The author of this article should be a professor of fantasy. He's in dreamland. Just as dreams are shot through with happenstance images, so are his arguments floated aloft by visions of Utopian serendipity.
I won't list my objections in any order or even completely because I'm not taking the time to match them point by point to the article. But if there's one over-riding neglect in his article it's the absence of a recognition of booming world population. If production is scaled back for the sake of improving life quality for producers, what becomes of the needs of new millions of people each year? The simple concept of modern productivity is that products are made only as well as they need to be to suit a defined goal. Excessive labor and use of materials are trimmed back if they are wasteful. The authors carpenters, for example. He dreams of them constructing things with the best materials and care, to last and last, thus hitting the sweet spot in ever person's heart for impervious quality. But if houses, for instance, not to mention the tall office building, were still built to the standards that are sometimes found in much earlier buildings, like post and beam, heavy stone, and finished off with four inches of plaster and capped with slate roofs, their cost would be stratospheric,leaving the majority of people homeless, and cities where tall buildings now abound, unimaginably congested and dangerous. The efficient use of materials is the best way to ensure environmental conservation. Any idiot can see the logic of that and only a dreamer pandering to the faulty wishes for a better, simpler time would presume the opposite. My old 1940 Ford was planked with heavy steel. It took a real whack to dent its big round fenders. My new millennium car has thicker paint than steel and thus has a thousand little dings on each door, the sure sign of a city car parked closely to others day and night. So it is with everything. Materials are cut to the minimum needed, not the maximum possible. The trick is finding the balance point between efficiency, resource and production costs, environmental issues, and the desired function and appeal of the product. That is the best formula for a smart, moral society. Yes, I'd prefer that my car doors would be more resistant to the careless actions of others but do I really want thicker steel or more costly alternatives for a product that's almost worthless after 10 years? The car is as good as it needs to be. It can't guard against human carelessness beyond ensuring a level of safety. Ditto for almost everything else I own.......except art. Ah, there's the rub. People think of art as made to last forever. After all, quality should be permanent, like Beauty. A first class rug is woven by hand (by children in Middle Eastern sweatshops?) and will indeed last for centuries. A bronze sculpture will last until it's blown up in war. A painting will last....ah, well, quite a while. The Internet and its storage clouds are the new Forever, the permanent craft of civilization. Long after humans disappear, the 'clouds' will be storing their chatter and records until the galaxy explodes. Maybe that's what's driving this insane fantasy for a return to a paleolithic or early Egyptian notion that everything should be made for eternal permanence, no matter the cost in money and lives, and civilization itself. For every ancient and beautifully crafted thing, we should remember that their benefits and delights were for only for the sifted few. Millions go to see the Welsh Castles of Edward I or the pyramid of Cheops, but many millions of others died of sickness, starvation, brutality of war, and much more as a result of their being made. How much better to spread the benefits to as many as possible by balancing means and ends even if stratified from lesser utilitarian goods to rarer symbolic goods where a presumed excellence and beauty replaces the utilitarian? If I was responsible, and generous, I'd go back to the article and outline its arguments and then respond in a structured essay. The egregious error of Berg's forwarded article does merit a forceful response. But not now. I toss out my scattered remarks as an opening volley, just to let the aggressor know someone is defending the fort of civilization. I also want Berg to know that I am not fooled by his constant presentations of copied reactionary and overly conservative pie-in-the-sky, views. It's just plain silly of him to keep marching these bewildered troops forward, relics of long ago and far away, phantoms of nostalgia and drippy sanctimonious wealseling for power. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, May 28, 2012 4:14:06 AM Subject: "It is the accuracy and detail inherent in crafted goods that endows them with lasting value." http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/opinion/sunday/lets-be-less-productive.html?_r=1
