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So earlier this week I tried to have a discussion about the common complaint here that modern, western culture is deficient and should be overthrown because it is extremely bad at creating beauty. I tried to argue that this particular judgement depends on aesthetic preferences that aren't as universal as its makers seem to think and gave a particular example of one of my own preferences (that is shared by many I know IRL) that actually judges it as exceptionally good.
The response was pretty shocking. There are some topics here that I know will provoke a lot of heat---immigration, racial identity, trans issues, etc. I never suspected this to also be one of them. The sheer amount of anger in the replies and the subsequent to emotional arguments and strawmanning was crazy--I really did not know it was this controversial. On second thought however, this aesthetic judgement really is the core objection a lot of the far right has towards the modern world and a lot of their policy suggestions to fix it that otherwise seem bizarre to me make a lot more sense when viewed as based on their particular aesthetic preferences. Therefore, questioning these preferences is really questioning the foundation of their political identity, much more than talking about immigration might be.
I'm therefore interested in polling this forum on the issue. I think it helps with the strawmanning to be very precise and try to clarify it into a dilemma. Pretend god offered you a trade: all future advances in science and math that aren't directly useful for technological advancement will stop. In exchange, the supposed squalor of the modern, western physical environment will be fixed---think replacing all of suburbia with stuff that looks as nice as your favorite ones of these. Would you take the trade? [Edit: maybe a better option would be changing all brutalist buildings to things that are as nice as cathedrals?] Now I know that "directly useful for technological advancement" is a very fuzzy, but please try to answer the question in its spirit---we're trading away only the aesthetic value of these advances, not their material and practical effects.
I would also be very interested in the correlation between the answer to this question and people's political views. I personally would be strongly against the trade (the same as most people I know IRL) and I'm a pretty standard American liberal.
(EDIT: on second thought this was a very unclear post missing too much context. See here for clarification---hopefully this helps to anyone still looking at this).
I'll happily take that trade! Pure mathematics is nice, but I'll trade it for all the other beautiful things in a heartbeat. Political views: dissident SJW/liberal, strongly pro-trans-rights, anti-racist, pro-freedom of speech, pro-vaccine/anti-lockdown.
I never understood why building ugly things was supposed to be a left/liberal position. It's not the highly-privileged architects who have to live in the damn things.
And yes, aesthetics are technically subjective, but this is one of those weaselly things. Perhaps there really are architects who deeply appreciate the local Concrete Abomination and find it transcendentally beautiful and aren't just saying that as part of a complicated signalling equilibrium! People are weird sometimes! But the public in general overwhelmingly prefers beautiful things in the polls, and they're almost never built any more.
It's an undemocratic injustice foisted disproportionately on marginalised groups by a predominantly-white elite. Tear down the brutalist monstrosities and replace them with cathedrals for social justice.
(Also, they're ugly as sin and I hate them.)
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Cripple industrial society and return humanity to a humane form of living? Ok sure I'll take the trade, but what's the catch?
Of course this is all pointless, the only way out of the current squalor is through technological adoption. How about we make something beautiful and great with that new technology instead of maintaining the mediocrity of a managed order? How about we actually live as actors of our destiny instead of cogs, since we have to live in a machine?
Beauty and Technics are not opposed, not necessarily.
I miss futurism.
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I don't understand the trade you are offering. There's no necessary link between the two.
A town in my country renovated a lot of their downtown to carry on a traditional 'old downtown' vibe with modern construction technology. It didn't take the abolition of non-directly-useful science and math. It was just a matter of people being sick to death of vulgar displays of glass, steel and concrete that had started to dominate other towns. Instead the townsfolk got colorful and traditionally framed houses.
It wasn't a matter of some meta-physical revival of the "far right" and their "bizarre" policy suggestions. It's just people with power not being inside their own assholes(and the town was close to going bankrupt afaik). It didn't take a fancy foreign architect educated in Boston to design the thing. A local design office did the job just fine. That might have been a big blow to the ego of some people involved, who could otherwise have made themselves feel very important and high status by rubbing their shoulders with big names and grand ideas. But no. Not needed. It looks great and fits the town.
Sure, math can be beautiful. Sure, architectural design in and of itself can be beautiful. But most people aren't good at math and most people don't know the history to appreciate the full extent of a clever architectural design that incorporates this and that style in a novel way.
