Equality: The reason for 'social mix' in planning

“the willingness to resist authority depends heavily on whether that authority is delivering a stable and secure existence... This is why radical subcultures can be developed in student ghettos, or among communities of the long term unemployed, without ever really threatening to extend beyond them.” Alex Begg,  Empowering the Earth, p.63 (great book about psychology and power if you get the chance to read it)

Public housing commission flats, Segregation through bad architecture.

It is for this reason that it is so important to create an integrated and connected community. Society will never be fair and equal for all, but as long as no groups become separated and disconnected from the rest the radical inequalities seen in today’s society will not be able to continue.

This is because inequality and unfairness can only arise when it is not obvious. If someone walks up to a queue and cuts in at the front no one with any desire for justice would let them stay there, but if the queue jumper was to avoid the queue altogether and enter the ticket booth from the rear then none watching would have any knowledge or care of what was going on inside. In the same way if someone living in absolute poverty does so only amongst others in the same situation then they would have little hope in getting the attention or sympathy of others living well off on the other side of town. But put these two groups together and suddenly the inequalities become quite apparent. Whereas some people might be struggling just to feed their family others are spending millions of dollars for a new car. If these people were both living on the same street it would be just as hard for the battler to accept the grotesque affluence of the wealthy as it would be for the affluent to accept the shameful poverty endured by his neighbour. Humans see everything contextually and it is for this reason that is dangerous for different socio-economic groups to become isolated for each other. Where the rich and powerful are surrounded by the rich and powerful, excessive wealth and consumption seems the norm and is accepted as such. Where the poor and impoverished are surrounded by the poor and impoverished they may not feel happy, but there is little they can do if everyone they know is in the same situation and no one can do anything about it.

It is through segregation that inequality breeds.

(This post was originally written in November 2009. Since then I've been on a trip through Eastern Europe where I was shocked by something which I couldn't quite put my finger on until now. Belgrade, Serbia, was where I felt this disturbing feeling the most. What caused it was the fact that on the same street where beggars sold trash they'd obviously found in bins around the city mafia types drove expensive BMWs and Ferraris. The corrupotion in this city was so great, and obvious, that I couldn't believe I was in 21st century Europe. To use my queue alanogy from before, there were queue jumpers happily pushing in infront of others for all to see and no one seemed to be doing anything about it. There seemed to be an obsession with money in Belgrade. Those who had it wanted everyone to know, and those who didn't seemed to be willing to do anything to get it. (I was ripped off multiple times while I was there and when you go out girls come upto thinking that because you're a tourist you must have money.) Of all of the countries I've visited in Europe Serbia was by the far the most disturbing because of this reason. To me it represented the corrupting powers of money.)

A shoeless beggar selling trash in Belgrade. On the same street obnoxiously expensive cars drive by.

Something to remember when designing

I think the most important things people need to remember are:

• We are but one creature on Earth and there is a complex relationship between all of us.
• Humans are far from completely rational beings and this needs to be acknowledged and even celebrated.
• Everything is relative and one should always try to make the world a better place for themselves and others.

Like all art, and social sciences, architecture should express these facts. Architects, through what they express and design, should attempt to make life better for all who come in contact with it.

(The appeal of Friedensreich Hundertwasser's HundertwasserHaus in Vienna is not it's rationality.)

Our society is increasingly becoming disengaged with reality

Today I found a snippet of writing from 2 years ago (30/12/08) Reading it back I found a lot similar to my previous post about Dan Phillips. I thought I'd share.

(Everytime I see this image it blows my mind)

The root cause of most of the problems with our society is our disengagement with reality.

Cultural courtesies and selfish ambitions prevent us from being completely honest with our fellow men.

Our desire for acceptance and belonging prevent us from being ourselves.

Our jobs, cities, homes and cars prevent us from seeing that we are merely animals whose only true needs are of shelter, food and water.

In western society we all have these things, but are we all happy? We have everything we'll ever need, but are we content? 
"The best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful." Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground. (One of my favorite quotes of all time)

We are all caught up in a whirlwind of being told what to do. People everywhere are trying to enjoy themselves and more still are telling them how to do it (for a competitive price of course). We are all living a dream but it is not as idyllic as it could and should be. I try to break away from this dream world of people as often as I can, without being disconnected from it completely, as this would be a very lonely life. A life possibly even more pointless than what could be created in the dreamed up world of mass society. So this is my goal in life, my message to the world to ‘get real’ to ask the questions “is this really what I want to do?” “am I really enjoying myself?” and “what am I achieving with my life?”

The line of relevance: “Queen Elizabeth isn’t free... they are hiding something.”
(I could probably think of a more relevant link if I thought hard enough, but this will do for now)

Where Che Guevara saw injustice, poverty and people being kicked off their land I see delusion, unhappiness and people with no direction in their lives. I do not fight for justice, freedom or better living conditions, we have all these things already, what we need is understanding, reason and aspirations. We need to stop praising those who earn more money than us and start praising those who have made something of their lives, people who make the lives of others better and people who are truly happy. True happiness not being something that is fleeting but rather something more prolonged that can last through hard times and which ultimately leads to contentment. Being content, it should be realised, is quite an easy achievement and one which should be within the grasp of everyone in our society. The fact that it doesn’t often seemed to be reached is a sad one which I hope to change.

