Yeah,
the
next two hours tonight we're going to hear from some people who are doing
some extraordinary work in the desert plateaus of Arizona. Yeah, going to
be bringing you parts of an interview that we conducted about two weeks
ago with paolo Soleri. Yeah. Who was the world's first archaeologist.
Archaeology is a word that balance salary invented.
It's a contraction of architecture and ecology
and hilarious,
probably the first major architecture figure of this century to have
really Absorb the ecological perspective and the amazing thing is that he
did it about 30 years ago. Mm
Where else are going to be? Bring you an interview with one of his
students,
young man by the name of Jack Blackwell who has a lot of very amazing
things to say.
Solari has
over the course of the years of his labors. Yeah, mm transformed himself
from being a simple designer to a creator of enormous and revolutionary
schemes for new types of cities
for years. He was
rather misunderstood and thought to be very far out and revolutionary. And
it's only lately that the basic conservatism of his approach has come to
be understood conservative in the sense that salary who was born in Italy
yeah, educated in europe and the United States has inherited the mhm best
of the classical european traditions of urbanism and the intellectual life.
Mhm mhm. When he came to the United States, he became a student of frank
Lloyd wright
and studied with right at his winter desert. Okay, retreat. Mhm. Outside
of phoenix Arizona
At the time. This was in the 40s.
Yeah. Taliesin West was very isolated on the outskirts of phoenix and
salary bought some land nearby
in the wide open spaces of the expanding perimeters of the phoenix suburbs
and with his wife, Cali, he created the co Santee foundation
because santa is,
is an italian word meaning before things or some people translated against
things.
And the work of the cassata Foundation has grown and proliferated
tremendously over the years. Solari has published, has worked widely in
series of fantastic drawings and notebooks and perhaps this is the wrong
medium to sure that kind of
information with you. But at the same time salary has turned his
considerable intellect onto trying to understand the needs of the city and
development of
appropriate habitats for human beings to
grow in and to preserve the best values of civilization. The things that
he responds to.
Yeah, there is a, a factor of a great power within the universe which is
not space nor time nor mass energy, its complexity,
which resolves itself into consciousness and self consciousness and
intelligence and so on. Yeah. And this factor is for a moment, as far as
we know, it might be isolated in few spots or maybe a few billions of
spots, who knows, but still quite isolated. There's a phenomenon which are
isolated from each other, but they're phenomenon that eventually, if they
develop enough power will call us into, into one event
and it's uh complexity as its own form of infinity or immensity or or for
power, anyone beginning now to see what that power might be or could be
through our action and this solar system since it's a power which is still
used by a very uh primitive or a very young phenomenon, it's used is
misused and it's made into actions which are very often detrimental to the
whole balance. But it is a power, the conscience of of the human family
seems to be one of the new factor within the universe that my eventually
transformed this universe totally.
And I I take that as a it was a hint or as a guideline and I introduced
the idea of the urban effect as the device as the procedure by which this
, this new
power in the universe might be able to because the transcendence of matter
into spirit.
Mhm, Mhm, Mhm Uh huh.
Yeah, yeah,
yeah. Mhm.
Mhm. All right. Mhm.
Yeah,
wow. Yeah, yeah,
mm hmm.
Yeah.
Mhm
Right.
One of the ways that salary has supported his activities over the year has
been by teaching,
literally thousands of students have pass through the casa de Foundation
in Scottsdale and now through Arcosanti, the new city town actually, the
first arc Ology Solaris demonstration project of his ideas for the
integrated town design. Mhm.
Many of the students who have come to live and work at the foundation have
wanted to make a hero out of celery and uh when will not be. And I spoke
with him, we asked him about that
color. The I've seen the relationship that you have to your students
described by the word master ship and Jack has just essentially alluded to
the same thing that everyone considers you to be a
an evolved being who has been able to uh Mhm. I can't get past your sense
of humor and I think
that twinkle coming around his knuckles, I think
you understand what I'm trying to say that yes, the people have gathered
around you in order to look at what you've done with your life. They're
willing to
confer upon you some authority in the sense of wanting to learn from you
and how do you participate in that process with them? Well, I believe in
leadership, but with a great reservation, which is that we should
understand that no matter how good the leader is, he's still fumbling and
seeking and probing and falling,
falling, fighting on these days on earth face and so on. So we should be
very clear about that. Which brings me to the, not to a parallel, but a
cautionary.
Mhm
saying uh
advice watch out about the guru and the instant wisdom and paradise
tomorrow and all those things. So we are trying at least personally, I'm
trying to be very clear and maybe I'm not very clear about the fact that
we we wish not so much to become a privileged or perfect or utopian group.
We would like to be very much normal in and almost anyway, but possibly
with some understanding of what normality could be.
So I have a lot of rather high I have a long list of vision of normality,
right? Yeah. But in many ways I feel that what I'm telling to me is
normality as against something very abnormal which is happening now and
this abnormality is expressed quite well too well by many of the things
that we as a technological as a technological beings are doing and
developing. So I see that what I'm trying to bring back really is a sense
of nor mighty, which has been lost. So I sometimes I make the power
between a very clear that using this is doing the same old kind of
rectangular brick as someone else that wants to be original. So it's going
to make a spherical breaks and then tries to build with spherical breaks
and I would say it well, the Los Angelenos as an idea and the ones that
are trying to use round breaks, I stay with square bricks because I feel
that I'm trying to make just a little tiny step within the evolutionary
process. As I said,
well, you have been described as a spokesman for some fairly traditional
in the best sense ideas or some conservative ways of looking at human
culture, but in the sense that associating with you essentially transforms
whoever is doing that personally, I don't know because I I don't feel at
all charismatic or anything like that. I have a vague notion that I'm not
cut for that kind of a situation. In fact, I don't I resent the idea of
giving orders or telling people what to do, but at the same time I know
that I am in a position where I somehow have to do something like that at
least time and then
but then I'm also a very private person, so I'm not capable of great
social interaction. I think that's perfect unity. Well, your community has
been described as a recreation and modern terms of the renaissance atelier
and actually,
wasn't it your joining the atelier of frank Lloyd wright that brought you
to the desert in the first place. Yeah, I that was a good lesson for me.
