THOUGHTS
I feel, but not really.
It is a feeling, but not identifiable. I just am.
For some reason, humans cannot just be and I cannot. I need to know what I feel and why. I can't just feel. How would I ever be able to share with someone, what I have inside me if I am not even sure?
We are human and to be human is to exist mentally within a body, but more than that- to exist soulfully. We design to shelter the physical body and provide beauty to stimulate the mind, but we forget the soul.
The problem is that architecture can quickly abstract itself to define any and everything. We can singlehandedly apply it to every component of what it means to be human.
We are so quick to romanticize our profession that it becomes difficult to realize the glaring oversight in our choices. Every decision and design choice has implications within the built world that emanate out for generations. Our influence is one of generational consequence.
Part of the shortcomings of design throughout history is due to both arrogance and ignorance. Designers, thriving on their god complexes have brazenly driven for their ideologies to be accepted as truth. Furthermore, due to a lack of knowledge, decisions were made that aged quite poorly. The majority of common construction materials are on some level toxic to humans. The very structures we spend the majority of our lives in and that we, as designers, idolize are unhealthy for our day-to-day life.
At its core, however, design is only a means of supplementation to what it means to be an individual. We often believe that we can solve societal problems through intense and rigorous refinement of our designs. I challenge this notion as being the primary means of societal change. I think that it can certainly be a foundational element, especially subconsciously. I believe that it is more direct and personable. We are human and it is our interaction and connection with those around us that alter our state of mind. Design can be a method for encouraging this interaction. At our core, we want to feel valued and understood. Community is how this is achieved, through intentional and genuine interaction. We have in one sense become more connected from the perspective of what is trending and the events of the world, but in reality, we have sorely disregarded the purposeful listening and exchange of someone face to face. It is difficult to keep the perspective that we are a mere piece of a much larger puzzle.
We so often reduce the design to an extension of a mere individual.
We are born and live our lives gathering experience and knowledge for some time. Our anecdotal experiences shape us and we gain some semblance of a worldview and with that, we decide what is right and wrong. How is it that throughout the annals of history, we exist only as dust in the wind, and yet we create absolutes regarding life? Our limited understanding and transience should humble us to the point of fear in a sense.
I think that luck is the apparent unrelated events that work well for an individual. I believe that this is the result of previous investment. Whether this is mental, emotional, financial, or physical, these investments help facilitate the perfect opportunity to be taken advantage of. When you prepare accordingly, opportunities can be better realized and used rather than having to pass them up.
Karma is also an investment. It is the idea of sowing and reaping. What an individual invests or sows will ultimately create a harvest and whether that is good or bad is dependent on what was invested and with what intention. It is a law of nature no different from physics. The rules apply whether someone intentionally sows or not. Actions, deeds, thoughts, and words will all ultimately have an effect. If you want to call that karma then it is fitting, but I think it is more specifically lawful than the metaphysical idea of manifesting and receiving or doing bad and receiving bad back. So in the sense luck is a result of the same actions that karma works with and they are then related.
Recently, I have been thinking about the stimulus checks that people are receiving and what future consequences they may cause. This caused me to begin thinking about our current culture as a whole. It seems that we have a blatant disregard for the future.
I understand that this is a bold statement to make, however, when you think about the government's actions as of late, it would appear that we are simply postponing upcoming problems rather than addressing them. Even on a smaller scale, my experience with people is that they are more likely to spend their stimulus money on frivolous niceties that provide instant gratification, rather than say save it for an emergency. My sample group is a specific demographic, chiefly college students, so it may be biased; however, this group is the upcoming workforce and ultimate decision-makers of the approaching era.
Besides financial longevity, people are also not necessarily even considering having a legacy in the form of children. Past generations have valued becoming successful to provide a better life for their kids to grow up in so that ultimately it would set them up for success in their adult life and the process would continue. This generation has an incredibly large percentage that does not even want kids. I would argue that child-rearing is one of the largest responsibilities that an individual can willingly partake in bearing and I understand that this is a matter of personal preference and that not everyone wants kids. This thought process led to the idea, though, that responsibility is fulfilling.
The idea that responsibility, when an individual willing bears it, is what causes sureness in oneself. This includes all responsibilities, whether college, trade school, career, music, or anything that requires work. When you logically follow responsibilities to their end you can see that it is the life spent facing adversity and overcoming it that rewards the most satisfying and fulfilling life.
This led me to think, again, about our culture and how prevalent it is to shirk responsibility. We are constantly procrastinating, expecting others to help, and claiming it isn't our job. This generation would much rather turn to our school, city, state, and government to provide for our needs than to provide for ourselves. And when these institutions fail to provide our every last need, we cry out louder because we are unwilling to look inwards and face ourselves as the true problem because that would mean a serious self-inspection of which we know we would fail. So we push responsibilities away, purposefully ignoring the idea that our own arrogance might one day come back to bite us.
It might be a rather bleak outlook on us, and it is not true for everyone, but these were just the thoughts I had when I was reading about the stimulus checks, I wandered off a bit from there though.