I don't think it's a matter of some deep issue or a 'core' of anything. Public displays need to appeal to the public. Not the vanity of whatever person is in charge. You are not special for liking the things you like. A 9 year old who likes a statue of a soldier is no less worthy of experiencing public displays of beauty than someone who is highly cultured, sophisticated and articulate.
The only relevant thing left is to decide what things that the public does like should be displayed to them.
I agree that in my original post there was no clear link between the two and apologize for the bad writing. I hope the edit I made clarifies things more.
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I don't disagree that public architecture is a top down thing. I disagree with its end product. I don't care how erudite the designers are when describing whatever it is they put on paper. I care what I feel when I stand next to it.
An unpainted concrete box that has rust leaking from the windows makes me think that the thing is unsightly. A similar concrete box that is properly painted and maintained, by comparison, looks nice. In so far as I know something about craftmanship and skill, I would at least like to imagine that some of it was required to put the thing together. That there are some details meant to look pretty. If that can't be conveyed then I as a living human being standing in the flesh have a very narrow positive basis to judge the thing on. If all you have is a clever idea or a lofty political message then it matters very little unless you actually write it on the side of the building. Because I can't say I feel the 'democratic' spirit radiating off those ugly greenhouses.
I agree there is a sort of political truth underpinning everything. It's much easier to appreciate the art of your ingroup and empathize with the noble cause behind it. But how we get from political cause X to an endless sea of glass, steel and concrete laid bare is beyond me. It feels like we are going 'the Nazis liked simple beauty that appeals to the common man, we hate Nazis so lets do something ugly that appeals to those who can truly appreciate the beauty of the Emperors New Clothes.'
The amount of derision I see towards what is called 'modern architecture' goes far beyond just "far right" wingnuts. To that end I don't think perceptions of beauty are as much a product of conditioning as you do.
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How do you know that?
While I don't disagree that there are people who have in the past (and likely in the present) see it as their duty to override democratic consensus in the cultural sphere, I don't think their use of the word "democratic" is a reflection of that. I think they are more referring to the idea that architecture is a diverse field, so "everyone" is getting a vote.
They do not hate beauty, they want to force people to be awake. To jar the senses and force people out of a perceived dream. That dream is national pride and everything associated with it.
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The Lacaton and Vassal building gallery looks alien to me. The proportions and thin elements remind me of insects and segmented crawling things. The corrugated sheet metal reminds me of refugee camps, and the window shades seem wrong and uncanny somehow. If their goal was to avoid nostalgia, they have succeeded in spades.
The triumph of modernism was giant impressive geometric shapes, which, stretching into the skies, were modern-day Towers of Babel, exemplars of the rightful pride of Man. But there is no pride here. These are crouching things, huddled close to the ground, making everything feel grimy and kludged-together. These cry out to me, “Do crimes here! No one will care.”
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I think humans have a deep spiritual need for beauty. For example, the obligation to dress well and take care of oneself isn’t only something we owe to ourselves (and possibly our partners), it’s something we owe to society. The experience of being around beautiful people is aesthetically invigorating. The experience of being surrounded by Walmart fatties is aesthetically painful, demoralizing, bad. It’s an embarrassment that human stock in the world’s richest country is so poor. Even nice Midwestern or Southwestern suburbs built in vernacular styles of which I approve are full of the obese. It is this, not architecture, which must be the primary consideration for any American who cares deeply about aesthetics.
That said, architecture is still important, it’s the most regular form of art (along with interior design, arguably a sub-discipline thereof) that most people encounter. But there’s still a lot of misunderstanding here. The modal American white picket fence suburb is not particularly aesthetically abominable. In some parts of the country (particularly the Northeast and parts of the Northwest, where there are plentiful trees, shade, sidewalks in the suburbs, sometimes even stores and so on that you can walk to) it may even be quite attractive. Single family homes are one of the last domains in which classical pastiche or semi-vernacular (eg. in the Southwest) styles dominate. The problem with suburbs isn’t necessarily that they’re ugly, it’s that they’re deeply atomized and represent an unjustifiable rejection of the way humans have always lived in groups, connected to neighbors and community, where children can roam freely and don’t have to be driven everywhere etc. The epidemic of ugly architecture is much more clearly visible in apartment building, public and corporate/office architecture.
