These wonderful books are all available from your local bookseller, or if you must, from a big box store.
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Grounding: an argument for the eternal...
In his seminal book The Education of Henry Adams, Henry Adams stakes a position as haunting today as it was when the book was first published in 1918. Reflecting on his own life and the rapid pace of change in the world he writes; … in essentials like religion, ethics, philosophy; in history, literature, art; in the concepts of all science, except perhaps mathematics, the American boy of 1854 stood nearer the year 1 than to the year 1900. The education he had received bore little relation to the education he needed. Speaking as an American of 1900, he had as yet no education at all. He knew not even where or how to begin. Golly. I can’t help but wonder… does the person of 1991 stand nearer the year 2023, or to the year 1? Is the pace of life so fast that no one can be genuinely current? Hmmm... I find myself asking; what gives the current its currency? The situation becomes more troubling when we look through the lens offered by Martin Heidegger in his book Poetry, Language, Thought, first published in 1971. Heidegger notes that we moderns have accomplished something that has never happened before: we have conquered distance. For example, in the late 1700’s it took up to six days to travel from Boston to New York. By the mid 1800’s the same trip took only a day and a half. Now it’s less than an hour. Depending on my needs I may instantaneously accomplish my trip via a telephone call or a Zoom session. The age-old problem of distance has been conquered by publishing, films, television, video, and modern transportation. Following Henry Adams one might say that because grandpa is apparently too old and / or set in his ways to figure out how to use video chat, he must surely be living terribly close to year 1. No conquest of distance for this one. And forget about Facebook. Grandma is never going to be able to handle a Facebook page. Living so near year 1, she is never going to be able to see the hundreds of photos of her grandkids. We moderns don’t have that problem. We’re connected! I can watch a cute video of a cat playing the piano just as if my feline friend and I are together. I can look at the last 150 photos that an old college friend posted of her grandson’s soccer game just as if we were there! I can (must?) even take the opportunity to “like” a few of them. Surely my old friend will feel like we're sitting together on those bleachers. Yes, we moderns have conquered distance. Of course, leave it to Heidegger to throw a monkey wrench into the whole mix when he reflects on the difference between “distance” and “nearness.” He writes; …the frantic abolition of all distances brings no nearness; for nearness does not consist in shortness of distance. What is least remote from us in point of distance, by virtue of its pictures on film or its sound on the radio, can remain distant from from us. What is incalculably far from us in point of distance can be near to us. Short distance is not in itself nearness. Nor is great distance remoteness. Uh oh. “Distance” versus “Nearness.” Have we moderns conquered distance, but failed to achieve nearness? I worry sometimes that we - that I - don’t even know what nearness is. I think about my old friend Phillip, who I first met while still living in Borger. Phillip had a profound and positive impact on the course of my life, and he seemed to turn up every 10 years or so in each of the locations where I’ve lived. The last time we spoke I was living in Boston and well into an academic track. He’d been teaching for years and offered some advice, some of which I later wished I had taken more to heart. It was a great conversation and as with many true friends the time between our last connection seemed like but a few days. We might not talk often, but when we did it counted. Phillip and I had not conquered distance, but we had achieved nearness. Some years later I decided to give Phillip a call and see if we could get together. The phone number I had wasn’t working so I went to Duck Duck Go and did a search. If you've not experienced it yet, give it time: finding an obituary instead of a current address. And yet, all these years since Phillip’s passing I still feel quite near to him. You can imagine how I feel about my late wife Rae. Incalculably distant, yet incalculably near. I’m starting to wonder about we moderns…. Without dismissing the current, perhaps there are elements of this human experience that stand outside of time and space. Gaston Bachelard provides a few clues; a finger pointing toward the moon. In his 1954 book Poetics of Space Bachelard suggests that there are “primal images; images that bring out the primitiveness in us.” For example, regarding physical refuges, Bachelard writes that; If we were to look among the wealth of our vocabulary for verbs that express the dynamics of retreat, we should find images based on animal movements of withdrawal, movements that are engraved in our muscles. Among other people, Bachelard suggests that some phenomena are woven into our very being and in many ways stand outside of time and space, albeit at an often tacit level. So, on one hand contemporary society’s rate of change is so rapid that whatever we are learning, whatever skills we are acquiring, whatever we do - moving from our date of birth we are all closer to the year 1 than to the current year. Things becomes ephemeral and quickly disposable. On the other hand, for millennia our forbearers have stood before a fire to warm themselves, even as a storm raged. Sitting before a blazing fire as a winter nor’easter shakes my house I have the same “muscle memory” of my ancient ancestors. I feel “good, sheltered, comforted,” perhaps even “hugged” by the environment. These eternal values are more or less true for all us regardless of our ethnic background, financial situation, gender and so forth. In our diversity we truly are one body with many parts. Through this lens I come to know the “other” in ways more profound than might be imagined. ---------- OK. I hear you asking, “Come on - who cares about this stuff?” Well, as it turns out, I care about this stuff and I’m saddened that others do not. The architect/educator in me groans when I read about yet another architecture program that has grounded itself in “sustainable” or “green” design (however important that may be) while completely ignoring those elements of design that stand outside of time and space; that speak to my very being. The musician in me cringes when someone tells me how great BTS is while also sharing how “boring” they find real jazz. I’m saddened by people who define nearness by number of followers, likes, and retweets. And oh my soul… the spiritual being that lives inside this little shell weeps for people who believe that “this” is all there is. Understand: I'm no better than anyone else. Far from it. But I keep getting up, dusting off and trying again. Nearby I see Adams, Heidegger, and Bachelard apparently wagging a finger at me now and again. |