Commodity, Leisure, and Why the West has a Big Problem

    I often find it amusing listening to the two "big" sides in our society duking it out over which system is preferable.  I speak of course of the discourse between Capitalism and Communism.  Coming from a place of solidarity, I sympathize with much of the critique laid down upon the feet of our capitalist society.  However, I think the problem is much deeper than bourgeois spending habits and can be seen in the landscape of our architecture.  A society devoid of meaning, will never find fulfillment no matter how big the architecture produced.  

    In his work, On Leisure, Joseph Pieper comments, “the greatest menace to our capacity for contemplation is the incessant fabrication of tawdry empty stimuli which kill the receptivity of the soul.” The West has had a problem with leisure for quite sometime, and nothing illustrates this more than the mall, a cacophony of themed spaces designed to pass what little time we have as quickly as possible while at the same time draining our resources through commerce.  In a culture devoid of meaning, all we have is physical “stuff” to pacify our lizard brains until we all walk out with a bang... Cinnabon-in-hand. 

    Big architecture attempts to fill this giant hole in our souls searching for the meaning our society robbed us of long ago.  I end with this thought, “Our culture has filled our heads, but emptied our hearts, stuffed our wallets but starved our wonder.  It has fed our thirst for facts but not for meaning or mystery.  It produces “nice" people, not heroes.” - Peter Kreeft