T.e & permaculture

The current state of global events is exerting immense pressure on society at every level, bringing the concepts of self-sufficiency and communal lifestyles to the forefront as viable solutions to mitigate damage and avoid potential risks such as food, water, and energy scarcity. For some, these ideas represent a more sustainable, low-impact lifestyle. Permaculture design is a key tool in enhancing self-sufficiency. Unlike the industrial approach to production, which relies heavily on specialization and market pressures, a shift towards self-sufficiency within a permaculture framework involves managing more complex dynamics. This complexity makes community living attractive, as it allows for the management of diverse activities without the constraints of cost-efficiency driven by external markets and monetary exchange.

While community lifestyles can be appealing and beneficial for many, they also come with limitations and challenges. One key value of living in a broader society, often absent in community life, is the freedom to engage in transactional relationships with strangers, maintain anonymity, and avoid the roles, behaviors, beliefs, and identities necessary for community transactions.

Organization is fundamental for both community self-sufficiency and industrial free-market societies. With the advent of digital tools, decentralized finance, and a new paradigm of knowledge, we now have the opportunity to blend the best aspects of both community and social lifestyles, enhancing each. The key lies in identifying organizational value and making it liquid, enabling nomadism and easy access to or exit from various community configurations.

Permaculture methodologies offer an extraordinary set of tools to organize human settlements in the most efficient and ecological ways. The principles of permaculture are rooted in "whole systems thinking," applied under ethical principles of caring for the earth and people, distributing surplus, and setting limits on consumption and reproduction, moving away from reductionist and industrialist worldviews.

Some examples of these principles, as outlined by David Holmgren (2001), include:

• Observe and interact

• Catch and store energy

• Obtain a yield

• Apply self-regulation and accept feedback

• Use and value renewable resources and services

• Produce no waste

• Design from patterns to details

• Integrate rather than segregate

• Use small and slow solutions

• Use and value diversity

• Use edges and value the marginal

• Use and respond to change creatively

Generally, the idea of sustainability in this context is based on the archetype of "land" and "nature," focusing on sedentary lifestyles for the reasons mentioned.

From a theoretical perspective, the challenge lies in extending the scope of permaculture design beyond the "land archetype" and "nature" boxes, integrating the new "digital land" with its nomadic possibilities. This approach allows us to design from a global perspective without the friction of defining what is "natural" versus "artificial."

A common idea within the permaculture movement is to "mimic or copy nature" and "observe and learn from nature." However, this "nature" relies on models, theories, and concepts—representations of the "real." What new design possibilities emerge if we step out of the representation paradigm into one where nature and the world are seen as symbolic flows? Sustainability could then be viewed as degrees of incarnation within the nature of a flow. Breaking the separation between humanity and nature, which feeds the perception of humanity as a plague destroying nature and consuming its resources, could be beneficial.

Considering how we build a world from transactions and how transactions create and associate players and objects, everything becomes a flow, eliminating the need to believe in natural laws framing our "freedom." Given the current state of institutional science and governance, any model or theory can become a tool for tyranny, as we are witnessing.

Let's continue exploring the possibilities of enhancing self-sufficiency, community, and social lifestyles. Let's bring permaculture design to global levels, leveraging tokenization to code value beyond the limits of monetary metrics.