piecemeal

The US Corp of Engineers has named one of the corporate strategies for environmental destruction, piecemealing. The idea is that those terrible things that some corporations would do to us in their greed, can be made more digestible to us by chopping them into smaller chunks that will be more easily swallowed without choking.

We witnessed this during our SWEPCO debacle in which a subsidiary of American Electric Power attempted to run an extra high voltage power line through Eureka Springs, claiming that it was necessary for our own good. They attempted to hide their intent to build a high voltage corridor across the state, at our expense and for their profits and presumed that by dividing their large projects into small chunks they could slip the whole thing down our throats and past regulatory agencies before we noticed. We were very lucky to stop them when we did.

Since we have been facing hog problems of our own, I've become very interested in researching the hog farm that was built on a tributary of the Buffalo River National Park and on helping the Buffalo River Partnership Alliance. We see the same strategies in place over and over again, and in the case of the hog farm, the claim is that it's safe (even though it has been proven to not be) and that it has no impact on the Buffalo River National Park. And this is a reminder that when it comes to certain portions of the government and to some American corporations, there is no limit to stupidity,  malfeasance and greed.

As you can see there is a danger to the powers that be when human beings become acquainted with the inter-connectedness of all things, when they begin to understand their own powers within the universe and find the personal strength and courage to stand up for the principles upon which their own learning rests.

I got a nice email from David Epstein, son of brain researcher, Herman T. Epstein whose work I've referred to here in the blog. As I've noted so many times, schools have become an artificial environment in which children know quite well that they are being manipulated for the needs of fulfilling some societal impulses. Kids love learning. The problem for so many is that they do not like being taught under such estranging circumstances. David Epstein wrote:

Something my father said, but may not have written about as succinctly, was "School is a wholly unnatural environment for children." This he meant, in an evolutionary sense, in that the human organism has been around for a couple million years, and it's only in the  the last couple hundred, that we've begun confining our young in buildings that house communal learning formats.  Sitting all day is in contrast to running, working, helping with hunting and gathering, playing, etc.

Piecemealing is also a term that could be applied to how we school kids. Instead of assisting them as did Froebel to understand the larger aspects of self, and power within communities, schooling can make students feel small, powerless and isolated, most particularly within the larger schools.

Piecemealing, on the other hand, is useful when making something. You divide the process into steps, each related to the next and the next. The image above shows the painting of a scissor tail box guitar in a Jackson Pollack style. The next colors to be applied will be yellow, then black.

Make, fix, create and extend to others the love of learning likewise.