A designer is simply someone who is good at problem solving.

A designer is someone who takes in as much relevant information as possible and then processes that to make a better world.

If you’re a designer and not doing this you are failing us all.

An architect does this in relation to the built world. This is what makes it such a cool profession, you need to analyse pretty much everything there is to know at the human scale; construction, climate, psychology, history and more. They then need to apply that knowledge to design a piece of earth varying in size from one room to an entire city.

I dwelled on these things after watching a very good TED presentation by Dan Phillips.
Phillips is not an architect himself, but he gets it. He understands that to be a good architect you must understand a lot about the way the world works, and this man clearly does.


http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_phillips_creative_houses_from_reclaimed_stuff.html

Some of my favorite quotes from the video

“Here come the marketers and advertisers... We buy stuff we didn’t know we needed.”

“I’m fulfilling your expectations of how I should live my life. I’m living my life according to how you expect me to.”

The above comments I find very interesting as they say a lot about the social psychology that pervade our society. As much as I like the point he's making, that we are all sheep in ways we don't even realise, I have to disagree with some of what he says. He speaks in the video about how we behave differently when we are with others and states that this is because we are " fulfilling your expectations of how I should live my life", but really are we not just being polite?

There is a difference, albeit perhaps only a small one, between censuring ourselves to be accepted and censuring ourselves simply as to not to be rude or obnoxious.

Another comment;

“Our housing has become a commodity.”

Yes, very true and unfortunate. But this is not as bad as he makes it out to be. There is a degree of efficiency about commodification. This has to do with the fact that most people have the same needs and most builders are trained to do things a certain way. Now perhaps the world could be a better place if people thought more about the way they live and why, but the fact is that most don't. And most are happy to live in their horrible Mcmasions. This is their prerogative. If they're happy with that crap, who am I to say they shouldn't be?

A house by Dan Phillips. Image from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/garden/03recycle.html?_r=1

The problem as I see it is that we don’t have the efficiency of mass produced housing and yet we still waste the opportunity to be original and creative with the parts we have because we are all happy to get what we're given if it's what everyone else is getting. It is so rare that someone actually questions the norm, and this is what makes Phillips such a breathe of fresh air. We are eager to live in houses that ‘fit-in’ because we ourselves are scared of standing out. Phillips is not. Perhaps he is a bit of an eccentric hippy, but is that really that bad? He seems like a pretty switched on guy, he does a lot of good for the world AND he seems like a pretty happy guy. If only there were more people like him.

The problem at the end of the day is that people are stupid.

We are all ungrateful.

We are all easily manipulated.

The world is not as complicated as it seems these days.

In the words of Dan Phillips “Here come the marketers and advertisers... We buy stuff we didn’t know we needed.”

My only hope is to keep on hoping

Looking back from where our society has come from and looking forward to where it is going I ask myself ‘what is the end game here?’

If the goal of life is to make the world a better place for tomorrow and we continue this forever then what happens in the end. Of course I don’t believe for a second that somewhere down the track we won’t fall prey to the faults of our own irrational psychology and destroy our environment and ourselves completely, BUT if that doesn’t happen then what would?

At the end of the urban planning simulation game Sim City once your population reached the highest level of evolution space ships would take off and human colonisation of the universe would begin. But what from there? Lets say we do expand to colonise the entire universe, like a virus, we have eliminated suffering, we all live perfect lives, we know all there is to know about the universe, what do we do from there?

There is this goal of modern society to make life better for the future, and as much as I believe that this betterment will never actually reach the point where perfection is reached, the point I wish to make is that if we did reach this goal then there would be nothing left to do. The only enjoyment we could have if we reached this point would be the exploitation of our own irrationality. We would be rationally complete and therefore find enjoyment only in fulfilling our more primal desires. Is this really our goal as a society? With religion increasingly being found to be false I think it’s about time we start seriously searching, scientifically, for a meaning for our lives. As I’ve said before my only hope in life is that someone in the future discovers this meaning. My only validation is that although there is no obvious meaning to my, or anything’s, life at the moment perhaps in the future someone will discover this. After all there is still a lot humans have to learn about the universe. It is this lack of knowledge that we have that gives me hope. It is for this reason that I am agnostic and not atheist, an existentialist and not nihilist. It is because we still have so much left to learn. The chance of actually finding something that gives a purpose to life may be small, but it is all any rational person has. Without this hope, we have nothing and we are nothing. Hope is our greatest weakness and our greatest strength.

If you do not share this hope with me then let’s look at the alternative option, we reach ‘perfection’ as a society and completely dominate the universe. What purpose, what joy do we have? We manipulate our own bodies in order to enjoy life, we reproduce and we die. In this opinion drug dealers are just as valuable to the community as writers or artists, they produce happiness. If there is no goal, no purpose then enjoyment of life is all that is important. Hedonism rules and nothing else matters. (original written 11/11/09)

The beginning

What this blog is about.
I'm not quite sure yet, but I'm hoping it will become clearer as I go.
My interests range from architecture to neurology, art to philosophy and sociology to quantum physics.

Over the years I have written a lot about these topics as I find writting helps me sort the ideas out.
I'm not sure if all these topics can actually be brought together in one place, but as this photo illustrates perhaps variety creates interest. (I also like the way the guy is looking so disappointingly at his little fluffy dog)