>>11280164So essentially, if we build a few tunnels, some really big dams, and a relatively useless particle accelerator, this alone makes up for the mediocrity, needless transience, and sheer waste of the totality of the system. Despite all of our capability, we have no drive nor ability to scale it to anything grand nor worthy of note. Visionless, uninspired, ugly. Which is why odds are you'll hear people talking about the aqueducts, not any dam that happens to be upstream somewhere.
How about the Soviet advances in high density housing. Were these an accomplishment? Certainly they were by some metrics. Everyone had a radio in the wall. Phone. Running water. Perhaps a balcony. It was a component of relatively efficient machine. Likewise and even further in parts of Asia. Yet these are sooner forgotten and there is no desire to emulate them, nor see it return or propagate. Why is this?
>Foundations of modern citiesWould be covered over. Which is what you see in most of the world, bizarrely, including Australia. Certainly in Rome and later Europe. They built on foundations and retaining walls which were already there.
>fee-feesWhen it comes down to it, you're just naive and have no conception of the long game, which is why you haven't consciously incorporated these other parts of the human experience into your value system. You think you have a raw utilitarian approach, but eventually will crumble or fizzle into apathy under the meaninglessness of your endeavors. This has important functional effects on a society, its organization over time, and its ultimate fate. This paradigm does not, and cannot last.
Build it right, build it to last. I suppose if man has a future I'm part of the next cycle, you're still living in the old one. It always goes this way. Although I would like to get away from "building" completely, which I think can be done. Structures should be grown.