Lastly, there is the issue of squalor as @DaseindustriesLtd said. Squalor is different from architecture, there are old colonial cities in Central America full of beautiful architecture that are largely in a state of squalor, for example, and there are ugly Nordic cities dominated by 20th century modernism and brutalism that are nevertheless very clean and safe. Squalor is the worst issue American cities face, and the most pressing priority, because it includes the homeless issue.
I'm a little confused about what the original aesthetic complaint against the modern west is then. I always read the "Why can't we build anything beautiful anymore" from neoreactionary-types as being followed by a claim that this is caused by something fundamental to our culture and it can't be fixed until the culture is overthrown.
The examples you gave do not seem to fit this---both are very easily fixed by money and you can see this if you walk around any rich part of the west where there is very little squalor and much fewer fat people (well, San Francisco is it's own weird thing, but consider Bay Area suburbs instead---maybe more precisely any part of the west where poverty is excluded). I don't think any culture has done a good job of keeping its poorer parts aesthetically pleasing.
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I think it’s a false dilemma only because a culture that doesn’t see itself as worth making beautiful is one that won’t exit for long.
Beauty in the built environment is a symbolic way of saying that this culture and this place is worth making beautiful. I think you can see this with religion the most clearly. In the early days of religion, you had big, bold beautiful cathedrals, chalices and bowls made of precious metals and jewels, ornate vestments, and so on. And it was a reflection of the way (at the time Catholic) Christianity saw itself and the world. God was worthy of the absolute best. In modern times, Christian churches are often placed in strip malls or reclaimed businesses, built to be functional but not much else. And I think it’s leading to at least some of the decline in religious interest. God has been reduced to something unworthy, something that only deserves the cheapest of materials, the most banal of music and to be squeezed in next to the Orange Julius and Xist Fitness and a cheap cafeteria.
The same can be seen in our art in general. We simply no longer take ourselves seriously. We don’t see our culture in a way that makes it worth taking seriously. I’m personally a fan of the older Star Trek, and to me the entire thing has devolved into the same self-parody that plagues much of movie and TV making. No gravitas, no sense that anything is at stake, no big ideas. Fuck putting in effort, or making it seem like anything matters. Instead, make it a giant spectacle. Turn Spock into a cursing gen Z emo. Turn it into a musical. Write stories that reference cartoons. Write stories that make no sense on any level. And it’s impossible for anyone to watch that because why would you take something seriously that doesn’t take itself seriously.
Why would someone feel inspired to to something wonderful in a culture that sees itself as unserious and unworthy and banal?
Have you considered that they just find different things worth taking seriously? The value of buildings as a way of indicating a place's worth is intuitive, perhaps, but not the only way.
I think so, obviously people will differ on which parts of the built environment or what art is worth making beautiful. But I thing the general trend in the west that people around these parts are hitting on is that this is a pretty generalized trend, we don’t think anything in our culture or civilization is worth the effort of beautification or even just taking seriously. I tend to agree with the Chinese criticism of western culture— that we are simply an unserious people. Nothing has worth or use or deserves to be taken seriously.
And thus to me is a huge problem because an unserious people cannot and will not do anything of note. Why would they, the environment screams at them that they live in a throw away society where everything is built cheaply as possible and made to break or be thrown away? Why contribute to culture when it’s cheap tawdry memes and spectacle and self parody all the way down? When the prize winning art looks like the artist puked paint on the canvas, and the best music is forgotten quickly, and so on, it says everything worth saying about us. A person who doesn’t believe they deserve good things would be considered possibly depressed, or at least to have issues with their self worth. I would submit that the general ugliness of our environment, our shitty art and so on say the same about us. We no longer believe that we deserve such nice things.
As a cohesive unit? That's fundamentally impossible. Do you think the Chinese youth take their leaders as seriously as those leaders take themselves? The next generation is always going to make jokes and generally trivialize what came before, that's their job.
There exist many people who can and do serious work, you're just not seeing it.
Do you like fiction? Ever want to read an entirely serious work about Rey and Kylo from the new Star Wars trilogy going from enemies to lovers? Go to AO3, you'll find your serious fiction. Do you like music? I'm sure there's some heartfelt song out put out by a black rapper about his struggles growing up on SoundCloud.
Yes, these things get memed. Yes, people do eventually grow tired of them. But just as many people hold these things near and dear to their hearts. They just don't get up in arms when someone makes a joke about it. Memes and self-parody don't stop serious things from existing, often within the same minds as well. The folks on the noncredibledefense subreddit made waifu art of Perun (a military analysis channel), but they'd be the first to tell you they take his words seriously.