It wasn't a lesson as an experience and I think I'm very glad to have had
it because I think it was a very positive experience.
And when I look back at it, I I see that my response were probably quite
different from the response of young people now to what you might call the
master.
And perhaps that's because I was slower in my thinking or I was less
uh
inpatient or whatever, but I never occurred to me to discuss what's
happening, what was happening to us in, which might not be very good. But
that was my reaction. I was doing things that I found the environment very
interesting and exciting and so I was going about doing what was told to
do. But those were the 40s and the 50s, they were not the 60s or the 70s.
Now I don't know what the balance is. I think both ways have some
something to offer.
He it is an element of arrogance in a contemporary scene which I don't
know if it's very good at the same time. There is an element of inquiry
and an observation and questioning, which is very good. So I don't know
what the balance is. You say you feel an arrogance now in the contemporary
, in the, in the young people, which is probably has been caused by the by
teachers and professors telling the young people that, you know, look how
beautiful you are, Look how perfect you are. Know what you can do if you
just freed from the coercion of society and so on. Which I think it's
fundamentally alive because beauty and resourcefulness and so on are very
relative things. And hopefully growing up means to become and if they
understood what was being said to them, they would be humble. Yeah,
willing to learn. Yeah. I think the humility should be ingrained into the
, into the learning process and that goes for naturally for the master as
much as it goes for the pupil. So what I'd like to see is a little more
balanced situation, maybe we're a little more humility might be
interesting to see the pupils and the other things like keep grabbing at.
It's the element of self pity. Self pity. Yes. Which is, um, yes. But
what about me? You know, when I get out of it and oh, this hurts or this
is demanding too much or I make no, all those, all those things. And
there's always a grain of truth in those complaints. But then again, youth
should be the time and the place and in the circumstances where you can,
you know, generosity and it's such a great gift. I have the energy of
youth. Yeah. The energy of use and feel less sorry about yourself. Uh, and
I think again, that's part a consequence of the affluent syndrome. And
then this explosion in the 60 of what I feel it was only responsible
reaction, not of the students, not the young people, but the people
responsible for them. This big faculties, professors, teachers, and so on.
No. Yeah.
Okay, mm hmm. All right. The first time you look at a picture of one of
palace hilarious, extraordinary city designs. You're struck with the
enormity of it and the complexity of it. He's a virtuoso designer. In fact
, he first came to the attention of the design community in this country
for his designs of ceramics and bridges and sculptural projects and was
acknowledged as a master of all those forms. And he's incorporated that
into his, um, architectural and urban designs.
And he's been creating on paper, at least some projects for some very
enormous buildings, some of them even a mile or more across
all of this generally gives rise to certain kinds of chronic criticisms.
This will be in here dehumanized and hill or a mega structure and there
is a certain tendency and contemporary real estate development too
put together a really big package something that will have something for
everybody in it. But as I think you'll hear in this next section,
Scolari's ideas are a little bit different. Yeah.
Mhm. Yeah. The thing which distinguishes an archaeology from a mere mega
structure or a huge building is the development of the concepts that
underlie it as a form of human organization. Would that be fair? Yes, the
degree of complexity which is assumed to be able to develop their gives
the degree of liveliness and fitness and coherence with the environment
and with other factors.
And with as soon as you bring in the complexity parameter, you cannot
avoid the physical parameter, which which is the support of the structure
of the grid, which makes the complexity. That's why the idea of
militarization
Because we could imagine that there is something as as complex that does
the brain, which is uh 50 times as large of the brain. But we can only
conceive of that, we cannot probably demonstrate the feasibility of this
thing because as soon as the physical dimension changes, you lose the
swiftness, you lose the immediacy, you lose the pertinence and
responsiveness
because for very simple reasons of action and response and so on. If it
takes that much time to for a message to go from here to there in that
process something is going to change so that when the response comes in,
response is for the past is not for the present. So there was little
parameter, it sounds like a materialistic element, but it's utterly tied
with the notion of consciousness of responsiveness, of immediacy and of
liveliness.
Do you see specialization within each of these cells? And I see arcosanti
as a cell uh a series of units of perhaps scattered across the landscape
with lots of what's called green space, but in Arizona it's not
necessarily green of green belt of
there will have to be communication between those units as well. No
community can be totally self sufficient in this day and age. There's
always something that's dependent upon someone else to be doing. And there
will be a degree of specialization than in each area. Say that in
manufacturer I think so there was your cloning, you know things and as we
can as we are repelled to an idea of cloning in creatures organisms,
living systems. I think we should repel the idea of cloning anything. I
mean the cloning is really the condition of the origin. There is a
particle
there are a few particles which are self identical, there. Myriads of
party which are self identical. And you start from there. So the more you
move away from that condition, the moria too. In many ways that define the
originality. It's certainly a very radical idea for american consciousness
to try and absorb since a virtually our whole psychological sense of
security as we move across the landscape is developed by finding the same
thing everywhere. And this has been pointed out over and over again that
the crummy hamburger that you eat in phoenix is going to be identical to
the one and find your feeling over equal nausea and the gas stations and
all these other repetitive elements of the american landscape are an
attempt to give people a sense of location. Now you're saying that you're
encouraging originality within the structures that you're creating. Yes,
yeah, not so much functional originality, but especially original. You
know what the means might have a repetitive character to them. But the end
is too, it's not too come out with the originality
and his eyes like saying, well the brakes are always the same, but you can
build a mansion, a humble house, castle and you can build a nice humble
house or ugly open house and so on. So I'm not against the repetitiveness
or or discipline or
order or hierarchy, but I would be careful in believing that since this
works nicely here, let's make a clone somebody else, someone else. All
right, So this is another kind of appropriate response to condition which
you take into your design
priorities. When you approach something, there's an element which is an
element of
presence. We we always say that we are we are building for a client for a
group of individuals or a society. The fact is that we're building for
something which is not there as yet. If if I'm going to build a house for
a client in the house is going to take two years, we built hopefully the
original client is not what's going to be the final client. So we have to
be very careful and that person will have transformed himself in the
meanwhile. Yeah. And part of the transformation might have been the
actually
in the house. But our side of this this factory, the fact is that this
person has grown into something else. So there is an anticipation
parameter in the process which we tend to ignore. And we say, well,
everything is given. We're going to get together in this room and we're
going to say that we need this in this, in this, in this. And so we're
going to be able calling to what our needs are. Well, if we take others as
strictly the guidelines, then eventually we're not doing anything that is
future oriented. We're doing something which is passed orient. So we have
to let you have to always inject this element of mystery on the ability
and of suffering somehow, which is part of making the future.
