A friend of mine, Carmen Gonzalez, has graciously shared with me a set of 21 "cards" (or posters) created by Brett Pritchard, a student of Bill Mollison in Australia. These comprise an excellent summary of Bill Mollison's luminous teachings, so I've decided to post each of them in order for your enjoyment and commentary. The first two posted below are (1) an overview of the principles, arrayed in pyramid fashion; (2) Card # 1: The three core ethics upon which permaculture is based: Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share.
My Comments: These three core ethics--Care of the Earth, Care of People, and Redistributing the Surplus (Fair Share)--are foundational to Permaculture; they are the equivalent, for the movement that Bill Mollison initiated, as the Ten Commandments for Judaism, the Great Commandment for Christianity, the Five Pillars of Islam, or the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. But unlike any of these others, these are Gaian ethics--there is no "us" vs. "them" involved, nothing one has to believe or profess; they are based entirely on a clear scientific understanding of reality, coupled with a basic ethical sense of responsibility for our fellow living beings, human and otherwise.
Another way of thinking about this ethical foundation is that it derives logically and inevitably from the universal Dharma, as beautifully articulated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr: "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
This insight, likewise, is not something you have to "believe." It is something that any clear-minded person would recognize as an accurate statement about reality, whether physical, biological, social, or spiritual.
In short, once we recognize that we are a part of, not apart from, our interconnected living planet, it follows necessarily that we must predicate all of our decisions on what is best for our biological support system, and what is best for our own fellow humans. In pairing "care of the Earth" with "care of people," Bill Mollison cut right through the false "man vs. nature" dichotomy shared by both rapacious industrialists and some fanatical environmentalists. If we don't take care of our living planet, we cannot take care of each other--and vice versa.
The third ethic has often engendered controversy among permaculturists, some of whom were afraid, evidently, that "fair share" sounded too much like a socialist agenda for redistributing the wealth. So some have proposed alternatives, like "Reinvest the Surplus" or "Future Care." I beg to differ.
As I see it, "Fair Share" is the indispensable self-replicating element in Permaculture; it refers to both reinvesting and redistributing our surplus yields into both caring for the Earth and caring for people.
In this respect, as in all others, Bill Mollison's aim was to emulate nature (or Gaia) by recycling and reinvesting our surplus yield for the further propagation of life and health--just as the topsoil biota do for plants by fixing nitrogen, as plants do for animals by providing nourishment, and even as top predators do by leaving the remnants of their kill for vultures, smaller scavengers, insects, and microbes.
Bill Mollison, David Holmgren, Toby Hemenway, and all other Permaculture luminaries converge in emphasizing the primacy of these three core ethics in the practice of Permaculture--the practice of healing Gaia from the ground up.
The top card, with the core ethics, is followed by two additional cards, consisting of ethical principles derived from these core ethics, which pertain, specifically, to natural systems and resource management.
Brett Pritchard, the Australian student of Mollison's who designed these cards, has also provided a useful and imaginative set of "mind maps" to illustrate each of the principles in these cards. Here are the mind maps that illustrate the three core ethics of Permaculture and their derivatives:
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