Who is at the center of human-centeredness?

The second thing is to take the straightforward, sincere and completely natural human desire that immediately arises in your head and put yourself in the center!

But your brain, the consciousness of an adult person, in the very next moment, with a condescending smile, will send such childish spontaneity to the shelf of unfulfilled dream children... And will offer a replacement: some group of people who are somehow similar to you, similar to you. Or people you sympathize with. Or the people in whose ranks you dream of joining! Do you notice? Replace? Yes?!

There is! So, you were recruited, and immediately put in its ranks by one of the parties-chapters of society - with its own banner roaring overhead and its own path, disappearing in the fog, along which, thundering sentences of arguments, march detachments of apologists.

We will model the discussion of this issue between prominent representatives of similar cohorts.

— "Let's put the weakest and most disadvantaged in the center of human-centeredness! After all, if there is a place in the world even for the poorest, everything else will be even better! The true mission of society and the architect as a representative of the avant-garde is to create housing for those who are unable to provide for themselves in any other way! Create an environment for those who are not able to create it otherwise! For it is written: "Blessed are the poor in spirit"...

If the society needs new achievements, it is necessary to leave room for the healthy egoism of those who realize these achievements

— "...And we will receive a helplessness review contest, where everyone will try to prove that he is the most unfortunate and the most suffering, and therefore, worthy of the preferential distribution of benefits. The weak only pretend to care about the moral state of society, but in fact they simply substitute the question "what is the length of the neighbor's skirt?" vopros "what are my own successes and achievements really?" There is no place for the weak in the center of human-centeredness! This is a place of strength and a place of the strong!"

- "The strong are selfish - they are determined to achieve their goals, and they should not silence a reasonable question: why do the weak, instead of also independently achieving what they want, spend all their energy on redistributing what they have achieved in favor of others? And if society needs new achievements, it is necessary to leave space for the healthy egoism of those who implement these achievements: they must be able to drive up to the main entrance and throw the keys of their luxurious electric car to the porter, who will park it in the parking lot and then hand it over to the moment of departure . And it is not an option to replace the front entrance with bicycle parking or a public transport stop, which, of course, must also have a place. But "and - and", not "or - or"! In general, social projects belong somewhere on the side of the highway of progress. To at least not interfere! And the center is for superheroes and those who aspire to be them!"

— "...But, probably, the person who is definitely not close to the hero will feel oppressed in such an architecture? And we will receive a groan of hopelessness that drowns out any successes and achievements of the heroes from those who are unable to achieve success, among whom there will be thinkers who are ready to present to you a tortured fundamental theory of a universal conspiracy against them with the participation of architects. Social justice is unattainable. In the same way that we cannot achieve a society consisting exclusively of superheroes who do not need it. The only thing that can be in the center of human-centeredness is harmony and beauty, which will certainly save the world with the hands and brains of people with impeccable taste and creative talent.

It is necessary to put an artist who realizes and creates beauty in the center! And we will create a perfect environment capable of instilling refined taste in people, who only in it will actually be able to feel normal, without an endless test of patience with tastelessness and fakeness..."

There is no place for the weak in the center of human-centeredness! This is a place of strength and a place of the strong!

"... But artistic taste is only one of the human talents, which, alas, nature has not awarded to everyone. And a person without taste, who was allowed to live in the realm of aesthetic perfection, will be doomed to feel like a schoolboy all the time, who somehow got into ballet with the class. Creativity is, first of all, freedom! And including freedom from aesthetic prejudices, which also become obsolete from time to time! It is necessary to put free human choice in the center of human-centeredness! Absolute freedom of choice!"

"... But the choice of a person who lives in society and by definition needs it cannot be completely free. Our freedom ends where the rights of others begin..."

Choose! What battle line will lead your cohort?

An endless string of ideas and slogans replacing each other forms an equally endless vortex around the center of human-centricity, enveloping in a dense fog any chances of everyone marching with his party to figure it all out. What seemed to you and your apologists from afar like a battlefield of ideas, on which you and your truth should win, turned out to be a labyrinth from which there is no way out to this truth. Moreover, this exit is blocked not by the walls of the labyrinth, but exclusively by the thoughts of your supporters and opponents.

Perhaps the correct name for this labyrinth is "discourse of human-centeredness" (from Late Latin, Discursus: originally - jogging, vanity, maneuver, roundabout; and only figuratively, in one of the meanings - "conversation, conversation").

It is necessary to establish a dead end! And where is the right way? And where did we turn wrong? I think the mistake crept in at the moment when we assumed that a party close to you in spirit as a part of the whole and the idea that unites its apologists could be at the center of this whole. Absolute dominance of one part necessarily leads to degradation in the second separate part (furthest from the winner). And then the system as a whole. And the labyrinth of ideas that we received within the framework of our speculative model is actually a compensatory mechanism that protects the entire system (society) from this degradation.

 

Celebrate diversity

A successful society is a diverse society in which different people have a chance to find what they need: the strong get opportunities, and the weak get support, people with taste can create and enjoy harmony, and people without taste don't bother about it, and so on.

But what will be put in the center of this diversity? What can unite everyone, but at the same time not lead to a common denominator?

In my personal opinion, it is necessary to place the desire of a person to be and feel noble in the center. And architecture should contribute to this: yes, a person in a wheelchair needs at least a barrier-free environment to have a chance to feel noble. But this is only the minimum - the opportunity to stand on the same level with other, "ordinary mobile" people.

What does it take to feel noble in general?

Nobility? "Blagoi rod" is an atavism, a word from the second era, in which, it should be noted, goods were more often inherited than acquired through personal merit. And is this relevant for the XXI century?

But what will be put in the center of this diversity? What can unite everyone, but at the same time not lead to a common denominator?

But I use this word because the second reason has not appeared in the last time! And the quality of nobility that was achieved by this hereditary and ancestral method is incomparably higher than what can be achieved by actual methods. And I believe that it is precisely this "super quality" that modern society needs.

Over the last century, we have learned enough about how cooks run the state and what kind of music millionaires from the slums order - this can also be seen as the work of a kind of compensatory mechanism that was activated when one part of society appropriated nobility "by birthright". And now this is no longer the word-logo of the "white bone party", but a quality to which everyone can approach by working on himself (or, perhaps, enlightenment).

A noble person may well realize a seemingly non-ecological desire to earn a lot of money - but not by taking it from others, but by creating something new! Does he need to quickly get to another part of the city, where, let's say, there is no parking? Excellent! He will take a taxi and will not spoil the environment with an electric car left on the sidewalk, even if it is a technological and design fad! A noble man will not replace the process with his imitation: can't you do it yourself? Give another a chance.

A noble man will not replace the process with his imitation: can't you do it yourself? Give another a chance

The site must be taken away from the developer who does not build on his plot, and he must understand that, having acted ignobly, he deserved such treatment.

And, finally, a noble person will not prevent others from realizing their dreams! Let's not even look like him at all and not at all the dreams that he himself would like to realize!

When society expects you to act nobly, when architects create an environment in which you feel noble, only a desperate thief will behave ignobly. Well, desperate thieves are definitely a minority. And society has long developed technologies for their localization.

 

On photo: "Vitruvian Man" by Leonardo da Vinci / Nokia Networks Munich office. Photo: Sven Read / Unsplash. Collage