Living Permaculture | Jan Spencer

0:00The Living Permaculture Public Affairs Program is brought to you by Kate and Kate. Public Access Radio that connects community members to one another and to the world. Please support our community radio station today. If you enjoy living permaculture and public radio that is for the people and by the people, please visit kdnk.org and click on the red donate button or call 970-963-0139 to donate today. Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to Living Permaculture on KDNK. I'm Vanessa Harmony of Colorado Edible Forest, Nursery and Consulting in Glenwood Springs, joined by my co-host Joroma Suntowski of Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute or Crimpey for short, a nonprofit devoted to permaculture design, research, demonstration and education in basalt, Colorado. Today's guest

1:06is someone trying to light the pathway to a present and future that is sustainable, just, equitable and socially and spiritually uplifting. Jan Spencer is an author, artist, educator, headcaster, urban homesteader, permaculturist and counter-culturist. Jan has encompassed his bodies of work in two websites, suburban permaculture.org and a primer for paradigm shift.org. By the way, if you're like me, you might not have heard primer pronounced as primer, but it turns out historically primer was the pronunciation used to refer to an introductory book on a subject, whereas primer was the pronunciation used to refer to a pretreatment. By the late 1800s, some people were using primer or primer to refer to both, and since that time there have been dual pronunciations regionally. So in Jan's a primer for paradigm shift, he discusses the following aspects of paradigm shift. Positive human capacity, harness our greatest renewable resource,

2:13reduce ecological footprints, fit within natural boundaries, prioritize time and money to pay for the paradigm shift, be the change, no permission or legislation needed, widen the audience, identify and ally with organizations already working to create a better world, build civic culture, engage in our communities, paradigm shift economics, an economy that does not externalize its costs, is equitable and serves society. Permaculture as core principles and values, and the wisdom of the world's great spiritual traditions that transcend history, culture and geography. Jan believes the greatest breakthrough needed for a healthy and sustainable future is our own consciousness in the here and now, and we're excited to be discussing that with him today. Jan, welcome to the program. Thank you Vanessa and Jerome. Wonderful description. Sign me up.

3:14I want to be there. You are there. Well Jan, is there a place anywhere in the world or anywhere in history, the paradigm you envision for the world has manifested? There's bits and pieces of what you described all over the place, but looking out my window, my own flutter acres of both and property here in Eugene. This is a tiny example of paradigm shift. I know of many, many others on my website, you mentioned a primer for paradigm shift.org. Most of the website describes real life examples of paradigm shift in the early going that was there back to many of these ideals and values and visions that you mentioned in the intro. I know of many, many

4:16examples that people and projects that are engaged exactly in what you're describing here in Oregon and in my own neighborhood, many places all over the country, other places all over the world too. Yeah, I just spent three months traveling in Europe and that was what I was turning over every rock to see where I could find these paradigms shifts. I visited eco villages, backyard gardens, universities and saw a lot of this stuff going on. This is my third trip and this one's a three month seven country trip and I flew, took buses and trains and I did workshops and presentations and consulting, visited Finland and then they linked me to Latvia and Estonia then I went to

5:16Poland and Finland and Slovenia and Madera and Wales. Yeah, it was amazing. My guess is that a lot of these places that you visited in Europe, I would consider probably a lot of those those efforts to fit into the realm of kind of early paradigm shift in my in my thinking. Well, a lot of them didn't give it up, you know, like in some of these countries they're hanging on to what they what they always did and they're not letting it go like we did and we don't have to reinvent it. Now, like at least in Finland and Latvia and Estonia, they they have a social network. There's a book called The Nordic Theory of Everything and it's where they have free everything. So they already have 50% of what, you know, the paradigm shift would actually give you

6:17and that's all government stuff. It's free healthcare, free university, free maternity leave, free everything basically on all these countries and and so we don't have any of that. We've stripped all of that and privatized all of that and bankrupted people because we're trying to, you know, because of disaster capitalism. So, you know, they're starting out, you know, light years ahead of where we're at and they're continuing to look for look for alternatives, you know. And, you know, there's more eco villages there. There's more people sharing things. There's more people getting along and doing things together. That's in their culture and it's not in ours. So we have a long ways to go and in our valley here, we're very fortunate to, in the last, you know, 25 years to go from home with no farms, no small farms to maybe 20, 20 farms that are

7:19operating because of open space land by the county was leased at very little cost to farmers and we also have a two forks club that gives a interest free loans to these farmers and so, you know, this is our example of a paradigm shift and you know, you won't find this any other, almost any other valley in the world of where all this free land is giving to farmers and so it is happening. It's not just like, you know, a hunter down breaker that you're going to turn on and here's a whole new world. It's going to happen sort of from the bottom up and it's going to happen in different ways, I think, in different places. That's a, that's an example of what you're describing there, Jerome, is a very high priority in value in the realm of paradigm shifts and that is making creative and smart use of what we have available and you know, there are many

