FOR REASONS UNKNOWN John Shinnerer's comment diappeared. I post it following. My response appears below.

John Schinnerer

Dec 7·1 min read

ON NOVEMBER 20, 2021, a controversy erupted in the Australian permaculture network.

It would have been interesting to see what would have come of this if two unknown nobodies had been holding that sign, instead of Holmgren and Dennett.

We could for example imagine that someone saw an opportunity to expose to permaculture - by name and tagline on a banner at least - a bunch of people who normally wouldn't be exposed. Or who the subculture would passively or actively exclude.

Meanwhile the permaculture subculture responds, as usual, with dominant-culture patterns - the most obvious being taking sides, in all the predictable ways.

Supporting or denigrating Holmgren. Starting a new forum, wow, that's innovative. And on Farcebook, of all places.

We might ask why these conversations have generally been avoided, or intractable when not avoided, for 25+ years.

We might look at the patterns of attraction and recruitment among people in the subculture over 25+ years.

We might look at the persistent failure of permaculture over 30+ years to get beyond a small fringe subculture, while fundamentally parallel but differently named systems such as biomimicry get attention and money.

We might look at 25+ years of replicating a culture of apparent or alleged "leadership" by charismatics and personalities.

Just for starters at least...some design issues to ponder.

Meanwhile let's celebrate those servant leaders who have simply had their heads down doing the work in whatever ways they could move it forward, while managing their ego-systems appropriately.