mm. Yeah,
Paulo Soleri city is designed in the image of man and efficient, complex
in one complete miniature package, a completely functional form, just like
our bodies. Today, we live in the city in the image of the car, a city in
fragments connected by asphalt arteries. Solari City and archaeology calls.
It would gather and assemble those fragments. If you consider how we
perform in our daily lives, You see that the performance demands only
about 10 ft in height. What demands very large areas horizontally? So when
you try to connect those areas horizontal, you're gettin troubles. When
you try to connect them vertical because you're able to pile them up, then
you see immediately I'll sweep. The connection becomes not only that, but
there's something peculiar about the difference in the difference between
the car behavioral mode and the elevator mode the car needs the road. The
road becomes a divider separating separating elements, it becomes a
segregated elements The other later is able to do the same thing fast
better much faster than economically without separating because it
perforate through the performances instead of separating them, coming into
them and separating them. So, um, I really think that the answer, the, the
instrumental answer and logistical answer to the problem of the cities is
a congruence between the horizontal dimensions and vertical damage.
Celery has already begun. One such city, Arcosanti and archaeology
designed for several 1000 people presently being built up near cordes
junction. If men can accept Arcosanti and other our colleges, if we can
live their policy. Hilary hopes we will then be on the road to
spirituality and obscure idea in a world where economics and politics have
nothing to do with justice. And more importantly, where people's
relationships have little to do with who they really are in Solaris book,
the bridge between Matter and Spirit is matter becoming spirit. He writes
, we are what we make of our environment, heartless and popper environment
does nothing more than reflect and denounce the harshness and indigent
condition of our minds and souls. To change all this will require greater
things than wealth and determination. It will require a definite moving
away from materialism, determinism and arrogance. It will require a truly
reverent attitude toward the sacrum mentality of all things. Last week I
talked to paolo Soleri Arcosanti, his home and workshop in Paradise Valley.
I got there a little early so I spent some time just wandering around
watching people and looking at models of our colleges. I found Hilarion
one back workshop dressed light in the heat of the frame like Gandhi. It
was there that we sat and talked for a while, salary seems like a quiet
man. He calls himself withdrawn, but he's not spear with his words. He
speaks softly and distractedly as if he might be wasting his time.
Elaborating his ideas over the roar of the workshop fan and the voices of
the workers at cassandra.
Uh huh. Been reading your book the last couple of days wandering around
here in your book. You talk a lot about your little one's a new one. You
talk a lot about complexity and miniaturization being married and uh
wandering around here. I get the feeling of simplicity. Well yeah, this is
this movie. Okay.
Even looking at the designs of our quesadilla, you you have eliminated a
lot of the needs that we find in the city. That to me is simplicity. So I
must I just have misinterpreted what you meant by that.
I don't think so, complexity doesn't mean necessarily gadgets which are
very complicated complexities, mainly
her relationship with a mental Sure, you don't need necessarily a very
complicated machine. Yeah. Too complex environment. What makes for the
complex environment is uh responsible for what you need to the needs of
the life and develops the in a way the non
the non purely rational aspects. Yes. Uh
we can take two examples. So you saw the mom of uh
anyone of the destruction that we are now. So they might look simple. They
capable of uh
certainly
individuals and groups in society in many different ways. So they have uh
the ability to be very happy. Mhm. For this one needs and activities. A
lot of people today don't seem too willing to accept the the prospect of
living in urban concentrations in the future there.
They're sick of and sick from the city. Yeah we have now. Well they never
they never were able were allowed to really enjoy the city as it could be.
Especially they see virtues in other environments. Like like a small
village set that in your book you say You describe this kind of of sterile
when you're describing the farms.
