d. Opression

“Restless souls, mistics and revolutionaries,

can propose to remodel the world according to their dreams;

but evil remains,

and whilst it hides in the secret places of the heart,

utopia is only a shadow of a dream”.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

From Deep Green Resistance

People withstand oppression using three psychological methods: denial, accommodation, and consent. Anyone on the receiving end of domination learns early in life to stay in line or risk the consequences. Those consequences only have to be applied once in a while to be effective: the traumatized psyche will then police itself. In the battered women’s movement, it’s generally acknowledged that one beating a year will keep a woman down.Read more at location 1095

“Oppression is a system of interrelated barriers and forces which reduce, immobilize and mold people who belong to a certain group, and effect their subordination to another group.”Read more at location 1122

Oppression is not an attitude, it’s about systems of power. One of the harms of subordination is that it creates not only injustice, exploitation, and abuse, but also consent.Read more at location 1125

Any show of resistance is met with a continuum that starts with derision and ends in violent force. Yet resistance happens, somehow. Despite everything, people will insist on their humanity.Read more at location 1142

Stella with one of her lambs, a traditional Canary Island breed.

These Herrenian sheep are relatively rare, they give much wool & milk as well as excellent meat & of course invaluable environmental services - they are rotated on the ecovillage farm she is designing in an integrated forest gardens system with multiple animal species (chickens, ducks, guinea-pigs & sheep) designed to maximize food yields & carbon capture in soils.

Picture taken 11 Jun 13 for Karrin's article

The beautiful lamb we called Canarina because she was born on Canarias day, 30th May, daugher of Chocolatina. Me & Jose were there at her birth & I love cuddling her, she's love on legs!

a Burka made of used pill packaging, and she writes:

"yesterday Inma gave me a present of a burka as my birthday is practically now. What a most useful present. This way I never forget my pills and I can see the world through them. And so this beautiful and freer than ever, we went shopping in Tetuán street."

on their mission they comment: "in a previous comment, an anonimous harassed woman proposed that we supply solutions to harassment. I am sorry: we don´t have any. At least, to put the brakes on the agressor of the harassment. However, yes we do have some (personal) solutions for the psichological resistance in the case of harassment. The first step is to make visible what the institutions and the work colleagues don't want to see. So starts our campaign of making visible workplace harassment ... (follows a very silly video ..)

Which is exactly the conclusion I came to when I realized that the general bullying that exists in the permaculture movement is being accepted as 'normal'... and our informality makes it all the more easy for the bullies to get away with this kind of behaviour.

25 Jan 09

A lesson in bullying and group dynamics (mobbing?)

- for definition of terms see new Mobbing page

A trip to Bill and Lisa Mollison's farm (where I took a two week Practical Permaculture Certificate course ending yesterday) was very enlightening in terms of how much a leader's opressive patterns can freeze out free intelligence and creativity in a group of people - and even affect in this way some considerable chunk of intelligence of a whole movement perhaps.

I was astounded to find myself viciously bullied by Bill within a day of meeting him, simply because he disagreed with things (he imagined) I said.

This is something that has happened to me before, in much milder forms but also from anglosaxon men 'of a certain age' (over 45), who seem to over-react massively when I disagree with them on something.

Far from welcoming a lively discussion (as I very naively imagined such an 'intelligent man' would like to encourage, especially amongst his students), he very quickly tried to shut me up by repeatedly and very violently insulting me in front of all the other students and teachers (am just stupid, don´t know anything, am incapable of having fun, etc.).

No arguments, no facts offered to reason about the disagreement, just plain insults targetted at my person: bullying.

Attacking the person instead of the issue is a standard opressive ploy, and of course only 'needed' when the arguments are weak or inexistent - and only possible when there is a (socially created) power-difference between the bully person and the bullied person, eg. a teacher to a student, an older man to a younger woman, a local person to a foregner, etc.

What struck me as very interesting isn´t so much that Bill was reduced to using bully tactics (as disappointing to find out he is a bully, bullies simply exist, it is just a fact of life), but how people react (and protect) a bully.

