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Quote by Geoff Lawton

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Geoff Lawton
Geoff Lawton

Geoff Lawton is a renowned sustainable design expert, born on December 10, 1954. He has extensive experience and profound expertise in sustainable agriculture, ecological design, and community development. more

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“Trust is built in many ways: by creating opportunities to share something of our lives and feelings, by encouraging people to argue passionately for their ideas and positions while still respecting their opponents' right to differ, by meeting responsibilities and building a track record of dependability, and by sharing risks together.”

SustainabilityPermaculture
Book:Sustainable [R]evolution: Permaculture in Ecovillages, Urban Farms, and Communities Worldwide
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“A sacred way of life connects us to the people and places around us. That means that a sacred economy must be in large part a local economy, in which we have multidimensional, personal relationships with the land and people who meet our needs, and whose needs are met in turn.”

SustainabilityPermaculture
Book:Sustainable [R]evolution: Permaculture in Ecovillages, Urban Farms, and Communities Worldwide
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“Most permaculturists are expert at understanding the relationships between landforms and water harvesting or between soil microorganisms and plant health. But when it comes to our human relationships, we often founder. Nurturing the vegetables in the garden is a lot easier than nurturing our connections to the people who decide where to plant the vegetables and who will water them.”

SustainabilityPermaculture
Book:Sustainable [R]evolution: Permaculture in Ecovillages, Urban Farms, and Communities Worldwide
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“All life has suffering. But to live is to suffer. So we bless life, we bless death, we bless sickness and health, we bless happiness and sadness. We say om mani padme hum to bless all suffering borne by all beings, as the suffering is our karma. And our karma is our life.”

LifeSufferingHumanityLife QuotesBuddhismKarmaBuddhaBuddha Nature
Book:A Story of Karma: Finding Love and Truth in the Lost Valley of the Himalaya
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“I think there has always been a strong crossover between the household- and community-level design in permaculture. From the beginnings of permaculture in the 1970s, there was a close connection to the 'back to the land' movement and the counterculture. Within that broad movement, international communities and ecovillages were major themes.”

SustainabilityPermacultureEcovillages
Book:Sustainable [R]evolution: Permaculture in Ecovillages, Urban Farms, and Communities Worldwide
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“There is one problem, however, at least for alternative experiments of the American variety (and possibly some European as well), namely that we have no clear litmus test to determine which models are truly steady-state (non-expansionist) and which are business as usual hiding under “green wigs.” This latter trend is known as “greenwashing,” in which the language is hip and the bottom line remains profit. Thomas Friedman and Al Gore are major (and wealthy) players in this category, perpetuating the notion of “green corporations.” Other examples include a 2012 conference on “Sustainable Investing,” sponsored by Deepak Chopra, among others, which had as its slogans “Make Money and Make a Difference” and “Capitalism for a Democratic Society.” All of this is the attempt to have one’s cake and eat it too (or simply eat someone else’s cake); there is no real interest in disconnecting from growth, and it is growth that is the core of the problem. As Professor Magnuson tells us, while traveling around the U.S. to interview varous alternative businesses and experiments, he discovered that many of them were shams—capitalist wolves in green clothing.”

EnvironmentCapitalismPermacultureDeepak ChopraAl GoreThomas Friedman
Book:Neurotic Beauty: An Outsider Looks At Japan
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“We are at stake to each other...We are all lichens, so we can be scraped off the rocks by the Furies, who still erupt to avenge crimes against the Earth. Alternatively, we can join in the metabolic transformations between and among rocks and critters, for living and dying well. "Do you realize," the phytolinguists will say to the aesthetic critic, "that once upon a time, they couldn't even read eggplant?" And they will smile at our ignorance, as they pick up their rucksacks and hike on up to read the newly deciphered lyrics of the lichen on the north face of Pike's Peak.”

PermacultureFeminist TheoryBiomimicryHarawayCompanionate SpeciesSympoetics
Author:Donna Haraway, "Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene" (Chapter 2)
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