So you have no fixed vision of what the way things should be. But it's an
art
suffering somehow, which is part of making the future.
So you have no fixed vision of what the way things should be. But it's an
ongoing vision that itself is transformed as it progresses. Yeah, you
think that you can see modalities by which the future is becoming the
present and the modalities are very much suggested by history and more by
evolution as a more comprehensive process. So you're trying to have some
faith and to keep faith to those majorities at the same time, you have to
be very careful in in projection, which are to define and to final and if
you look at any kind of we call it science fiction's things. The one thing
that kills you is the mediocrity and the board that you find in the
environments which are designed all the custom which are developed and
that shows how difficult it is to anticipate. It's uh so you're really
trying to set up the conditions for creativity in the best sense. Well,
which again, it's very arrogant in many ways, but you're trying at least
to keep things uh unstable enough. So that might happen naturally also to
have a to define priorities that you feel, I feel important. Sounds very
dullest.
It seems so much about more as though you're going down the list of the
data jing. It's uh it's so in the flow of being in that movement and being
flexible and approaching problems and working around them and finding new
solutions and always putting the pieces together as you go along. Yes, at
this point maybe we should, we should introduce the opposite aspect, which
is the continuity and permanency tradition
because without those pyramids, I think we are just, we don't have a
ground to stand on. How do you feel?
Uh let's see, I feel strongly, I feel strongly in since I come from an
environment which is not the american environment and you know, we have a
certain ability to compare because I have been both of them. I feel very
deprived environmentally when I'm risk in this country private in the
sense of the not finding many things that mankind has been able to do in
other places because of more time, basically more time to develop a
culture and tradition.
So I would be very careful about the instant whatever it is played,
motorcycle civilization and again, here to find a balance between the
permanency of something and the necessity of transforming a constant
transformation. Well, part of understanding the dow is close to
acknowledge the fact that whatever you do has repercussions on all sides
that it influences everything else. I think that's very much of what
you're, you're implying in the evolutionary process that you are and it is
an outflow an outbreak from the past, which is similar to the only thing
that we have to work with.
So when you, when you tend to make, let's say some kind of a jump or leap
in many in many ways in terms of media or instruments, then maybe you
should be real careful in trying to remind yourself that is also the other
aspect which is not to leave but to gently move into the future. Mhm. With
a full consciousness of the uh mankind's achievements in the past. Yeah,
well and and the struggle and the and the weight and uh and the cost of
those achievements. Mhm. Okay.
Mhm.
Okay. one of the main things that has made the work of Palo salary
attractive to young people over the last 15 or 20 years has been the
consistency and the wisdom of his moral position as someone who has
embraced the simple life and economy of means in his work for many years
and has consistently been able to support his creative work out of his
teaching and bill making activities. He's almost a model for this kind of
thing.
And it's his moral position that comes out in the talk that we had
uh huh
there is a constituency which doesn't exist yet. Our unborn Childrens and
sooner or later we had to, we had to get to turn to this constituency and
say, well, am I doing something which is at least neutral if not damaging
for them.
And uh really then according to what the answer is, you should try to
behave. We did. So even if you come out with, say with a structure which
is going to be pervaded by opulence and majorities, but it responds in
physical terms to a greater congruence,
an ecological equity. Then what you pass to your Children at least is a
better instrument. The instrument is also a finality. It's not just the
media, it's also a message. And this is very true in architectural
environment. When you, when you make a glass, it might be a little less
true because the glass, if it's impermeable, if it's, you can handle it.
If it's not today into dangerous, you can accept it. But that's a very
specific function. When you move into the functional of an environment
which is molding people, then the instrument cannot just be purely a
device has to be also a message
which brings in the hysteric question
speaking molding people. One of the things that interest me when you first
arrived in the United States was your work in the desert in using the sand
form and pouring concrete over them and then hollowing them out and
creating living spaces that were almost imperceptible from the landscape.
And uh, that appealed to my hobbit like nature. And I was quite startled
when you started moving up out of the earth and creating these miniaturist
, these condensed communities. And I had to question myself as to how I
was responding to it, but beyond my own particular view of that, how do
you see the change taking place in phoenix, for example, just sprawling
acres now of
individual houses, each with their own swimming pool, each with a very
wide road in front of each with a driveway and carport everything, you
know, of self sufficient units. How do you, in that one sense that this
belongs to me? They certainly aren't self supportive of
How do you see the consciousness changing and people willing to live
tightly together and not want their own piece of land? Well, the answer
could be on a number of levels. One level of the observer of equity. The
journey is the level of the ecosystem.
And not only is the level of maybe the fundamental level of what's this
scope of life ultimately on the level of equity, evidently I can't afford
a swimming pool if I wanted, but I can't afford it because
millions of other people and pay for them. And so that can go on up to a
point and I had to look at my conscience and make a decision and they
might come where we Westerners and special americans might have to make a
decision because that's decision is going to make
for for a life or non life for our Children, anyhow. The other level of
conferences that
I don't think I don't think it makes sense, especially in a Arab land for
instance, we have also improved for one person or two persons. We have
also improved, but At least we pretend to say that there are 25 or 30
people. Cause anti that can use it naturally. Sandy, well, we'll have more
than that.
And they point you were making at the beginning of looking at something
that almost disappears in the landscape totally different. You can make a
paragon a parallel which maybe it's not fair. But Michael ST it'll point
you can say there's a meadow, which is a very nice thing. And then
suddenly you have this gigantic tree sticking out of it. And would be I
would be hard put to say that the meadow
or suffer and is legitimate. Industry is illegitimate in fact. But that's
only fits only to a point. But if you if you look at what you might call
the organic paul. Again, the ecologically fitting, then I think what fitz
is not the underground room, but it is above ground.
Three dimensional creature.
