Bill Coperthwaite: Yurt Builder Extraordinaire

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

PLOWBOY: Do you think all utilitarian things can be beautiful?

COPERTHWAITE: I think that our society went through a long period of putting things down, saying that one should rise above the material level . . . and of course, it's possible to want objects in a miserly way, to need a collection of them as proof of one's worth. But there's another sense in which things are important because we respect and understand them . . . because we've come into an intimate relationship with them.

If a certain dish gets broken we feel badly . . . and if the dish doesn't matter to us at all then it's time to get some better dishes . . . ones we like.

We need to teach children to value the spirit within inanimate objects . . . the beauty that we see when we know who made a particular item or when we know the way it was formed or when we know how it works. We need to emphasize the interrelationship of all things, not only in a practical way, but out of respect for the skill that created an article. This attitude takes for granted a life intimately surrounded by things made by friends.

PLOWBOY: I suppose that child-raising on principles like this is another kind of work the Yurt Foundation might get into?

COPERTHWAITE: Well, this kind of "human information" is hard for us to deal with at our present stage. The material things — the graphics, the artifacts, the tools — are the easiest for us to grasp right now and deal with in getting the foundation moving.

Still, maybe some of the understanding that will help us deal with children — and other adults — is going to come from material things. For example, I believe that the need to hurt or kill is a manifestation of insecurity, of a need to put someone else down . . . and when we have the power to create with our hands, we become more secure and less prone to violence. It' you learn to shape a canoe paddle and gain confidence from that activity — without ever verbalizing the experience in any way — that confidence will show in your interactions with kids or with anyone else.

PLOWBOY: That's another good reason for encouraging the ordinary person to develop hand skills, I suppose. More generally, wouldn't the whole social principle you're working toward — the direct involvement of people in shaping their own lives — also tend to promote a non-violent culture?

COPERTHWAITE: Yes. Non-violence — like warfare — is rooted in small daily actions. How we live in the family or the community, how we operate our schools, how we treat children, what attitude we have toward objects . . . all this is directly connected with the violence in our society. In our families we call the hostility of children "normal sibling rivalry" . . . but other cultures handle it differently. If we could find out how to help a child grow to be a secure and sensitive person, we would eliminate warring.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print