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The community as a way: Los Portales, an experience of "human permaculture"

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Kevin Lluch

In a recent visit to the community of Los Portales, Luciano Furcas, good friend and wise disseminator of Permaculture, told us that what we were doing was "Human Permaculture". Since my knowledge of Permaculture was quite limited, his statement intrigued me and stimulated me to want to know a little more about it. And I was very surprised to discover that the principles of Permaculture apply perfectly to community life. Through them I will share the essential features of our experience.

Permaculture talks about how to "create sustainable human habitats following natural patterns, that is, the durability of living natural systems and human culture."

Thirty years may be nothing in the scale of the evolution of the cosmos, but on the scale of the durability of community projects in our modern societies we can say without false modesty that it is a long time.

In our case, everything started back in the late 70's, when a group of people gathered in Brussels around a Jungian therapist and analyst with a growing commitment to an inner work, with a path of self-knowledge and personal evolution. In addition to psychodrama and other psychotherapeutic and / or shamanic techniques, the main tool of this work was dreams. Dreams, which constitute a way to access the hidden or unknown dimensions of ourselves, tell us about our areas of suffering as well as our defensive strategies in the face of this suffering, but also open us to our dormant potential, to all that that we can become, both individually and collectively. In addition, dreams put us in touch with the collective energy field, in the sense expressed by Lyne McTaggart in her book "The Field" or Gregg Braden in "The Divine Matrix".

Below I will develop some of the basic principles of Permaculture in light of those thirty years of experience of community life:

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A case study of the Community Los Portales : Analysis of the Potential of Lifestyle Change with regard to Sustainability and Transferability

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Reconnecting with the Essence of Being Human

Cora Pausch is 33 years old and the mother of 2 children (6 and 3 years old). She studied International Forest Ecosystem Management (Bachelor of Science, 2009) and Global Change Management (Master of Science, 2013). At the time of her masters internship, she already had the desire to live in a community with her partner and 1 1/2 year old son. And not just any community but one which had personal relations and personal development as a basis. So she decided to combine her personal desire to gain experience in a community with her research for her thesis by focusing the thesis on sustainability in communities and choosing Los Portales as a case study.

Initially her focus was on ecological sustainability but her experience in Los Portales showed her the strong connection between social and ecological sustainability. This connection and the attempt to apply its key aspects to any kind of society (also large-scale) became the heart of her masters thesis. Since then she has felt strongly connected to Los Portales and its members and recently she and her partner decided to make Los Portales their permanent home and they will move there in spring 2018.

Abstract

In times of globalisation, accompanied by economic crisis and climate change, it becomes obvious that the western lifestyle cannot be maintained anymore if a Great Transition towards a future of enriched lives, human solidarity and a healthy planet is the overall objective. The industrialized countries are made responsible for a disproportionate share of the worldwide exploitation of natural resources, CO2 emissions, and pollution of air and water; but still the associated lifestyle is spreading its way.

The question arises how the Great Transition can be facilitated and what is still missing to overcome the challenges of global change, resource depletion and individualism. The Great Transition cannot be achieved by technical means only but an adaptation of lifestyles is also necessary to obtain this target. Sustainable lifestyles include attractive social coherences that combine the individual freedom with responsible cooperation and a harmonious coexistence. There is a great demand for sustainable lifestyles; a way of living in which human cooperation is appropriate and carried by respect and empathy; a search for lifestyles without moral appeal and demand for abstinence. The field of intentional communities represents direct response to the questions and problems of social conflicts, environmental crises, and uncertainty at all levels.

In this thesis, the Community Los Portales in Andalusia, Spain was chosen as the case study to display approaches and methods that aim for the improvement of socio-ecological sustainability.

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