The way folks celebrate the post-human these days, you'd almost swear Modern Man desired nothing better than to supersede himself. And yet not, it would seem, out of a sense of his own insignificance. At least not in the way, say, that John the Baptist longed to be superseded by his cousin Jesus. But maybe - who knows? - just for the thrill of finally, irrevocably creating his own God?
Anyhow, even in these aggressively posthuman times, the fact is that everything we do still has a human dimension. A human face, if you will, however dour, grim and unwelcoming. Indeed it would seem, in many of our operational settings, that this particular human visage simply can't be too grim, too forbidding and demanding. After all, there's WORK to be done! And if the solemn importance, gravity and urgency of work - as twenty-first-centurily defined - hasn't got the right to drain every ounce of joy and spontaneity out of a human undertaking, what does?
And yet I wonder sometimes if we aren't making all sorts of working environments - at least visually - far more austere and harsh, more nought-for-your-aesthetic-comfort-and-good-cheer, than even the strictest, most rigidly hierarchical notions of utility would dictate. Yes, it's true that life is a serious business. And in particular those necessary and innovative disruptions of life that involve profit and war. But is it possible these days that serious life is becoming a tad too much so? I.e., too serious even to make allowance for basic human refreshment, and restoration?
Now already I can hear the common business-like rejoinder:
"Well, I'm afraid that's just too bad - that's simply life in the real world! If something is necessary then at very least it is functional, and if so that functionality should be obvious. In other words, it should look the part: there should be nothing in its appearance suggesting anything extrinsic to that function, however otherwise pleasant or restful or even delightful. The fact is, many things that may be refreshing to our so-called spirit are nonetheless distracting from, or even inimical to, the task at hand. And even where the reverse is true - where aesthetic pause and refreshment actually enhance a given task's end result - why, even then, surely there's much to be said for the kinds of adverse conditions - those, say, of a 'sterile', unpleasing, overly functional work and business environment - that, regardless of their effect upon the immediate result, nonetheless steel and fortify us for the real, wider and larger tasks of life? And in particular the most pressing tasks of all - those that require surviving and dominating a chaotically unpredictable, if not hostile universe?"
In sum (and assuming I'm reading this argument correctly), reality, whatever else it may or may not be, is not a friendly place. Or even necessarily a beautiful one. So why pretend it is, through our traditionally deceptive, palliative architectural and other arrangements of space?
At which point I can't help but recall an observation by T S Eliot - himself no mild critic of our human penchant for self-deception: namely, that reality was a thing that humankind, in the poet's own words, cannot bear too much of. I recall that he wrote this c. 1941. And then I consider the visual realities we have been inundated with these past c. three quarters of a century, and how we have been made to bear them: the starkness, the grim hyperfunctionality of not just our work, commercial, educational, and even recreational environments, but of so many of our most festive and ceremonial, and commemorative, public spaces. Just think of the bareness, not just of ornament, but of portraiture and imagery and statuary, in so many of these spaces both interior and exterior; consider how loudly it preaches our Western contempt, not just for our own history and tradition, but for all previous canons of beauty, artistry and taste.
Now I especially want you to note two things about these modernistic realities we have been made to bear. Think, first, how this sheer absence of visual memory, of reminder, has perhaps sharpened our perception of certain other vital features - technological, informational, monetary, manipulative - of our (hyper)modern real world. And then ask yourself - bearing in mind how architectural space continues to shape both the things we think and those we do - ask whether this visual and spatial puritanism hasn't blinded us to certain other deeper, more abiding human realities. Some of which - who knows? - may even exceed, and outlast, our most godlike powers of technology, and organization, and manipulation.
Reflect on how in particular this ancient and resilient human core, as it were, has somehow continued to seep through, into the most enduring of our poetry and drama and other literature, not to mention the fine arts. Consider, finally, how all-but-globally universal our "functional" bleakness has become - along with its presumption of greater progress and rationality. And yet how poorly it has inoculated us against supposedly atavistic, tribal and territorial viruses like war, and ideological fanaticism, and terror. Almost as if there was something - I don't know, chronic? - in these latter human plagues: an element not just imbedded in our sordid and bestial origins - and so more likely to be dislodged or diminished with every human advance - but actually "progressing" in tandem with each forward step. Or perhaps even something - making diligent use all the while of our organized violence - that's determined to render our public life more visually repugnant, even as it makes ever more "futuristic" demands on us? (As silly as that sounds.)
At all events, might we not do well, do you think, to be suspicious of any "Spirit of the Age" that systematically erodes and outmodes the aesthetics "of the Past" - even as it multiplies, and organizes, and industrializes "the Past's" aggressions and conflicts?
Indeed, for my part I wonder, were old Father Eliot nalive today, and able to survey with some thoroughness our busy post-Eliotic globe, if he wouldn't conclude that humankind, after all, can only bear so much ugliness, and aesthetic inhospitality, masquerading as reality.
No comments:
Post a Comment