The Cult of Liberalism that has taken control of the West’s “governance” is a Tyranny.
UK, US, EU all subsets of Globalist Liberalism are tyrannies.
With the Tyranny are all aspects of Cult manifestation, a complete devastation of prior culture, art, psychological harmonies and knowledge. The Cult must debase all. No different than the ISIS freakoids breaking up ancient archeological and religious sites. They rampage through academia, Constitutional order, sovereign borders—whatever is foundational and normal.
Inherent to modern deconstruction of social norms is the godless separation from Nature and Human Values.
They particularly hate individuals of accomplishment, families, small congregations and communities, cohesiveness and conviviality. They must have namelessness, separateness, soullessness. They use techniques all Cults use that produce Stockholm syndrome clinging to the Cult as the only balm from the despair they create.
Authority of the Elites in the Cult (Government especially) is idolized and protected as if a Queen in a Hive were under attack. All drone bees cluster in defense, regardless of the danger.
We saw this with Obama (the ultimate Queen Bee). We see it everywhere with the EU being protected, NATO being protected, every construct to be worshipped with no option for all or any to challenge or criticize or compete. You will be destroyed!
Israel, the concept, is unassailable.
America the Exceptional, is unassailable.
EU, the marvel, is unassailable.
Globalism.
Liberalism.
Multiculturalism.
Bezos.
FaceBook.
Zuckerberg.
Google.
All unassailable.
The Pentagon.
17 Intelligence Agencies.
Zionism.
Khazaria.
Unassailable.
Consistent Conservatism.
Saint Mike Pence.
Unassailable.
Billionaires.
Millionaires.
Unassailable.
All objects of Cult Behaviorism.
Then along comes a singular mind like Paul Joseph Watson and he busts the Cult with his four minute rants, and the free minds of the world shout in joy as the Truth destroys the Hive, piece by piece.
Great for you to post this video, Saker. Thought provoking and deserving of an honor in the Vineyard.
Think Free and Live Free.
A perfect opening statement for July 4th weekend. Fireworks for the brain and soul of all humans outside the Cult.
Paul Molyneux? You mean that Australian Christian that comes up with my YouTube search
And the downside to Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones and Infowars is that they seem to be pushing the Islamophobia pro Zionist agenda which is a pity. Feeding the divide thereby aiding the rule of the deep state.
Also Jones is letting Wolfgang Halbig down who is fighting the authorities over Sandy Hoax.
A few I would recommend and hold in as high a regard as I do the Saker are James Corbett from the corbettreport.com and Sibel Edmonds from Newsbud.com .
Richard D. Hall from Richplanet.net
John Rappaport from nomorefakenews.com, note the name of the website and keep in mind his website exists for about 12 years.
And Ray McGovern. http://www.whatreallyhappened.com weekday radio show by Mike Rivero with daily independent news.
Paul Joseph Watson does have a few good points about the utterly unmoored, untethered and rootless nature of postmodernism. But his knee-jerk reactionary politics and his hateful personality always seem to triumph. I agree with portions of his argument, specifically the postmodern rejection of ALL tradition and the past in general as well as the almost instinctual hatred of any aesthetic that was once revered by dreaded white males. But he fails to examine the Golden Rule in all art: the person who pays the architect gets final say in everything- I guess this would lead Paul would then have to question the utterly rapacious and voracious nature of late-stage capitalism.
I was unaware of le Corbusier’s totalitarian nature, but it does explain a lot.
Also, does Watson demand that we all live in Classical or Baroque cities? NO, he does not, but building new places in traditional style would be an expensive proposition. And even Gothic and Beaux Arts, as refined and aesthetically stunning as they were had a kind of international and non-local air to them.
Furthermore, much as I agree that people should probably live in houses instead of tower blocks, there is something to be said in favor of some degree of density in urban planning for the poor. Should they live in houses way out in suburbia which would require greater outlays for public transit, or should they live nearer civic centers where jobs and social services are closer by? None of this is addressed by Watson, but I guess he’s not really a very deep thinker, just a knee jerk reactionary with an attitude and access to a video studio and a production team.
As always with Watson, anything that smacks of social planning or socialism is automatically anathema and Satanic or antihuman or target for his vitriol.
Finally, it’s strange to see Paul Joseph Watson, Morrissey and rapist Prince Charles agree on anything, but here we are. My critique, like Watson’s line of reasoning is a bit of a hodgepodge. I will definitely have to track down that Morrissey documentary, however much as I’ve disliked the guy in recent decades.
DougDiggler, I do like Morrissey a bit, but mainly because his guitarist is Johnny Marr (and they do come from Manchester like me)
There is very little I agree with Prince Charles, except his views on architecture, genetically modified food, and basic human sustainability- such that any survivors will need a range of seeds from history – whilst people like Monsanto are trying to eliminate all seed history to sell their infertile seeds…You’ve got to buy them every year .
Of course in nearly everything else he says and does is not that impressive.
He had the nicest girl in the world. She was the only Princess in Living Memory – that almost the entire Wolrd Loved…
For what she did – doing eg photo shoots disarming landmines.
