#10 PART.II.thought — Introduction
The Goal in Architecture PART.II.0 thought — Introduction Part 1
This is the beginning of PART.II. This will be a lot longer than PART.I. The path may seem to move away from architecture, but it is not. On the contrary, it is the profession that has gotten too far away from architecture, following concepts that do not harmonize with today. We are finding our way back.
In the previous articles I noted that the mind is described as having four components in the Indian Knowledge System and that this is expressed in rajayoga. Manas, buddhi, ahankara and chitta, corresponding roughly to thought, intellect, ego and conscious mind in English. Thought is distinguished as only a part of mind and consciousness. We are examining the role of thought through this orientation, linking to spiritual practice and its verküpfung with architectural practice.
PART.II is about thought. Thought and thinking have brought humanity far. Thought and thinking are ‘good’. We are going to consider thinking from a POV that we construct by applying some great research in spiritual practice, based on the goal in life, rajayoga and its broader knowledge system. To these we will add the social and cultural context that will lead us to technology's role in practice and essential value of architecture.
Thought is certainly definitive of humanity. It is broadly considered to be what makes us different from all the other creatures. Thought (manas) and the intelligence (buddhi) that we build up are a part of the whole of each of us. Thought appears to be definitive because we generally ignore or subvert the full set of components that make up mind.
The separation and the disconnect with other components of mind is well evinced through the common feeling that machine-based AI, which could not exist without human perception, is somehow equivalent to us, with many concerned that it is destined to supersede us. AI as it is being produced now is insanely dangerous, but just as a nest of deadly ants can be neutralized, we can easily end that danger. AI is completely vulnerable to human intervention. It is the people who arm themselves with it who are the danger. Not only aggressive leaders and users, but the seemingly innocent scientists and bureaucratic functionaries who blithely go on with powerful developments, isolated from their responsibility to humanity and Nature. We should rightly be wary, if not fear them. Machines can do a lot of damage, but the blame for manifestations of our thoughts, such as AI, all manner of digital tools and weapons, rules and systems, corporations, and places, is with people and people's intentions.
The displacement of the danger to the tool is a common symptom in our culture, akin to letting the 'market' define our lives and claiming that the building is architecture. It is our mind that presences these things; they are not meaningful outside of human life. The need is for discrimination, which is an essential capacity in spiritual practice. Discrimination is telling one thing from another. Discrimination will be important in the coming articles.1
It is easy to attribute the human plight to lack of even more ‘progress’. Progress appeared to be synonymous with good until that short reign began to erode in the 1960s. Much of our progress was proving to be toxic either directly, like leaded gasoline and any number of chemicals in processed food, and indirectly, like DDT's ravaging of birds.
Despite progress in yield, refrigeration, biotech and management, millions of people starve while millions of tons of rice and wheat rot in storage or are destroyed for market advantage. At least half of the food that is grown in North America and in Europe never gets eaten by people or their domestic animals. Much thinking is going on while this happens, but millions of people over a century of Machine Ages progress have not provided solutions. Markets 'mechanisms' take food spoilage with transport and storage investment as an expense in ROI calculations, including artificial scarcity. Good storage and logistics technology is, therefore, not the issue. Providing it is. Progress is now a nuanced concept.
While 'new' is no longer automatically good because harms are most often discovered after deployment of the new, we are hardly more careful that benefits are justly attained and that they are justly distributed. We avoid summing up, we look to ever shorter term gains because finance is short term and the big picture is so unpleasant and difficult, even with computed predictions and outlooks. Unity over values that are not rewarded with capital and power remains difficult. The effects on the biosphere and for the climate are signs of distress and trauma that together with the suffering of humanity at our own hand are now overwhelming.