They see virtues in that as far as the community and the and the
camaraderie between the people. Yeah. But it's a very elementary that's
why something doesn't fit my vision of what reality is. It's a nostalgic
moving back to something that is irretrievable. Fortunately so, because
life has to move, keep moving along, not cannot stop and then put reverse
gear, move back. You call it an elementary camaraderie. But it it seems to
me to be in some ways linked up with what you call environmental knowledge
which not knowledge stored in the mind but more more in the heart. Or
whatever The trouble is that environmental knowledge, it's a way of only
one kind which is the kind in a sense that considered the advantage of the
mind, what we call the natural economy. So that if your Children are
growing up in that kind of development to me, they are deprived of
whatever civilization for good and evil has been able to come up with for
the mind of man. So, it's a novel simplify some of our solution for a
problem. Which is tremendously complex. What specifically are they
deprived of? You mentioned are they are the pride of all the intermediary
elements that we tend to call institutions that are going for the for the
communication for mm hmm. Trust overwhelming. Which is part of
civilization. And to put names on them. You can say, let's hear her
library disc attack uh
church.
All the things that necessitate a certain critical temperature in order to
develop to have substance and be afforded. So the little village might
have a little library cannot have a substantial library. Might have a wind
instrument complex. A few people playing a guitar flute and so on. That
cannot have a what you might call a great sound resource. Um, and if you
if you look at what those institutions do, you might realize that that's
part and parcel of the nature of man. You talk about two kinds of
knowledge, environment and synthetic. Did you give me a description event
? Yeah. Listen to acknowledge that. Well, it's not even knowledge, is its
information. The information that you are you're going to transmit from
this interview is going to be on the synthetic kind, which means Yeah, bye.
Unknown voice is going to come out. We've got a number of sentences which
probably out of context very little so that this interview is going to
meddle uh, environmental knowledge. Taking the same people involved would
be for the viewer or the listener to come for instance and work here or
better there and get involved in the process of developing yeah. Things
which are only
remotely
discussed here or in your book. Would you call that, would you call the
information they're environmental or something? No, it's it's like I have
a synthetic because it goes directly from from page into the brain and it
just happened that the media is the the eye. But could be could be here is
instead of the group reading, you would listen to a record. Uh So what
whenever we have a short mhm. Circuit that goes from a data into the brain
, remote information. So all the electronic information is remote. Is it
then very useful in our lives? It's tremendously important and
tremendously dangerous because of the remoteness and because of the very
special sharpness that it might have
when it deals with a very narrow band or any aspect of life. It's
synthetic knowledge than that has led us to where we are. And it's the um
balancing of this more and more of the synthetic knowledge non balance by
environmental information. Now, the environmental information is not along
with the village for the wilderness. Environmental information is the
wilderness. The village, town city, everything happened. So you also talk
about form and function, how foreign precedes from. Uh you give an
illustration of the giraffe.
How do you get along that and learn to use it uh to survive our Cassani is
based on that and that. Uh you would build it and then then people would
would go through uh a spiritual ization as they lived in. No, that's only
part of it. I think it's in the same paper, I'm saying that the city needs
to be the place where two kinds of conditions are satisfied. one is the
satisfaction of functions which we know of in the bathroom, in the kitchen
, in the garage, a laundry place, you need a police station or whatever.
Those are known entity of the city. So the design of the city better
cater to those necessities at the same time. That's not the neck of the
giraffe which is developing uh someone sent without without apparent
meaning meaning is going to come out later on. So while you design the
city in functional terms, you have to keep very present in your mind and
the mind of the team that is going to design that there are elements which
are not clear. They're not rational. They're not logical. There are
mysterious, they are
geological magical, what are we going to call them? And those are the
elements are going to make really make or break the city. Do you expect
men to see those elements before they they pick up an idea like
understanding well in an activity that the elements of
and they're unexplainable is present. So it's not that what I do as that
character has. But when you're dealing with a comprehensive problem like
the environment, that element has Mr and how can you get it in? It depends
on the substance of the minds that are in the back of it because you
cannot pinpointed, you cannot.
Mhm. Program it. We just have to somehow approach the problem in the city
with the frame of mind which we accept,
reverential
vetoes, the residential,
the condition that the mind has to begin. Which industries, in our present
situation, living in a city, a city like phoenix, we seem to have lost
ourselves to the point where we really don't understand our pain and the
suffering that we're going through a kind of numb to it. And so uh an idea
like Carcassonne to is we can't see it clearly, it doesn't it doesn't
bring forth what it brings forth for you for men in the city, they're so
involved, so involved in their own suffering for so long, that artist
johnny isn't what it is to you, the suffering is self inflicted and the
self inflicted by by the stubbornness of man to be practical
so little by little, we we answer to our problems or distress or yeah, see
uh yeah, frustration with what we call very practical solutions and we add
up this mountain of practical solutions which are utterly unreal,
so that the structure of phoenix is an unreal uh response, two Very real
challenges, but no one seems to be seeing they're going totally in the
wrong direction. They see well, coming up with more solutions to their
situation, the proof is in the pudding
you act like you expect man to come around more through coercion and
reverence to coercion of reality. There's no way about not two ways about
it? Reality. It's a very uh stern and demanding.
