Lost Cause
In response to a question posed by a newspaper article: "What's wrong with the world?" the author G.K. Chesterton replied:
"Dear sir,
I am,
Yours truly,
G.K. Chesterton"
This sort of attitude is what we need to address the problems faced by our age. Instead of pointing the finger and playing the blame game, we ought to look in our own lives on how we are effecting the environment and trying to change ourselves. I hate how we think we can overcome this issue with gadgets and building envelopes. If we were really concerned about the whole environmental problem, we would not even build anything. Modern buildings are mostly destructive endeavors and are the best way to deplete our limited resources.
It all comes down to culture. Unfortunately, our culture relies heavily on fossil fuels and synthetic products to run our whole economy. Lacking limits, it promises rapid growth without looking at the consequences of having finite resources. On the other hand, a sustainable culture is one that would renew itself and allow for slow growth, but it has limitations that would be unbearable to our modern lifestyles.
Looking at our cities today, Moshen Mostafavi in Ecological Urbanism writes that:"The city historically constructed is no longer lived and is no longer understood practically. It is only an object of cultural consumption for tourist, for aestheticism, avid for spectacles and the picturesque." It is sad that this modern lifestyle doesn't leave us with any fulfilling worthwhile experiences. Even the cities of the past are wastelands of brokenness. We are constantly trying to entertain ourselves creating a need that can never wholly be fulfilled. The promises of Junkspace leave us in a world that is empty and meaningless.
So, what is the solution? Going back to my preamble, it is crucial that we figure ourselves as part of the equation to repair our unbalanced culture, but why kid ourselves that this is remotely possible? We enjoy modern life too much to do anything about the problem. Having bit out of the apple of technologies and follies that modern life promises, we are addicted to immediacy and have evolved to have extremely short attention spans. Perhaps we should just keep partying until the punch runs out and wait for our children to figure it out, just like how our parents did.
"Dear sir,
I am,
Yours truly,
G.K. Chesterton"
This sort of attitude is what we need to address the problems faced by our age. Instead of pointing the finger and playing the blame game, we ought to look in our own lives on how we are effecting the environment and trying to change ourselves. I hate how we think we can overcome this issue with gadgets and building envelopes. If we were really concerned about the whole environmental problem, we would not even build anything. Modern buildings are mostly destructive endeavors and are the best way to deplete our limited resources.
It all comes down to culture. Unfortunately, our culture relies heavily on fossil fuels and synthetic products to run our whole economy. Lacking limits, it promises rapid growth without looking at the consequences of having finite resources. On the other hand, a sustainable culture is one that would renew itself and allow for slow growth, but it has limitations that would be unbearable to our modern lifestyles.
Looking at our cities today, Moshen Mostafavi in Ecological Urbanism writes that:"The city historically constructed is no longer lived and is no longer understood practically. It is only an object of cultural consumption for tourist, for aestheticism, avid for spectacles and the picturesque." It is sad that this modern lifestyle doesn't leave us with any fulfilling worthwhile experiences. Even the cities of the past are wastelands of brokenness. We are constantly trying to entertain ourselves creating a need that can never wholly be fulfilled. The promises of Junkspace leave us in a world that is empty and meaningless.
So, what is the solution? Going back to my preamble, it is crucial that we figure ourselves as part of the equation to repair our unbalanced culture, but why kid ourselves that this is remotely possible? We enjoy modern life too much to do anything about the problem. Having bit out of the apple of technologies and follies that modern life promises, we are addicted to immediacy and have evolved to have extremely short attention spans. Perhaps we should just keep partying until the punch runs out and wait for our children to figure it out, just like how our parents did.
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