The Intersection of Permaculture and Natural Law with Ethan Cohen

Hey, everyone. Derrick Brose here with the Conscious Resistance Network, and I just wrapped up the first leg of the Activation tour, and I'm here in Denver with my buddy Ethan.

What's going on, guys?

Yeah, so some of you guys might have met Ethan on the road. As I said, we just finished the first leg of the tour. I'm going to be going on the second leg in July. If you're curious, check out activationtour.org but I just wanted to check in first off to thank everybody who welcomed me and Ethan to all the places we got to visit and just give my brother Ethan here a chance to share about some of the beautiful things he's doing with my audience. So, yeah, I mean, for those who got to see you on the road, they got to hear your story, but for those who aren't going to get to see you in the second leg, I just wanted to give you a chance to, yeah, like, share about some of your background. You know, you're here in Denver right now. You're involved in permaculture, maybe share a little bit about, you know, what you were sharing on the road.

Sure, sure. Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you guys to everyone who came out and supported us. It was amazing meeting you and yes, so thankful that I was able to do this. So I gave a little talk a couple couple times during the trip, just sharing my exit and build journey so far. And like Derek said, I'm in Denver now, but I sort of started my journey in Florida, where I went down the rabbit hole and then found out about permaculture through one of Derek's podcasts. And that sent me on a whole nother rabbit hole, but a better rabbit hole, hopeful rabbit hole. And so I found out about permaculture, which is like, I consider a design science for sustainability, creating sustainable habitats and designing human systems. This includes things like gardening and building, other things like financial institutions and banks and the whole realm of human activity. But what makes it special is that it's rooted in ethics. So an ethic for Earth care, people care, and future care. And that's what really stood out to me. And so I went down this permaculture rabbit hole and first off, started gardening at a community garden in Florida. Then I took a trip to Costa Rica where I really dug into agroforestry and natural building and homesteading skills and really learned to work with my hands and get excited about working with the Earth and just seeing all the possibilities of how we can make a sustainable, hopeful future. And I'm not talking about sustainable, like the Sustainable Development Goals, but something close to the, the voluntarious principles that we, we like in our, in your audience? I think so, yeah. Community gardening. Costa Rica came back and found a guy who does backyard agroforestry and really wanted to work for him. So I sent him an email, then I then a phone call and next thing I know I'm working for this guy, building food forests in Florida backyards and doing something that I felt was really going to make a difference in the world. And yeah, worked for this guy for two years. I've probably planted thousands of plants and hundreds of fruit trees. And it was just an amazing experience to give people this abundance right in their backyard. And it really just flipped the switch and just showed me how abundant our world could be.

And that, that was. Let's walk a little. We're losing some light here, guys. We're at the end of the day here. That was really one of the core messages you were sharing too, right? As we were driving around, you're telling me about how you really see this intersection of abundance and natural law and volunteer volunteers principles with permaculture. You know, just like you were saying, permaculture brings abundance. The, the use and the belief in natural law and voluntarism can also bring abundance for us in different ways. And I think that's, I mean, I thought that was a really beautiful kind of realization and just the intersection of the permaculture and the ethics there with what we believe with voluntarist principles. And you also talked a lot about natural law. I want to give you a chance to elaborate on that in a moment. But one thing that comes to mind, so you're in your late 20s, there's going to be some people hearing this like, oh, that's easy because you're young, you know, and as we saw on the road, there's a lot, when we were traveling guys, we were asking people, what are the challenges? What are the successes you've had? And there's always going to be a million reasons you could give up or not start on something like permaculture. Like you might say that, oh, well, that guy's young and of course that's easy for him to just pick up and go to Costa Rica, Florida, whatever. But there's going to be challenges no matter what your age is, what your background is, what your financial situation is. If somebody is listening to you and they, this is maybe the 10th time they've heard about permaculture and they're almost ready to try it out. What's one piece of advice you would give them? You know, just to how they could get started? Whether it's just watching videos online, any documentaries you recommend, or just diving in like you did?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's so many, so many documentaries, so many amazing people doing, doing great work. You know, Jeff Lawton and I mean, there's so many names I could go through.

Jeff Lawton's@discover permaculture.org so that's a good place to start.

