The Nature of Order
1 rating since posting on Thursday, January 4, 2007
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The Nature of Order", Christopher Alexander's Magnum Opus of books about architecture and cosmology is at once profound, bravely honest and frustratingly close to being really Individual and Personal in nature. They introduce and copiously illustrate the fundamental structural principles (Vol. 1), processes (vol. 2), psychological/spiritual attitudes (vol. 4) that Alexander deems indispensable to the generation of Living Structure" (I might say "Living Infrastructure"). Volume 3 is about the potential of the application of the process as illustrated by a large number of examples of real life attempts. The books are in some sense a continuation and elaboration of what was started in his previous works, of which "A Pattern Language" and "the Timeless Way of Building" are the most famous. I heartily recommend all of these as well. I don't really have the space here for a more detailed description of the contents of the books. For that you can visit natureoforder.com. or patternlanguage.com. Instead, I hope it is not misleading if I see fit to limit my review to more of a critique. Make no mistake; these books are a brilliant, beautiful and sincere attempt by a highly educated (acculturated) individual to make sense of the world and to come to grips with, and get free from and replace, those assumptions of his own culture/education that, as they translate into practice, threaten to turn nature and the future into garbage. I write what I write here only because I feel it is crucial to the success of what I think we are both trying to accomplish that it be someone do so, and because I have no sense at all that anyone else is going to express it. I think that the only real flaw in the books is Alexander's unconscious undervaluing of (perhaps even misconception of) culture. By this I mean not only "the Culture of Building"(Howard Davis), in some unnecessarily restricted sense, but culture in general as it relates to building among many other things. Rather than treating the Descartian world view, science, and physics, as cosmological manifestations of a sick culture, Alexander seems to want to make culture itself subject to a new "trans-Descartian" physics which is nevertheless still fundamentally flawed and prejudiced by sick culture assumptions of Apart-ness and dissociated specialization. I think he misses a more truthful approach because the sense of Culture as an irreducible subjective/objective whole and as an inextricable union of Cosmology, Identity, Ritual, and Infrastructure is relatively absent from his work/life, as it is from that of most people. Without such a healthy conception of culture (which is, "recursively", itself an aspect of healthy culture) , he seems to think he can limit his diagnosis and prescription to treating of only one aspect of our dysfunctional Cosmology and only one aspect of Infra-Structure, leaving out Identity and Ritual almost altogether. Not unrelatedly, he does this primarily from the specialized and dissociated Identity of "an Architect/artist and Scientist" within the limited field of "architecture/art" (however broadly defined)... The over all effect of this approach is extremely frustrating; it is as though important evidence is revealed in a way that obscures its most important implications; in a way that obscures the deepest truth that it is evidence of. It is like witnessing someone proving that the "emperor has no clothes" in a way that might make it harder and not easier to challenge "empire" itself. This, I believe, is because real wholeness and real healthy culture (and healthy infrastructure as an aspect of that) cannot be achieved, or even inspired, through primarily specialized means and methods, nor by primarily "specialized" individuals. The assumption of the togetherness of subject and object (or of Nature and "The I") is not just a means to a specific infrastructural end, nor even only the informing basis of an entirely different kind of science/cosmology, but both the cause and effect of a fundamentally different Way of Life (culture) individually and personally. The shift to that inner-and-outer culture of healing can not be made or even furthered as a public-private figure but only as an Individual-Person in the active practice of Healthy Culture. For example, analogous to what Alexander shows regarding "material" structure in the "Process of Creating Life"; how a rigidly willful and egotistical image of the final building is typically violently imposed on the land in a building process that violates and insults rather than ornaments and brings out its inherent Living Structure, so there is a way in which the rigid "Identity-Structure" of being a "professional" within some relatively dissociated "field" constitutes and ego-driven image that fails to "ornament", and even partially destroys, the authentic, living structure of the Individual-Personhood of any real human being. The same can