"Where are my statues and buildings?" you ask. But those are your standards for what indicates a culture's self-esteem. The people you think are doing nothing are doing what they think is serious. Statues and buildings have a permanency and impact that are matched movies and TV shows. Which is more beautiful and serious, the original Star Wars trilogy or the Golden Gate Bridge? While I don't have the answer to that, the former was referenced in literal Chinese propaganda directed at their youth.
I’m thinking more of the cultural creatives and tastemakers and educational establishment. The people who design things — the architects and artists and writers obviously would bare the responsibility of having created ugly, cheap, art. The filmmakers are doing the same things with movies. They don’t care for the craft of filmmaking, there’s no thought to telling a coherent interesting story, it’s just spectacle and effects. And most of it is yet another franchise film that goes nowhere, but with plenty of room for the next 3-4 movies. Nobody’s going to look back on this generation’s films the way they look on the originals and Classic films of earlier eras.
But those largely are not art movies in the first place! They're not trying to be either! The MCU might be defended by fans as serious art, but it's a kid's spectacle to its core. You want serious movies that are trying to be art? Try movies like VVitch, Midsommar, or Tar.
I can hardly think of a more anti-elite attitude to movies if the ones that win box offices and several awards each year are flashy spectacles that the public at large seems fine eating up.
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One would assume there is a correlation between cathedrals and church growth while strip mall churches meet with failure, when the correlation is very much negative. The denominations that hold and maintain the tall steeple churches tend to be the ones living off of trust funds rather than congregants while the "is the new building a cannabis farm or a church?" Denominations are the ones in a consistent growth cycle (before imploding due to governance issues so mine picks up the pieces.)
If you want to you can compare the American methodists with the non-denominational Baptists and see that story play out. I'm certain that the lack of beauty does have some play in it, but it is far below a lot of other driving forces.
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Not taking this trade at all. Things that don't seem directly useful now often turn out to be 100 years down the line, or at least their existence now will speed up advancement 100 years down the line because this thing won't need to be reinvented.
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I kind of see these as beautiful as well. Pure Math can be very beautiful if you know what you're looking at.
This seems like exchanging music for architecture.
... I would not take that offer
EDIT @orangecat sorry I meant to respond to OP
This word is not used to refer to uninspired suburbs, you know. Maybe for you the choice is indeed between suburbs and tasteful Gothic cathedrals or pretty magical houses, but that's a whole different aesthetic axis. «Squalor» is the word for Mumbai, Barnaul, worse parts of San Francisco or Paris and so on – though it's extremely prevalent throughout the «developing» world.
There is a certain aspect of spiritual squalor to tacky advertisement and ridiculous postmodern design, I suppose, but those things are overwhelmingly shaped by influences different from poverty and neglect. They are more ideological: sometimes expressing brutal utilitarianism (this unites them with the Warsaw Block brand of squalor), sometimes deliberately offending the onlookers. Perhaps clarifying terms would be of use.
Squalor is a major and entirely unjustifiable aspect of human suffering (though perhaps for some people, living in squalor would be a small price to pay for the privilege of reading Peter Scholze). It is more debatable whether recreational math and science are worth tolerating modern ugliness. I think the space of potentially useful math is so vast (even just quantum physics and computer science provide gargantuan Truth Mines, and of course much of clever math can be preserved for training/evaluations), that we might well win on making this trade. There's also bonus utility in a) disempowering people who promote ugliness and b) embarrassing glass bead champs who just can't get it up for applied disciplines nor see anything beautiful in them. In my experience these people are spoiled; their self-esteem, grounded in intellectual superiority, and knowledge of being unproductive by ordinary metrics, make for a noxious mix – they learn to perceive themselves as the chosen caste, those for whom the rest of humanity exists as mere means to an end; they insist on the distinction between «pure» and «applied» specifically to show their contempt for the cattle of no Inherent Worth. I feel the same way about haughty artists (who think the world exists to sponsor their indulgent scribbles, thus AI must be banned), and in general despise people with strong «aristocratic elite» identity, though tolerating their immature antics seems to be net positive (and granting free rein to salty anti-elitists is profoundly net negative). This is more or less a normie attitude.