Immediately afterwarwards a string of very well-meaning people came to talk to me privately in order to try to console me (am sorry that happened, don't take it personally, etc.), but all ended up justifying this behaviour and trying to instruct me on 'how to handle him' so this won't happen again! All different and very colourful excuses, anything but admit the that a bully had simply bullied a person (and managed to bully everyone in sight at the same time: scaring them to think for themselves).

As going home and getting my money back was not an option, I decided to stay observant and study this interesting social lab.

In particular observing my own reactions and the group dynamics throughout the course produced some very interesting insights for me.

One main feeling I had to deal with for the rest of the course was actual physical revulsion - a strong feeling of being around a rapist* when he was around (not a rapist of me in particular, just of people in general, or of the creative spark in people). It was relatively easy not to take his insults personally because they were so striking in their bigotedness: he simply re-hashed all of the sexist stereotypes in succession, knowing absolutely nothing about me he didn´t even care to give them a personal touch. It was his violence and obvious enjoyment of violence that were novel and stricking.

* Rape is not about sex, it is about abusing and humiliating another human being: the connection between everyday (considered) 'mild' psychological violence against women and pornography was suddently highlighted by the extreme violence of his verbal abuse.

So I was wondering how to write about the all-pervasive pattern of silencing (raping) women in our culture - then found that it´s been done already quite well in this brilliant and very timely article I received whilst on the course - and put up on the PD wiki:

passionatedialogue.pbwiki.com/Art20

The article is about the pattern of Genocide, but above all it is about pattern-spotting.

Colonialism (slavery) is Genocide´s nearest cousin, just as Sexism (the subjection of women) is the nearest cousin of Colonialism.

And much has been written about the similarities between the rape of women and the rape of Mother Earth (the fractal-type pattern goes on and on..).

It helps a lot in seeing the patterns when you start spotting the connections (and vice-versa)

The difference between Genocide and Colonialism is that in Colonialism the killer culture does not try to wipe out a Nation completely as it wants to keep the slaves alive and numerous enough to work for it.

Classism is a form of Colonialism: the 'working classes' are a type of slave within a colonialist culture and Racism also provides another type of slave or additional 'excuse' to extract wealth/work from whole 'other' Peoples, within and without nations.

Killer cultures only colonise 'other nations': first they have to convince their own People that the 'other' People are alien enough, don´t count as human, etc - and that is the main function of Racism, it is a construct designed to facilitate / justify Colonialism and Genocide.

This pattern of "the other" is all-pervasive, inside and outside all the patterns, the stuff they are made of: having a concept of 'other' is what creates all the fear in the first place (some of us who study this stuff suspect).

In Sexism on the other hand you want the women alive, pretty and available / usable (which includes play-worshipping a carefully selected sub-set of them: in general 'the girlier the better') but humiliated and/or unaware (silenced) enough not only to do the work for the culture AND smile, but to also decorate it, mother it and comfort, coax or bully it´s other killer agents into doing another day of killer work.

This within all cultures, all classes, all races, all ages and all historical times ... so the patterns can be - on the surface - very difficult to spot with sexism, simply because the forms vary so much: very very confusing, because DESIGNED to confuse us (which does not mean the design is entirely conscious).

It's extreemly dangerous when any of those victims speak up (or / and stop acting out their given roles).

And you can tell immediately when this happens because someone, somewhere gets REALLY mad.

So there is something particularly interesting about anger, and this was the insight for me -

anger really is a double-edged sword: it seems that anger is a sure sign that someone is either being opressed or about to opress someone*, rebel agains or perpetrate some killer tactic, be a victim or became an agent of the Killer Culture.

*As we are all called to be, sooner or later, often or rarely, in proportion to how high up on the shit-pile we happen to sit.

Yet we DON´T have to answer that call to opress, we DO have a choice.

So it is very understandable that anger is so heavily supressed (especially in anglosaxon and colonialist cultures?) - it´s a kind of control on opression (so it doesn´t 'get out of hand', and this can be achieved by institutionalizing it), but it is also a way that the opressed are kept in check: it cannot be permitted, that the downtrodden get angry - too dangerous.