And that's because there are there are again the question but the ultimate
request, ultimately a question of understanding communication, learning,
intensity, and all those things that cannot be developed in those isolated
cells. You have to have a community of things. And since there are
community of physical things, besides being a community of mental things,
you have to go back to the how complexity is achieved. How can you have
complexity without taking in the physical parameters. So this which at
first I might look more organic has to be sacrificed for the greater
organize city of. So it's not organic. It's romantic. That's nostalgic,
right? Which is not evil per se that when you multiply it no, by the
millions, which is what we are now, it becomes evil. No, it's the society
based on aristocracy. Could have could have extravaganzas because they
were for three few people. But as soon as this organza function people
becomes the norm, then you really got a problem. So while the automobile
was a a toy For let's say one or 2% of the population, it was one thing
when this story became the instrument for survival for everyone
that big consequences. And so it's for everything else including swimming
pools. So we have to be careful of things that are designed solely for our
own benefit. We have to think broader just because they are feasible and
because they have some appeal evidently there are a many things are
appealing, but we have to watch out what they mean when they are
translated into the collectivity into what dear fellow will do.
Do I want these sort of fell do what I do. And then I have to watch out
the size of things and the clutter of things and a number of things. And
so and by the other fellow, in many cases you mean millions of other
people that that's a better thing that brings in the necessity of
frugality and
can't escape it, I guess of awareness. That's really what it comes down to
it. It's really involved awareness and then performance because I can be
aware of many things and then go my merry way without acting apartment.
So that brings in the question of hypocrisy and the vision you offer, the
experience that you offer to people is
certainly very radically different from what America has traditionally
meant to people. It's been an expansionist traditionalists uh situation. I
mean this country was at least in its present form. Leaving aside the
native american culture founded by european refugees. People who who had
had it with traditional european cultural forms. Uh we're not able to uh
pursue their lives and the ways that they wanted to, they founded a
country which is based on a very a vision of kind of openness and
expansion. And Now 250 years later we're seeing that we're having to
reconsider some of those very fundamental concepts and it's just kind of
uh
this is a counter psychology almost that you're offering to people.
Well, I think there's a link between
uh huh the belief that there's always an X frontier and possibly the
inability to set limits to one's own greed and one's own acquisition and
was the feeling of the sacredness of on the ship or whatever.
Yeah. And I think there's been an elemental exploitation in this country
not because the people in this country were less good or terrible because
it just happened in this country was such a cornucopia. I mean It was
harsh and difficult but was there available. So there's always the
possibility of exploiting this piece of ground, exhausting it and then
move 500 yards and repeat the same thing. So I'm wondering sometimes if
the vastness of this country wasn't one of the reasons for the character
of our society and
and at this point we are beginning to understand that exploitation and
accumulation and
uh huh It's they're not really what we should be after. I sense you don't
you can't look at yourself as a european anymore and yet you're not really
embracing the mythologies that have sustained America is that just make
you a cosmic citizens? Well,
I don't know. But as far as citizenship, I always said that I would rather
lose one and to acquire one in a sense of you know, eventually it would
make very much sense ah in terms of law that I am american swiss or indian
so on, but for the moment we'll stick with it and maybe we have to accept
those conditions but again, since we are a privileged society in the sense
that we have so much, maybe we should try to begin to consider those
aspects as if not illegitimate As very interesting.
Thanks
Yeah
mm
please. Okay mm
the best article I've been able to find on the work of sala salary comes
from a book by William Irwin Thompson called passages about earth and in
the chapter on individuals who have become institutions, He talks about
salary, he says, if man is to find his place in an arc ology, he must not
move about in bourgeois upward mobility. He must not move about in the
ecologically burdensome culture of wealth with its cars, ski doos and
cabin cruisers. Like a man in the Middle Ages, he must know his place and
like a man in the Middle Ages to know his place, he must live in a
spiritual culture that makes up for all the toys that he has lost from the
old bourgeois materialistic, democratic days. The return of the Middle
Ages is clear in salaries thought says William Irwin Thompson, the
prostate or not, Solaris culture is catholic and his our ecologies, a
medieval cathedral towns,
we didn't have very much time to tim power down on this subjects, but
before he escape from us, we made one more attempt.
Mhm
felt like you've been working for 30 or more years pursuing your vision
for a
an integrated man. Uhh one that would take advantage of the the best of
the past traditions of humanity and also
at the same time, not turn your back on the new possibilities that our
technology and our present did uh scientific development offers us
and you've been really remarkably successful in articulating your ideas
and turning them as much as possible into built form.
Ah I would like to know what you feel you may be able to achieve in the
remainder of your life in order to express these ideas.
Well one thing would be to be able to develop enough a prototype which
might begin to function and demonstrate and also be a place for
for improvements and changes and corrections and so on. And you're honest
to develop the parallel
mm model which I tend to quiet on this cattle ology at this point. Some
kind of geological geological mm model. Because I think that at this point
we really need something of that sort. And in a way I feel that some of
the at least many of the traditional geologists are. I'm not responding to
that. Can you tell us what that word means to you? Anthology? Yes. Well
pathology. I think the website said something about the science or the the
inquest inquiry into the final
final aim. Finality. So I don't believe that we at this point we can we
can think in those terms, no, not as a truth or as an existing thing but
as an hypothesis and we know now that the truth is somehow based based on
fulfillment of hypothesis more than existing things or rules.
So you make a model. Then you try to fulfill it to develop those
conditions which are making the model reality uh there to come up with a
model which which makes sense Or hopefully it's transcends what exists now
in good better in metal terms. So we have been inventing theologies for
for ages. I mean in fact man appeared when theology was invented I guess
what we want to go over time.
Yeah. Mhm.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
One of the most for both of them.
Mhm.
You know what?
Okay. Yeah.
Yeah.
The opportunity that we had to interview palace salary came about as a
result of one of his infrequent visits to san Francisco. Yeah. And he
brought with him some of his uh huh assistants and students. Yeah. one of
them was a young man named Jack Blackwell. Jack was described as one of
the real veterans of Arcosanti
since he had been there for six years. Sure made him one of the senior
citizens.
Yeah. Right after paolo made that last remark about man appearing when
theology was embedded, everyone broke up and said how do you know that
bologna. Jack said well you real that's the story you really ought to get.