Prince Charles could have done that too, with her and their 2 kids….but he didn’t he betrayed her and went back to his old girlfriend.
Princess Diana used to turn up at the same gigs as my wife and I and our two kids. We never saw Charlie – but he ain’t That Bad – and he has got an impossible job. I actually feel sorry for him.
They should give the job to Harry – at least he has a sense of humour.
“Also, does Watson demand that we all live in Classical or Baroque cities? NO, he does not, but building new places in traditional style would be an expensive proposition”
That is why it is so stupoid to tear down older row houses, etc.
Plenty of these were show in Watson’s clips. It is absurd to charge that he says we shouild all live in “baroque cities.” There is a limited number of these, for starters, and they are indigenous to Europe, not to the USA. But plenty of great old buildings have been torn down everywhere to make wasly for monstrosities, both residential and otherwise.
Far better to rehab.
Another point: In the old days a large portionof the value of construction was in the materials. N ow it is in labor. Thus it is almost unavoidable that new structures will be made of inferior materials.
Huge swathes of US cities, and the cohesive neighborhoods in them, were demolished in the name of “urban renewal.” Which came to be called “urban removal.”
Watson mentions Boston City Hall. I lived in Boston in the era when Scollay Square and the old West End were destroyed to make way for monstrosities and high-rises. The communities of the dense West End neighborhoods were scattered far and wide. Old theatres in Scollay Square were destroyed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scollay_Square
(great photos here)
“The city offered to give any demolished materials to anyone who could load and take away a full dump truck load. The materials included street paving blocks (Belgian blocks quarried in Quincy), granite, lintels, and bricks.”
I have to agree with pretty much every word of Watson’s.
I think the video clips of the TED talk might be James Howard Kunstler. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ZeXnmDZMQ
Kunstler has a great feature at his blog called “Featured Eyesore of the Month.” http://kunstler.com/featured-eyesore-of-the-month/
In fact, I think quite a bit Watson’s presentation is derivative of Kunster.
Which is OK. Any way to connect more dots with new audiences is fine by me.
But I don’t think he mentioned Kunstler.
Paul Joseph Watson in fine form. I don’t always agree with him, but I have nothing to argue with him here, except that much of rural Britain is still very beautiful…and to be fair much of London is too. I do like living here. Most people are really nice, especially the poor.
Below are a few excerpts to illustrate what it’s about, including some amazing brayings by a certain Adolph Loos and Le Corbusier himself.
[…]
Before the era of mass education, and for a great many people still today, architectural patterns represent one of the few primary contacts with mathematics. Tilings and visual patterns are a “visible tip” of mathematics, which otherwise requires learning a special language to understand and appreciate. Patterns manifest the innate creative ability and talent that all human beings have for mathematics. The necessity for patterns in the visual environment of a developing child is acknowledged by child psychologists as being highly instrumental. One specific instance of traditional material culture, oriental carpets, represent a several-millennia-old discipline of creating and reproducing visual patterns. A close link exists between carpet designs and mathematical rules for organizing complexity [6,7]. A second example, floor pavements in Western architecture, is now appreciated as being a repository — hence, a type of textbook for its time — of mathematical information [8].
[…]
We are interested here in what happened in the twentieth century. The Austrian architect Adolf Loos banned ornament from architecture in 1908 with these preposterous, unsupported statements:
“The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from utilitarian objects. … not only is ornament produced by criminals but also a crime is committed through the fact that ornament inflicts serious injury on people’s health, on the national budget and hence on cultural evolution. …Freedom from ornament is a sign of spiritual strength.” [13]
This hostile, racist sentiment was shared by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier:
“Decoration is of a sensorial and elementary order, as is color, and is suited to simple races, peasants and savages…. The peasant loves ornament and decorates his walls.” [14]
Thus they condemned the material culture of mankind from all around the globe, accumulated over millennia. While these condemnations may seem actions of merely stylistic interest, in fact they had indirect but serious consequences. The elimination of ornament removes all ordered structural differentiations from the range of scales 5mm to 2m or thereabouts. That corresponds to the human scale of structures, i.e., the sizes of the eye, finger, hand, arm, body, etc. In the Modernist design canon, patterns cannot be defined on those scales. Therefore, modernism removes mathematical information from the built environment. Looking around at twentieth century buildings, one is hard-pressed to discover visual patterns. Indeed, their architects go to great lengths to disguise patterns on human scales that are inevitable because of the activities in a building; they arise in the materials, and as a consequence of structural stability and weathering.
[…]
Architects complain that new buildings are bad because they are cheap and tacky; implying that they could be improved by a more generous budget. One hears that: “the reason beautiful buildings cannot be built today is because of the high cost of materials and workmanship”. This statement is belied by the wonderful variety of folk architecture built the world over using inexpensive local materials. Architecture is about creating patterns and spaces; a preoccupation with materials only obscures more important issues. It is perfectly possible to build mathematically-rich structures on any budget, by applying the timeless rules derived by Alexander and elaborated by this author. New buildings are usually bad — in particular, those with a big budget –because they are generated by a negative set of mathematical rules [1,10].
