[MD] The Perennial KinderGardner

[John Carl]

Challenged recently as to my understanding of what "The Perennial
Philosophy" means, I thought I'd look it up on the internet and see if it
meant what I think it means.

But then I decided not to.  Why let criticism turn me into just another
wiki-spouting dweeb?

Every gardener knows what "perennial" means.  It's a plant that doesn't need
planting every year.  It's a flower that blooms without effort on the part
of the gardener; that comes forth when it's time and this old world makes
it's cycles.  So a perennial philosophy is obviously a set of ideas that
correspondingly, don't take much effort.

What kind of thinker is a perennialistic thinker?

First, there's a level of intelligence beyond the norm, which sets that
thinker apart.  A reaction against thinking what everybody else says is
correct, a desire to think deeply and originally for oneself.  Socrates
comes to mind.  Buddha comes to mind.  Lao tzu, most definitely and I'd
include Robert M. Pirisig, obviously.   Hey, and Jesus too, for that matter

All men who had a strong social context but went against it.   Called
degenerates by those around them, and messiahs by future generations.  But
it wasn't just about them.

They were describing patterns they found in the world around them, freshly
and originally and for themselves mainly, and in so doing, found a harmonic
resonance with others doing the same.

A select club, the perennialists.  Even though the world itself never
changes, the social patterns evolve and need a bit of tending now and then.
Due to the way  monoculture comes to dominate through intellectual
interference in natural  social patterning, I guess.

Did you all get that?  Understand what I mean about the way monocultures
evolve in response to intellectual interference?

Ideas come to dominate a social group, in competition with other social
groups and the winners blankets an area with their success and breeding
habits.   A collective arises and chokes out all variety.

We need variety in our body politic in the same way a caterpillar needs
butterfly cells.

Around here everybody plants, harvest and gardens in pretty much the same
way.  The main crop that pays the bills is cannabis.  Which I do grow, but
not using the same old methods everybody else uses.  They spend thousands on
soils and mulches and worm castings and compost tea' and I'm sure it works
fine.  The farmer is pretty much a conservative fellow, following the tried
and true.  But I think all that effort and money is a silly waste of
energy.  Fukuoka farming teaches that the less you do to Nature, the
better.

So I do it my way.

For instance, cannabis is treated like an annual - but its not.  It's
actually a perennial.  And if you can keep it warm through the winter, with
a bit o' structure, then it doesn't need to keep getting juiced up year
after year.  Stem and root growth, once grown, can be reused.   People pluck
the plants out of the ground in the fall because that's the way they've
always done it.  Of course, you can't have illegal plants growing past the
time of harvest.  What would be the point?

But the plants aren't illegal anymore, and Califonria has notoriously long
indian summer and if you leave the plant growing, it puts out a second and
even a third harvest of buds.

That's my perennial philososophy, in  a nutshell.  Squeeze all the juice out
of life you can, with as little expenditure as possible.