Well after the exhibition of the great model of Arcosanti was
finished at the cow palace, that's part of a big garden and ecology and so
on and so forth. Type of show. Jack Blackwell was kind enough to come back
into the studio and give us a
Yeah, very heart felt very open, kind of deep interview that showed me how
much he has absorbed from salary and how truly
I'm talking with Jack Blackwell who has been working with paolo Soleri for
a number of years now. Jack maybe uh we could start by, if you could
describe to us how you came to get involved with power and where that has
led you
you have to start with childhood. I think I grew up in a place it would be
ah maybe the idyllic suburbia as opposed to the a tract home reality. And
its very first manifestations, what we call suburbia is really a as much
of a utopian venture is as our colleges are today. In a lot of ways, if we
use the term utopian with a little bit of caution.
I grew up in that community which the residents themselves got together
and and financed and built and it was very open place socially. At the
same time it was water indirectly on nature.
Those impressions still remain very strong and they've always been my
frame of reference in dealing with environments. The fact that I can move
very freely around the local social environment with a lot of
reinforcement. I think this came back in the Haight ashbury in a lot of
ways. Ah and the fact that virgin nature, so to speak, it was right there
right there. This
it was
remained in my mind as the tract homes began to cover this land. And
really turn it into
survey as we know it, the kind of mentality involved in that is much
different. The exploitative economics
vis a vis kind of cooperative economics. My parents in there, friends are
involved in this is this was not a radical socialism or anything like that.
It was very middle class upbringing and what you might call culturally
barren if you're city dweller. But the emotional level was there and the
living outdoors,
contacting nature as a child, the ability of a child to move freely.
Thanks. It's incredibly critical.
My education is
liberal arts at a school in southwestern Ohio
Joed the Army in 1966. Out of a desire for experience and who break out of
the path towards
typical career in society. I guess that college was heading me too. Ah I
was influenced by people like Henry miller, iron rand, uh
people who counseled the doctrine of looking to yourself for knowledge
and this was all new to me and the environment of my upbringing,
The army, ironically enough sent me to san Francisco eventually 1967,
which was very important time to be here. I believe
the whole experience of that era is it's impossible to summarize. And I
only say that
Altamonte, is it maybe a focal event
because there we turned up all the demons under all the rocks and realized
that the road towards
better times was going to involve a lot more work than maybe a lot of us
had anticipated
at that point, I came in contact with Solaris ideas.
I realized in my own mind that
We had two roads
basically possible for for our generation to work within one was could be
called Mysticism, one could be called the
the emerging electronic hardware's
and of course, rock music, it was the beginning of an interface of those
things for it, for the early bands. I think that was the case.
Ultimate told us there wasn't enough somehow, that wasn't enough and I and
that thing to tame
the animal and us and therefore we didn't really have the basis for a new
civilization
in that medium. But sorry,
included the the morphology,
physical arrangement of things
in our environment
as as the overriding factor and how we can relate to one another.
And the Haight Ashbury,
there was a synthesis of people on the level I think historically is
unprecedented.
And uh
there's certainly been a lot of cynicism about it in the meantime. But I
have to hang in there and say that I'll stick by that.
It's something that I could never let go.
Person raised in a very small town, middle class environment,
but with a certain amount of a communal integrity
being exposed to synthesis that really represents what the city is all
about as an institution historically
in evolutionary terms.
So,
where do we go after the heat? Well,
I think we go towards trying to establish
more of a duration, all basis for it. That level of of intensity and we
all took a lot of drugs. But it seems in the meantime, people are taking a
lot of drugs to its not having the same effect. Well, the reason may be
the premises
and
the openness to which which we all entered the situation.
I believe that's typical of i historical golden ages.
I believe what we're after, what's hilarious after in its own way as a
society where okay, standing on the street,
there's an energy present which
next to impossible for you to be anything but positive and creative
about the group you're involved in and about the environment you're in.
In the 60s, we were developing that type of consciousness with him and
environment
which was very unrelated to the consciousness in many ways. Mhm san
Francisco
was built in the early 20th century. Most of it uh huh.
With the economic drives being predominant
with segregation of individuals on a as we know, victorian
model.
So we found in the sixties, within that more apology
victorian society, they couldn't grow
the consciousness
that we had for a moment
for a long period of time. Or at least not that great intensity except
through the incredible resources and energy of youth that just by its
nature is not put off. But in the long run we have to confront
the physical morphology of our environments
as perhaps the determining factor in and how much synthesis as possible
within a group of people. So Larry was doing this. He was doing it Well in
the 50s. Mhm. So it seems like it has been a concern of architects and
town planners since time immemorial. But sure,
One of the things that came out of the late 60s was a sense of criticism
of the of the existing society, people feeling that no matter how
beautiful the environments were, that we could create for ourselves. And
you say you describe one of the idyllic suburban, quote suburban
environments which our culture did manage to create and I think a lot of
that was rationalized around the rearing of Children, a good place for my
kid to grow up, not like what I had to do. I'm sure people who came out of
the basically european type cities which were rebuilt on our shores in the
in America by european residents, uh I wanted to create something
different and they did, but then it was realized that underneath that
where all the implicitly held assumptions and cultural patterns and values
that were who people were and I feel that a lot of energy has gone into
changing that figuring that the the changes in the physical environment
will will naturally follow that. Uh I think you're right, I think you're
absolutely right, The changes will follow, but they will follow slowly
because environments change much slower than our consciousness does. Right.
So arcosanti, the work of redeveloping human settlements around or
integrated models is it's very logically and simply
the
expression of
a consciousness which must already exist to a certain extent in order that
those things could happen and it's trying, trying to come out in a
physical and appropriate physical form. Yes. And also it's use it or lose
it I guess. So for me anyway, if you've got that consciousness well great
, that's fine. But you won't even have it tomorrow unless it has some
place to flow. That's that's valid. And there are entropic dead ends where
many people's consciousness as has had to flow because of the arrangement
of things now. And I think we will lose it if we don't
shortly
device
more efficient use us for it. Our ecology is being the the primary one
that I have in my mind at this moment. You yourself were not trained as an
architect or a designer and as I understand it, your your role within the
Arcosanti work is that of a teacher and somebody who is coordinating
educational programs and sort of reinforcing or making clarifying the
ideas which are the underpinning intellectual structure of the whole thing.
