Yesterday, I emailed a friend that I had discovered a FREE permaculture course on line. I knew he’d be interested, since young people in his part of Indiana have suddenly turned on to the idea of permaculture and want to do something, NOW! I counseled him to have them first take a Permaculture Design Course, which tends, unfortunately, to be expensive.

Then, of course, synchronicity flew in: the very next day I see a free on-line course on fb.

www.permaculturedesigntraining.com

Then, synchronicity intervened again! — when he called last night to say that he had just returned from the first meeting of their local permaculture group, and learned that the kids have already discovered this course, and decided they needed to do it first!

Notice how surface events that signal the new direction pop up next to each other in time and space much more quickly now, even though the deep change movement is still slow and deep and invisible.

Just now I returned to that free course url and discovered that it’s taught principally by a man named Larry Korn, called, on this website, “America’s leading permacultural authority.” Well, that kind of stuck in my craw. Is this guy just a self-promoting egotist, full of hot air?

Checking further, I discovered that Korn studied permaculture from Bill Mollison himself (the self-described founder of permaculture) way back in 1983, and that even before that, in the ’70s Korn had worked with Masanobu Fukuoka in Japan, even translating his book, One Straw Revolution.

BTW: One could argue that Fukuoka discovered permaculture independent of Mollison. And one could argue that the Austrian mountainside farmer, Sepp Holzer, did too. And why not? Ideas are in the air. They get picked up by those who are most sensitive to the winds of our time. We call it the zeitgeist. Ultimately, nobody discovers or invents anything on their own. Since none of us are separate, how could we? Those who still suffer from egotism, and need to defend their ideational turf might as well relax! It’s all good. It’s all connected. And we are one. Not only with each other, but with the Earth and her cosmic home. Here’s Larry Korn with Matsuoka, in a famous youtube clip:

To go on a bit more with this same train of thought that none of us operates alone: It’s especially not surprising that a number of people should independently “discover” permaculture. After all, since the principles and practice of permaculture are sourced from Nature herself, I imagine this way of working with the land must have been obvious to earlier peoples, ones we would call “primitive” now. Clearly it’s time for us to return to our natural connection to the living Earth, and to learn from her.

I found a sweet little clip from a Larry Horn intro to permaculture lecture, and it’s clear to me that this man is not an egotist. Perhaps he might speak to his web designer about the label she gave to him?