Yeah. Reality. Do you think that eventually will come to to the solution
which you've reached? You outline a few alternatives. We have robot like
lives? Well, that's that's to be seen as Yeah. If I had a solution, I
would say yes, men will come around yet. I don't have a solution. I have a
methodology. The methodology has to be implemented which means between
between the methodology which is some kind of a guideline and the
application of it. There is quite a bit of a struggle since function. It
comes after form. You can't be sure. Only only as I was saying uh the part
or whatever the problem is, which is transcendental, which means it
doesn't have the answer into the causes because it's something the effect
transit ended because okay, I might not be understanding your answer, but
I'll say what I was going to say. If function does come and perform in the
case that you say, then you can be sure that man will become a more
spiritual creature, more in tuned to the universe after he moves into on
the second. That's right. Just because it's there are no real guidelines
or rationalization about this. Uh
You I would say this mystery, We don't know if we are succeeding or not.
So most of the time we do not succeed, but that's that's part of the
toughness of life. Is there any way you can you can make more certain
things will succeed? Yeah, you can make a more servants certain by trying
to be true to what you feel the important things are and
try to preach a little bit also to live a
we go through a lot of loneliness in the city. The city seems to at least
in my case, it seems to numbing to individual people. So many pastors in
my life in one single day and so many seem to want something of me and I
do the same, I want something of them that I've become very numb and
distance to them and that contributes to myself image of myself, which
also contributes to my loneliness and everything I always looked on. That
is, it's the product of being in any place where there was a large number
of people and I still anarchists are, they will be a place where there are
a large number of people in a miniaturization, more concentrated than they
are now in phoenix and I, and that leads me to apartment. I think it might
help you into this camp laundry if you try to understand what life seems
to be about and you see immediate one thing you see immediately here, the
life is cooperation
getting together, um, interaction working out a problem that seemed to be
insurmountable and so on. And this is not, this is not something that has
been going on only in the last few generations has been going on for about
3000 millions of years. So it's a substantial teaching that we have. If
you if you take away this aspect which is a corporation interaction, you
destroy life, it's it's automatic. So if there is something which is very
clear is the matter in order to be sensitized to become sir matter or
spirit or mental stuff or conscience or compassion, anything like that has
to follow that path. Mhm. Have you intellectualized how a change will come
about in our Cassani or is that again part of the transcendental area that
can be verbalized how well you can see immediately the functional aspects
, you can see that for the same size of population for the same thing that
this population can do and has available Arcosanti is going to be a far
smaller bureaucratic machine, far smaller garbage collection machine, a
far smaller postal delivery machine, a far smaller uh huh market place
machine and so on. So that means that is going to be able to do much more
with much less
what in the area of environmental knowledge or information as well as what
you described as accumulated to things that we've come up with a history
of man, things like books and our and other things also included is the
rest of the universe correct nature will we have, how will we have better
in tune with that part. Environmental information. Once in orchestra by
being true to the trust of life which is to become more knowledgeable,
understand
and hopefully wise to eat so that we can work with it. It will be more
than more of a state of mind than a no, no, no, no. It deals very much
with the physical aspects of the whole system because we are not by far we
are not pure spirits. So our spirit is conditioned to all our physical
being. So the psychosomatic man has to be totally considered
And uh but to be true to nature as we call it is to be true to something
which usually we don't we don't really mean when we say nature when
speaking of Pakistan and that transcendental changes the spiritual ization.
We will go hopefully you know yet always keep that in mind. That's right.
You talk about pain and loneliness and the loss of it down to what you
describe as residual suffering which you say is compassion is born of that
as well as as joy.