[…]
Modernist architects took the rectangular geometry of classical architecture, but eliminated subdivisions and subsymmetries (i.e., columns, cornices, fluting, and sculptural friezes). By explicit stylistic dictate, modernist architecture has no fractal properties, and that is one reason why it appears unnatural [20]. Traditional architecture, on the other hand, including that in a Classical style, tends to be explicitly fractal. Fractal subdivisions and scaling can be found in buildings of all periods and styles, and that crucial characteristic divides contemporary architecture from much of what has been built before. The exceptions are those older buildings wishing to disconnect from the pedestrian, usually in order to express power and to intimidate. The latter include monumental Fascist architecture, and its precursors in deliberately imposing, grandiose temples, palaces, and defensive military buildings of the past.
[…]
Modernism removes fractals from our environment. Pure Platonic solids and fractals are incompatible, because the former exist only on a single level of scale. One definition of a fractal is a structure in which there is substructure (i.e., complexity) at every level of magnification. Magnifying a fractal by a fixed scaling factor, say 3, will give a set of pictures at magnification 1, 3, 9, 27, etc., all of which show structure and complexity. A “self-similar” fractal has the additional property that all these pictures are related by geometrical similarities (as long as one uses the scaling factor intrinsic to that fractal). The buildings of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe intentionally violate this rule, in an attempt to distinguish themselves both from natural forms, and from traditional building styles [1,2]. Some exceptions are discussed later.
Recently, fractal dimensions have been calculated for Frank Lloyd Wright’s and Le Corbusier’s buildings, using the method of increasingly smaller rectangular grids [22]. The results show that (at least some of) Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings display a self-similar characteristic over a wide range of scales, from a distant view to finger-tip size detail, so those buildings are intrinsically fractal . In this, Wright was following the brilliant example of his teacher, Louis Sullivan. By contrast, Le Corbusier’s architecture displays a self-similar characteristic over only two or three of the largest scales; namely, those corresponding to a distant view. Up close, Le Corbusier’s architecture is flat and straight, and therefore has no fractal qualities. A fractal dimension between one and two characterizes a design that has an infinite number of self-similar levels of scale, whereas the fractal dimension of Le Corbusier’s buildings immediately drops to one.
————————
Yet another excellent article.
[…]
The most sincere, because unconscious, tribute to Le Corbusier comes from the scrawlers of graffiti. If you approach the results of their activities epidemiologically, so to speak, you will soon notice that, where good architecture is within reach of Corbusian architecture, they tend to deface only the Corbusian surfaces and buildings. As if by instinct, these uneducated slum denizens have accurately apprehended what so many architects have expended a huge intellectual effort to avoid apprehending: that Le Corbusier was the enemy of mankind.
[…]
See also:
The Tyranny of Artistic Modernism
by Mark Anthony Signorelli and Nikos A. Salingaros (August 2012)
New English Review http://www.newenglishreview.org/cust…/sec_id/119633
I love this!
Thank you so much.
I am going to read the whole thing.
The comments on fractals are wonderful insights.
I have always been mesmerized by tiles, especially the patterns on ceramics.
The idea that ornament, subdivision, orderly patterns, subdivisions, etc. are mathematical concepts made visual is brilliant. Of course.
The author provides a simple and credible insight as to why this is so.
Why people are simultaneously excited and calmed—stimulated in a positive way— by such designs and by “good” architectural settings.
Katherine
You are welcome. Salingaros is a sharp thinker about these matters, architecture being of course one of the most in your face arts there is. If an art gallery is showing a series of crappy escatological paintings, you don’t have to go in. If anorchestra plays one of Mr Stravinsky’s “serial”compositions, or one of Mr Cage’s cacophonies, you don’t have to go hear it. But how are you supposed to walk on the streets of your city while avoiding the unbelievable piles of horrors built during the 20th century, specifically meant to dominate us hapless citizens by sheer dint of rubbing all that excrement in our faces? How indeed?
Architecture is therefore the most immediate barometer of the level of relative sickness (or health) of a society, I think.
Watched a couple of minutes of this and realized it was typical tory toss. The guy is amusing when he ridicules fellow right-wingers (the melenials upset about brexit), but is obviously out of his league here.
Plenty of butt-ugly modern architecture, plenty of butt-ugly older architecture. Most of the butt-ugly stuff is way too tall. Period. What is the point of massive buildings? To impress. To consolidate a maximal amount of square footage with minimal amount occupied area. Efficiency expert stuff. A rightwing thing. A domination thing. Domination. The core of right wing “philosophy”.
Most recent architecture is actually very plain and in a large part, this is because of capitalist right penny pinching. Saving money mass producing look alike rubbish while charging up the arse.
This is right-wing, not left, not even liberal, in fact political views don’t play into it, but capitalist money making scams do. As always in right-wing oriented societies who think greed cures all.
The problem with modern architecture is essentially the same with modern anything, too many greedy capitalist parasites making money off of us.
