Our Disconnect from Nature, page 1

Originally posted by cimmerius
[Ya, there are a ton of things we take for granted, not just machines and how they work, but even basic skills....That would seem to be a function of our education system, which seems to have enough trouble educating people to read and write.

The educational system is a part of this, but I really think it is part of a broader issue. There are many things which keep people from understanding where things actually come from. In the ancient world, an educational system wasn't neccessary to understand where things comes from. The problem with this complex world is that everyone is making decisions, whose implications they don't understand. For instance people fall for investment scams, because they don't understand investments. People also buy products, which causes environmental damage they are against, because they are ignorant of the consequences of their actions. Often, the only distinguishing features are those that are mentioned in advertisements.

People could be better educated in understanding complex in systems, by learning more about things like systems theory. However, selective ignorance of the broader world is in itself a form of slavery. Decisions can only be made on available information, and when the immediate information is confined, freedom of action is inherently limited. Some have commented that these limitations embraced by our educational are intentionally part of our current system (see John Taylor Gatto's Underground History of American Education available online).

Regional specialization is another problem. When things are manufactured thousands of miles away from where you live, it is difficult to learn about the manufacturing process. As Jane Jacobs points out in many of her books on cities, the growth and success of cities is highly dependent on their ability to copy technology and manufacturing processes from other cities. However, encouraged by the world's most powerful economists, the we have moved to a centralized system, where countries, and regions are supposed to specialize. The same is true for agriculture. These things take people further away from the producers. In this process many intemediaries disconnect consumers from original producers.

A lot of this has been a symptom of central planning by top governmental and financial institutions. Like the Soviet Union, the western economy has in many respects the free market, centered around small businesses, in favor of an economy which depends more on large corporations. Rather than build a smaller factory in every city, these large corporations tend towards large factories, which are easier for a centralized management to plan. These organization have maintained their dominance through superior access to capitol, lawyers, and other advantages of government access.