3DN Living in Place
Living in Place
- The place that I live is short grass prairie. A place is the sum of the sun, and wind, and rain, and rock, and the plants and creatures that live there. Each part interacts with the other parts to make each place unique – but we classify them – and my place is classified short grass prairie. It is a place with too little water and too much fire to grow trees on its own. On its own this place climaxes with grass – disturb it and then leave it alone and it will return to grass.
- I have lived in this place some 55 years. It is home to me. The long hot clear days. The long delays between moisture. The dry mild winters. I try to observe its patterns. I try to understand how all the parts interact.
- When my family moved here in '54 there were no trees. Our acre was subdivided from a bigger farm – this place was the turkey yard. Since then we have added things – trees and flowers, lawns and gardens – some things take hold – some things die out. I work at gardening here. I have had great success with some things some years and years when the hail flattened the garden just when it was showing promise. There have been years when the voles or the squirrels seemed to eat most everything; years when it is to cold for some things; years when it is too hot for some things.
- I live in this place. I create it but in truth it creates me.
____
- This concept I am playing with – living in place – is not unlike the concept of living in the moment. It is being aware of the forces playing out around us, only we follow those forces from moment to moment. Living in the moment seems to imply that we are merely observers and not actors. To live in place requires us to act – or rather interact. We react to place as it reacts to us.
- My place supports me and I support it. We are a team – the sun, wind, rain, rock, plants, creatures and me – that makes our place unique. I know that I can enhance it and I do what I can. I know that I can diminish it and I try not to do that. I know that I am not in control – the best I have is influence – the place will be what it will.
- When I read descriptions of enlightenment – realizing oneness and releasing desire – I sometimes think it must be like living in place - to fit fully and completely within the forces playing out around and through us. But those descriptions seem to make the enlightened solely observers – living in the moment. Compared to living in place, it is a abdication of responsibility to interact – to create place as you are created by it.
____
- A prairie builds soil by maintaining a balance between grass leaf and grass root. The more leaf there is the more root is grown. Then, when the buffalo come by and eat the leaf, the grass plant sheds root, and the roots decompose, and in the spring the decomposed roots hold the moisture to support the growth of new leaf and new root. In my place we honor that process. We let the grass grow each spring as tall as the moisture will let it – and then cut it once – and let it go dormant. The grass I cut is mulch for the garden. The grass plants that go dormant will shed root that will build soil that will support more grass next spring – and my interaction enhances the capacity of this place to produce grass – like the buffalo did before me.
- Each part of this place interacts with every other part of this place. The place itself expands and contracts in the volume of life from season to season and, if I do my part, increases the opportunity for new life over the years. There was a time when our elm trees were badly infested with elm beetles – and I thought about cutting out all the elm trees – but this place adjusted and new bird species came to eat the beetles and they are no longer a problem. There was a few years without late frosts when the ash trees were severely infested with ash saw fly – but we have had late frost recently and no saw flies. Nature will balance itself – one way or another.
- I do not use poisons in my place. It is clear to me that using poisons diminishes the capacity of this place to produce life. And the more life the better. People talk about using beneficial insects instead of poisons in their garden. They think of it as if they could hire a sentry and have them stand guard. It doesn't work that way. The only way to have lady beetles is to grow aphids. The only way to have a full and healthy array of living things in a place is to welcome all life there.
____
- That transaction between plant and aphid and lady beetle is not mysterious. It makes sense to us in terms of our own place in the food web. But consider how the sum of all transactions in a food web creates this thing that we call ecosystem, or environment, or each unique place on earth. It is truly a case of the whole being more than the sum of the parts.
- We generally do not, however, carry the understandings we gain from nature into the interactions between humans. If you ever ran a business you will understand parts of this. In each economic transaction there is that same sort relationships – except is not about predator and prey. When you are trying to sell a product or service to a customer, your primary concern is not about what the business gets out of it. It is about what value you can deliver to the customer. Unless you can deliver that value you will lose the customer, and all the referrals that a happy customer might make. If you lose enough customers, then you can't pay your bills, and the economy contracts. On the other hand if you can deliver that value, you will attract more customers, possibly expand, buy more supplies and the economy expands.
- Living in place does not stop at the relationships in your garden. My place also includes other people. And other people have things and skills and needs. And this thing we call economy is the sum of the transactions between people that occur in this place – in the same way that an ecosystem is the sum of the transactions between plants and creatures in a place. We can enhance the economy by participating in it. We can diminish the economy by preventing the transfer of value. No one of us is in control but living in place means understanding that we create the economy as we are created by it.