And I agree with vot tak that Watson is largely out of his depth on this. He does a pretty good job ridiculing various kinds of nincompoops which he refers to as “leftists”. He is a great defender of the virtues of capitalism versus the supposed evils of any proposed alternatives, and sees no connection between it and the depressing nature of much of modern architecture.
J. G. Ballard wrote about all this and much more in his notorious “The Atrocity Exhibition” back in the late 1960s. Feel free to check it out. Nothing new here. I can provide a free download link if anybody wants it.
I follow Paul Joseph Watson from time to time and find him quite entertaining and refreshing in his arguments. I see him as part of a new breed of internet-based commentators ranging in style and quality from the court jester (Milo Yiannopoulos), to the journalist (PJW), to the popular author-columnist (Ann Coulter), to the academic intellectual (Jordan Peterson). They all have tremendous following on social media and YouTube, they are articulate, entertaining and (quite important for their mass appeal) good-looking. Interestingly, they are all Anglosaxon.
From their arguments one could say they stand for traditional values, true free speech, national sovereignty, border control, they respect blue-collar workers, They are against political correctness, moral relativism, postmodernism, faux-intellectualism, mass immigration, LGBT weaponisation (weirdly enough for Yiannopoulos), safe spaces, the MSM, globalisation and the EU. They are are/were pro-Trump and are/were anti-Clinton (if they took a stand in the matter).
And just as one might find them hopeful in shaping a public opinion that can reign in the Empire and push for world peace, they continue their argument with a deep fawning at “Western civilisation (you know, the one they say Gandhi considered that “would be a good idea”). They highly esteem modern capitalism as responsible for the progress (meaning material progress) of Western societies, a progress they see as deserving of those societies’ qualities. They profoundly detest anything remotely resembling socialism and Islam (imagine them in a discussion with Ramin Mazaheri) and they set the stage for a war of civilisations or a war of religions.
For them, Africa, Asia and Latin America are deserving of their misfortunes for not sticking closer to the Western capitalist doctrine. Cuba and Venezuela are socialist failed states and China a communist dictatorship (discussing Pinochet’s Chile under the Chicago boys is a no-go zone).
For them, Western colonialism never existed. The Western world did no harm and its misdeeds never happened (from the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, to the genocide of the indigenous Americans, to turning the Chinese nation to opium addicts, to the sacking of Africa for slaves and diamonds, to turning the Middle East to a constant war theatre for cheap oil, to famines in India, to… etc etc).
For them, the material prosperity of the West is somehow independent of the sacking of all the rest of the world for 800 years now.
For them, that material prosperity reflects the West’s moral prosperity (how Calvinist of them!).
For them, modern capitalism (being so sacred) is not responsible for the ecological dead-end we are walking into.
Overall, I see them as nicely adapted for US-Agnlosaxon audiences, doing a good job waking those audiences up from their long sleep, but no more than that. As long as they don’t get off their high horses of Western moral superiority, I can hardly see them worth their salt anywhere else in the world.
Watson completely misses the point because he is caught up in style. Style has nothing to do with architecture. Actually architecture has nothing to do with architecture. Design is a minimal part – insignificant part of the building process.
The questions must be directed toward urban planning or the lack of. Similarly building usage and how it reflects the state of economic and social de-evolution. Why are cities the way they are?
Western cities are the way they are so transnationals can take advantage of large population centres in order to maintain control of the goyim; achieved through numerous building design and urban design techniques.
The less public space the better and the greater the inflated property values the richer the pound of flesh set get.
Condos take on the corporate mantra of applying false value to the all important need for shelter. Office towers warehouse workers and codify the need for relevance of the corporations – how they are the only way to create a functional economy – CEO down to the slaves.
Modern cities are nothing more than stacks of safety deposits boxes filled with empty promises and the delusion of wealth. Wealth and the promise of its greedy glutenous rewards is what keeps the goyim as slaves to the material world and the marry your cousins occultists on top.
The revolution will happened when the goyim wake up and stop going to work – the office towers and the symbols of oligarchial overlords will be exposed as absurd.
Forget the archi-f**ks and lead the revolt to expose the false gods of the neo-liberal judiac nightmare that we live in.
I couldn’t stomach the entire video, but if he doesn’t like apartment buildings, I’d like to see him live in an American trailer park. Those are “houses,” aren’t they?
Watson is the most effective voice on YouTube.
The Cult of Liberalism that has taken control of the West’s “governance” is a Tyranny.
UK, US, EU all subsets of Globalist Liberalism are tyrannies.
With the Tyranny are all aspects of Cult manifestation, a complete devastation of prior culture, art, psychological harmonies and knowledge. The Cult must debase all. No different than the ISIS freakoids breaking up ancient archeological and religious sites. They rampage through academia, Constitutional order, sovereign borders—whatever is foundational and normal.
Inherent to modern deconstruction of social norms is the godless separation from Nature and Human Values.
They particularly hate individuals of accomplishment, families, small congregations and communities, cohesiveness and conviviality. They must have namelessness, separateness, soullessness. They use techniques all Cults use that produce Stockholm syndrome clinging to the Cult as the only balm from the despair they create.
