esd05

Mental Landscape

As much as I'd like to write a wonderful submission saying how this reading relates to society...I think I'd have a bit of trouble as I believe it is quite irrellevant in today's society. By saying that there isn't enough space in the world for the human race to have separate 'resident' and 'explorer' personalities, i think is completely missing the point. As a baseline, there is no way that the entire world is going to change their way of living...even slowly by altering today's design methods to become more ecologically sustainable. So even the suggestion of transforming our way of living or transportation to the 'outdoor living room' from older european cities is similar to comparing Stone-henge with a modern piece of sculpture: their reasons for existance and context were so far apart they had no relevance other than what could be interpereted to fit a certain agenda.
They lived like they did due to lack of transportation and lived in small communities because communication was very limited so they could walk down the street and bump into people they knoew, whereas the chances of having cities or any type of even remotely similar set-ups in today's socity where people bumped into each other and knew them is so far from likely i don't believe it's even worth the thought.
Because technology is such a prevalent part of today's socity, and it itself is so fast moving, i don't believe it is possible to map out how society should be, because by the time it is able to be put into effect society will have, once again, changed so considerably it will be ineffective. As an example; the way we mix different areas of our life (in response to the idea of having the 'jekyl' completely separate from the 'hyde') is becoming more and more based on technology and so many different areas of our lives are being integrated. mobiles mean we are contactable by work 24/7, or vice versa, by family at work or wherever we are, we can do the washing while dinner is cooking, and also you can have an automated vaccuum cleaner and the creepy crawly looking after cleaning, the hot water heats itself, and we have all the information on the latest news, weather forecasts and celebrity updates as well as our shopping online at the click of a button (or two). There is no longer that distincltion of 'resident' and 'explorer' possible; as things in our daily life become easier, we do not get lazier, life just gets busier and we fit more things in (for the average person that is....granted, there are those who do simply become fat and lazy.)
And the idea of 'combining' motorists with residents by building a village is not successful, it is more nullifying the motorist and making them fit in with the resident, which i believe is ineffective and defeats the reason for the motorist.
I think that instead of creating idealistic lifestyles we should find changes we can make to our own, using methods that are plausable and understandable in the average person's eyes.

posted by Mel Binks @ 12:16 AM