Great place to start. Yeah. Stephen Brooks. You know, I know Derek's familiar with that crowd. So many people, really, one piece of advice is just start as close as possible to you. Even if it's just container gardening on your, on your porch or in your windowsill, just get your hands in soil, get some plants, you know, in, in that soil and just start just, you know, I'd say just feeding yourself as close as, as, as close to home as possible. Yeah, I think once you, once you start just planting, I think you'll, you'll really make a connection with, with, with the earth and you'll realize that even just a little container garden makes so much of a difference in your life.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's like. I think with any big journey where you're starting off right, you just gotta take that step. You gotta start to do it. I'm sure even when you heard about permaculture through myself and others, that once you dove in, I'm sure there was still some nerves about like, okay, I'm gonna go to this whole other country and do this. You know, what if I just doesn't turn out right? Or what if, you know, there's all kinds of doubts. I'm sure that came up and you went through it with it and now you've got this vast amount of knowledge. What I consider, I mean, and for those who heard Ethan speak, even in the short presentation he gave you heard the amount of things that he touched on and I think that' that's what makes you a more empowered person in terms of exit and build. For those of you guys who know what I talk about building parallel systems and trying to get out of the mainstream systems, the more you get knowledgeable, whether it's about permaculture or how to bake bread or build, you know, make soap or whatever it is that you're particularly interested tech stuff, the more resilient you are, the actually the really regenerative you are, the more sustainable you are and the more Useful you can be as well to a community. Because I know a lot of the audience like yourself are people who are like, well, I want to be a part of a community. Well, these are the ways you can make yourself more useful, having skills. Like for example, we've got our community right now we're at the point where we've got a good amount of members and now we're being more selective because we're looking for people who do have skills. So whether it's permaculture or something else, just take that first step and really dive into it. Let's move a little closer to the light. And so yeah, one of the other things you were talking about was your declaration. So let's share about that, let's tell everybody about that where they can find it.

As I was going down my journey of permaculture and self ownership and liberty, I started really getting into underlying principles. Like I mentioned in permaculture, there's these underlying ethics of earth care, people care and future care. And so I really started wondering what are the underlying principles that create sustainable societies and free societies and anti tyrannical societies. And at the same time I getting into the work of Mark Pasiot and natural law and realizing that morality is objective, that there are certain principles that unite all of us. And I started learning what a right was and what wrongs are and yeah, really getting interested in how can we create free societies. And so I put together a declaration that I call a Declaration of First Principles for Free Humanity where I outline 20 articles similar to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights but more expanded. 20 articles that are as universal as possible that dictate what creates a free society. So some of these articles are the right to exit, the right to consent. Stewardship of the Earth is a big one. You know, transparency in government institutions or whatever institutions are you're using. And the declaration is meant to act as like the underlying foundation for any governance system or any constitution or organization that you create to try to keep these organizations on the path to creating something as anti tyrannical as. Yeah, so.

And I just want to say, I just want to really pump this up for those of you who didn't get to meet Ethan and see it in person because he was sharing about this. I highly, highly recommend everybody checking out the website and through the website they can contact you.

Right.

If they want to get to know you more or just learn more about your permaculture or share anything with you.

Absolutely, yeah. The website is freehumanity declaration.org. and like Derek said on there is my email. You can read just an overview of the article or you can download the PDF of the full declaration and please, please read it and send me feedback. Yeah, I really, my goal is for communities and organizations to use this, but also for personal use for people to be able to answer the question of is this system or organization that I'm interacting with, is it respecting my right of consent? Am I able, do I have the right to exit? So to be able to ask yourself, okay, is this. Am I in a consensual relationship with this organization person, etc.

And I just, again, I think it's a great foundation for those. I think most of my audience out there are familiar with Lark and Mark and my work on natural law and volunteerism. But if those are new concepts to you, or even if you are somebody who's familiar with these ideas, I think the way that Ethan put them together is very cohesive. I think it's very holistic. I love that you included stewardship in there and I think that's sometimes often overlooked in certain circles. So please do check it out. Guys, contact Ethan. As I said, he was with us on the first leg of the tour. I was so grateful to travel with you, brother. I think you were the perfect person to do this tour with me and I look forward to collaborating with you in the future, guys. So check out his website, learn more about permaculture. And I heard a rumor Ethan might start posting more on social media, so you might see more of him out there sharing all the good works he's doing.

I did say that that might be the next step in the Exit and Build journey is to put myself out there a little more. So you might be seeing more of me, guys.

Sweet. Awesome, guys. I'll put the L below. And as always, remember, you are powerful,

you are beautiful, and you are free.

Peace.