Authority of the Elites in the Cult (Government especially) is idolized and protected as if a Queen in a Hive were under attack. All drone bees cluster in defense, regardless of the danger.
We saw this with Obama (the ultimate Queen Bee). We see it everywhere with the EU being protected, NATO being protected, every construct to be worshipped with no option for all or any to challenge or criticize or compete. You will be destroyed!
Israel, the concept, is unassailable.
America the Exceptional, is unassailable.
EU, the marvel, is unassailable.
Globalism.
Liberalism.
Multiculturalism.
Bezos.
FaceBook.
Zuckerberg.
Google.
All unassailable.
The Pentagon.
17 Intelligence Agencies.
Zionism.
Khazaria.
Unassailable.
Consistent Conservatism.
Saint Mike Pence.
Unassailable.
Billionaires.
Millionaires.
Unassailable.
All objects of Cult Behaviorism.
Then along comes a singular mind like Paul Joseph Watson and he busts the Cult with his four minute rants, and the free minds of the world shout in joy as the Truth destroys the Hive, piece by piece.
Great for you to post this video, Saker. Thought provoking and deserving of an honor in the Vineyard.
Think Free and Live Free.
A perfect opening statement for July 4th weekend. Fireworks for the brain and soul of all humans outside the Cult.
Two more effective voices:
Paul Molyneux
Lauren Southern
There are others – I’ll list as I recall
This rant was best done in book length by Tom Wolfe in 1981. I read the book at the time, and it was excellent.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/08/specials/wolfe-bauhaus.html
Paul Molyneux? You mean that Australian Christian that comes up with my YouTube search
And the downside to Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones and Infowars is that they seem to be pushing the Islamophobia pro Zionist agenda which is a pity. Feeding the divide thereby aiding the rule of the deep state.
Also Jones is letting Wolfgang Halbig down who is fighting the authorities over Sandy Hoax.
A few I would recommend and hold in as high a regard as I do the Saker are James Corbett from the corbettreport.com and Sibel Edmonds from Newsbud.com .
Richard D. Hall from Richplanet.net
John Rappaport from nomorefakenews.com, note the name of the website and keep in mind his website exists for about 12 years.
And Ray McGovern.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com weekday radio show by Mike Rivero with daily independent news.
And 2 podcasts commenting on the, mainly US, news.
noagendashow.com By Adam Curry and John .C. Dvorak.
http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/show/unfilter/
Paul Joseph Watson does have a few good points about the utterly unmoored, untethered and rootless nature of postmodernism. But his knee-jerk reactionary politics and his hateful personality always seem to triumph. I agree with portions of his argument, specifically the postmodern rejection of ALL tradition and the past in general as well as the almost instinctual hatred of any aesthetic that was once revered by dreaded white males. But he fails to examine the Golden Rule in all art: the person who pays the architect gets final say in everything- I guess this would lead Paul would then have to question the utterly rapacious and voracious nature of late-stage capitalism.
I was unaware of le Corbusier’s totalitarian nature, but it does explain a lot.
Also, does Watson demand that we all live in Classical or Baroque cities? NO, he does not, but building new places in traditional style would be an expensive proposition. And even Gothic and Beaux Arts, as refined and aesthetically stunning as they were had a kind of international and non-local air to them.
Furthermore, much as I agree that people should probably live in houses instead of tower blocks, there is something to be said in favor of some degree of density in urban planning for the poor. Should they live in houses way out in suburbia which would require greater outlays for public transit, or should they live nearer civic centers where jobs and social services are closer by? None of this is addressed by Watson, but I guess he’s not really a very deep thinker, just a knee jerk reactionary with an attitude and access to a video studio and a production team.
As always with Watson, anything that smacks of social planning or socialism is automatically anathema and Satanic or antihuman or target for his vitriol.
Finally, it’s strange to see Paul Joseph Watson, Morrissey and rapist Prince Charles agree on anything, but here we are. My critique, like Watson’s line of reasoning is a bit of a hodgepodge. I will definitely have to track down that Morrissey documentary, however much as I’ve disliked the guy in recent decades.
DougDiggler, I do like Morrissey a bit, but mainly because his guitarist is Johnny Marr (and they do come from Manchester like me)
There is very little I agree with Prince Charles, except his views on architecture, genetically modified food, and basic human sustainability- such that any survivors will need a range of seeds from history – whilst people like Monsanto are trying to eliminate all seed history to sell their infertile seeds…You’ve got to buy them every year .
Of course in nearly everything else he says and does is not that impressive.
He had the nicest girl in the world. She was the only Princess in Living Memory – that almost the entire Wolrd Loved…
For what she did – doing eg photo shoots disarming landmines.
Prince Charles could have done that too, with her and their 2 kids….but he didn’t he betrayed her and went back to his old girlfriend.
Princess Diana used to turn up at the same gigs as my wife and I and our two kids. We never saw Charlie – but he ain’t That Bad – and he has got an impossible job. I actually feel sorry for him.
They should give the job to Harry – at least he has a sense of humour.
Tony
“Also, does Watson demand that we all live in Classical or Baroque cities? NO, he does not, but building new places in traditional style would be an expensive proposition”
That is why it is so stupoid to tear down older row houses, etc.