____
- A large part of my acre is in grass – all kinds of grass – whatever grass decides to grow there. If I were to use this place to produce for the market the incentive would be to plow fence line to fence line and then plant a few high value crops. I might be able to make a profit but I would be diminishing the life process of this place. This place would no longer be able to provide nutrients, and beneficial insects, and native pollinators – all that would need to be imported.
- Instead, I let most of the acre be what it wants to be – grass. I spend nothing on it except my effort to cut it once a year and move it into my garden. In return for the welcome I give to all the plants and creatures who choose to live in this place – this place gives me all those things – nutrients, beneficial insects, native pollinators. Those things are inherent in the transactions that occur here. Each transaction is an exchange of resources and as the transactions occur and re-occur those resources accumulate in this place.
- In this place we support more plants and creatures contributing to more and more transactions that occur and reoccur. Each cycle feeds the following cycle and the builds more resources. We increase fertility over time instead of depleting fertility.
____
- So what do I mean by place? In only a very superficial sense it is this acre where I live and where I have “property rights”. Property rights give me the human authority to determine what activities will take place on this acre – whether we will allow activities that diminish life processes here – whether we will invest in enhancing life processes here. But this acre is not an island, and even if it were, the life process playing out here would still be directly connected to a much larger place.
- Think of it instead as a focal point of a set of transactions. This place that I inhabit – in which I try to be aware of all the forces playing out around and through me – is the set of transactions that I can affect and that affect me.
- We are aware that the wind blowing in over the mountains carries dust from as far as the Gobi Desert. The dust settles on the leaves of the trees here and the rain washes it into the soil – nutrient and pollutant. Where water flows it leaches nutrients/pollutants - where water stands the leached nutrients/pollutants settle out and become part of that place. In my place, we import water from the other side of the mountains, 'purify' it with chlorine and distribute it to millions of people who could not live here without that water.
- So, I think, that place is not so much that which we can locate on a map – it is this focal point I am trying to articulate. And, within any such set of focused transactions we can decide to simplify, and reduce the number of interactions or we can decide to add more and more kinds of transactions. The one approach depletes resources over time – the other approach accumulates resources over time.
____
- To be fully aware of the forces playing out around and through us includes the smallest of transactions in a place. In my place there are billions of bacteria, millions of miles of mycelia, hundreds of thousands of worms, and thousands of other kinds of tiny creatures all dedicating their lives to supporting the rest of life in this place. It is these smallest of organisms that cycle life, taking old life and making it ready to be new life, holding the resources that life creates and that support life in this place.
- It is on the base of these smallest of transactions that all of the grass and trees, fruits and vegetables, birds and mammals, and my family stand. These smallest of transactions take place in the soil, create the soil – are the soil. So I don't spend much time composting – I mulch. Instead of painstakingly building compost piles of precise mixtures of carbon and nitrogen – and periodically turning them – to produce the nutrients my fruits and vegetables need, I lay the grass I cut around my plants – and the soil organisms make those nutrients – while being soil. I feed the soil and the soil feeds the plants in this place.
- If we rob the soil of last year's leaves and grass, if we plow fence line to fence line, if we spread poisons, we reduce the number of organisms, the number of species of organisms and the number of transactions in a place. Then life itself, the ecosystem, is diminished in that place. In my place, we honor the gift of the smallest among us.
____
- I do not know of a corollary to this honoring of gifts in human economic thought. Economic thought is primarily from the point of view of the market – the interplay of supply and demand – the competition for resources. But there is this other dynamic that is neither addressed by laissez-faire nor welfare state economic beliefs. The dynamic is that when more people contribute to the pie the pie is bigger and there is more to go around. It is a false choice that the strong are entitled to their bigger share, or, must give away some of their share so the weak can survive. We all have a gift. We all benefit when more people can give of their gift and we all suffer when others are prevented from giving of their gift.
- I do not know of a corollary to this honoring of the gifts in any philosophical tradition. Jesus said that the poor will always be with us – and we interpret that - as part of God's will – that we are called to charity for those less fortunate than ourselves. And charity may prevent the worst of tragedies but does not seem to rescue people from useless meaningless lives – it does not generally facilitate the giving of one's gift.
- But this honoring of gifts – honoring the gift of the strong and powerful as well as the gift of the weak and powerless – honoring the gift of the least among us – this too makes the difference between a community experiencing economic expansion and a community in decline. This is because and economy is a set of transactions focused on a place – if there are more transactions and more kinds of transactions the economy is growing and expanding – if there are fewer transactions or fewer kinds of transactions then the economy is in decline.
