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Muddling Towards Frugality

1/8/2015

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"Frugality" is a word which Paolo Soleri used liberally without carefully defining it but a 1979 book by Warren Johnson, the title of which I've borrowed as a title for this entry, offers precision, exactness. 

Johnson didn't forecast the vulgar and scandalous connection the mortgage banksters had with the ensuing housing crisis but it's ironic that the subtitle of his book,  "A Blueprint for Survival in the 1980s, prescribes frugality as the 'pill we have to swallow' to dump the evils of hyper-consumption,

Paolo Soleri was convinced that we (gringos - but not just gringos) must adopt 'Frugality' as a central principle. Frugality is what will make it possible for the industrialized world to get on with the essential task of dealing effectively with its problematic over-consumption. 
Not an impossible hypothesis but I'd like know if we are sure precisely what, exactly, is going to be put in place when we have managed to adopt frugality as a principle.

"Frugality?" How do we come to agree what "frugality" requires? Might I have a detailed explanation, please? 


How do we know it? How do we recognize differences between what's needed and what's wanted? What limits do we place, what limits can be placed, on how we make provision for material comfort, for our ourselves as well as for people who matter to us? People we know is one group; people we don't know is another group, right? That group of people we don't know is practically guaranteed to be a group with a larger number of people in it than the group of those whom we do know.

There are how many billion people on this planet? Of that number, you know - you've met - exactly how many? 1000? 10,000? A million? How many do you know by name?

The case can rest right there. But here's another test for you: 
Who gets to decide what's important? And: How do those deciders come to their decisions? 
Should every person be able to want or demand more than just what is needed for survival? How about aesthetic satisfaction? Or gratification of feelings about what is sacred? Honoring whatever people see as sacred? 

'Frugal' seems an odd word to put anywhere near, for example, the stained glass windows of Chartres, the Shang bronzes, the intricate hand-knots of a Persian carpet.. The penmanship required for a sefer Torah. The musical manuscript notation of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven in a climate-controlled glass case.  

Is it ironic that frugality as a conceptual basis for arcology implies political and social constraints as well as economic ones?

Paolo Soleri by his own admission had no social plan for development of  the 'prototype' (model) he envisioned, hoped Arcosanti could/would become. Does it not seem incredibly naive, now, that he imagined an entire complex "urban laboratory" that would house 5000 people could be completely constructed by volunteers with only the oversight provided by the semi-skilled labor of the 'Mom and Pop' organization that their (Colly and Paolo's) Cosanti Foundation had available?

How such a complex hyperstructure could be totally built before any practically viable "community" existed to build it. is staggering, as assumptions go. But what is even more amazing is how that particular aspect of Paolo Soleri's legacy has served not only to impede his own aspiration to complete construction, but to have infected many of the volunteers whose efforts helped to construct the "Old Town," what is now in place on the site of Arcosanti. 

Coming up with a practical development plan has been anything but straightforward and simple. Comparisons may be odious but it seems pointless to avoid them when there are available examples that are easily emulated.

Two I like, sophisticated and elegant (in the mathematical sense) can be seen in the link below, but Majora Carter isn't the only effective organizer in the world. Brilliant though she is, t
here are others, including spirited entrepreneurs who are operating as a collective. The Baba Yagas in France set a new standard for a type of  'co-housing' that is working very well. Jonathan Rose is not the only savvy modern developer, although he's a fine one, and Witold Rybczynski describes several, makes an excellent  case for the bona fide  capitalist variety in Urban Harvest. 

All of which doesn't add up to a formula for developing Arcosanti as a prototype for arcology. If we don't know what sort of social organization makes arcology as much of a social structure as it is a physical container, stticky points can't help but turn eventually into sticking points. And then they turn into stuck - remain there like burrs on a woolly sweater or - worse - jumping cactus in the skin. 

I've said before, I'll say again: What makes sense to me, to support the frugality intention of Arcosanti, is
 to form some type of a Workers Cooperative  Members will be those who can commit to work together, share aspirations and skills, develop their ideas and actualize them, make them manifest in real time. At Arcosanti. 