The confusing thing is that the culture (our 'manners') tell us to furiously ignore all this emotion, but our very bodies keep on telling us that we can and must feel the sadness, grief, rage and yes, get angry: feeling anger is a very healthy and physical response to opression, it is just Life in you saying I WON´T TAKE ANY MORE.

Anger ALWAYS has a very good reason, somewhere, for showing up: it is a survival emotion.

It just might be difficult to dis-entangle what that reason might be, for a while (all our history is soaked in violence: the attempted genocide of your great-great-grandparents, or all the wars, brutality and injustice our ancestors had to endure ... what do you think all that would produce? Can it possibly vanish into thin air?)

Anger is always 'right' yet violence rarely is rational and opression is NEVER justifiable.

Anger, violence and opression - these are actually 3 very different things, but our culture glues them up all together (just one of the many confusions that keep us tied up in knots).

The Killer Culture is just twisted-up fear, and the pull is to get confused by or engage in the knottedness and above all to waste our time and endure endless miseries by taking it personally: your feeling shitty about yourself (being fearful that you´re somehow 'bad' or defective) is the Killer Culture's biggest weapon - and you can de-nuke that one any time: it´s in your head.

ALL of us children of the Killer Culture are also its slaves and victims - and bullying-perpetrators, whenever we are high (over-powering) enough, fearful enough AND unaware enough to let it happen: all 3 conditions have to be present for opression to happen. (The RC theory of opression explains the mechanism of opressed and opressor: how opressors get that way by being hurt themselves)

You are no exception.

Our only job is to put Consciousness and Life back in their rightful places: polish our permaculture pattern-spotting specks and STOP doing, supporting or being silent about ANY of its' multiple violences.

Am writing this because I care a great deal about those specs.

The greatest outbursts of abuse from Bill were about my questioning whether 'Permaculture Aid' to third world countries was actually still appropiate today - now that many of those 'developing countries' have had 20+ years of permaculture history (same as in the west) which - it is reasonable to assume - could have produced at least a self-replicating nucleus of native teachers (which might benefit hugely from the vast sums of money spent in travel by First World Permaculture designers, IF what we really wanted to do was to foment local permaculture development?)

I suspect this is a nerve-touching question because it is about colonalism (and Colonialism is one of the deepest wounds in our collective psyches).

Am questioning (meaning I am asking myself - and others) whether "Aid" is just the latest wave of colonialism.

The interesting pattern I believe we should explore here is that ALL waves and styles of colonialism IN THEIR OWN TIMES comprised of people who sincerely thought they were 'special' and totally believed they were 'doing good': the crusades with their swords, the christians with their bibles, the businessmen with their industry, ... what's really so very different about us with our permaculture?

The other nerve I think I might have touched on is also about Colonialism (perhaps all of them are, deep down), but more about how profoundly we hide from our 'consuming the world' addiction.

I was the only latino person in a very anglosaxon group (Australians, North Americans, a British woman and one young Chinese woman living in Australia and married to an Australian).

Although much was made of having very multi-cultural (including Spanish and Italian) food, strangely (¿?) no curiosity whatsoever was shown by anyone about my cultures (Italian and Spanish) and indeed quite the opposite happened: on occasion Bill's (often very inaccurate) statements about the Canaries* were taken as authorative and interesting and my personal experience was not asked and very much not welcomed when I tried to correct him.

* Bill is Tasmanian and lived in the Canaries for a very short time over 20yrs ago. I am Italian and have lived there for the last 10 years.

The interesting thing for me was finding myself in an anglosaxon environment after 10 years of living in a latin environment - previous to this I had spent 20 years in Britain, and in these two short weeks I experienced something I did not expect: to feel how radically different these cultures are, and how very uncomfortable I feel in the anglo culture now, mainly because of its strong undecurrents of violence.

After this extensive exploration of the patterns left by Colonialism, ironically (or perhaps very appropiately) the leaving party for the course celebrated (amongst other things) with this song which was left written up on the board:

(Woody Guthrie)

This land is your land

This land is my land

from California

to the New York Island

From the Gulf Stream Waters

to the ..

This land was made for you

and me.

