The torn fabric of humanity
Just hanging out at the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth and came to realize that the fabric of our society is completely at odds with humanity. The breadth of the disfunction is profound. It crosses disciplines, media, indeed even life functions. It’s profound. So I had to write about it to remember.
Here are the triggers to this realization:
First, the profoundly awful space - the Hopkins Center. It is an absolutely abhorent fallacy of design and function. Pieced together by institutional architects of several generations who were or remain profoundly disconnected from the authentic human experience. There is hardly a single comfortable room or passage in this whole maze of a dungeon. There is the constant sound of HVAC, and one is surrounded by rock and tile and hideous random lighting.
The place doesn’t even work institutionially. I had to move from one part of the building to another with a kid on crutches and had to use six different lifts and elevators - it took four times the amount of time, and was as confusing as linear algebra to find spaces. There must be 20 different levels, fifty different stairwells here. The place is hideous to all of the senses and sensibilities.
Second, reading an article about the new Yankees and Mets Stadiums in NY (got me thinking about public and institutional architecture so that I noticed it here)
Three: Reading the Blue Sweater about a journey into Africa (and the obvious proximity there to basic life necessities, so distant here in pretentious, duplicitous Dartmouth).
Four: the hideous destruction of the world order promulgated by AIG and the other investment banks - while I may have to lay off a virtually homeless person living in a wreck of a trailer, AIG bonuses are equalling what I might earn after working for 180 years at my current salary.
Five: Comedy Central (I forget how, but comedy brings it all back, doesn’t it)
Six: Clothing: clothing in the West is profoundly innefficient and unattractive - suits, pants, shoes, zippers, plastic, ironing, to say the least.
Seven: The incredible amount of waste which we all both create and require to survive. Thinking about the sea of plastic in the pacific and then thinking about the contribution of the humble toothbrush. Argh.
This discord is profound in education, in our social fabric, in architecture, transportation, the food system, our economic system, climate science, medicine, our society of class and disparity, sexuality, the nuclear family, fashion, creativity, expression, celebrity, language - you name it.
My realization is one of those that hovers just out of intellectual grasp, or capacity to explain, but it appears to be part of the truth of the world.
Blech, or argh or gasp or something.