Is that fair? That's one role definitely. And what is along with that
goes hand in hand, the role of the builder
and that's I'm trying to live what I see is as the archaeologists in the
making lifestyle, which is to integrate the activity of building designing
, Conceiving of environments with the activity of
what you might call spiritual
ah advancement and growth.
And as I said earlier, those two realities for me, all right, the same
thing in many ways I came to Solaris without a formal architectural
background, self taught and what I would consider to be what Buckminster
Fuller calls comprehensive design science.
Trying to
integrate generalities from a number of perspectives.
But and I see that as the only way in which the present generation can
really come to grips with. It's historical destiny with
we developed a refined degree of specialization to to an extreme, which is
certainly valid in evolutionary terms. But people like salary are
important because they've gone beyond those boundaries and try to
synthesize
all knowledge again in a way that's why you could almost call salary and
other contemporary people of that nature profits. This is what I see the
profit does performs for society historically. So as a self taught person
, my approach to arcosanti is as a learning system in which
there's really an instant testing of the validity of one's behavior. If
it's not real good environment, there is intense enough that it's going to
blow you out. That sounds pretty off the wall. Well let's try to clarify
that. But you mean to work real tests for definitely your ideas and on
many levels. Yeah. Including just playing physical endurance.
Began as a as a laborer and I got involved in building a large piece of
public sculpture that Apollo designed for the city of phoenix. So one ton
cor 10 steel woman flying through space. It's about 20 x 20 ft x eight ft.
Well that's steel plate. Yeah. Through that involvement, I got interested
in the metal trades and became the welder at Arcosanti. But there's no way
that someone with all the metaphysical balance that we all carry our can
do welding without without a real sense of of Mhm. Mhm. Using that as a
metaphor.
What holds the city together in a way this molten steel, incredible heat,
blinding light. All these things have have more than a casual significance.
And they certainly did for me. And there's a romantic adventure to the
early days of our cassini which it's still there in some ways. So
you kind of well, the head now in the in the promotional uh brochures that
you send out to people, you kind of stressed the aspect that this is
really going to be hard work and you may have to do some things you don't
want to do. And I do. I seem to remember that the sense of adventure was
much more present in the message that was being put out in the early days.
Huh? I'm not sure probably many people are still attracted to that as the
adventure has simply changed levels as far as I'm concerned. And it's it's
a much more complex adventure. And it's going to get much more complex
because we're trying to or trying to
Integrate 40 500 minds more so than has ever been done historically, as
far as I'm concerned. So it's 4500. The ultimate population for our
Cassani, Or is that a number of people? That's the projected population.
The number of people that are working on the project now is in the
hundreds At times it is above 100. But the number of people Working there
full time is still about 25. I see those people changed quite frequently.
Well how do you get from well into running a to try to give people an
experience of evolution? Ah
you get there by realizing that our Cassani
as we worked on it in the early years. It was moving awfully slowly and
although it's very easy to feel satisfaction about erecting a wall panel
which takes you all day and takes a huge amount of involvement in energy.
Yeah. And people have done it themselves and feel the accomplishment.
It's a very ego gratifying thing. In the end you have to confront the
scale of the undertaking and the fact that it would never be completed at
the rate we were moving. So what can be applied, what energy can be
applied to
give us the wherewithal for that quantum leap into
uh huh building the town itself,
I found that energy personally and it's hilarious ideas and after several
years of immersion in that. And then the thought of Teilhard de Chardin an
and then
relating those to many, many other thinkers
and many people who came to Carcassonne and shared their energy and
intellect and ideas.
It seemed that Carcassonne was no different from the human race in general
, in lots of ways we're bogged down and cynicism were bogged down in the
in an overflow of
self consciousness and reflection that Is happening on a mass scale in the
20th century.
We're vastly in need of confidence building at the very deepest level of
our beings.
That's the species as a whole. And classical religions are not giving it
to us anymore. Imagine there's no heaven
season you try,
no hell been loan
arcosanti is as it presumes to be an arrow had an evolution.
It really requires that we work out
the motivation
and clarity of aim there first,
as presumptuous as that sounds,
I've begun to find the
the source of that clarity and motivation and they're interrelated
commitment to do this work which is a vast reorganization of not only
people's heads but
the day to day where we live.
Yeah,
I have the feeling that what Solari has gotten and
absorbing the perspective of Teilhard de Chardin,
the whole idea of a cosmic evolution leading through
human beings to another state
somewhere in the future. The trends that we extrapolate from that and the
significance of the position of men today
in that in that process.
I think so. Larry is taking a step beyond any classical religion
and saying that
there is no pre existing God that's created this universe. Ah the universe
began
not by chance by probability, but by the simple
logic that to have something is more probable than to have nothing
and that by loss of great numbers. The first synthesis in the universe
came into being
gradually.
Is this process of synthesis unfolds. It leads us through the rise of life
and planetary systems. It leads us to the rise of thought and it leads us
to the present.
As far as I'm aware, this whole idea, the evolution of thought towards
higher level has been expressed in every occult system of self
enlightenment, but it's hilarious expressing it on the level of planetary
man. Not not how do you as an individual
control and create the universe, but but as a social thing that you as an
individual are
a seamless web with other individuals in the world, in the world of the
flesh and thought creating itself.
Of course. Hillary, that is God at this point
in our universe, there is nothing beyond
thus. You and I, leading us protecting us, taking care of us after we're
dead
or helping us to get through the next day
or helping us to create to transform the material world.
Salary expresses
this thought that man's intelligence is not in the process of discovering
the truth. It is in the process of creating it.
And such revelations as we have through classical religions represent
our ability to imagine the future
and in fact classical religion has has needed up to this point because in
a way our consciousness is that of an infant to it, imagine past
perfection that existed
for salary. This proposition is reversed. The classical religions are
valid only in so much as these images of mhm of grace, of the garden of
Eden and so forth. Were
we're like metaphysical architecture. They were
the way in which the mind must
take hold of itself and give itself direction on a societal,
At a societal level and individual level two. But
these were only simulations
that nothing such as that existed except in the imagination of of us.
