What Are Ethics?
What better place to start than to define exactly what ethics are, then we can proceed to look at why we need them, and why they have been incorporated into the ecological design system known as Permaculture.
Ethics is one of those terms that people more-or-less know the meaning of, but can’t exactly define. In common usage, the word “ethics” is often incorrectly used interchangeable with the word “morality”, and though the two concepts are tied together, they are not the same.
So, let’s look at definitions of these two concepts to determine what they’re all about:
- Morals are principles of what is right and wrong
- Ethics are a codified or formalised system of morals of a particular person, group etc.
So, in a nutshell, Ethics can be defined as a set of formalised principles of what is right and wrong conduct.
“Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life, it is bad to damage and destroy life.
Albert Schweitzer
Why Do We Need Ethics?
Why are ethics important? Put simply, they keep people from engaging in conduct that is morally wrong, it’s as simple as that. Without ethical guidelines, an individual may do the wrong thing if they believe it will benefit them and that they can get away with it, without getting caught.
“Ethics is what you do in the dark when no one’s watching.”
Rushworth Kidder (2003), the founder of the Institute of Global Ethics
Systems of ethics can originate from various sources, such as from laws, religions, organisations, ideologies, personal values, and societal values.
The major issue that arises when discussing ethics is the question – what is morally right?
While trying to define what is right and wrong seems to defy some academics and philosophers, who tend to conclude that what is right or wrong is relative and shifts and changes with society’s values, such abstract intellectual posturing serves no purpose in the practical design system of permaculture, which deals with real-life scientifically quantifiable systems.
“Relativity applies to physics, not ethics”
Albert Einstein
There are objective absolute rights and wrongs when dealing with biological systems on a scientific level. This may be a controversial statement to make, but read on and I will explain this further.
The Ethics of Permaculture
As a basic definition, Permaculture is a holistic design system for creating sustainable human settlements and food production systems. It is a movement concerned with sustainable, environmentally sound land use and the building of stable communities, through the harmonious interrelationship of humans, plants, animals and the Earth.
By this very definition, this system necessitates that our conduct is focused on the good of the planet, Nature and the people. It cannot work otherwise.
“A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.”
Albert Schweitzer
In Permaculture, we are dealing with scientifically definable and measurable systems, namely biological ecosystems and human communities. What is beneficial or detrimental to either of these systems is not a subjective matter bound to the realms of personal opinion and conjecture. What is good or bad for living systems is objective scientific fact that can be observed, measured and the results readily reproduced, it is not idle philosophy abstracted from reality and relegated to the towers of academia.
“Any living system, when viewed scientifically, has required inputs which sustain life within that system”
Any living system, when viewed scientifically, has required inputs which sustain life within that system. A plant needs sunlight, air, water and soil to sustain it. Naturally, these inputs occur in a clean, unpolluted state. If we negatively impact these inputs in any way, we harm plant life. In the case of animal life (which biologically also includes the human species), damaging the systems that sustain life have a similar detrimental impact, but in a more complex way.
This idea can defined in terms of ethical conduct and summed up in the following definitive statement: If a person’s actions are detrimental to the inputs required to sustain life in a living system, or if the actions are directly harmful to the living system itself, that is, the organisms within it, then it’s unethical, period.
For anyone’s wondering whether eating plants and animals is also tantamount to harming life, there’s a simple answer to that tired old question. It’s a basic axiom of biology, which is the ‘life feeds off life’.
Understanding the Cycle of Life
Plant life is ecologically classified as producers because they are capable of producing their own food through the process of photosynthesis. During photosynthesis, plants utilise sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to synthesise organic compounds, primarily glucose, which serves as their energy source. This ability to convert inorganic substances into organic matter makes plants primary producers in ecosystems.
As primary producers, plants form the base of the food chain, providing energy and nutrients to other organisms in the ecosystem. Herbivores, such as insects, birds, and mammals, feed directly on plants, while carnivores and omnivores consume herbivores or other animals that, in turn, have consumed plants. This forms a trophic pyramid where energy flows from producers to consumers, supporting the entire ecosystem. Organisms that were once living are returned back into the soil by a class of organisms known as decomposers, which release the nutrients to make them available to plants once again. Therefore, plants play a fundamental role in sustaining life on Earth by capturing solar energy and converting it into organic matter, making them crucial for the functioning of ecosystems and the survival of other organisms.
This natural cycle of life, growth, peaking, decline, death and rebirth has been known throughout the ancient world, across all cultures. The early agricultural lifestyle which tied their fate of human communities to the cycle of the seasons of the year, the cultivation of plants and raising of livestock, made the humans of that time acutely aware of the process, but it has been well known and understood long before then.
Necessary and Unnecessary Cessation of Life
When discussing the natural cycles of life, it’s important to make the qualitative distinction between the cessation of life (including plant life) as a consequence of sustaining life, and the pointless, unnecessary destruction of life.