8:19allies, a paradigm shift and they don't even know it and when people who are already doing smart actions like what you're describing in your valley, what we consider them, wow, thanks for being a part of this huge movement towards a more sustainable, a more uplifted future. There are already many, many entities that are working on this and when they find out that they're part of a much larger movement in human history that can be extremely empowering for people to know, wow, I'm a part of this much larger direction towards the next chapter in human history because we need to leave the consumer culture and the society based on consumption. It's run as close and it's time to move on. Well, Jan, you observed that consumer culture is brilliant at

9:19turning reasonable needs into oversized wants and that advertising and consumer culture diminish our sense of personal accountability for what we buy and consume. How can we address the economic malpractice of capitalism as you put it? Yeah, very good question. One of the first answers I would respond to in that is how do we value our own time and money? An example that I like to hear from my own experience on my own suburban property, I have a very simple nothing special quarter acres suburban property here in Eugene, Oregon. When I bought this place 25 years ago, the intention from the start was to do a permaculture makeover that was the plan, reduce my ecological footprint, produce more basics here on site like food, energy, water, aesthetics. I'm from very modest economic means and what I had to do at the beginning and it

10:28wasn't the typical choice, but a lot of people have the opportunity to choose what they're going to do with their time and money. For me, the way that I deal translated into the real world is that instead of a kitchenery model or a new maybe midsize car instead of those types of purchases that I chose to do with edible landscape, take out my driveway, rainwater collection system, passive solar, turning the south side patio into a passive solar space, turning the garage into a living space. What I've done here on my property is I invested my own time and resources into paradigm shift and a lot of people have that option in their own lives if it just occurs to them that we don't need to continue making the same problems that of course

11:33the consumer culture celebrates excess, the consumer culture celebrates vanity and those other choices to be made and the more people who make these choices you mentioned be the change, the more people who are the change and visibly we can't be shy about doing this then this provides more people with the ideas of wow actually there are other choices for how we manage our own lives and we can invest our time and money in paradigm shift instead of the consumer culture. Well you say when we prioritize our time and money for paradigm shift we shift our own identity from consumer to citizen can you elaborate on that? Sure, how can we focus our own energy with our own time and money in paradigm shift? We all have choices to make and the more examples

12:44like Jerome is talking about what you saw in Europe, the more examples of paradigm shift in action, the more relationships we can build. You mentioned also civic culture that's how we prioritize our time and money instead of maybe going through to the concert or the the top culture event we join our neighborhood association and we make our neighborhoods better places to live. I can criticize the system for a long time and there is critique in the primer that the fact is that our afternoon excess vein system of economics does provide us with an enormous number of assets and technology and communications and knows how to create alternatives

13:47to that system. Zoom, the telephone, the internet, these are wonderful resources to use on the half of paradigm shift. We have lots from this culture that is mistaken in many ways. It can be used in positive ways as well. The radio you have a low power community non-commercial radio station where you live. There's hundreds more in the United States. These are very valuable resources for reaching out to the wider world to say, hey, we have ideas that you might be interested in for moving towards sustainability and an uplifted society. Yeah, and it's funny that I think we've been I've been doing this podcast maybe for 25 years in the last couple of years that Vanessa's signed on as my co-host does all the heavy lifting here but maybe I guess yeah it's a great resource

14:54but going back to my trip to Europe I think you know they have so much culture that they have preserved. Just every country you know if they build something they build it completely different than we build it. You know like Warsaw and Dresden are just in beautiful cities and they work they you know they have roundabouts and they have you know light rail and it's just an amazing difference and then when you go on the countryside they preserve all of the old traditional buildings and castles and it's magical to travel in Europe. And part of the reason Jerome is because they invest more in public places more in cultural resources than what happens. There's so much

15:56privatized and that's one of the most difficult challenges we have for paradigm shift is for people to recognize we basically have been living in a social engineering project or entire lives with a consumer culture that tells us that the reason for getting up in the morning and going to work is so you can buy more stuff and that type of attitude exists in Europe too but it's not as deeply ingrained as it is here. You mentioned these places almost all of those cities in Europe have car-free places where people can enjoy the plaza, the piazza, squares and meet and connect with other people on my website a primordial paradigm. There's a photo

16:56gallery of places in Europe that some of them you probably want to do. I bike around Warsaw Poland and there's some beautiful places where you don't have to mess with cars and that's a big difference between the United States and Europe as they more invest in public amenities just as we described earlier. I have a big interest in urban land use and one trip I did to Europe a few years ago was specifically to visit not only Copenhagen and Amsterdam but other places that are less known like Hochen, the very bottom neighborhood in Freiburg, Germany, Barcelona. There are so many wonderful examples and they have a long way to go to Europe. It's not the unfinished product of paradigm shift but to see how they are reclaiming space for people.

