Most folks know what I do for a living and how much I do enjoy my work. It is an integral part of who I am, but it is NOT the primary reason for my continued refusal to die. When you are employed in the architecture field, the majority of your peers and colleagues are far to the left in ideology. The closest that I can come to the reason for that is because they got into the industry because they liked to draw and realized that feeding themselves by producing art was too risky. Therefore, we do not have a bunch of folks that are interested in buildings for the right reasons, the buildings come much further down the list. The art is the primary reason.
That is why buildings these days SUCK. Artists do not take the time necessary to study the reasons for a building in the first place. What could those reasons possibly be? Well, of course they are simply to protect a man and his belongings from the elements. If you fail to meet the primary reason, you fail to meet all subsequent reasons. Sorry, Frank Lloyd Wright was AT BEST a poor architect. While Wright is the best known of all American architects, he was NOT a good one. His ART was nice, his buildings were failures. Hence, the only ones that people continue to talk about are the three of his main works that survive, Guggenheim, Falling Water, and Robie House. Of these three, only Robie has NOT had continuous work on it performed to keep it from collapsing from the element bashing the other two suffer daily.
Now, to the ideology. I read a great post this morning on
Why Architects Drink on the history of Pruitt-Igoe, a Saint Louis housing development that was a failure from day one. While it does seem that the complex was adequate for keeping the elements at bay, the ideology of collectivism was the reason for their construction and proved beyond any doubt why collectivism is an abject failure wherever it is tried.
Understand please, that Saint Louis is a poster city for the failure of an activist government. Even as far back as the 1940s, working people were fleeing the city for the safety of the suburbs. Today, virtually no employed person lives in St. Louis proper, they are all on the outskirts of town and the downtown area rivals Detroit, Cleveland, Little Rock, and Jackson, MS in the crime department. This further proves the point of this post. Philosophy is the key to success in personal life, in townships, in cities, and in countries.
You can search across our country and diametrically opposing ideologies exist virtually within rock-throwing distance of each other and the contrast is STARK. DC/Alexandria, Memphis/Germantown, Forth Worth/Plano, and Jackson/any surrounding city sans Clinton, the list is endless.
The first real ideological battle that is well documented that I can find is the one that presented the United States with its first real influx of capable men, women, and children that brought about our industrial revolution. In the United Kingdom around the mid 1840s, the introduction of machinery started to reduce the need for skilled artisans and those craftsmen that were replaced suffered hard times. Local townships had always had poorhouses that were supported by the township's citizens to take care of their less than wealthy folks. But, alas, those poorhouses would NOT allow anyone that possessed a skill to live there.
If you were replaced in your job, you were EXPECTED to find another. If another job was not to be found in that area, you grabbed everything that you owned and migrated to WHERE THE JOBS WERE. That is why Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and the Great Lakes area received so many Irish, Scots, and British folks during the mid-1800s. There were no jobs in the UK, but there were plenty here, so the people came to WHERE THE JOBS WERE. Potato Famine? Uh, not really, it was a jobs famine. We had at that time, the greatest influx of new workers into this country that did the unthinkable, they sought and took JOBS.
Then the ideology began to slowly shift. People started to FEEL as if they were owed something from the greatest country in the history of the Earth. At the present time, we now have around fifty MILLION people that do not possess the slightest work ethic and they continue to expect more and more from those of us that do. One only need to point to the residents of New Orleans and the shit-fit crying jag that arose when two days after Hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi, they starting DROWNING in New Orleans.
But, in the same vein, these are those government subsidized apartment complexes that were provided as "low income" housing on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Twenty-two of these apartment complexes are scheduled to be constructed in Mississippi. Nine have already been completed.
Oddly, the number of jobs unfilled since the hurricane has NOT increased, yet we are making great strides to move people into these apartments in areas where there are no jobs available. What can the outcome of this effort possibly be?
Please note the covered PARKING at these apartment complexes. COVERED PARKING FOR POOR FOLKS. Our poor folks in this country OWN CARS. In other countries, most of the RICH FOLKS do not own cars.
Indoor plumbing is also provided. Do you realize that OVER seventy percent of people on the entire planet do not have ANY plumbing? This bathroom would be inconceivable to the overwhelming majority of people living in Mexico, wonder why exactly they want to come here illegally and also wonder why we let them do that?
Do you wonder why those in the Middle East hate us so? It is because we do not have to shit on the GROUND.
In many areas of the world, BATHING is unheard of. Imagine what someone that was transplanted here from the Amazon basin would actually think of a knob that you could turn that would produce potable water? They would think that we were SORCERERS that can conjure up the great spirits of MAGIC!
Oh man! We can make MAGIC FIRE, too!
Let's see, an electric range, a microwave, kitchen sink, places to store canned goods....HOLY SHIT! CANNED GOODS!
No flat rock and a pointed rock is needed either to prepare food in our MAGIC SORCERER kitchen for "poor people." And dang, we do not even have to travel eight miles to the dirty, crocodile infested river to fill a wooden bucket with muddy water, then travel the returning eight miles with a wet bucket on our heads.
This is our circa 1840s UK poorhouse, folks.
OH LOOK! Holy spotted leopard G_d! There are things made from shiny magic material that receive our dirty garments and offer them to the cleaning spirits so we no longer have to go to an area covered over in Malaria and Yellow Fever mosquitoes, too!
Please consider the shark sufficiently jumped if this is what we regard in this day and age as "affordable housing." Admit it, the phrase means "FREE HOUSING FOR DEADBEATS."
And also take a brief glimpse at the SIX-PANELED DOORS! None of those flush, hollow-core bullshit doors for our poor people! That is elitist and shall NOT STAND.
By the way, swimming pool with fountain. Beach volleyball court. Free internet and cable television. Yeah, they are poor.
Do you understand that we have produced a class of "poor" people that shall never, ever hit a lick at a snake for their entire lives? How can that survive? Dunno, just ask those mythical people that Ayn Rand wrote about at The Twentieth Century Motor Company.
Who's the MASTER and who's the SLAVE?
Please take the time to comment.
