Well, for me it changed a lot.

I don't think living in a isolated rural setting is necessarily sustainable. I have a much greater respect for the importance of personal (not burning out) and community (getting along well) sustainability.

What do others think?

Cheers

Tim

I guess a lot of sustainability idealism has been broken down for me over the course of the year.  There really is a difference between looking at the map which describes a certain way of life, and then actually using that map to get to a destination which is in reality shifting constantly with the rest of the landscape anyway.

The key things I've learnt are the necessity to be adaptable, and the importance of sharing.

Through David Holmgren's writings I've really come to see that sustainability is in essence making the ethical choices which are appropriate to the current context.  What this means is that a wise use of energy resources will look very different now to what it may in 100 years time.  Right now there is still a huge amount of dense energy available through the joys of fossil fuels.  It may make sense to invest some of this in technologies such as the solar industry if the energy returned in doing this is actually greater than that needed to make the systems.  2107 may see my children and grandchildren using a more truly renewable resource such as wood to bring light and heat into their homes.

When I started here I thought that what made life here more sustainable were features such as:-harvesting of water onsite, using solar panels to capture energy, growing a large proportion of our own food and living in a passive solar designed house. What I can't get past now is that even if everyone applied all of these practices to their current way of life, this Western society is still gonna crash.  Although the features I've just listed are important, what makes the real impact here is the invisible structure around which the place is built.  Bringing awareness to the way we use a refrigerator, sharing a kitchen between up to 20 people and having systems in place to make it work...this is where the real magic lies.  If I sit down at any point and actually allow myself to be marketed to, I get the impression that I have to have one of everything, as does everyone in my family, and my neighbours.  I really believe we're gonna have to share more in order to adapt to energy descent.  

Thanks for sharing your time with me.

Rob.

well sustainabitily is great in the rural setting the citys also neeed lots of change  &education on the way forward to sustainablity  theres alot goin on in the city  alot of  food coops extra  i personaly like a rural setting in apermaculture design  & think that the ownly issue i have is transpost  & petrol  costs there needs to be more focus on alternitive transports

tell me about it Pete, lucky we're such compitent hitchers and the community are sympathetic drivers, otherwise we'd be stuffed!

I don't realy think I ever thought about sustainability much before comming here, it's not realy why I came to be interested in Permaculture, I just liked the pictures in "the bible", and a few other things of course. I do feel like what the word encompasses has changed for me though.  I now know that there can be personal and social aspects, and understand that they are equaly important as those other sustainable ideas that you can "poke with a stick". This was the suprise for me, and it really resonated after spending much of my life  on the edge of the flame, or actually in it, and it is this personal aspect which I had been putting efforts towards improving before I came here. Everything fell into this perfect picture that could be understood and talked about  under the same heading, sustainability.

Like Sido, I don't think I had a really clear understanding of what sutainability was before coming to the Permaforest Trust.  I think early on in my reading about peak oil and climate change I realised that technologies such as solar and wind power, or hybrid cars, though good temporary solutions and a step in the right direction, would not be truly sutainable in the long run.  What I did have a sense of is that sustainability must involve a return to nature, a return to using low embodied energy products and resources that are available in nature.  I think that's one of the reasons I'm so interested in natural building methods.

Sustainability means so much more to me now, even after spending only 3 months at the Permaforest Trust.  True sustainable culture must happen on levels beyond simply the physical strategies of permaculture or green technologies.  You can have a community that produces all its own food, energy, harvest all it's water and material requirements, but without healthy interpersonal relationships with clear boundaries and communication the community will never be truly sustainable.  Even further, the interpersonal relationships will never be truly sustainable without each member promoting health and sustainability within themselves.  Each person needs a balance of work, rest, play, communal time and solo time, acknowledging emotions, dealing with negative thought patterns, etc, etc, etc. 

Here at the Trust we discuss these aspects as the I, We and It spaces.  I'm constantly realising through my experiences here that each of these areas needs to function within themselves and also be integrated into a healthy/functional whole in order for true sustainability to be possible. 

Steph

Previously sido bilson wrote:

tell me about it Pete, lucky we're such compitent hitchers and the community are sympathetic drivers, otherwise we'd be stuffed!

I don't realy think I ever thought about sustainability much before comming here, it's not realy why I came to be interested in Permaculture, I just liked the pictures in "the bible", and a few other things of course. I do feel like what the word encompasses has changed for me though.  I now know that there can be personal and social aspects, and understand that they are equaly important as those other sustainable ideas that you can "poke with a stick". This was the suprise for me, and it really resonated after spending much of my life  on the edge of the flame, or actually in it, and it is this personal aspect which I had been putting efforts towards improving before I came here. Everything fell into this perfect picture that could be understood and talked about  under the same heading, sustainability.

well sido thats a point  it would be great to make out own biodeisil  , start up car poolin in ya local  area   horse ride to nimbin take a while but get used of it   aa ive traveled with the krisnas on bullocks it look some time but we got there  and ya can carry a heavy load  push bicks would be grat ridin to the school bus stopp in the morning extra