Which is a nice cheerful Colonizers' Hymn

(of course very much NOT written nor sung by native americans)

But things are moving. Whilst this little nasty mix of opressive stuff was going on on a tiny farm in Tasmania, hundreds of people were exposed to this genioused analysis of the war in Gaza, the US got its first ever black President and a big bunch of very loved world-changing colleagues shared a long dialogue I enjoyed from a distance about a moving commemoration they celebrated of of Martin Luther King's birthday:

Dr. King's speech in April 1967 in Riverside Church "From Beyond

Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" is not as well known as it should

be. You can read a copy at

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html

Three quotes from that speech are:

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not

haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which

produces beggars needs restructuring."

"I am convinced that if we are to get on right side of the world

revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of

values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented"

society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers,

profit motives and property rights are considered more important than

people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are

incapable of being conquered."

And from a speech in Chicago, Illinois in August 1967:

"We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism

grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and

sacrifices. Capitalism was built on the exploitation of black slaves

and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor."

1 Dic 08

Opression is an all-encompassing pattern, and it is a fractal-kind pattern, in that it replicates itself in tiny details as in the overall, larger 'shapes'. So this below is about one small detail, but it is coherent with the above mentioned much larger picture.

This is how I think our own diploma system might be perpetuating opressive systems:

Many of our students report that it is very difficult to understand how to 'use' our diploma system. This I noticed is the same story in the UK where I first met the system we have in place, and it´s the same thing we hear now in Spain, where we have made even more effort to clarify and simplify the procedures.

Am sure that our education system's discouragement of initiative, creativity and free thinking has a great deal to do with this diffculty (the PC diploma system requires skills and attitudes that are actively discouraged by schools - ref. PD19)

What is interesting is to observe that some people do 'make it' through (whatever filters are in place), but (I observe) they are not necessarily the people we know to be best designers or more active in permaculture design, just the more confident types.

As the conventional educatios system 'filters' for exam ability (and not just knowledge or skill in the subjects examined - to what proportion of each we don´t know), it is reasonable to think that our diploma system filters for more than permaculture design ability too.

In february 2009 there are 40 diploma-holders on the PC Association's web list and 8 of those are women (20%). In Spain I believe there are 5 known diploma-holders (who got their diploma via the old spanish system, which is via the UK Association) and 1 of those is a woman (20% again).

And I observe (from direct experience of our courses, and through talking with other teachers) that there is more that 50% intake of women students on PC courses, in any country, even despite the vast majority of those being taught by men or even teams of men / mostly male teachers.

In the standard education system there is no such great gap for women in attaining higher qualifications, so how can we explain this disparity?

In way the diploma system works at the moment, it seems that it takes much self-confidence & knowledge of the workings of the PC movement and / or a great deal of support from a mentor / teacher to even enter into this 'Diploma Process'.

And I would argue that the strange figures are explained by considering that this confidence (+mentoring which also comes with this confidence) is something white men are a lot more likely to have than anyone else, particularly as the 'authorities' in place (the vast majority of the teachers and also the famous founders) in this system are also male and white. Permaculture was also started in the australian white culture, which is regarded as particularly sexist (from outside Australia), and this might further push those figures.

I know it´s controversial, but the facts to date simply seem to testify to that, and I´ve yet to hear of more likely explanations for this strange effect of perpetuation of privilege than the RC Theory on Opression.

Not just in what diplomas are awarded (certainly here in Spain I´ve overwhelmingly heard of this type of men being awarded diplomas, so far) ... but also in how "high-level permaculture" is very much still thought of and presented in terms of 'experts' who are overwhelmingly male, white and from First World countries.

Coincidence?

Just in the last year for eg. I´ve seen advertised various permaculture courses each taught by a team of 'experts' - and not a woman amongst them.

(Where a team of women teaching anything would raise many eyebrows and surely be labelled a 'women's course' .. but of course nobody dared even think "here is man's course" or "where are the women?" - at least not loudly.)

One of those courses was here in Spain where I know there are women with more permaculture know-how and teaching skill than some of the names listed in the teachers list.

Certainly the overwhelmingly white, male and first-world image of 'permaculture experts' is very worrying (given we're supposedly about re-designing society) - even if there are very few (and very highlighted) exceptions that disorientate a little from the actual numbers.