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Notes -
On Communist Supervillains, Cognitive Dissonance, and IQ.
1 . Communist Supervillains.
Somewhere on the motte I found a link to a 1983 Harvard debate between architects Christopher Alexander and Peter Eisenman. The debate was shocking not only for its content, but for its clarity and its age. It made me do some thinking about communism, cognitive dissonance and IQ. Hence this post.
Alexander and Eisenman are/were eminent architects and professors of architecture. In the debate, Alexander explains his philosophy of architecture. Alexander focuses on harmony. He explains how important it is for the building to accomplish its purpose, for the persons who use the building to literally feel comfortable in whatever that purpose might be. Alexander also explains his process (iteration and full-scale mock up) of achieving that harmony. If the purpose of a square is to provide students a place to relax and feel free from distraction, the square must actually create that mental state. There must be harmony between these things.
Eisenman is a deconstructivist (socialist). Eisenman views the creation of disharmony as a moral imperative. Eisenman explains that architecture is meant to make people psychologically (and sometimes physically) uncomfortable. Buildings must literally impose psychic harm and pain on the people who view and use the building, or it has failed its purpose. An architect has a moral imperative to create such pain among the populous.
This is real supervillain shit. Eisenman is an influential architect, part of a whole school of architecture, who spends his time, and his students time, and untold sums of money, refining their skill at creating buildings that are mathematically ugly, disharmonious, and cause psychological pain to those who view and occupy them. And he explains all of this in absolutely clear and calm language.
Now, for students of socialism, Eisenman's outlook is not noteworthy. Socialists of all stripes are notorious for compulsively committing their thoughts and plans to paper or speeches. However, for me, the Alexander v Eisenman debate highlights the absence of public backlash. At least, not enough to prevent them from making such buildings.
You would think that if an architect responded to a city's call for plans for a new middle school building and said 'my plan is to create this building, which I believe will maximize the amount of discomfort and pain felt by anyone who gazes upon or enters it,' that his plan would be immediately rejected and that he would probably suffer some sort of social consequences. Apparently, that is not the case. Apparently, you can successfully make that pitch without much trouble.
How is that possible?
2 . IQ
My first hypothesis is that a sufficient number of persons are literally incapable of comprehending these words and ideas, even when spoken plainly and directly. However, I am not familiar enough with the IQ literature to validate this hypothesis.
I am familiar with the basics of literacy levels. As you can see, the levels come with clear examples, and explain what a person at a given level can or cannot understand. If Eisenman's statements were written, then we could plug them into the levels, and determine who would understand.
However, I am interested in who could understand Eisenman's plain statements regardless of medium (written, spoken, etc.). What IQ would be necessary to understand the statement 'I am an architect. I build buildings that harm your mind.'? Does anyone have a source which equates IQ scores with conceptual understanding in a manner similar to the literacy levels?
3. Cognitive Dissonance
My second hypothesis is that sufficiently many people do understand what's going on when they encounter socialists like Eisenman extolling their plans to do evil, but that a majority of those people with an IQ sufficient to understand in theory, are in fact blinded by cognitive dissonance. That is to say, most people's minds will not let them take seriously the idea that whole departments of people believe that turning buildings into psychic weapons is a moral imperative. Even when the evil doers state their intentions plainly and have a decades (millennia) long history of success.
Edit: Adding a comment I made downthread. I rest my case.
@sansampersamp is an architect. Let's see what he has to say about 'where architecture has gone' since Eisenman.
Okay. What does Gage say?
There might be some youngsters or non-english speakers in the audience. Let's double check the essence of Lovecraft:
So architecture has moved on from Eisenman to getting as close to emparting "cosmic dread, forbidden and dangerous knowledge, madness, non-human influences on humanity, religion and superstition, fate and inevitability, and the risks associated with scientific discoveries" as they can.
No, no. They're not evil. They're just trying to create buildings that replicate the effect of an alien presence so profoundly dangerous that merely conceptualizing a infinitesimal part of it drives you to madness.
At which timestamps from the debate does Eisenmann state what you paraphrased to "my plan is to create this building, which I believe will maximize the amount of discomfort and pain felt by anyone who gazes upon or enters it" or "I am an architect. I build buildings that harm your mind."? I am not watching all that, but my prior is that you heavily misrepresented what was said because you think communists are evil [and thus they surely must want to make maximally ugly buildings] or because you think those buildings are maximally ugly [and that could only be because communists are evil].
And if he provides the relevant quotes, are you going to change your mind on anything substantial, or just grudgingly concede that specific thing?
No need for this epistemic meta-jousting, full transcript is here. The quotes obviously aren't in there but I was reading them as a (poor) attempt to summarise Eisenman's position.
Because it's sun_the_second that put the quote marks around them.
How is it a poor attempt?
Perhaps my literacy level is not as high as yours, so you will need to help me as exactly where you see a desire to "maximize the amount of discomfort and pain" or "harm your mind", or a claim that "buildings must literally impose psychic harm and pain on the people who view and use the building".
How do you understand the words "harmony" and "disharmony"?
Also, when he says "And I’m not convinced that that is something I should have to live with all my life, just because the majority of people feel comfortable with it." how does that not straightforwardly say he wants to make people uncomfortable?
I primarily understand harmony and disharmony in terms of cleaving to notions of geometric proportionality, e.g. as formalised by Palladio. You could probably extend that to congruity in style and materials, both internally and in context. Personally, I can see deviations from this as well-executed or ill-considered, but it'd be an exceptional case I'd consider to be psychically harmful.
In the second case, he's saying he wouldn't like it if the entirety of his aesthetic experience was like Mantovani, who he regards as popular, but a bit vapid, saccharine, and unchallenging. I'd agree that some buildings, such as his Berlin memorial, succeed by being more challenging and this is appropriate for it's purpose. Conversely, most people wouldn't style their own house en brut, but it still appeals to some people.
But here you're softening the original statement to make it sound plausible. If he really wanted to "maximize the amount of discomfort and pain" his buildings have an unambitious amount of rusty syringes and razored door handles.
I feel like something is being left out by such a technical definition. You can define harmony in music in terms of mathematics too, but I don't think it's wise to completely leave out of the defintion, the effect being constantly bombarded by disharmonious chords would have on a person. And I'm pretty sure Eismann is aware of that, given all the talk of "comfort".
What is supposed to be the difference between "challenging" and "deliberately causing discomfort" in your opinion.
No, you're doing the opposite. For example OP was explicitly talking about "psychic" discomfort and pain, and you deliberately left that out to make him look ridiculous.
Also, an architect will be limited by building safety codes, and the threat of having his license taken away and/or going to prison, which will prevent him from fully leaning into his sadism.
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