And that in fact that perfection, that total enlightenment only exists
as a possibility.
It exists as a possibility. And at this point in history where at a time
when the classical religions are actually holding us back that to imagine
that some one something, some other force. It's going to bail us out.
There's a negative influence on evolution because at this point man must
take total responsibility for life. There's no other alternative. And any
religion which teach us that that responsibility lies elsewhere for salary
anyway. And I've come to agree, uh lets us off the hook to the extent that
a total creative power is night present interactions
at this point, man must take total responsibility for life. There's no
other alternative.
And any religion which teaches that that responsibility lies elsewhere for
salary anyway. And I've come to agree uh lets us off the hook to the
extent that our total creative power is not present interactions
and then even and can lead to stopping it of the growth of consciousness.
10 yards short, Hannah's
expressed the idea that
reflection must ultimately
be able to see awaiting the way ahead of itself. That's
that's worth pursuing higher destiny. Or it will the board itself, it will.
The structure of consciousness is such that it cannot exist. Ah well,
commit mental suicide as it were.
Consciousness introduces a choice into life. It introduces the power of
life to take account of itself and determine whether it should continue or
whether it should stop
Solari. I think it represents a breakthrough. He's going to say that yes,
all the classical religions are valid, but what we need now as a religion
and he uses the term. So I'm not
not bastardizing it.
A religion which can include and go beyond
all those traditions, a planetary religion. And it's the religion of God
making it's the religion that we believe that through taking total
responsibility for it. What has made us what we stand for that is All of
life, all 15 billion years that we know about scientifically Anyway,
Weston
and each one of us
and nowhere else we are, we are life at this point.
And we are life taking
taking an evolutionary dead end, scattering into entropy or consolidating
and intensifying. There's there's no middle ground between those two. This
consolidation and intensification in its physical manifestation takes the
form of the city designs, the archaeology is intense, densely organized
cities and in the personality and the individual. Uh the consolidation and
intensification. How does that manifest?
I think it comes in terms of an internal revolution which shakes you tear
roots in the same way. Perhaps drugs have shaken some of us. Ah That's the
only general metaphor I can I can come up with.
It comes in the coming of age of mankind from
for merely experimenting for merely discovering
how the world works, crafting more and more power over its workings. Mhm.
Uh huh Through our understanding of nature. Mhm. It evolves to the state
of an adult man, an adult humanity which
maybe has a grain of seriousness there that it didn't have before and that
and I'm not describing a state that I have reached or salary is reached.
Although you touch upon it sometimes a sense of unity with the universe
that's not pastoral. It's the sense of unity with the universe that
imbues our actions with
great integrity.
But there I'd clarify that and say what this internal revolution
represents is more anguish for us. It's not a way out of our anguish.
It's in a way plunging deeper into it because
and a hilarious scheme of things. There is no total enlightenment possible
until Actually evolution completes itself until this universe which began
15 billion years ago at some point in the future reaches
it's what Taylor calls it spiritual pole, it's complete
are transformation
from matter from pure matter into pure spirit.
Today's man today's person isn't it is an absolutely unprecedented and
critical position along the path of this universe. At least the section of
it that we know about planet earth. It's the only place where
reflection exists, where human consciousness exists.
It really puts us on the hot seat. Hilarious philosophy could not
can barely be accepted today but it could not have been accepted by for
instance
Nici one person's salary
refers to as an influence influencing factor. Um
May have achieved this insight on a personal level.
Um
That blew his mind. Perhaps it will blow a lot of our minds before they
come to grips with it. I think it will blow our minds if we don't come to
grips with collectively that the responsibility that's
that impinges on man at this point can't be faced by any individual alone.
Ah Even salary
are people like him. It's by the structure of evolution. It must be a
collective experience. So all our pursuit of individual enlightenment.
It's valuable. Yeah as the development of our organism are thinking
organism and I think there's no getting around that. In fact we have to we
have to take the lonely uh huh monks position, the hermit's position. They
okay.
Mhm. The seeker of one's own soul position.
For a time. We must come back from that into into collective action right.
Which
I don't know if we're really facing up to that right now. at least we're
not at arcosanti
totally facing up to it. And I think many communities get around it by
appointing someone as
Mhm. That's the voice of God and and trusting that voice which may be a
valid to some extent but and hilarious theory and philosophy,
each one of us
stands in that position. It can't be shoved off, it can be shoved off to
those who are older and more experienced, but ultimately each individual
has to come to terms with the same
Mhm.
Responsibility
for his own existence that people like to er and salary. I have already
done to some extent yet. Coming coming to grips with it collectively. It's
the thing that hasn't been done yet. It hasn't been done by classical
religion as I see it only in very in a very ritualized way. We're not
talking about rituals here. The experience that I'm trying to create them
, the people in the workshops is it's very far from
stylized
uh
water down
experience of what life represents. I think our position now is that we
can really get we'll tr to express it as being not only
as being a kind of crossroads where not only our own ideas but things
themselves
radiate from. That's the position of us today, opening ourselves to it is
that's the problem
do we have to help each other? I don't think we can do it alone
or should either
it's hilarious ideas
represent a good
a good summary of where we're at where human consciousness is at on this
earth. That is that
man is just now peeking his head above childhood and taking account of the
fact that were the gods such as God exists at all. Not a perfect god by
any means. And certainly it's an anguishing position. As I've said, this
is the way in which mhm The energies can be generated to move life on to
another level. as similar to the statement that was made uh in the late
60s and the preface to the whole earth capture that we are as gods. So we
might as well get good at it. You might as well get good at it. Except
that even even saying that we are God is so heavy that it's going to take
a generation or so forgot to thinking sure,
I don't know. Do you think people are? Mhm. Are ready to
accept the responsibility for their evolutionary destiny?
I think we have no choice whatsoever.
Not at all. Well, we'll do that or we will destroy ourselves. And the
evidence is growing. That is exactly what we're doing. The only certainty
that I can endorse at this point,
that's a life represents the rise of complexity through the means of
gathering things into
more efficiently performing bundles.
Human city is not.
Is an infant example of this at present. During the time that present
cities with which all of us are familiar san Francisco in particular came
into being
mm And possibly through the the intensified intellectual spiritual
possibilities of those situations.
