Gray and The end of Liberalism

Starting a New Year is a good excuse for seeing with fresh eyes what we are going through in our world. Liberalism, the complex set of ideas that are behind the liberal democracies we have enjoyed in the West for almost a century now, is gone. And it is not gone because authoritarianism has defeated it, it is gone because of its inner contradictions. An expert in Liberalism, as John Gray (he spent 20 years of his academic life investigating it) has a precise diagnosis of what has happened. This lecture at his former university is extremely valuable to refresh our view of declining Western World. 

Plot Against America

An excellent reading for this summer: "The plot against America", by Philip Roth. It opens our imagination on what could have happened as well as what could happen in the future.

Looking for Today's Roosevelt

If you are a politician and would dear to pronounce a speech like this today: please, launch yourself.

Franklin Roosevelt’s Address, October 1936

"We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace–business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me–and I welcome their hatred."

The whole speech is in the link.

Smart Power

This 18' talk of ex-dean of Harvard Government School is cheering up. We need certain amount of optimism also to keep us going. The main message: yes we can do something.

Consumerism and Architectural Pedagogy

Image from deviantART

To check how hyper-capitalism influenced architectural education in the UK in the middle of 20th century is a good idea, now that globalization is going to push even harder in that direction.

Personality, consumption and architectural pedagogy in the UK, 1958–1968

Alise Upitis (2008).

Architectural Research Quarterly, Volume 12,
Issue 3-4, December 2008 pp 325-335

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?aid=4399504

Public Luxury in Barcelona

Sometimes the simplest things are the most important. Bicing, the almost free service of bicycles in Barcelona is able to change the way citizens use the city. It is not intended to be an entretaintment: it is an alternative mean of public transportation.

Yesterday, at two in the morning, it was fantastic not to take a taxi or a night bus back home. As a friend said: that is a truly luxury.

Naive Realism

Population density. Data from the G-Econ project, Yale University

There are innumerable recommendations for surviving current crisis. I propose naïve realism.

Think for a moment that there were 2 billion people in the world in 1940; that we are now 6 and will be 8 billions inhabitants in the world in 2050. Sum to it that our planet can not possibly feed that amount of “animal spirits” (Keynes). John Gray insists (see “Homo Rapiens and Mass Extintion”, 2002, in his last book Gray’s Anatomy, Allen Lane, 2009) that the “plague of peole” is not going to reach the “Era of Solitude” (Wilson), when humankind would be alone because all the rest of animals have been killed, nor the eradication of humankind (Lovelock): The future is going to be a combination of genocide, war, epidemic, natural destruction and the sort of generalized social collapsed that has taken place in post-Comunist Russia.

Just as we do everyday, that we live knowing that we are going to die, we have to choose what kind of life we want to lead in a world that is condemmeded to change radically and violently in the next future. I call it naïve realism, adapting slightly Keynes' “naïve optimism”. Gray puts it this way: "From a human point of view, this may be a discomfiting prospect; but at least it dispels the nightmare of an age of solitude".

What architects and artists should do in such a situation?. Well, maybe to preserve the aesthetic as a value, as some of them have always done: the harmony of the aesthetic experience is the only way humans experiment their subjective unity authentically. There is nothing more we can do, but we should not do either anything less.

Nihilism for the Money

The Treachery of Images, 1928, Rene Magritte

Until very recently, nihilism was just a cultural stand that made leftists look culturally elegant. Since 1989, nihilism has become the common ground for right and left wing intellectuals, especially in American and European Universities. In fact, John Gray affirms in his The Enlightenment's Wake (1995) that nihilism is Western's "only truly universal inheritance to humankind", and one of the main reasons why non-western cultures will take the lead in the global world.

In my "Arquitecturas virtuales" in Revista de Occidente (2002), I related Koolhaas's architectural approach to a precise political praxis that had more to do with marketing than art.

Some political analysts consider now as postmodernist the right wing strategy of twisting the meaning of language to impose their ideas: "regulation is bailout" is the new one that tries to stop Obama's financial reform. The best example of the deconstruction of language for the money is Frank Luntz's Memo to kill the bill. The thing is that as a media strategy it really works: the lie of mass destruction weapons allowed already the huge business of the Iraq war. That was another initiative to take the money away from tax payers. Paul Krugman calls it the "black is white strategy".

PD (30/04/2010):

On the 28th Obama gave a strait answer to what I have called "Nihilism for the money". After saying that this crisis is not a cyclical one he responded to the "White is Black, and Up is Down" strategy. The three points of Obama's Wall Street Reform are:

1. Protection to consumers
2. End of bailouts
   
3. Financial Transparency

Have a look at the video:

Educación y poder

Baños romanos de Bath, con la abadía detrás

Ojala tuviésemos en España conservadores como el británico Chris Patten: ¡casi no quedan ni siquiera en Reino Unido!