Plenty of these were show in Watson’s clips. It is absurd to charge that he says we shouild all live in “baroque cities.” There is a limited number of these, for starters, and they are indigenous to Europe, not to the USA. But plenty of great old buildings have been torn down everywhere to make wasly for monstrosities, both residential and otherwise.
Far better to rehab.
Another point: In the old days a large portionof the value of construction was in the materials. N ow it is in labor. Thus it is almost unavoidable that new structures will be made of inferior materials.
Huge swathes of US cities, and the cohesive neighborhoods in them, were demolished in the name of “urban renewal.” Which came to be called “urban removal.”
Watson mentions Boston City Hall. I lived in Boston in the era when Scollay Square and the old West End were destroyed to make way for monstrosities and high-rises. The communities of the dense West End neighborhoods were scattered far and wide. Old theatres in Scollay Square were destroyed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scollay_Square
(great photos here)
“The city offered to give any demolished materials to anyone who could load and take away a full dump truck load. The materials included street paving blocks (Belgian blocks quarried in Quincy), granite, lintels, and bricks.”
I have to agree with pretty much every word of Watson’s.
I think the video clips of the TED talk might be James Howard Kunstler.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ZeXnmDZMQ
Kunstler has a great feature at his blog called “Featured Eyesore of the Month.”
http://kunstler.com/featured-eyesore-of-the-month/
In fact, I think quite a bit Watson’s presentation is derivative of Kunster.
Which is OK. Any way to connect more dots with new audiences is fine by me.
But I don’t think he mentioned Kunstler.
Katherine
He has a great feature at his website:
Paul Joseph Watson in fine form. I don’t always agree with him, but I have nothing to argue with him here, except that much of rural Britain is still very beautiful…and to be fair much of London is too. I do like living here. Most people are really nice, especially the poor.
Nikos Salingaros has a very readable article titled Architecture, Patterns, and Mathematics here: http://www.emis.de/journals/NNJ/Salingaros.html
Below are a few excerpts to illustrate what it’s about, including some amazing brayings by a certain Adolph Loos and Le Corbusier himself.
[…]
Before the era of mass education, and for a great many people still today, architectural patterns represent one of the few primary contacts with mathematics. Tilings and visual patterns are a “visible tip” of mathematics, which otherwise requires learning a special language to understand and appreciate. Patterns manifest the innate creative ability and talent that all human beings have for mathematics. The necessity for patterns in the visual environment of a developing child is acknowledged by child psychologists as being highly instrumental. One specific instance of traditional material culture, oriental carpets, represent a several-millennia-old discipline of creating and reproducing visual patterns. A close link exists between carpet designs and mathematical rules for organizing complexity [6,7]. A second example, floor pavements in Western architecture, is now appreciated as being a repository — hence, a type of textbook for its time — of mathematical information [8].
[…]
We are interested here in what happened in the twentieth century. The Austrian architect Adolf Loos banned ornament from architecture in 1908 with these preposterous, unsupported statements:
“The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from utilitarian objects. … not only is ornament produced by criminals but also a crime is committed through the fact that ornament inflicts serious injury on people’s health, on the national budget and hence on cultural evolution. …Freedom from ornament is a sign of spiritual strength.” [13]
This hostile, racist sentiment was shared by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier:
“Decoration is of a sensorial and elementary order, as is color, and is suited to simple races, peasants and savages…. The peasant loves ornament and decorates his walls.” [14]
Thus they condemned the material culture of mankind from all around the globe, accumulated over millennia. While these condemnations may seem actions of merely stylistic interest, in fact they had indirect but serious consequences. The elimination of ornament removes all ordered structural differentiations from the range of scales 5mm to 2m or thereabouts. That corresponds to the human scale of structures, i.e., the sizes of the eye, finger, hand, arm, body, etc. In the Modernist design canon, patterns cannot be defined on those scales. Therefore, modernism removes mathematical information from the built environment. Looking around at twentieth century buildings, one is hard-pressed to discover visual patterns. Indeed, their architects go to great lengths to disguise patterns on human scales that are inevitable because of the activities in a building; they arise in the materials, and as a consequence of structural stability and weathering.
[…]
Architects complain that new buildings are bad because they are cheap and tacky; implying that they could be improved by a more generous budget. One hears that: “the reason beautiful buildings cannot be built today is because of the high cost of materials and workmanship”. This statement is belied by the wonderful variety of folk architecture built the world over using inexpensive local materials. Architecture is about creating patterns and spaces; a preoccupation with materials only obscures more important issues. It is perfectly possible to build mathematically-rich structures on any budget, by applying the timeless rules derived by Alexander and elaborated by this author. New buildings are usually bad — in particular, those with a big budget –because they are generated by a negative set of mathematical rules [1,10].