We've evolved
to new technologies side by side one
the ability to
transform matter and to control it in much and much much more effective
and
and broadway's represented by perhaps going to the moon. It's a good
example
to do anything we want virtually anything we want with. Mhm. Electronic
circuitry,
structural technology.
Ah At the same time during this period of human history we've come into a
scientific understanding
of our origins on a much wider scale than we had before. So
so that
men like Apollo and tired taking advantage of this wider intellectual
scope. The compression
of human beings and the intensified
sphere of thought that within which great minds operate today
as opposed to earlier earth
as possible
to achieve a synthesis between the physical and the spiritual
evolution
of life. Mhm.
That gives us the wisdom
to apply these technologies
toward the direction which life
has always been seeking that is to transform itself
from matter into spirit
by means of the route of complexity.
Ah
This has been done at any time in human history. I believe when culture
has been at its height and the things that we regard as great have been
achieved.
But to do so self consciously deliberately.
There's a new idea
at least on a scale of society.
That is why to me, Arcosanti represents
bud
an incipient bud something incredibly new and pretentious for the human
race.
It's at Arcosanti that people
myself, people like you
Are taking into their hands these two phenomenon, an understanding of
how life has come to be, what it is, what it's striving for the rise of
the spirit in this universe
and and our intellectual powers to understand and manipulate matter
deliberately, which in the past has has been done
mainly as a means of survival.
Arkansas represents a reversal of priorities in terms of design and I
think we also represent a reversal of priorities in terms of design. Human
beings have changed the orientation of life from one
in which chance
competition for space,
survival of the fittest in physical terms have determined the design of
organisms into it a new level in which
the outcome of those chances and those design changes. That is human
thought has taken hold
of life locally
and began to transform it. So the city as it presently exists
as a machine created
for the economic reasons of survival
at its deepest level. To be human, to be analogous to what we are in
nature, that is
an organism in which the spirit
is a predominating factory.
The city must be reorganized
along the priorities
of achieving it.
A human ecology. What salary refers to as a human ecology. That is an
environment in which thought the interaction of minds and ideas.
It's facilitated as well as
and effectively by the physical infrastructure which we all must operate
in that Arcosanti is unique and in that lies our salvation in the sense
that
we must
keep that priority.
If we're to avoid sinking into having our colleges become what many people
fear. Ah
the ultimate expression of statism of centralized control
of all the things, incipient an industrial culture as a exists now without
a head, without a soul in many ways, blindly
grasping at more and more power,
if human evolution has reached a state in which we can consciously take
control of it, then there's not only there's not only hope for the earth,
but
there is the hope of something more than has ever existed on the earth.
And that that is what Arcosanti represents to me the beginning of that, we
are privileged
all of us to be at it at an incredibly potent staged
and the movement of life in the world,
There will only be one
time in the history of this planet when
life
deliberately takes hold of itself on the scale
of collective human minds
and builds more complexity, more connection, more possibility for love.
That's what it's the best way I could describe it into itself one first
time, I think Carcassonne is that that time and therefore
the incredible amount of hassles that go into building it are really
meaningless when you consider it in those terms, looking ahead if you
could to that thing which is in your mind that is being created here, what
do you feel that that would be like,
I don't think we have anything to refer to historically? Uh huh. That
could convey the power of it. Except
let me ask if you're in love, you're in love with someone. Uh Mhm. That
sounds sounds kind of weird, that's the way it seems to me. Yeah,
we could have a society in which more people would be in love.
That's what I'm looking for.
But the beauty of the beauty of arcosanti is also the danger. We don't
know what will be there. We don't know and there's no way to even begin to
predict.
It's a change for me, the change that we're embarked on is the change of
the magnitude of reflection coming into existence 3,000,003 million years
ago.
That's what the integration of many minds
really integrating. Not just
an occasional glimpse of connection but an organic connection between us
which is only incipient and and very, very fragile and
unrealized at this point. Any time that we've experienced that on an
individual level between two people that's a glimpse but we're after on a
societal level, do you expect that that will be achieved in your lifetime
?
I expect that will have taken the first step in that direction
and I'm convinced that it will be achieved, whether it's in my lifetime or
not,
but I'm glad and scared to death that
that where the generation is going to embark on that for the first time.
It's just this is something totally new in a lot of ways
and it's
that's where we're at as a generation too though. I mean all of us who
for whatever reason were drawn into any experimentation at all. Uh huh.
They know in their hearts that oh being alive, that's what being alive is
is for it's just that that chance that risk the challenge, the challenge
above all that that we have to keep engaging ourselves with and the
challenge on this earth right now. Yes,
as crazy as it might sound is that is the construction of that thing out
there and that may say in Central Arizona,
he can be fully alive
by only by engaging yourself in the greatest challenge open to our
particular evolutionary moment. That's something that's not for everybody
might not even be for me ultimately, but but it's there, it's available
and if we don't get the best minds involved in it. Yeah,
it may be a chance that doesn't come again.
Well, you've been involved with this work for the last five years of your
life to work at Arcosanti continues
the energies of that was hilarious. And the people that he has been able
to bring around him seems to continue year after year. Mhm. Growing and
reaching into the public imagination and
all I can say is I really wish you all the fruits of the intense work that
you're doing both out there on that mesa in Central Arizona and on
yourselves in the process of transformation.
Thank you.
Mhm.
You've been listening to Stephen Hill. Mm and Jack Blackwell, director of
educational programs at Arcosanti builder Dreamer,
walking together
toward the vision of a more perfect future.
If you'd like information about Arcosanti,
the workshop programs which happened every six weeks, which entailed
construction work discussions with paolo Soleri,
four day seminars and living on the site
or events that happened on the equinox ists and solstices
or the arts festival, which happens in the fall.
You can write to the Coast santa Foundation. That's C O S A N. T. I
Foundation 6433
Doubletree Road Scottsdale Arizona 85253.
So many topics tonight. Such promise for
a new vision, A bright future,
all brought to you by
new dimensions.
Mhm. We want to thank you for listening
for being with us
for sharing the faith in the future.
Mhm. This is KQED FM SAn Francisco.
Good night.