be said for the structure of the kind of mathematics which he takes for granted and in terms of which he tries to formulate and, perhaps, legitimate his experience. What I am saying is that these cognitive structures and identity-structures (as well as the various everyday rituals that support and reinforce them) are part and parcel of the culture which has generated the present, relatively life-denying built environment, and that each of these represents as naked an "emperor" as doe’s modern architecture. They, and the institution of modern (and most "ancient") education that transmits them across time, are old bottles, incapable of holding the new wine of the paradigm that is needed. So far as Identity goes, I wonder If Alexander has read "Disabling Professions" by Ivan Illich. I am sure he would say that he is trying to be and "enabling" rather than disabling professional but I think that that is an oxymoron. Or rather the idea of "enabling" is still pretty arrogantly unilateral and beside the point. It is only through an expression of egalitarian friendship as wounded (but also healing and even whole) Individual-Persons, eschewing the alienating identity politics of Profession just as much as those of race, and gender etc, that human beings can really be helpful--not only to others but necessarily to themselves. I want Christopher Alexander to "come out" as an Individual-Person (an Individual family- member, neighbor, citizen-of-the-world and soul) rather than as an Architect or scientist. And I want him to do it in the context of the cosmological assumptions of really Healthy Culture (such as those comprising what I am calling Integral Science: see integralscience.motime.com/). I don't know that he is aware of the possibility of doing this and so I offer this review also as an informant and an open invitation to such an enterprise. Such a "coming-out" (for any "Professional" in any field) would constitute a kind of initiation into the cosmology, identity- politics, ritual and spatial-temporal infrastructure of Healthy Culture. To that same extent it would involve the acknowledgement of lingering traces of the culture of apart-ness (it’s factional identity politics, dissociated cosmology, and its rituals of inner and outer apart- ness), as part and parcel with its alienating infrastructure, not only in the outer world, but in his own life as an Individual-Person. I think that if Alexander did this, the real truth in what he is saying would be more clear, more clearly put into perspective, and, with modifications consequent on its integration into a real inner and outer Cultural healing process, more likely to be put into practice at the scale intended. In short, a sick infrastructure, an infrastructure of Apart-ness, is a symptom of a Sick Culture of Apart-ness conceiving "culture" as Cosmology, Identity, Ritual, and Infrastructure, as well as something that transcends collective ("our culture") and individual ("my culture") distinctions. The sustainable transformation and healing of our collective and individual-personal infrastructure will come about only as an aspect of the transformation and healing of Culture conceived and practiced in this truly holistic sense; a sense inclusive of not only Cosmology and infrastructure, but of Identity and Ritual as well. Healthy Culture conceived and enacted not only collectively but Individually and Personally (and both inwardly and outwardly) is the issue to start with. To start with anything else is itself a ritual of apart-ness that will inevitably thwart and baffle even the most well- meaning attempts at any more specialized "healing". All of that having been said, I want to reiterate my feeling that these books are works of incredible importance and intrinsic Beauty. Like all of Alexander's works of which I am familiar, both written and built, they approach, both in message and in physical being, that kind of beauty--the only true kind--which is an expression of Beauty because it as an expression also of Goodness, of Truth, of Life… Note: I have used some language in this "review" in ways that are specific to Integral Science. To understand what I have written better and to learn more about Integral Science and Healthy Culture, please check out my Web logs at integralscience.motime.com/ and lifedancelog.motime.com/. (It might be better to begin backwards, with the archives, of the former). An even better way to find out more is though personal correspondence. Email me at: individualperson1@gmail.com. --Piankhy Thompson - I-P , posted 01/04/07 |
The Nature of Order was recommended for:
- Tribe: The Bioregional (r)Evolutionary Movement
- Tribe: Healthy Culture (open tribe)
- Tribe: Radical Urban Planners
- Tribe: Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability
- Tribe: ARCHITECTURE
- Tribe: Natural Building
- Tribe: taoism
- Tribe: Eco-Pioneers : Community Cultivators
- Tribe: Sustainable Practices and Technology
- Tribe: Carfree by Choice
- Tribe: EarthFirst!
- Tribe: Cars Suck
- Tribe: acculturation