[…]
Modernist architects took the rectangular geometry of classical architecture, but eliminated subdivisions and subsymmetries (i.e., columns, cornices, fluting, and sculptural friezes). By explicit stylistic dictate, modernist architecture has no fractal properties, and that is one reason why it appears unnatural [20]. Traditional architecture, on the other hand, including that in a Classical style, tends to be explicitly fractal. Fractal subdivisions and scaling can be found in buildings of all periods and styles, and that crucial characteristic divides contemporary architecture from much of what has been built before. The exceptions are those older buildings wishing to disconnect from the pedestrian, usually in order to express power and to intimidate. The latter include monumental Fascist architecture, and its precursors in deliberately imposing, grandiose temples, palaces, and defensive military buildings of the past.
[…]
Modernism removes fractals from our environment. Pure Platonic solids and fractals are incompatible, because the former exist only on a single level of scale. One definition of a fractal is a structure in which there is substructure (i.e., complexity) at every level of magnification. Magnifying a fractal by a fixed scaling factor, say 3, will give a set of pictures at magnification 1, 3, 9, 27, etc., all of which show structure and complexity. A “self-similar” fractal has the additional property that all these pictures are related by geometrical similarities (as long as one uses the scaling factor intrinsic to that fractal). The buildings of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe intentionally violate this rule, in an attempt to distinguish themselves both from natural forms, and from traditional building styles [1,2]. Some exceptions are discussed later.
Recently, fractal dimensions have been calculated for Frank Lloyd Wright’s and Le Corbusier’s buildings, using the method of increasingly smaller rectangular grids [22]. The results show that (at least some of) Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings display a self-similar characteristic over a wide range of scales, from a distant view to finger-tip size detail, so those buildings are intrinsically fractal . In this, Wright was following the brilliant example of his teacher, Louis Sullivan. By contrast, Le Corbusier’s architecture displays a self-similar characteristic over only two or three of the largest scales; namely, those corresponding to a distant view. Up close, Le Corbusier’s architecture is flat and straight, and therefore has no fractal qualities. A fractal dimension between one and two characterizes a design that has an infinite number of self-similar levels of scale, whereas the fractal dimension of Le Corbusier’s buildings immediately drops to one.
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Yet another excellent article.
The Architect as Totalitarian
Le Corbusier’s baleful influence
by Theodore Dalrymple
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_…corbusier.html
[…]
The most sincere, because unconscious, tribute to Le Corbusier comes from the scrawlers of graffiti. If you approach the results of their activities epidemiologically, so to speak, you will soon notice that, where good architecture is within reach of Corbusian architecture, they tend to deface only the Corbusian surfaces and buildings. As if by instinct, these uneducated slum denizens have accurately apprehended what so many architects have expended a huge intellectual effort to avoid apprehending: that Le Corbusier was the enemy of mankind.
[…]
See also:
The Tyranny of Artistic Modernism
by Mark Anthony Signorelli and Nikos A. Salingaros (August 2012)
New English Review
http://www.newenglishreview.org/cust…/sec_id/119633
I love this!
Thank you so much.
I am going to read the whole thing.
The comments on fractals are wonderful insights.
I have always been mesmerized by tiles, especially the patterns on ceramics.
The idea that ornament, subdivision, orderly patterns, subdivisions, etc. are mathematical concepts made visual is brilliant. Of course.
The author provides a simple and credible insight as to why this is so.
Why people are simultaneously excited and calmed—stimulated in a positive way— by such designs and by “good” architectural settings.
Katherine
You are welcome. Salingaros is a sharp thinker about these matters, architecture being of course one of the most in your face arts there is. If an art gallery is showing a series of crappy escatological paintings, you don’t have to go in. If anorchestra plays one of Mr Stravinsky’s “serial”compositions, or one of Mr Cage’s cacophonies, you don’t have to go hear it. But how are you supposed to walk on the streets of your city while avoiding the unbelievable piles of horrors built during the 20th century, specifically meant to dominate us hapless citizens by sheer dint of rubbing all that excrement in our faces? How indeed?
Architecture is therefore the most immediate barometer of the level of relative sickness (or health) of a society, I think.
this video is fantastic – thanks Saker, I’ll send it on
love his Australian accent.
He is a Brit, not an Aussie.
Born:24 May 1982 (age 35)
Sheffield, England, United Kingdom
Watched a couple of minutes of this and realized it was typical tory toss. The guy is amusing when he ridicules fellow right-wingers (the melenials upset about brexit), but is obviously out of his league here.
Plenty of butt-ugly modern architecture, plenty of butt-ugly older architecture. Most of the butt-ugly stuff is way too tall. Period. What is the point of massive buildings? To impress. To consolidate a maximal amount of square footage with minimal amount occupied area. Efficiency expert stuff. A rightwing thing. A domination thing. Domination. The core of right wing “philosophy”.
Most recent architecture is actually very plain and in a large part, this is because of capitalist right penny pinching. Saving money mass producing look alike rubbish while charging up the arse.
This is right-wing, not left, not even liberal, in fact political views don’t play into it, but capitalist money making scams do. As always in right-wing oriented societies who think greed cures all.
The problem with modern architecture is essentially the same with modern anything, too many greedy capitalist parasites making money off of us.