But ultimately this truly is a strawman, and this kind of choice does not present itself. Ugliness is not in any way a tradeoff we must accept to maintain modern economic productivity that allows universal education and pure math departments. It doesn't enable nor pay for that. I think it does not even spuriously correlate with ugliness – in every era, prettier places tend to produce more intellectual beauty too. And pure math cannot meaningfully compensate for the lack of physical beauty. It is idiosyncratic to conflate those different realms.
P.S. I of course despise «the spirit» of the question because of how loaded it is, on top of being strawmannish. The strawman aspect is only the decoy. Can you ever write without these attempts to mislead and own the opposition? You objected to people's dissatisfaction with, basically, lack of beautiful new architecture with «but there's a lot of new math». In this survey you do not propose trading like for like – modern physical ugliness for modern math; but an eternity of future non-utilitarian math and science for contemporary, transient building codes, as if any of those buildings would stand more than a century or two. Seriously, what the fuck.
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That is certainly not the ugliness I am particularly concerned with. While its true that suburbs can be boring, and modern metropolises are steel and glass. That is all utilitarian function. What I want to get rid of is the intentionally ugly. Give me the Lincoln Memorial 10 times out of 10 instead of this hideous MLK thingy.
Hypothetically, if the people of Poland disliked the Lincoln Memorial and liked the MLK statue on aesthetic grounds, would you care? Would you let their preferences shape the statues and symbols of your land? I don't think you would.
Maybe you are from D.C, I don't know. But it seems to me that much of the tension is resolved if people stop expecting a nation of 4-5 different cultures to have any kind of unified aesthetic vision. I recognize the inherent problems with doing so. For example, you pay taxes to the concept of a singular American nation, not just your particular cultural one, so by God you had best make sure to voice your approval or disapproval for things. But I'm increasingly convinced that people who complain about ugly public art are doing so in a cross-cultural manner i.e like a Christian accusing a Jew or Muslim of making shoddy cultural products.
If a Texan finds the art of California insufficiently beautiful because it glorifies homosexuality instead of God, or vice versa, these should be seen in the same light as debates over which country has the best food: fun to engage in, pointless to take seriously.
Indeed I care much less about Poland, or even LA than I care about DC, which is the capital city of my country. As such its art should reflect near universally like American artistic styles. Which would mean classical Greco-Roman style, natural beauty like flowering trees, bushes, etc.
And again, I agree rolfmoo. No one outside of a rounding error of people actually like this sort of art. Instead the imposed cultural imperialism of ugly chique is meant to reflect the Cathedral's boot on our throats at every possible corner.
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I don't think it's true that hideous modern architecture is just the genuine aesthetic vision of a different culture. Most people hate it, Texan or Californian: it's the taste, or apparent taste, of a small number of highly privileged people (architects and their sponsors).
Sure. There's also a class divide within any particular culture - elites may want to valorize one thing and the public another. But unless you're from the culture is question, you can't just ignore your own aesthetic preferences.
The people of Chicago might have ugly buildings built upon them without a voice. But perhaps some consideration should be made of the big difference in cultural standards if you aren't from Chicago, that's my point.
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Doing the same, but in lead/bronze would be 10x better, even if still bad.
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Surely you can do better, when it comes to perverse modern art?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Embrace
Apparently $10 million of private donations went to making a phallic/fecal bronze in Boston.
I limited myself to things in the Capital City of America that I have seen outside the abomination that was the Newseum and FBI headquarters. Both should also be demolished.
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See also: this hideous MLK thingy.
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Yeah, no thank you. I'm not exactly a rightist in the way you're describing, like BAP style, but I do have complaints with modern liberalism.
I actually think that you're off base with the aesthetics argument. The most common (and compelling) argument I see here on the side of the right is that modern liberalism has a lot of benefits, but has destroyed something that allows people to self-actualize, and grow into better, more integrated people. Whether that is the disruption social fabric, a lack of any sense of responsibility, the loss of religion, or just the general dispelling of illusion via the scientific method, is hard to say. But it's inarguable that something has been lost, something deep that helps give people meaning and purpose.
If you define beauty more generally, I can see where you're coming from. The beauty of seeing someone exhibit courage, or transform from a child to an adult. The beauty of seeing a group of your close friends and family, of feeling supported when you're down. This type of purely sensual, aesthetic beauty is weak by comparison.
When it comes to the issues with modernity I could care less about the aesthetics, I care about the people it harms.