18:01I was walking in in Barcelona with some friends and we were exploring this land use a new approach called Cypher blocks and we came upon a nice little park where kids were kicking a soccer ball. This is all paved that where people on benches go and treat people hanging out with their friends. A beautiful location it used to be an automobile intersection it used to be crowded with cars and the noise and the exhaust. Now it's a public park they're in Barcelona by way of super blocks and other cities have their examples too. Piers is well known as a city that's trying to repair the damage of years and years of automobiles as well. It's just a joy as you experience Jerome to see that a more public spirit when budgets

19:05go into what's good for people and everybody can enjoy and they can go out and mix and mingle and that's just something positive about being engaged and being in a place nificetractive and the aesthetic as well. We really need to learn a lot of that here in this country. If we in the United States wanted to try to pursue that model what unexpected allies would we possibly utilize? Yeah an example I think that's wonderful and this is in the realm as you describe in your introduction taking these ideas out to a wider audience. We have more allies and assets than we really realize and some of those allies and assets as I mentioned may not even realize it but an entity that I would love to see gain a bit of a jump in consciousness would be

20:13the American Association of Retire Persons the AARP. They have 35 million members myself included in the AARP and its publication on this website. We'll explain lots of issues. These are not only issues for all the people. These are issues of importance to everybody. The AARP consistently recommends here's the kind of lifestyle here's the kind of future choices that will increase the likelihood that you live a long and healthy life. Of course they're talking about foods vegetables they're talking about exercise they're talking about making smart choices to people's time and money. The AARP also is a big champion of rock and roll neighborhoods that's a new organism

21:14term. This is an ideal this kind of like a a big new story here in the United States where as Jerome knows this is this is just the way much of the world is already organized when you don't need to have a car to go by or with a thread or something like that. But the AARP advocates urban redesign improved public transportation. That's already good for the AARP but what if the AARP became a little bit more a little bit deeper into messages to the membership on the website and in their new letters and identified our economic system capitalism and the consumer culture is actually being kind of the source of all these problems in the first place that would have an enormous amount of educational values to their membership. And then

22:18if the AARP did know to describe the real life examples of taking existing resources existing assets and doing something smart with it by reducing ecological footprints for building civic culture. The more these ideas are out in the public realm, the more opportunity there is for their people to see those ideas and resonate with them and do something about it. And the AARP the Sierra Club, the League of Women's Studies, Occupy, Wall Street, all of these entities essentially are on the same team and they could be working much more effectively with each other to get these kinds of ideas out to the wider world. Yeah another one that comes to mind is the veterans. I'm a veteran and you know I think there's been several you know efforts to get new ideas into veteran association. We have Paul Anderson did a whole series of

23:28huts for vets taking vets out to the ski huts, the cross-country ski huts and doing sort of therapy there through you know being out in the wilderness. That's one a good example but I think there you know that organization would be open to some alternatives like you mentioned a bunch of them and I think just you know planning the seeds and all of the stuff is pretty obvious and it doesn't require a lot of capital investment. Jan do you have any closing words of reflection or inspiration you'd like to share with our listeners? No I've enjoyed the conversation. We've touched on a great deal of good positive information. I think an important

24:29item to keep in mind is just that we all have awesome potentials in our own lives to be part of creating something that the humans themselves and people humans are capable of. Also there's all over the place and heroes don't need to be a mother, Clarissa or an MLK. There can be heroes in the neighborhood and if we have more time I could certainly describe a few likes here in my own neighborhood but the opportunity we have all kinds of allies and assets for making these changes we have allies and assets that don't even identify with paradigm shift but as I mentioned if people can be engaged in a positive way and come to learn that there's a huge horizontal movement for paradigm shifts just ready to discover itself then that is an absolute reality

25:32and it's up to people who want to make best use of their own time and money to help bring that reality closer to really live in our families and streets and neighborhoods. We have awesome potentials. Thank you. Well if any of our listeners are interested in learning more about and connecting with Jan Spencer they can visit his two websites suburban permaculture.org and a primer for paradigm shift.org. There you'll find links to Jan's articles, YouTube videos, posters, artwork and podcasts. Jan Spencer thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule countering culture and embodying a model for the present and future to join us today. Oh thank you Vanessa and thank you Jerome. Thank you. And thank you also to our listeners for joining us today. I'm your host Vanessa Harmony of Colorado Edible Forest joined by my co-host Jerome Asintavski of Center Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute. You can find my contact

26:34information at coloradoedibleforest.com and Jerome's contact information at crmpi.org. And we're looking for some spring volunteers to do some work in the greenhouse and in the nursery. So if you want to get a hold of us and come up and volunteer on Saturday or any day 9704563480 or Jerome at crmpi.org. Toon in next month on KDNK on the third Monday of the month at 4pm for another episode of Living Permaculture we'll talk to you then. The Living Permaculture Public Affairs program is brought to you by KDNK Public Access Radio that connects community members to one another and to the world. Please support our community radio station today. If you enjoy Living Permaculture and public radio that is for the people and by the people please visit kdnk.org and click on the red donate button or call 970963-0139 to donate today. Thank you.