Eating a lettuce to stay alive is understandable, while irresponsibly dumping radioactive mining tailings into a river, causing untold destruction of life, is clearly completely unjustified and unethical! Would living systems be harmed if uranium mining ceased? Likely not, because no living system requires uranium as a primary input for its basic fundamental biological processes. Life existed before uranium was mined, and will continue if it were to stop. It’s essentially a peripheral human activity primarily aimed at deriving financial profit, secondarily as a means of providing materials for creating weapons of mass destruction and for energy generation, the absolute necessity both of which is questionable…
There is a stark and glaring difference between the taking of life to sustain other life, and the taking of life to support a lifestyle!
Actions, whether ethical or unethical, can also be a matter of degrees, there is a quantitative difference between what is sustainable and what is destructive folly.
A case in point is the harvesting of trees. It’s possible to sustainably harvest timber to construct a shelter. which is one of our basic human needs as a species. The key word here is sustainably – we can select what we take, where we take it from, how much we take, as well as choose to use the resources responsibly.
Conversely, we can take a more destructive approach, where forests are clear-felled for food production, or even worse, wood chips for paper and carboard manufacture. This can lead to the disruption the natural tree systems which precipitate rainfall, and the loss of groundcover vegetations may trigger soil erosion, and the rise of salinity due to deforestation. Ultimately, these actions may create conditions where there is inadequate rainfall for agriculture, rendering soil unusable or prone to erosion.
From a Permaculture perspective, ethical actions are simply those that support life, and unethical ones are ones that harm or destroy life needlessly.
Permaculture therefore starts with ethics, which form the very foundations of this design system, and all actions we undertake in Permaculture activities are strictly always in agreement with the ethics of Permaculture.
“Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life. “
Albert Schweitzer
The Three Ethical Principles of Permaculture
There are three ethical principles in Permaculture, and these are:
- Care of the Earth
- Care of People
- Return of surplus to Earth and people (also called “Fair Share”)
Let’s look at each of these ethical principles in turn to better understand their purpose.
Permaculture Ethical Principle One – Care of the Earth
The Earth is the life-support system that sustains us, it provides us with all our essential needs to stay alive – air, water, food, shelter. It’s also the only source of these essentials, as we can’t obtain them from anywhere else! Our own bodies are composed of materials derived from the Earth. We totally depend on the Earth, and all the living systems with it (which, incidentally, are all interconnected in a complicated, interdependent web of life) for our survival.
Taking care of the Earth’s systems which keep us alive can logically be perceived as ‘enlightened self-interest’, doing what is right to ensure our own survival – not polluting the air we breathe, poisoning the water we drink, and destroying the land which provides our sustenance.
The principle of “Care of the Earth” includes all living and non-living things, such as animals and plants, as well as land, water and air. Why? As science shows us through the disciplines of ecology and biology, all living and non-living systems are interconnected and interdependent. When one is affected, all are affected.
Caring for the Earth also means caring for the soil. Life is dependent in life, and the soil itself is actually is a very complex living ecosystem which supports plant life. Plant life in turn supports higher organisms and provide us with our sources of food, directly or indirectly.
Beyond food production, caring for the Earth means caring for our forests, which are the lungs of the planet, ensuring a supply of clean air. Forests are also inextricably linked into the process of rain formation and the water cycle, and therefore play a key role in ensuring our supply of fresh water. It means caring for our rivers, which are the veins of our planet, circulating the water which all life depends on.
Permaculture Ethical Principle Two – Care of People
All living things are interdependent on each other, including people in human societies. As the saying goes, “no man is an island”. Humans by their very nature are communal and social animals, much like bees and life on the planet is generally cooperative in nature.
If you doubt the veracity of this statement, then cast your mind back past the psychologically delusional industrialised society that we find ourselves in, and look into our history. Traditionally, the punishment for serious wrongdoers in ancient societies was banishment or exile, being forced out of the community to fend for oneself. This was equivalent to a death sentence, or at least a cruel, lonely and unsafe life of severe hardship.
Beyond physical interdependency, humans psychologically need community. Modern studies have shown that having a sense of community is beneficial to the mental health of an individual, and lack of community is clearly detrimental. The ancients knew that humans needed community, hence the nature of the punishment. It’s a pity that modern society forgets this fact today, and individuals self-banish themselves to an isolated and meaningless technological prison they call modern life, where they selfishly pursue their needs and often never get to know their own neighbours.
Self-sufficiency is a myth, and a harmful one too!
The principle of “Care of People” is about promoting self-reliance and responsibility towards the greater community. It is importance to point out that we are talking about self-reliance and not self-sufficiency here. As mentioned earlier, “no man is an island”, an individual cannot do everything, and it’s ridiculous to expect any one person to do so in any form of lifestyle other than the most primitive. Self-sufficiency is a myth, and a harmful one too! As Bill Mollison once stated, “I might grow food, but I don’t want to have to make my own shoes, though I can trade food I’ve grown with someone who makes shoes…”. That’s the essence of community, it’s all about sharing and supporting each other.
Self-reliance is about taking responsibility for more than one’s own future, and looking to help one’s community by sharing knowledge and experience, to skill people up so that they can provide for some of their basic needs. The essence of this is captured by the expression “give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for ever”. It’s all about a collaborative effort to bring change to one’s own life and that of others.
