Rick:
Here's one definition of permaculture: 'Work with nature not against." Graham Burnett.
All natural systems are open systems. It takes a human mind to close a system.
I used to teach a class (in another lifetime) to show students the difference between a closed an open system. [This was a class in primatology--I am an anthropologist.] This was in San Diego and we had the cooperation of the San Diego zoo. The assignment was that each student would choose for a semester project one primate at the zoo, that also had an in-the-wild study. The project was to compare the two 'systems' and write a report.
The animal in a cage is a closed system. The community of animals in its wild habitat is an open system.
The student had to report on inter-family, inter-group interactions as well as the relationship of each of those units to their environment. The result was a complete study of the interactions between all individuals, the groups formed, the environmental variables, as well as the 'edge' or boundary phenomena affecting the primate community in its natural habitat.
To me the point of permaculture is to teach people how to view themselves as components in an open system. What we do in our daily lives, the choices that we make -- does affect the ozone. We may think our lives stop at the property line, but that is not really the case.
