1. About Design
Full recording available to
What is Design? & Can we Re-Design a whole Society?
Permaculture is a holistic science based in design & that is not something easy to understand in a society where we are taught (mostly) to follow recipes & copy things, or consume instead of truly create & think for our selves.
In this class we explore why learning to design, from first principles (which we always question) is so vitally important, & we look at what design is all about & how it can be applied at every scale.
Systems & Sub-Systems
In this section we start looking in more detail at systems design - or rather, what we know of how it works.
We have deliberately chosen a provocative big-picture question (can we re-design a whole society?), because it is from that point of view that some important system dynamics become easier to see.
All systems self-regulate to some extent: what we can do as designers is spot what the self-regulation mechanisms are doing & why, if we hope to re-design these (& not just fight agains the natural tendencies of the sub-systems).
Often, sub-systems self-regulate in apparently strange & unforeseen directions.
See Fascist Ecology, for a detailed description about how fascist ideology thrived on a base of a growing interest in 'back to nature' values, ecological & spiritual interest ... amongst what became the Hitler Youth
Some will hear, but not listen.
Some will hear, but not understand.
And some will understand, but not act
Video: On being wrong
TED talk by Kathryn Schulz
http://www.ted.com Most of us will do anything to avoid being wrong. But what if we're wrong about that? "Wrongologist" Kathryn Schulz makes a compelling case for not just admitting but embracing our fallibility.
Video: Systems & Subsystems 001
NASA Connect segment explaing basic facts about systems and subsystems. The video also introduces the study of Earth System Science.
(uploaded in August 2009 it introduces "the new science of Earth Systems" .. hmm... they haven't heard of permaculture then..)
Video: Earth System Science
NASA Connect segment explaining Earth System Science. The video also explores how modern technology studies the many different areas of Earth System Science.