Agriculture is central to human civilization.

From Wikipedia: "A civilization is a society or culture group normally defined as a complex society characterized by the practice of agriculture and settlement in towns and cities. Compared with other cultures, members of a civilization are commonly organized into a diverse division of labor and an intricate social hierarchy."

And: "All human civilizations have depended on agriculture for subsistence."

Civilization as we know it does not exist separately from agriculture. And yet most of us, as individuals in civilization, are far removed from agriculture. Why? Why is it that most of us agree that fresh-off-the-vine tomatoes and fresh eggs taste better, and yet so very few of us plant our own gardens or raise a couple of hens? We'll spend hundreds of dollars per year to beat down our lawns into poison-perfect turf, but we can't be bothered to spend a few dozen dollars and a little time cultivating our own food.

Why is it that we choose to enfranchise corporate farms that cram dozens of chickens into one tiny cage, or hundreds of thousands of pigs into one disease-prone concentration camp, or thousands of cattle into a standing-room only feed lot where they must stand hip-deep in their own filth, suffering in cruel confines until they're slaughtered? In truth, these practices are unsustainable and they could not go on indefinitely, even if we lacked sufficient ethics and imagination to find them sadistic and to seek better ways.

Our agricultural system doesn't make any sense. Very little of what modern civilization does actually agrees with common sense. Even the way we make most of our bread involves extracting monoculture grains from corporate farms with fossil fuels, then processing almost all of the nutrition out of them with bleach in vats, and then "re-enriching" them with industrially produced vitamins, baking them and sealing them in plastic bags hundreds or thousands of miles from our local grocery stores, and then shipping them across the country in diesel trucks. We're all aware of this insanity, and yet something makes us averse to becoming aware of how we can bring a meaningful relationship with the Earth back into our lives, and common sense back to civilization, so that we don't have to buy all of our food from poisoned monoculture fields or animal concentration camps run by Unicorp.

Let's rethink this. Consider, for instance, permaculture. Wikipedia states, "permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and perennial agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in the natural ecologies." This ties in with sustainability, and a Natural World Order (timelessness) in lieu of a New World Order (centripetal control, more of the same). Mollison, one of the insightful Australian men who coined the term permaculture, identifies industrial systems of production and distribution as fundamentally destructive to Earth's ecosystems.

The private—and collective or aggregate—practice of permaculture is a way of renaturalization, or Rewilding. Permaculture is indeed the path to manifesting a permanent human culture. And fittingly, it is fun, spiritually positive, it saves money and it improves the environment—not merely in the sense of reducing pollution, but also in the sense of beautifying one's own property and community.

First and foremost, permaculture involves keen observation, and cultivating perception. One must listen and learn in order to discover the most fitting natural patterns—Alexander might call this a pattern language—for a particular set of environmental factors and complementary species at a particular location. This pattern language takes the following into account:

1. Observing the whole system or problem
2. Observing how the parts relate spatially and temporally
3. Understanding long-term sustainable, working and mature ecosystems in the area well enough to plan how to mend local sick systems
4. Seeing, cultivating and using connections between key parts

O'BREDIM is an acronym for a permaculture design methodology. From Wikipedia:

O'BREDIM is a mnemonic and acronym for observation, boundaries, resources, evaluation, design, implementation and maintenance.

    * Observation allows you first to see how the site functions within itself, to gain an understanding of its initial relationships. Some people recommend a year-long observation of a site before anything is planted. During this period all factors, such as lay of the land, natural flora and so forth, can be brought into the design. A year allows the site to be observed through all seasons, although it must be realised that, particularly in temperate climates, there can be substantial variations between years.

    * Boundaries refer to physical ones as well as to those your neighbours might place on you, for example.

    * Resources include the people involved, funding, as well as what you can grow or produce in the future.

    * Evaluation of the first three will then allow you to prepare for the next three. This is a careful phase of taking stock of what you have at hand to work with.

    * Design is a creative and intensive process, and you must stretch your ability to see possible future synergetic relationships.

    * Implementation is literally the ground-breaking part of the process when you carefully dig and shape the site.

    * Maintenance is then required to keep your site at a healthy optimum, making minor adjustments as necessary. Good design will preclude the need for any major adjustment.