When people collaborate to support each other, and to meet their needs, both physical and non-physical, this creates healthy human relationships and a bond which builds stable, supportive, and emotionally healthy communities which prosper.
The ethical principle “Care of People” importantly has to begin with the person closest to us, which is ourself! It’s hard to care for others when we can’t care for ourselves, and there’s no point in caring for others while neglecting oneself. Such martyrdom is unconstructive, because if we are interested in helping others, then it is in our best interests that we are in an optimum state to be the most helpful to others. Beyond our individual selves, “Care for People” then extends to the next closest circle of people in our lives, our families, then our neighbours, our local community and then the greater community, and ultimately, all of humanity.
Permaculture Ethical Principle Three – Fair Share
This is also described as the ethical principle of “Return of surplus to Earth and people”.
No matter how we look at it, the world’s resources are definitely finite, so it follows logically that there is a finite and measurable share of resources available to each person on the planet to support them.
If all the resources produced were a metaphorical ‘pie’, and each person has their respective slice of the pie, what happens when someone wants more than their fair share, wanting more than one slice of the pie? Quite obviously, someone else misses out.
Our Western society is driven by the unsustainable economic ideology of consumer capitalism, which incessantly chants the mantra of “continuous growth”, which in effect, implies continuously increasing consumption. This is a rather quaint concept, as the idea of continuous growth in a finite system clearly defies the laws of physics, and also contravenes the laws of common sense.
It is a truly delusional and flawed ideology, as it has no basis in ecology or any other science. If anyone for even the briefest moment stops to think of how we could possibly have continuous growth, and for that matter, continuously increasing consumption, on a planet of fixed size with finite (and diminishing) resources, then the nonsensical nature of this concept is clearly evident.
All our basic needs are met by the Earth herself, and our next higher needs are met through community with each other.
What we fail to see through the hypnotic daze of non-stop shopping, wide screen televisions and a myriad of electronic consumer gadgets is that Nature keeps us alive for free, as she has since we first walked the Earth! All our basic needs are met by the Earth herself, and our next higher needs are met through community with each other.
It’s only in this 200-year-old experiment we call ‘industrialised society’ that we have become disconnected from Nature, and forgotten how to tend to our own needs through the resources provided to us freely by Nature. Admittedly, a life sustained directly by Nature is much simpler and more fuss-free, and sometimes a bit harder, though in a different way. This is probably why many people are opting to move out of the big cities, leaving the rat-race far behind them, and taking residence in the country to lead a more balanced and harmonious life.
When we live closer to Nature, we more clearly recognise and understand that Nature does indeed provides us with what we need, as long as we respect Nature and only take what we need to survive. In traditional societies, hunters knew about the need for sustainable harvests. They would only hunt what game they required to feed their tribes. They were aware that if they took too much of the game animals in a single season, they wouldn’t be able to use all the food, which would clearly be wasteful, and if hunting activities significantly reduced numbers, the animal populations wouldn’t be able to breed fast enough to restore their numbers, and the tribe would potentially face the risk of starvation at some future point in time.
As an example to demonstrate this idea, consider a village with an orchard of fruit trees. In this first scenario, the villagers collectively enjoy the plentiful fruit yield, freely harvesting what they need each day. Nature provides abundantly without cost.
Now, imagine one villager’s greed leads them to hoard all the fruit, taking more than can be used personally, and demanding personal possessions from others in exchange for fruit. This parallels the consumer capitalist model, where one individual’s self-interest disrupts fair distribution.
Both scenarios have the same quantity of resources, but differ in their distribution. The second exemplifies the imbalance created by selfishness. It underscores the importance of a fair share system and highlights the flaws in our current societal structure.
If we move past the irrational fixation on accumulating possessions, epitomized by the empty philosophy of “the one with the most toys at the end wins,” and the resulting frenzy of resource acquisition, we can take responsibility for our lifetime resource consumption. By living sustainably, we can prevent the destruction of the Earth’s vital ecosystems that support life. This mentality of exploitation is not normal, it is learned rather than inherent, and as such, it can be unlearned.
Furthermore, when we share our surplus produce, our skills, knowledge and experience, these actions build bonds between people which all works to foster a sense of stable, collaborative community.
The point of “Fair Share” principle is that if we take only our fair share, then there is enough for everybody, and there will continue to be in the future too.
Permaculture Ethics, Guiding Principles for Purposeful Living
The three ethical principles of Permaculture—Care of the Earth, Care of People, and Sharing of Surplus—promote a life-affirming system that fosters reverence for all life on the planet.
By embodying and living these principles, we ensure the continued survival of our species, maintain the health of the planet, and uphold a profound respect for life itself.
Consider the impact of lacking sound ethical principles: in a world driven by financial incentives where ethics are sidelined, the consequences are both predictable and unavoidable. Global consumption statistics vividly illustrate the inequality in resource distribution, the excessive waste in developed countries, and the unsustainable rates of resource and energy consumption.
The Permaculture ethics urge us to take personal responsibility for our actions. We can either contribute to the problem or be part of the solution—the choice is ours!