The Powers of Belief

 
The thing that characterises contemporary society more than anything is conformity. Just take a brief journey through all the major newspaper websites around the world and you are left exhausted at the repetition of the reporting of certain 'key' 'world' events. It's hard to believe that there are six billion people on earth, and yet we are all supposed to be interested in just the dozen things that happened in the world today. Is this utopia? Have we arrived? Why do reports of events in far off places have to disturb my peace?

Somewhere up there, journalists must look at the world and think that everyone has the same need to connect with the same handful of global protagonists; politicians, actors, musicians, sportsmen and hangers ons. There also seems to be a will, especially among western intellectuals, to institute a homogenised global body politik that matches their narrow worldview. Did someone give them this mandate or are news and ideas too, merely commodities? George Orwell predicted that the world will divide into a hegemony of three power blocs. This may well work to maintain law and order at a global scale but why is humanity in such great numbers represented by so few as if the individual soul no longer matters? Was not the Florentine republic once regarded as the ideal size for a sovereign state? Whatever happened to the richness of human cultural diversity? Have we lost the right to determine the scale of self governance?

Globalisation may well have its benefits but its true scale goes well beyond our powers of imagination. The Internet makes it seem even intimate but the virtual world is an illusion. I believe, with the desperate need to heal Earth's ecology, that the time has arrived for individuals to redirect their powers of belief. Let Internet do its great work of connecting humanity, but for oneself, it is time to give meaning to the smaller scale, giving greater importance to the reality of the collective soul of one's immediate surroundings. Re-engage with family, neighbours and friends and create a new mood for communal level politics. Do we not need to care about who is keeping the neighbourhood clean and how much it's costing? Let's ignore the robotic sports on TV every now and then and go urge a group of local lads.

At the time, as the first airplanes took off, it must have seemed as though man was capable of anything! As I was growing up, I was constantly presented with the imagery of a dynamic future where supersonic airplanes and spacecraft would link mechanised cities full of domes, insulated corridors, monorail conduits and brightly lit towers. It was an attractive vision but so far that human impermeability has not materialised and I doubt if it ever will. In any case, I have gradually grown away from believing that such a future is inevitable, let alone desirable. I now seek to escape the habits and routines of the modernist regime but I'm not sure if others do. The fantasy of a heroically modern future seems to remain vivid for many, perhaps because it also promised to remove our fears.

Let me relate these global/local antitheses to architecture:

If what I assert is true, that architectural style is compelled by the powers of belief, then it is not surprising that the profession is dividing into two distinct camps of global stylists of abstract conceptions on one hand and local imitators of the vernacular traditions on the other. Somewhere in between are the serious learned architects who can still compose convincing classical buildings. Who can tell whether this tendency will create a pluralist world or lead to a conflict of cultures? If the opposing views seem completely delusory to each other, it means that arriving at a consensus may not be possible. So if we are to avoid conflict, we have to recognise that the age of collectivism is over and that we are entering the age of the individual conscience. This view may seem unrealistic but overall, democracy can only be improved by the sharpening of the individual's critical faculties.

The fear is that Mankind will never transcend his worldly desires and remain forever despondent about the scale of his ambitions. Without the heightening of mystical perceptions, self knowledge cannot extend beyond the barrier of definitions and in the end we just end up conforming. Things have moved fast but ideas have not. As in the words of the eccentric Renaissance monk, Nicholas of Cusa, the best we can hope for is to realise how much more we need to learn about ourselves and attain what he called "learned ignorance". Then again, this too is a form of belief but perhaps if it is felt strongly enough, it might bring forth an innovative architectural idea. If so, I feel that it would be modest; more like a rough-hewn hut rather than a gleaming glass tower.