Apr 2, 2022·edited Apr 2, 2022Liked by Addison Del Mastro
Is there an appropriate time horizon for urban development? Most of my reading these days is 19th century, the protean days of conflagrations and epidemics. A question I have for historians: how much old architecture did we lose just from fires? The first hotel in Houston, constructed during the first few months in 1837, simply collapsed about two decades later. It was a shabby "Bretterkasten," as some Germans referred to it. Should we worry that we are not building for the ages? People needed lodging, and the Ben Fort Smith Hotel (aka City Hotel) was built with available supplies and labor. American cities are undeveloped, and it is most important to build housing, especially if it supports mixed use.
With old architecture, we often have availability bias. We imagine that the old buildings were better quality because we only see the best-made buildings. How many old buildings just fell apart, and were torn down and replaced because they were low quality and not worth preserving? Surviving buildings are almost always among the best of their era. It's ok to build things for current needs.
>"I kind of like buying precut, prepackaged foods that don’t make me contemplate death as a precondition of having a meal. I think the vast majority of people do, as well."
So I struggle with this concept in general a bit. I think Wendell Berry has a line about never eating meat that you wouldn't be willing to butcher yourself, etc. And while I think that specific admonition is hyperbolic, I'm not entirely sure it's completely off the wall?
Like there's clearly a point where we ought to be presented with the implications of our actions. I've been pondering car design and the implications of making the driver have an enhanced (sometimes artificial!) sense of personal safety and how that seems to induce increased danger and damage to others. I think we'd probably all be better off if our driving helped make us more consciously aware of the reality of our position as maneuvering a massive and dangerous machine.
Is it just because that's impacting other *people*? I don't know. Or to the question of meat, like does the desire for a bit of buffer like you describe also justify not worrying about any sort of process and whether or not the creatures are raised humanely? There are practical reasons to be concerned about Factory Farming for sure, but I also kinda think the aesthetic ones stand on their own, too.
Anyway, I don't know, but I guess to bring the pondering full circle I'm forced to reckon with Arendt's Banality of Evil: if one of the core sources of deeply inhumane behavior is the willingness and ability to abstract away the implications of a given process, it definitely seems like we ought ot be very careful what abstractions we casually tolerate in day to day life.
Is there an appropriate time horizon for urban development? Most of my reading these days is 19th century, the protean days of conflagrations and epidemics. A question I have for historians: how much old architecture did we lose just from fires? The first hotel in Houston, constructed during the first few months in 1837, simply collapsed about two decades later. It was a shabby "Bretterkasten," as some Germans referred to it. Should we worry that we are not building for the ages? People needed lodging, and the Ben Fort Smith Hotel (aka City Hotel) was built with available supplies and labor. American cities are undeveloped, and it is most important to build housing, especially if it supports mixed use.
With old architecture, we often have availability bias. We imagine that the old buildings were better quality because we only see the best-made buildings. How many old buildings just fell apart, and were torn down and replaced because they were low quality and not worth preserving? Surviving buildings are almost always among the best of their era. It's ok to build things for current needs.
>"I kind of like buying precut, prepackaged foods that don’t make me contemplate death as a precondition of having a meal. I think the vast majority of people do, as well."
So I struggle with this concept in general a bit. I think Wendell Berry has a line about never eating meat that you wouldn't be willing to butcher yourself, etc. And while I think that specific admonition is hyperbolic, I'm not entirely sure it's completely off the wall?
Like there's clearly a point where we ought to be presented with the implications of our actions. I've been pondering car design and the implications of making the driver have an enhanced (sometimes artificial!) sense of personal safety and how that seems to induce increased danger and damage to others. I think we'd probably all be better off if our driving helped make us more consciously aware of the reality of our position as maneuvering a massive and dangerous machine.
Is it just because that's impacting other *people*? I don't know. Or to the question of meat, like does the desire for a bit of buffer like you describe also justify not worrying about any sort of process and whether or not the creatures are raised humanely? There are practical reasons to be concerned about Factory Farming for sure, but I also kinda think the aesthetic ones stand on their own, too.
Anyway, I don't know, but I guess to bring the pondering full circle I'm forced to reckon with Arendt's Banality of Evil: if one of the core sources of deeply inhumane behavior is the willingness and ability to abstract away the implications of a given process, it definitely seems like we ought ot be very careful what abstractions we casually tolerate in day to day life.