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The first thing I notice in the first picture is there's no private outdoor space. So if I just want to grill, well, that's a damn shame. Then I notice that transport is terrible; obviously, there's no place to park so the residents must not have cars, the narrow street makes deliveries difficult, and even bicycling is going to be terrible, both because Montmarte is a steep hill and because the road surface is terrible. The buildings are old, probably cold in the winter and hot in the summer, and high-maintenance. The Rue de l’Abreuvoir might be a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.
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(I'm not sure if I'm one of the people you had in mind when you wrote this, so this might be irrelevant.) In our last exchange, you seemed content with being surrounded by physical ugliness because you can find beauty in a lot of higher maths and sciences. My objection was, and remains, that leave us midwits who don't have the g to see things the way you do out in cold. That doesn't mean I think all western society needs to be burned to the root, it just means I wish we didn't always go for the cheapest, blandest options.
Further I reject the framing of your hypothetical here too. I don't think it clarifies much. Why can't we achieve new breakthroughs in math and science while still making buildings that are at least inoffensive?
I think the parent comment I made was bad writing and left out a lot of context. So the complaint from this particular segment of the far right is that there is something essential to modern, western culture (they'll use a term like "globohomo") that destroys something aesthetic. I'm currently a little confused about what exactly their aesthetic complaint is---people's living environments, public buildings and spaces, people's bodies, some sort of missing abstract search for glory? However, as far as I understand them, they think that this aesthetic issue cannot be fixed without changing the foundations of western culture. Usually, they argue it necessitates some kind of ethnostate.
I wanted to make a point---even accepting their premise that the aesthetic issue can only and will be fixed by getting rid of "globohomo" culture, it's not actually that clearly an issue. I personally think that the modern, western physical environment is adequate, even though it could be better---airports and suburbia, for example, are moderately ugly to beautiful (visit Changi or walk around Palo Alto to see the good side) depending on how rich the area is. However, in this trade for adequacy instead of greatness (again accepting the questionable premise that culture change would actually lead to greatness!), we get greatness in another place: beauty coming from scientific and technological advancement.
The hypothetical was meant to ask if people think this trade is ok. Obviously there are also other aesthetic benefits from modern, western culture. I just thought this one was most compelling (though obviously I was wrong here).
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My unpopular opinion is that art generally gets better over time. The trendline from the dawn of humanity until now points upwards. There are alternating periods of creative growth and creative decline, sometimes there is regression, there were also certain fantastic works that appeared relatively early on... but still the overall pattern is one of improvement and progress, rather than a tragic tale of decline from an originary golden age.
As a corollary, I don't think that the contemporary world is artistically deficient in any unique way. Certain aspects of it are conducive to artistic creativity and certain aspects of it are not. It's complicated. Like any era.
No, for the simple reason that I would reject all earth-shattering trades of this nature by default. The chance to alter reality, the chance to redo the past, the chance to alter my own properties or capabilities... I'd just rather not. I'd rather just let things be what they will be.
I agree with you on the high aesthetic value you accord to mathematics, for what it's worth.
Art, maybe. That which is labeled as "fine art", not so much. It's largely descended into navel-gazing; perhaps photography simply broke it.
"Fine art" is just one subculture among many now. There are so many different things being made by so many different types of people. There's probably something out there that speaks to you.
People overestimate the impact that photography had on the development of modern art. All artistic media underwent drastic changes in the early 20th century. People started experimenting with atonal music and stream of consciousness writing at the same time they started experimenting with abstract painting, even though music and literature didn't undergo a similar technological revolution (I understand that the record player was emerging around this time, but that's more like a printing press for music, rather than something that makes people reevaluate what music is in the first place).
Music did; recording is more significant than you claim. But neither atonal music nor stream of consciousness writing took over the way BS took over visual art.
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What exactly does it mean for an advance in science and math to not be useful for technological advancement? Aren't they all part of the same messy ball of human understanding?
What specifically would we be giving up?
I suppose something like the Chinese Imperial handling of things: destroy all copies of the invention but one, lock it in the imperial Palace and forbid the inventor to talk about it under penalty of death.
The thing is it strikes me as closer to our current rulers' view of dealing with technological change through regulation than that of it's challengers.
Who's trying to brainwash AI, after all?
Is this regarding the Qin palace library and the banning of books beyond certain topics, or is this about something else like the Ming sea ban?
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Why does it matter what suburbia looks like? The whole argument is silly. Suburbs and residential in general serve a specific purpose - people live there. Why does it matter if it looks ugly from the side of a helicopter? The homes are attractive and livable to the people who actually have to live in them, they're not tourist attractions.