- To be fully aware of the forces playing out around and through us means that we will be aware of those gifts around us that remain ungiven.
____
- In my place most of the people are relatively well off. Most people are not aware of all the forces playing out around and through them. Most people are focused on their part in the set of transactions that create this ecosystem and this economy.
- And I suppose that is how it has been since the beginning. We each start out completely dependent and learn what our community learned about how to fit – what it takes to survive. And then we focus on finding a place for ourselves and our primary concern is maintaining that transaction that allows us to survive – learning what it takes to earn enough money to be able to do what we want to do. For some people that is acquiring things, for some people it is maintaining a life style, for some people it is saving for retirement.
- Being aware of the motivation of the people, plants and creatures that create this place, how can we influence their choices toward choosing more value retained in the system and away from choosing less value retained in the system? How can we use the existing forces to not only improve the conditions here for ourselves, but also for all the other people, plants and creature that reside here?
- In this place I am working on building gardens based on recognizing contributions – where we can learn to honor the gift of the least among us.
____
- This focus on our part in the set of transactions is critical to understanding inertia in the system. Once people find a fit they tend to stay there – because it is what they know – because it is safe – because we do not know the end result if we were to try a different fit.
- And this focus on our part in the set of transactions is critical to understanding conflict in the system. Once people find a fit they will do what is necessary to preserve that fit. People will defend the transactions that allow them to survive. And if one consequence of the relevant transactions is damage to another's prospects – then we have conflict.
- To maximize our influence in a place – to move the set of transactions focused on a place in the direction of more value retained in the system – means that we will seek out the opportunity to make new connections. I do not think it requires that everyone involved is aware of all the forces playing out around and through us – only that those of us seeking new connections understand the motivations of those we would connect. An Aikido approach to living in place.
___
- Until 2004 I made my living practicing law. I was the owner with various partners over the years so I have a great deal of experience with such things as customer service, motivating employees, systems development, and generally running a business. The ideas about exchanges of value forming the structure of our world derive from that experience.
- I sold my interest in the firm in 2004 so I could write about this change in point of view – that we are not engaged in a struggle – we are engaged in a pattern of flows – that we create the pattern as it creates us. Earlier this year I started a new business – Organic Landscape Design to work at applying this understanding – to influence the way people in my locality react to the ecosystem and economy - to create more places for people, plants and creatures to fit.
- The basic idea is about changing our aesthetic for lawns. A lawn is a maintenance expense – particularly here in the arid west. My company offers a design for a no weed, no water, no till, deep mulched, drip irrigated gardening system that maximally employs nature's processes to accomplish the work thereby minimizing the material and labor inputs required. The system takes the maintenance expense and converts it to a continuous source of value.
- As this idea catches hold we will hire and educate permaculture maintenance technicians to build and maintain these landscapes. We we will have created new places for people, plants and creatures to fit. The food produced will form the basis for even more transactions – and I will have learned more about successfully living in place.
____
- It is important to me to distribute this idea – living in place – as widely as possible. Each one of us controls only a few transactions so by our selves can have only nominal impact on the ecosystem and economy in a place.
- Most people do not know that they create the place where they live. Many people think that someone else is responsible. They think the government or the big corporations or unenlightened are responsible. But the world we experience is made up of all the transactions in which we each engage and your choices have as much impact as anyone elses.
- Many think that it takes money to change things and that we must get a vote in congress or a grant for money to make changes. But the world we experience is being changed all the time – to enhance the ecosystem simply stop using poisons – or compost your garbage – or leave a wild edge to your yard. To enhance the economy change what you buy or stop buying things. Your choices create the ecosystem and economy even as you are created by them.
- Some people think that the market will solve all our problems – but we create the market through our decisions about what to buy and when – and some choices result in a depletion of resources retained in a place and some choices result in the accumulation of resources retained in a place.
- If enough people in a place understand that they create place – and begin living in place – we can create the new transactions for more people, plants and creatures to fit in our place. We can enhance our local ecosystem and our local economy in my place and your place and all over the world. And the more that we exercise our power to create place the better we will become at it.
- For that purpose I am asking you to share these ideas with all the people that you know who want the world to be better than it is now. If you know of a group that is working on some change I would be pleased to present these ideas at the next meeting. It is up to us to create the kind of world we want – no one else will do it for us.
Back to Introduction
Back to Table of Contents