Lord love us - the place will practically build itself. Cooperation has always been a core value that shared aspirations cannot live without. Check out the videos below, from Praxis Peace Institute.   

frugalior (L) - useful or worthy; frux (L) - fruitful or productive

http://praxispeace.org/videos.php
http://www.ted.com/speakers/majora_carter
Babayagas for internet
(04:29)
 
 
http://www.rosecompanies.com/
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Eco-Friendly Time-Travel and Other Distinctive Pursuits

1/2/2015

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Social networking, when used in a genuinely friendly manner, can serve as a mildly competitive game of treasure-hunting, I find. As such, it brings up splendid little bits of shells and glass; but occasionally a diamond in-the-rough appears. Such a nugget is the YouTube below, which explains the context of Paolo Soleri's idea of arcology. It, like the TedTalk on arcology by Jeff Stein, President of Cosanti Foundation, was posted on a Facebook group page.      

In light of the ongoing discussions about and interest in sustainable cities, walkable communities, cycling as a healthy lifestyle choice, accessibility in general, I got to thinking about how oddly marginalized Paolo was, by many of his peers, during his lifetime. Despite world renown, multiple awards, blockbuster exhibitions of his graphic designs, the man was far from having been universally acknowledged by all the architectural giants whom he knew, who knew him. He was admired by many of his contemporaries but in general, they were not, as time went on, quick to ask his opinion. I got to wondering, as I said, how that came to be. 

It is true that his writing is somewhat arcane, to say the least. It is also true that his structural vocabulary is as unusual as it is unique - Moishe Safdie once told me, after he and Paolo had competed for design of a building in San Francisco, he felt Paolo's forms served to disadvantage him. Neither of those facts completely accounts for his having been largely pushed aside, despite the initial enthusiasm of scores of architectural critics and savants, despite the still-present and consistent trickle of ongoing interest in his perceived work. 

In the course of ruminating about this, Dr. Deborah Sword, a Canadian friend whose blog, WritingForLife, offers insight and information about the world of breast cancer survival, happened to bring to my attention physicist Murray Gell-Mann's Scientific American blog entry of 2013/12/17: "The events that create our current life are frozen accidents. What we think of as history is a series of coincidental cascades where events happened in a particular order to bring us to today."  

The statement made sense, immediately reminded me of a related observation that also made perfect sense when it was delivered by Buddhist teacher Tulku Bardor Rinpoche at the Rigpe Dorje Centre in Montreal: "Most of life is accident, What we do with the accidents we are given is how we create karma."

Paolo Soleri never met Murray Gell-Mann or Tulku Bardor Rinpoche. Comparative religion was not his strong point and his knowledge of particle physics was, despite the sophistication of his designs for buildings,  far from exhaustive.  Nevertheless he did give thoughtful consideration to the world, came to his own conclusions about it, which echo in his own inimitable style the values of the Great Traditions. His insight, his embrace of what he called "frugality," is akin to the view of poet William Wordsworth, who said 
"The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers...." and poet Oliver Goldsmith, who observed ""Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay.""

<<http://www.writingforlife.org>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCqdvLaBx50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtzZRVhODvk

To poise oneself on the brink of the future is as precarious as poising oneself on the edge of a cliff. If you have no forecasting tools or a great deal of experience, it's hard to determine whether the next breeze will blow up into a storm of gale proportions. 

Paolo understood the power of greed intuitively, how it could bleed a human soul and heart, remonstrated with it in principle as well as, for himself, in practice. But his ongoing reckoning with it as a force, independent of the basic, simple perception that it's wrong, is by no means an easy read, even for super-prescient phone-booth touchdown travelers. 

Hang onto the coat-tails of the wind, o ye time-weary curiosity-seekers. Hitch your carpets up tight and snug.  T
his could be the ride of your lives.  


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Photos used under Creative Commons from FaceMePLS, nedrichards, qtschlepper, M_Schimmel, fihu, Abulic Monkey, Space][rucker, David Jones, --Sam--, saamiblog, hr.icio, robertkillmer, Vanderelbe.de, runran, Melody Ayres-Griffiths, BiblioArchives / LibraryArchives, LoopZilla, Space][rucker, Cambridge Cat, Tomás Fano, Jonathan Lumibao, srqpix, exfordy, a minha menina, Piano Piano!, loufi, Gwydion M. Williams, TheeErin, Jo Naylor, Ben Sutherland, ratanx, Rome Cabs, tara marie, Joe Shlabotnik, Chrissy Olson, Mavroudis Kostas, postal67, Ryan Dickey, Amanda Niekamp, Paulimus J - moved to: ipernity.com/home/paulj, qtschlepper, qtschlepper, Arria Belli, gedankenstuecke, qtschlepper, Wolfgang Staudt, exfordy, OakleyOriginals, bixentro, 드림포유, RileyOne, kuhnmi