“This book is cause for celebration! Many of us have long hankered for the insights and principles of permaculture to be translated to serve all aspects of our lives. Looby Macnamara has been worth waiting for: she fills the bill with luminous clarity, lean eloquence and an exquisite knowledge of systems. Her opening chapters on ‘Thinking Like an Ecosystem’ should be required reading in every classroom from third grade through graduate school. Equally rewarding are her applications of permaculture to health, communication and the life of the mind. It’s part of the genius of the book that all this, once you see it, can seem as natural as breathing.”—Joanna Macy, Author of Coming Back to Life, World as Lover, World as Self and co-author of Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy
“This is indeed a timely and very important book. Now, more than ever, we need to find ways of working together if we are to create a world in which our grandchildren can and want to live in. I am confident that we already have the tools to practically build a future in harmony with the Earth, but our greatest challenge is how to live in harmony with each other to enable us to do so. Looby’s book provides the very tools we need to undertake this vital work.”—Tim Harland, Founder of Permaculture magazine
“The application of permaculture principles and thinking to peoplecare has long been a vexed issue for permaculture activists, designers and teachers. In this book Looby Macnamara uses her solid grounding in permaculture to show that its principles and thinking can help us all be effective and hopeful in an age of change and challenge. In the process she draws in kindred ideas and influences from the field of peoplecare, making a significant contribution in the ongoing evolution of permaculture as a concept and a movement creating a better world.”—David Holmgren, Co-originator of the Permaculture concept, author of Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability
“Peoplecare is as important to permaculture as earthcare – unless we learn to live in harmony with each other, we’ll never get anything done. Looby’s book fills a gap that has long been there in permaculture literature. I heartily congratulate her.”—Patrick Whitefield, Author, The Earth Care Manual and How to Make a Forest Garden
“We all have our dark moments of the soul, when we go deep into our individual beings and ask hard questions and sometimes get unwelcome answers. Are humans a plague on the planet? Can one person, when that one person is me, really make a difference? Can the juggernaut of consumer society be turned? Why should we single out our fellow humans for a special degree of care over, say, salmon, or whales? The answer is in this book. We take care of people because people matter, and because that is our nature as creatures who care. What we care about matters to the fate of the world, now as never before. If permaculture as a design tool is about making connections, this book is about how we reconnect ourselves – to each other, to our inner selves, to our highest aspirations and, finally, to the cycles of life, of which we are just a small, but incredibly important, part.”—Albert Bates, Author and educator, The Farm Ecovillage Training Center
“The future of culture and agriculture is in permaculture. This book is perhaps the first to give readers the big picture and a comprehensive understanding of permaculture and how it can underpin our ecological, social and spiritual paradigm. The book is an outstanding contribution to an ever evolving vision which is creative, imaginative, sustainable and joyful.”—Satish Kumar, Editor, Resurgence magazine and author of No Destination
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