Permaculture (and) Religion Chris Marsh This article is a contribution to the often contentious discussion about whether or not religion (and/or spirituality, metaphysics, mysticism, god(s) or goddess(es) and associated writings, rituals and images) is/are – or should be – part of permaculture. My own position, during twenty years of being interested in permaculture as a movement for radical world change, has tended to be that attention being given to all this spirituality stuff does more harm than good. 1 I now think there may be a case for seeing permaculture as religious, even as a religion, in the original sense of a shared understanding that binds a community together. The religiousness of permaculture comes with its ethical principles: ‘Care for the earth; Care for people; Set limits to consumption and reproduction, and redistribute surplus’. 2 Caring for people means being sensitive to their needs and desires, including their faith in god and receptivity to religious ideas. 3 Hence we should respect or at least tolerate all the various kinds of subjective beliefs people hold dear, and perhaps look for some core belief at the heart of all those. In his influential book Permaculture: Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability, David Holmgren, co-founder of permaculture, examines the ‘spiritual dimensions’ of permaculture early on in his chapter on the ethics. He writes that ‘beliefs about a higher purpose in nature’ have been an ‘aspect of sustainable cultures’ of the past which we ignore ‘at our peril’. Holmgren may have been showing respect for people who feel this way, but he also mentions his own experience, following his ‘atheist upbringing’, of being gradually, through permaculture, ‘drawn towards some sort of spiritual awareness and perspective’. 4 When I was considering writing something about ‘permaculture and spirituality’, I searched the internet and found a discussion on this topic initiated two years ago by Craig Mackintosh of the Australian Permaculture Research Institute, which provoked hundreds of comments, generally agreeing with his view that the airing of personal spiritual beliefs – some used phrases like ‘hippy 1 Chris Marsh, ‘Honouring the Chicken’, http://www.des4rev.org.uk/chickens.htm [accessed 15/05/14], where I express a similar position to Graham Strouts, in ‘Does Spirituality have a place in Permaculture?’, http://skepteco.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/does-the-spiritual-have-a-place-in-permaculture/ [accessed 15/5/14]. 2 David Holmgren, Permaculture: Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability (Hepburn, Victoria, Australia: Holmgren Design Services, 2002), p. 1. 3 Jessie Marcham sees God is ‘a core part of our lives’ and argues that in the permaculture movement ‘it could be helpful to make our discussion of God a little more explicit’. (Jessie Marcham, ‘What can permaculture say to god?’, https://www.permaculture.org.uk/knowledge-base/article/what-can-permaculture-say-god ) The sense that god exists, and receptivity to religious ideas, is recognised by cognitive science as a natural feature of human psychology. (Graham Lawton, ‘Losing Our Religion’, New Scientist, 3 May 2014, 30-5.) 4 Holmgren, pp. 2-3. 1