Logic dictates it must mean the thing is able to live, change, grow - for better or worse, one hopes. In the Orchard area of our little mountain village on the lake, neighbors told us that in Japan, people say your house is "finished" only when you're dead. As an admonition, that worked for me; but I did grow up in a cultural milieu that promoted patience as a virtue,
All of this brings me back to something I've written about before, about the way people who have kept on crying about how "Arcosanti is a construction site," "Arcosanti's not finished!" are reflecting - or rather, not reflecting - on what "finished" might mean.
Because I'm here to remind you, gentle readers: Neither are its builders.
Not only have all its builders not yet assembled in the same place at the same time so that they all stand a chance of meeting long enough to introduce themselves to one another; not only do they not all know one another; they also do not, I think, come anywhere near to fully appreciating or understanding how their experiential possession of Arcosanti as a group has enormous power-potential. The only other group I can think of with similar power-not-mobilized potential is the power of the First Nations collectively.
Which maybe has not-yet-been realized but that doesn't mean it can't ever happen or isn't ever likely to happen. I myself, for one, hope that it does. I definitely would like to see what happens when Native land claims are completely respected.
I happen to be one who finds it entertaining to contemplate thinking of ways to challenge my own complacency. I try to do that whenever I encounter it, which isn't as rare as I'd like it to be. Challenging myself makes it easier to shift my perspective if a presented challenge is one to which I can respond. Jihadists notwithstanding, I believe humanity comes closer to realizing its true strength when it has no need to flex its muscle antagonistically.
"Defense is the best offense" looks a lot like anger in a passive-aggressive sort of way but I don't know if that has any bearing on the traditional view once held among aboriginal peoples that no-one has a right to possession of land.
The view of land as sacred - the only home we have on the planet: Isn't that a thesis for arcology?
It seems to me that it is, even if no 'noosphere' discussion (that I'm aware of) has precisely identified that aboriginal insight as an essential ideological connection, a connection that must somehow be central to our notions of what 'arcology' is.