most beautiful pieces of hard science - which tipped the balance in favour of Gaia - is his discovery of a great cycle in which algae in the oceans produce volatile sulphur compounds that act as seeds to form the oceanic clouds. Without these dimethyl sulphide "seeds", the cooling oceanic clouds would be lost.

Lovelock is not a doom-monger but a practical problem-solving man, with suggestions for alleviating the climate crisis at many levels.”

Earlier in the year Richard Branson attempted to name his BIO-AVIATION Fuel Gaia-fuel, which incensed Lovelock. After a brief exchange of views, Branson, who must be a man of at least some integrity, issued a full apology and withdrew the Gaia name.

WOW ……… what a fool I hear you shout!!! Just think how many lovely green dollars he could have made duping the public into thinking they were flying by Gaia!!

I suppose Bill Mollison was a far better judge of character when it came to realising just how far people will stoop to earn a dollar. I could never understand why he patented the name “Permaculture” but now all is clear and my esteem of Bill has risen a million-fold.

To bad JasonJ, not much chance of “Permaculture University” then?

I suppose I should ask by what right you call yourself a University? Qualified board of Governers; Independent qualified external examiners to maintain standards etc.,? or is it just a case of complying to fire regulations with a couple of mates and a brother who knows a thing or to about designing flashy diploma’s with photoshop?

I took the time to watch your video but had to stop at least once because of the need to vomit!. You even have to start by mentioning GOD, ……… I believe Ronald Reagan used the same technique.

Gaia has, of course been evoked at various other points in history, Adolph Hitler (although lacking James Lovelocks credentials) was also allegedly a fan of the blue eyed, blond haired …. original version which predates Lovelock by several thousand years.

I noted that the orchestrated chanting at the end of your seminars failed to reach the levels noted at the infamous Nuremberg Rallies, but I’m sure you’ll get there!

I noticed the bankers listening with interest, or were they just weighing-up the repossession value of their potential clients? Is the incubation period no more than the time it takes you to retrieve your constancy fee, the inflated prices for the gullible to purchase the “essential bits”, and the repossession men to arrive seizing cars, houses, lives?

It seems to have escaped your notice that the Free-Market has just lost trillions of dollars and they’re not too fussy about how they get it back!

I hope ecodharmamark wont mind me mentioning that its only a matter of days since his report on a “big bank” dumping an eco-village on the eve of its construction ………… still, I don’t suppose anyone lost any sleep there?

If you ever get around to reading any of Lovelocks books you will start to understand what Gaia means to the current world, the futility of what you’re proposing, and the inherent dangers you’re promoting.

Perhaps I can leave a final quote from an interview with Lovelock, ……… because if I say what I really think about you’re whole operation it will undoubtedly be removed from the forum!!!!

“The tropical and subtropical zones of the Earth will be too hot and dry to grow food or support human life. People will be forced to migrate towards the poles to places like Canada. There will be less than one billion people by the end of the century. My hope is that we will stay civilised and those in the North will give refuge to the unimaginably large numbers of climate refugees.”

[pebble]

Crikey.

As an aside, the word 'permaculture' hasn't been copyrighted/patented.

[PeterFD]

Hi Pebble

[QUOTE]
PERMACULTURE: Designers’ Manual by Bill Mollison
Second Edition, April 2009

Copyright Bill Mollison 1988

The contents of this book and the word PERMACULTURE are copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism, or review permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission from the publisher.

[UNQUOTE]

I believe I read somewhere Bill’s reasons for copyrighting the word PERMACULTURE; and not without great justification as things are unravelling.

Although, …… I also believe I read somewhere that PERMACULTURE was about ETHICS; principally, Earth care, People care, Fair share.

However, now we have the Financial Permaculture Institute, or, if that’s a bit too hard to swallow, try Gaia University. Apparently the expressions are fully interchangeable without any loss of meaning!!

Peter

[jasonJ]

Can you post some pictures of the course in action when it gets going please?

We will be doing flash documenation during the course on http://www.financialpermaculture.org/ where we will post pictures and notes daily.

[PeterFD]

Well JasonJ ……..

Having recently checked-out your latest web-site (blog?) postings, you don’t appear to have actually achieved anything.

Perhaps my concerns regarding the hollow shell of Permaculture you were proscribing, devoid of ethics and integrity where quite unfounded. If this is indeed the case, I can only hope that all those who truly adhere to the core principals of Permaculture will overlook my indiscretion.

Your intention to build a large ethanol production system, accompanied by a multiple of smaller domestic ethanol production systems using Permaculture principals remains something of an issue that cannot be overlooked. You obviously never took the time to read George Monbiol’s article (PRI June 2, 2010) concerning the use of Permaculture principles originally intended to produce the sort of abundance needed to feed the hungry, to actually produce ethanol. To perpetuate global warming and hence hasten the deaths of billions of human beings must, and here I agree with George Monbiot, constitute a Crime Against Humanity.

So Michaelangelica, was it really you who posed the question “is planet Earth better off without us?

[pebble]

Peter, I know that the claim has been made in the past, but afaik the word permaculture is not copyrighted. I did some research on this last year when we were having a particularly heated debate (in a thread that was removed but has reappeared with the shift to the new forum - search by swindle +copyright).

I'll see if I can find my notes, but off the top of my head: you can only copyright a body of work, not an individual word. So the contents of the manual are automatically copyrighted to Bill Mollison under Australian law (it's not something he has to make happen), but the word permaculture isn't.

You can trademark phrases (not sure about individual words that already exist in the public domain). If you look up the database at http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au you'll see if permaculture is trademarked. When I looked last year it wasn't, but there was an application in to trademark the manuals (I'm going off memory here, don't have time to look right now). I take that to mean that people won't be able to use the manuals to train with unless they have permission from the Mollisons.

Actually I've just looked it up. Go to http://pericles.ipaustralia.gov.au/a...lication_start and use the guest access and search for 'permaculture'. It's quite instructive.

[PeterFD]

Hi Pebble

Many thanks for all the research, however, this is becoming a bit of a side issue that is clouding the real concerns regarding the unethical use of permaculture to make money for individuals whilst inflicting major harm upon its core ethical principles.

I know that the use of some words, like “Microsoft” are not permitted in law by other suppliers, so are we dealing with a Trade Mark, or can I really set-up the “Microsoft University” tomorrow and make a bundle of money ripping people off?

Here in the South of France it’s now 2:50 AM so my head is probably not quite together, so perhaps we can touch-base tomorrow?

This is obviously a very important issue within the current economic climate so would it be better contained within its own thread?

Again, many thanks,

Peter