The permaculture's whole principle of having to work with nature, rather than fight against it, is not just an ethical restraint. It's also about realizing you're not the one in control. Nature is not only a nurturer but also a great destroyer.

If you give up on trying to change larger structures and just go off on what some would say is a personal indulgence or being a survivalist, it can be seen as incredibly negative or pessimistic. But the other way to think of it is this: through manifesting the way we live and acting as if it's normal, you're defending yourself against depression and dysfunction, but you're also providing a model that others can copy. And that is absolutely about bringing large-scale change.

Traditional agriculture was labour intensive, industrial agriculture is energy intensive, and permaculture-designed systems are information and design intensive.

It is not the project but the living process that will be the measure of our actions.

If you understand it from an ecological or sustainability perspective, agriculture is the primary way we meet most of our needs, and it's the greatest form of human intervention on our environment. It has intimately shaped our culture as powerfully as industrial modernity, but for ten thousand years rather than two hundred.

Some ideas need to be continually reinvented and rediscovered, particularly an idea like the omnipotence of humans. It takes a long time to give up.

I thought if something was a good idea, we should be able to apply it to ourselves as guinea pigs and do something with it, rather than just tell other people what they should do.