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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.
I generally think that both nice, harmonious and disturbing, disharmonious works of art can be appreciated. Some people like classical music, some like punk rock. Some watch My Little Pony, some watch Chernobyl.
With texts (now that I am out of school), audio, video, paintings, theater, opera, sculptures, video games I can mostly decide what I want to consume.
Not so with architecture, in most cases. I mean, if I don't like Disney castles, I can stay away from Disneyland. Perhaps it is even feasible to stay away from a shopping mall if I think it is a crime on good taste.
But most of the buildings I visit are not this way. Picking a school and employer uses complex scoring functions, and 'do I like the building?' is not gonna be in the top ten deciding factors. For living accommodations in cities, there is even less slack to spend on architectural taste: if by some miracle I find a place which fits my other criteria, I will not care if the facade is raw concrete or if some sick fuck decided that the outer walls should weep blood like in some horror movie.
So in my point of view, most big buildings should not strive to be expressive in the same way as literature or video games are. Making them extra ugly is uncalled for, but making them extra nice from the outside is also not necessarily: schools are places were we store kids so they don't distract their parents from working, making them super nice looking would simply sugar-coat that fact. The kid getting thrown in the trash can by some bullies will not be very appreciative of the scenery. Nobody visits the DMV because they really like it there. Of course, buildings should be comfortable from the inside, have good light, short walking distances etc, but this is a rather straightforward optimization problem.
So my gist is, if it is not a new art museum or opera house or villa for some rich guy, you probably don't want a fancy artsy architect who has read Heidegger, just tell some civil engineer what your constraints are and let them optimize.
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