Exactly. By this same standard, we might as well replace a power substation with a playground because the power substation is ugly.
Being beautiful is not (usually) one of the main aims of infrastructure projects.
What is the first piece of infrastructure you can think of that is ugly? All the older infrastructure, like aqueducts and bridges, are beautiful. Victorian train stations look great. Is there a pre-war piece of infrastructure that you think is not beautiful?
Do dumps count?
If there was any infrastructure then I am sure a dump would count. I do not know of any old dump with appreciable infrastructure. Even a rail line, a station, etc. would be enough.
The Cloaca Maxima ain't pretty. Edison's Pearl Street Power Station was rather ordinary looking. Sunnyside Yard (1910) is ugly.
The Cloaca Maxima looks fine to me and far superior to most sewers that I have had to work in. I will grant you the other two. I should have known that someone from New Jersey could find ugliness easily.
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What? Where's the dilemma? If the offer was that all advances in math an science stopped, including the ones that are useful for technological advancement, I might need to think for a minute before I pressed the button, but what is supposed to give me pause here?
My political views are hard for me to put a label on. Ex-libertarian, some sort of traditionalist, I guess?
In the other thread, some people claimed that they found aesthetic satisfaction in purely impractical advances in understanding. An example might be, the search for exoolanets. The knowledge gained has no practical benefit to the advancement of material progress on Earth, but many people appear to find out profoundly enlightening.
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I just flat out reject the premise of those that find modernity uniformly ugly. I don't like suburbs, so I don't live in one. I don't think they're squalor, I think they're sterile and boring, but I can see how they provide a more affordable family arrangement than the beautiful Monmarte photo you linked above. We can't actually wave a wand that magics an economics that allows normal middle-class people to somehow have 2500 square foot houses in Monmarte-style streets.
For me, there is already much beauty in the world around me. I don't seek to impose my aesthetic preferences on those that prefer more space though.
Well, why not? Not on Monmarte, sure, but elsewhere, there's nothing stopping us.
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The choice to move away from ugly modernism (which should be considered separately from suburbia) doesn't really exist. If 99% of all new buildings in every city are ugly glass boxes, then your only option is to move to the diminishing number of places with no new buildings. But of course, these places are crazy expensive due to the massive demand from people who want to live in beautiful places (including, naturally, so many the architects that refuse to build beautiful things).
The architects aren't the ones building anything. They are hired by someone to fulfill a job, and the man cutting the checks gets to decide how many glass boxes he wants on his postage stamp lot.
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I don't live in the West, but if offered to make my environment beautiful in exchange for non-useful math and science advancement - I'll take it. Granted, our definitions of "directly useful for technological advancement" may differ. I'm fine with not discovering any more stuff like Graham's number.
I consider myself a social liberal and economically mildly left.
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Strongly against, and leftist-leftist.
I also hate the way shit looks now, but only in the sense that it all converges towards the platonic airport. I'd rather have an ugly building than a boring building.
Airports are such wonderful buildings! Particularly the interiors. I just love the juxtaposition of say, the food court, next to the convenience store, next to the rows of seats by the boarding gate. The fact that it announces itself so overtly as an artificial, constructed environment makes it somehow comforting in a way. Where else are you going to find so many functionally disparate services packed into such a tight space? The closest thing would be a shopping mall, but mall interiors are usually so spacious that they take on quite a different ambiance (I love malls too, but for somewhat different reasons). Airport hallways are just the right size in my experience - narrow, but not too narrow.
As for the exteriors, it depends heavily on location, but many airports are accompanied by large parking lots, and I'm a big fan of huge parking lots that just seem to stretch on endlessly like a concrete ocean.
This is probably why I find it hard to take seriously the claims that the modern world is uniquely deficient in beauty. I have an aesthetic experience every time I step outside - usually, they're at least somewhat pleasant.
I wish I had your aesthetic sense, only I don't because I actually enjoy almost everything BUT airport architecture. Maybe I wish I had both our aesthetic senses?
I'm that fuckin autist that climbs down the service ladder to look at the bottom of the culvert and go "Wow! Big concrete pipe! Amazing!"
I can't agree with you on the stripmall/parking aesthetic, though. I think it's the fact that it they are built without any consideration for anything, not even for cost. They are actually usually way more expensive than they need to be, both over the long term and the short.
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