Rethinking the point

Initially, I had wanted to spend the whole of this thesis trying to critique LH - for its clear expression of the machine-efficiency of Modernism, its overt tones of consumerism-pandering luxury, and ultimately its lack of aesthetic and spiritual ties to philosophies that espouse a more intimate, caring way of relating to nature (such as deep ecology).

But these few days, after getting a comprehensive if general dose of history, I've realized that, heady and passionate though such revolutionary, paradigm-changing philosophies may be (they really do sound like they can change the world, if only people can be convinced to believe in them), they also are only one in countless ways of looking at the issue of how people relate to the planet.

My goal at the outset was to argue why deep ecology represents one of the best ways to relate to nature, an ethic that architecture should strive to instill in its inhabitants. At the outset, I really believed in this goal, and I thought this would make for an interesting, if difficult to support, argument. (I didn't want to write a philosophy paper, yet concrete examples as case studies were lacking.) At this point, I still do believe that alternative philosophies like deep ecology (and its sisters the Gaia hypothesis, bioregionalism, biocentrism, etc.) represent an awesome paradigm shift in attitudes, a different way of looking at nature that could solve immense problems. It has the potential of philosophies like Marxism to "revolutionize," to effect massive change. But for the purposes of a relatively insignificant undergraduate academic paper, I'd better do the sane thing: look at it the topic at hand level-headedly, doing what I can to analyze LH from a good, fair range of perspectives. And not go nuts trying to argue on behalf of a controversial philosophy. I'll leave that to the veteran scholars who have more time and clout...

I've jumped into a stack of articles from the sustainable architectures community that, taken all together, appear to be warning against just this: preferring one viewpoint over another. And over time I have come to appreciate that, though the highly marketable, seductively beautiful homes designed through LH do not strike that passionate chord that crusading, non-anthrocentric, paradigm-changing radicals do, their approach is valid in other ways (such as those related to the post below on utopic promises made possible by technology).

The more you read, after all, the more you learn, and the more you have to retailor what you can and cannot say (with evidence). This is why I was so hesitant to write an outline at the beginning. But it's still good; even if I have to edit the darn thing 5 times (this stands to be about the 4th time - sigh), at least I have mistakes I can learn from.