This is my daughter Miriam's photo of one of my aquaponics ponds, and my microphoto of Funaria Hygroponica; one of the mosses I am beginning to propagate, which can remove lead from water.
It is forty six years since I first became conscious of the fundamentals and potential of aquaponics in studying the work of John and Mary Todd, who founded the New Alchemy Institute.
They were the first to hint to me as a young man that there are ways to heal the fouled waters we have created, not only in the biological sense, but in our attitude toward and relationship with the water as a fundamental living organism.
My contemporaries and I were then in the first stages of panic upon fully realizing that we- the humans- are rapidly killing the planet.
My cycle of despair at the time was very similar to what I am feeling right now, in a very personal way. At that time, I made the the decision to peel away from my involvement in the Capitalist Consumer Society, and look to the small signs of a potential healing in the form of John Todd, Woodstock Nation, and the Back-to-the-Earth movement.
After a few years of struggling as an artist and craftsman in DC, I founded a family business which began with one project: "Inua"; an exhibit at the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum with about 450 objects to mount. I was hired by a designer who abandoned the project somewhere near the beginning and left it, and the career track it implied, in my hands. My part of the project was to design and fabricate mounts for all the artifacts, and install them in the exhibit cases. It was something which I had never done, but I was a competent craftsperson and artist by that time, and the goals were clear; support the artifacts structurally while remaining invisible.
I really don't remember many details, because I was living absolutely in the moment, on the wire; hyper-conscious of the task and oblivious to almost everything else.
We did well, and were subsequently employed by NMNH to mount nearly all of the globally themed exhibits of the 1980's and onward from there: The Magnificent Voyagers, the Shanghai Museum Collection, the Japanese Ceramics exhibit, the Lewis and Clark exhibit, and many others. From that beginning, we expanded our family and our working scope to mount whole museum collections: the Jewish Heritage Museum, Mashantucket Pequot Museum, Texas State History Museum, Oklahoma Natural History Museum.
The museums were undergoing a fundamental change in the eighties and nineties. Prior to 1980, most museums had a previous artifact treatment protocol, developed by collectors, for mounting paper, books, textiles, and natural plant and animal specimens. Most other objects were simply set on glass shelves for display.
The point of all this naming is not to impress, but to get at the depth of design consciousness required to complete these projects.
This focus did not come from me; nor did it come from hiring experts. It came from finding and hiring the wildcatters- the designers, artists and crafters who live on the edges and are accustomed to engaging and solving complex and unprecedented design problems.
These outlying designers reject being absorbed by corporate profit-specific tasks, and strike out on their own to discover broader horizons than the narrow design applications designated and demanded by Industry.
It is among these fringe citizens that we will find the seeds of change. This is no surprise, it is our human story.
Here's the rub... corporate culture has developed an overarching, forced-growth mentality which profoundly affects every new growing seed- figuratively and literally. Our cultural development protocols have been usurped by the idea that accumulating capital is the first consideration.
So, in order to have any hope of achieving sustainability as a species, we must look at everything we produce through a design lens which examines the process and product for sustainability. Our big hammer methods of industrial production design are not up to this task.
This is not a task that can be done quickly enough to allay the results of our long term trashing of the earth. However, we have no choice but to take up the challenges on the ground; in the Community.
Sustainable development will occur slowly and organically, over a period of years as the degeneration and rebirth of our civilization occurs.
Ha! The problem with this approach is that in order to innovate, you must become an outlaw. The way to innovation has been mined with many traps, laws, codes, and barriers to keep the means of production in the hands of Capitalist corporations.
"The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it." Karl Marx
This statement is relevant in our quest for sustainability because itis the means of production which is poisoning our planet simply for the sake of enriching a few with no regard for the common weal.
However, there is nothing beneficial in seizing the means of production. Industrial mass production is too far advanced and too tangled in profit driven design to be of any use in healing our planet. It is our very demand for complexity which is driving our dissolution as a species.
Ironically, it is not the complexity of our systems which betrays us; it is the pressure for fast expansion on behalf of Industry.
Much of what we need can be accomplished by slowing down.
Please think about how absurd a 3% annual expansion is in the face of a shrinking resource base and a case of global constipation.
The task of unwinding oneself from dependence on the consumer economy is extremely complex, and may take the rest of our lives.
We must reinvent ourselves and our way of life as part of the global ecosystem. We have failed miserably as masters of the universe; and must replace our hubris with humility in the face of the creator of this magnificent Eden we have been given.
At this moment in history, we have the means to learn and share what needs to be done to survive. Although thwarted by misuse, our science and technology give us a window into how the natural world works, and thus a way back to the Garden.
We cannot stop the encroachment of industry, but in the face of increasing pressure from public reaction to biological chaos, their methodology will change.
In the meantime.....
There are some hopeful exploratory trends going on in the back-to-the-earth movement and the small farm and homestead communities which I am following.
Our intention here at Folly farm is to re-purpose our extensive shops, resources, and technical abilities to engender development of these trends for the benefit of our Community.
Next: Climate change and small scale farming
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