Entropy, livelihood and disaster

The last couple of days has been very windy. This place has strong winds in late winter and spring. They are part of the 'farm'. I find them unsettling. Things blow away, get damaged, dry out.  Every time the wind blows I hold on, hope, and wait for the calm to clean up the mess.

The winds convey a simple lesson. We are relatively insignificant and not in control.

They also provide a demonstration of a more subtle and important message about the wisdom of acting and then letting go.

The order on the farm is artificial. In ecology it is a maxim that, without the addition of energy, a system will tend to disorder and dissipation - an ecological reinterpretation of the second law of thermodynamics.

Modern western agriculture maintains its order by inputs of energy, most of it exogenous and 'artificial'. Substances like petrochemical fuel and industrial fertilisers contain remarkable amounts of energy. In as much as they are imported, these forms are 'unnatural'.

Permaculture, by contrast, is a way of harnessing and managing natural forms of energy in the landscape using inherent characteristics of the land and its natural and managed ecology.

These sources of 'natural' energy include the sun itself and the wind it drives.

Both natural and unnatural forms of energy generally dwarf the human work that influences the farm's condition.

Permaculture is a conceptual approach to farming. It aims, among other things. to guide and modulate the capture and management of natural energy with the aim of maximising the sustainable production of things useful to humans. A finite and relatively small input applied with intelligence is intended to provide a large relative output.

Permaculture can be interpreted in a way that aligns with the cultivation of the eightfold path. A vegetarian permaculture can work towards wise livelihood - work that attempts of reduce the potential for suffering in this world.

Developing the vegetarian permaculture requires action. The ability of action to influence is observable, but limited by the relative power and complexity of the natural world.

When the sun shines, wind blows, fire burns or water flows, the intelligence in that action is revealed in the quantum and quality of the farm's outcome - but only up to a point, the point where nature overwhelms human effort.

Beyond those limits the influence of any action is uncertain. Action may provide an expected result or it may not, or something else altogether may happen. Thus the wisdom in acting but letting go.