I can see that you are truly an ancient Greek
Corrected links to 3 very good articles on modern architecture
The Tyranny of Artistic Modernism
by Mark Anthony Signorelli and Nikos A. Salingaros (August 2012)
http://www.newenglishreview.org/Mark_Anthony_Signorelli/The_Tyranny_of_Artistic_Modernism/
The Architect as Totalitarian
Le Corbusier’s baleful influence
Theodore Dalrymple
Autumn 2009
https://www.city-journal.org/html/architect-totalitarian-13246.html
Nikos A. Salingaros on the elimination of patterns and mathematical information from modernist architecture (Le Corbusie etc)
http://www.emis.de/journals/NNJ/Salingaros.html
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And I agree with vot tak that Watson is largely out of his depth on this. He does a pretty good job ridiculing various kinds of nincompoops which he refers to as “leftists”. He is a great defender of the virtues of capitalism versus the supposed evils of any proposed alternatives, and sees no connection between it and the depressing nature of much of modern architecture.
Yes, Kunstler has a series called “Eyesore of the month” running for several years. Some serious eyesores there.
http://kunstler.com/featured-eyesore-of-the-month/
J. G. Ballard wrote about all this and much more in his notorious “The Atrocity Exhibition” back in the late 1960s. Feel free to check it out. Nothing new here. I can provide a free download link if anybody wants it.
Saker thanks for this post.
I follow Paul Joseph Watson from time to time and find him quite entertaining and refreshing in his arguments. I see him as part of a new breed of internet-based commentators ranging in style and quality from the court jester (Milo Yiannopoulos), to the journalist (PJW), to the popular author-columnist (Ann Coulter), to the academic intellectual (Jordan Peterson). They all have tremendous following on social media and YouTube, they are articulate, entertaining and (quite important for their mass appeal) good-looking. Interestingly, they are all Anglosaxon.
From their arguments one could say they stand for traditional values, true free speech, national sovereignty, border control, they respect blue-collar workers, They are against political correctness, moral relativism, postmodernism, faux-intellectualism, mass immigration, LGBT weaponisation (weirdly enough for Yiannopoulos), safe spaces, the MSM, globalisation and the EU. They are are/were pro-Trump and are/were anti-Clinton (if they took a stand in the matter).
And just as one might find them hopeful in shaping a public opinion that can reign in the Empire and push for world peace, they continue their argument with a deep fawning at “Western civilisation (you know, the one they say Gandhi considered that “would be a good idea”). They highly esteem modern capitalism as responsible for the progress (meaning material progress) of Western societies, a progress they see as deserving of those societies’ qualities. They profoundly detest anything remotely resembling socialism and Islam (imagine them in a discussion with Ramin Mazaheri) and they set the stage for a war of civilisations or a war of religions.
For them, Africa, Asia and Latin America are deserving of their misfortunes for not sticking closer to the Western capitalist doctrine. Cuba and Venezuela are socialist failed states and China a communist dictatorship (discussing Pinochet’s Chile under the Chicago boys is a no-go zone).
For them, Western colonialism never existed. The Western world did no harm and its misdeeds never happened (from the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, to the genocide of the indigenous Americans, to turning the Chinese nation to opium addicts, to the sacking of Africa for slaves and diamonds, to turning the Middle East to a constant war theatre for cheap oil, to famines in India, to… etc etc).
For them, the material prosperity of the West is somehow independent of the sacking of all the rest of the world for 800 years now.
For them, that material prosperity reflects the West’s moral prosperity (how Calvinist of them!).
For them, modern capitalism (being so sacred) is not responsible for the ecological dead-end we are walking into.
Overall, I see them as nicely adapted for US-Agnlosaxon audiences, doing a good job waking those audiences up from their long sleep, but no more than that. As long as they don’t get off their high horses of Western moral superiority, I can hardly see them worth their salt anywhere else in the world.
Watson completely misses the point because he is caught up in style. Style has nothing to do with architecture. Actually architecture has nothing to do with architecture. Design is a minimal part – insignificant part of the building process.
The questions must be directed toward urban planning or the lack of. Similarly building usage and how it reflects the state of economic and social de-evolution. Why are cities the way they are?
Western cities are the way they are so transnationals can take advantage of large population centres in order to maintain control of the goyim; achieved through numerous building design and urban design techniques.
The less public space the better and the greater the inflated property values the richer the pound of flesh set get.
Condos take on the corporate mantra of applying false value to the all important need for shelter. Office towers warehouse workers and codify the need for relevance of the corporations – how they are the only way to create a functional economy – CEO down to the slaves.
Modern cities are nothing more than stacks of safety deposits boxes filled with empty promises and the delusion of wealth. Wealth and the promise of its greedy glutenous rewards is what keeps the goyim as slaves to the material world and the marry your cousins occultists on top.
The revolution will happened when the goyim wake up and stop going to work – the office towers and the symbols of oligarchial overlords will be exposed as absurd.
Forget the archi-f**ks and lead the revolt to expose the false gods of the neo-liberal judiac nightmare that we live in.
I couldn’t stomach the entire video, but if he doesn’t like apartment buildings, I’d like to see him live in an American trailer park. Those are “houses,” aren’t they?