Within the trappings of eco-anarchy, there is a concept that everyone already open to a green revolution can grasp. With the principles of permaculture at their disposal, any individual, or groups of individuals, may transcend the nonsense of the modern western culture through a permaculture-based, neo-hunter gatherer method of food production and consumption. Why does this method make more sense than modern capitalism and industrial methods of production and consumption? For one thing it is more harmonious with nature, being localized rather than centralized, and concurrently in harmony with the natural human psychology.
According to the work of Richard Lauv, in his book Last Child in the Woods, as well as an article by Amy Novotney, from the American Psychology Association, human psychology has been shown to be positively affected by interaction with nature. In contrast, however, according to research done by the Arkin Mental Health Institute Amsterdam, the city-scape of today has the effect of alienating and depressing the human psyche.
The research and conclusions above evinces a rather important, and fundamental truth in modern times: that we are killing ourselves inside by living this way. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to find a better, more humanitarian and natural way of living. One solution to this fundamental problem, coming from the University of Washington, is Green Cities. Decentralizing, and localizing to a more holistic environment, an organic, human scale economic model, makes far more sense than the 20th century premise of industrial centralization, urbanization, and perpetual growth, causing sprawl.
Permaculture uses local, traditional, and indigenous knowledge, and combines it with modern and appropriate technology. Not only can this technique be applied to just about any environment, but it can be applied to subjects, such as economy, education, society, and assembly. Rather than allowing poverty to continue, a revolution of thought is right outside your door; rather than allowing war over resources to continue, a peaceful garden, a planet growing into itself, can be created with less effort than it takes to make a career about me, and nobody else.
We live in exciting times, all of the mistakes we have made were necessary in order to learn, and to make things better. If we changed to hunter gatherer style regions, where there were also high technology centers; where the technology was actually clean, based primarily on biology, rather than synthetic, mass artificial chemical production (for instance if we used fungi to produce our chemicals rather than factories), we would have a much better time of it.