El valor estratégico de la universidad y la investigación es algo que se entendió en España hace poco tiempo por parte de los políticos, pero se dejó de lado por atender otras urgencias menos importantes para el futuro aunque más acuciantes en el presente. Sirva este trozo de la entrevista aparecida en El País de ayer como invitación para disfrutarla entera en su web:

Una de las claves del poder de América es cómo enfoca la investigación y la Universidad. Por supuesto, influye que sea la principal potencia militar del mundo. Pero lo fundamental es que de las 50 mejores universidades del mundo, 42 son americanas. Y lo que me sorprende es este dato: hace 50 años, la mitad de los europeos que se doctoraban allí volvían a sus países. Hace cuatro años ya sólo regresaba el 25%. Imagine usted lo que supone perder la mayor fuerza intelectual en una sola dirección. El 75% de los trabajos y ensayos científicos de Estados Unidos son escritos por extranjeros. La mitad de los start ups de Silicon Valley han sido fundados por inmigrantes. Ésta es para mí la base del permanente poder global americano.

Los artículos de Patten (en inglés) no tienen desperdicio. Patten es otro de esos personajes que avalan mi teoría de que Bath se ha convertido en el Bloomsbury del siglo XXI: él también es bathense aunque sea el rector de Oxford.

Human Nature

Human nature is the responsible for the financial crisis, in Greenspan opinion (watch the BBC video here). And former Federal Reserve Chief does not just talk about current one: all of them, he says, from the South Sea Bubble in the XVI Century to todays.

The amazing thing is that the Homo Economicus is the only model economists use today: this is not serious at all. Current economy should not be considered a real science (in fact, it is a religion right now) since its models do not fit its subject. To make a long story short: the main problem is that economists are pure mathematitians that excuse their failures and dogmatic excesses about society by blaming the "unquenchable human nature" (Greenspan). How can coexist ideas like deregulation, free market and invisible hands in the very same discourse with "unquenchable human nature" and still pay these people such bonuses?

To have a remote chance of understanding human nature it has to be taken into account factors like art, for example, that are not reasonable or driven by interest. Any map of human soul that does not count on subjective impulses, beside moral attributes and mathematical skills is not going to be fully human. Economist should have the capability of dealing with the contradictions of human nature. So, little hope of fixing current state of the art of society in the hands of current leaders, I am afraid. Last hope are politicians...

Estilo blogero del premio Nobel

«O Caderno de Saramago», o livro do blogue from Fundação Jose Saramago on Vimeo.

Hasta el más pintado puede columpiarse con esto del blog. Los comentarios de la actualidad calientan la pluma como se le calienta la boca a los oradores en público.

El caso de Saramago es ejemplar en este sentido. Toda la sutileza y poética de su escritura se desvanece al calor de sus enfados por lo que pasa y no le cuadra en sus esquemas. Que los comunistas no aceptan la realidad tal como es ya lo demostraron suficientemente en la historia. Que un medio como el blog podría hacer a todo un premio Nobel abandonar la autonomía estética de la literatura es algo novedoso.

Como dice Umberto Eco al respecto: resulta "simpático" verlo perder los papeles en su libro El cuaderno, escritos del blog.

Poetry and Politics in the Architecture of John Hejduk

Social Center Trisca

Towers in Gaigás

John Hejduk believed in the poetics of architecture. However, when his buildings are more architectonic is when they are simply buildings and not built statements. An example of this difference are the two buildings in Spain by him (thanks again, Clara): one is a built poem; the other a beautiful and useful building. Both are authentic jewels and both are in Santiago de Compostela. It is good, anyway, to read, watch and listen to his poetry first hand, and to contemplate his paintings-designs too.

Above all, Hejduk was a passionate professor of architecture:

" I believe in the social contract therefore I teach. I believe that the University is one of the last places that protects and preserves freedom, therefore teaching is also a socio/political act, among other things. I believe in books and the written word, therefore I fabricate works with the hope that they will be recorded in books. I am pragmatic and believe in keeping records. I believe to record is to bear witness. The book I wrote, Victims is to bear witness and to remember. I believe in the density of the sparse. I believe in place and the spirit of place."

John Hejduk

Ghosts in Segovia

Cockle-pickers at Morecambe Bay, Lancashire, UK

A car trapped by the tides at Morecambe bay, 400 meters from shore

Ai Qin Lin, who survived the Morecambe bay tragedy, and main character of the film

Ghosts is the way illegal Chinese immigrants and local British workers call each other. Ghosts is also the name of the documentary shown in Segovia last Sunday at the Hay Festival.

It is the true story of a group of 23 illegal Chinese workers that were killed in Lancashire, UK, in 2004. Nick Broomfield, the Director , said that there are 20 millions slaves in the world right now. He also has created a foundation to collect the half a million dollars the relatives of the killed worker have to pay the lenders. The film is an excellent example of art and politics interacting without contaminating each other: the suspense sequences are one of the best ever shoot.

I first knew about this tragedy few weeks ago while asking Rod Morgan (author of the Oxford Handbook of Criminology) about the exploitation of immigrants in the UK. Do not miss it, it is in DVD.