I would I would say that
the most important resultant is creation which I call in the state of
genesis. Yeah. Then you'll have to define creation as differentiated from
compassionate joy. Mm hmm. Um
compassion comes comes somehow from the from the perception. Mhm That
oh what do we call life for reality is something as I was saying before.
Very demanding and in this demanding process. Lots of suffering is
involved. Joy might be called. Somehow the other facet though, life is a
very demanding thing just because it is so demanding is able to exhilarate
mhm. People or beings in some instances and those those are very often
most of the time a very short instances. So joy, it's a burst of
liveliness and go back to something give nous of feeling and conception uh
hysteric process is somehow the making use of those elements to create
something. So the passion enjoy. Yeah. Which are part of the anguish as
far as a valid aesthetic process. The only valid one could be Is the one
born of compassion. Yeah. The difference I think between the beauty that
we call the natural beauty and the beauty that man is able to create now
and then is that this second one is a compassionate beauty is the
equivalent in human terms of the beauty of nature coming before Amanda.
Yeah. As it stands now in our situation in the city, what do you see art
as born of compassion? No, it's just an extravagant or maybe a result of
fear or frustration or uh and we go to college boredom. So there's very
little I think or what I call aesthetic happening again in this age. This
time of ours. We are very much inclined even when we think we do, we work
around aesthetics inclining, producing tools for something that we don't
know what's going to be at. So we are really they're the Instrumental
ization at this point of the next step. Unfortunately we we don't know
what the next step is. We don't even care about it. So in that sense we
become instruments ourselves because we we lack the impetus or the trust
of the belief. I hope that something better can come along. R casada is
your creation. Is the framework ever since. From what I understand, it's a
combination of spontaneity and planning. The framework is planning in your
creation. I make a distinction that I would call it an invention.
Hopefully it will be something more than that. But that's that's again
it's the long neck. The risk is not granted. Can we say that that
invention is the product of compassion?
Hopefully. Yeah. Right. But I make a distinction between compassionate
pity or
poisonous.
Mhm. Compassion is not necessarily the act of the pious person might be
something quite different
in a way it's on a skill
which hopefully tries to encompass more elements than what the act of pity
of pious nous. My intel mm hmm. Your life? The function come after the
form. Did you? In a Mhm. In many instances, yes. How did you conceive?
Well, even in santa, you had some certain
directions which were given to me by the methodology was safe. Good said
his quality at the same time by nature because of my nature. I don't know
what he
I came up with my cold forms, which are not totally and absolutely
justifiable by that methodology.
So, I might come out with something very extravagant. If I feel I might
come up with something pretty good. If I don't feel you talk about the
last period since the Industrial Revolution, up to this time being, period
of preparation for what is to come,
then you also say that that mhm. This vision of our casada and this vision
of man without sadness and only with the residual suffering is something
that will come after generations.
I'm not sure I got Okay, I'm just trying to say that vision of man as a as
a joyful, compassionate deal with everything, losing all this suffering,
but that residual suffering will come after generation. Yeah, there are
there are kinds of sufferings that are not, in a way are superfluous. We
torment ourselves. Yeah. Two to a length which is not necessary at the
same time. One of the one of the drawbacks of this civilization is the
pursuit of happiness. Okay, if we pursue pursue happiness, definitely know
you're never going to get anywhere. We are not going to be joyful because
the pursuit of happiness is like a grain
effort, I'm going to be happy, I'm going to be happy. Well, that doesn't
make sense. You have to try to be worthy and if you're worthy, you'll get
some moment of joy. They're going to be drowned almost in order what I
might call the anguish, which is you cannot get rid of because it's part
of the the nature of life. Life is a very fragile, very isolated, very
tenuous phenomenon at this point, it's somehow comforting to know, I guess
it rises out of any compassion. I feel that someday the human race will be
free of all the things that seems to put itself through now. But but in my
lifetime it's not going to be, I feel that I need to be, but I'm still
surrounded like by ideas that built cities like phoenix, by automobiles,
by by crummy food, by ownership, by all those ideas as well.
I could say I got news for you, but I don't know, I don't want to mean
that I know better, but it's not your generation are going together, we're
not going to get it for possibly thousands of millions of generations have
, we must put ourselves in the perspective of Augusta. I just have to
believe that I can do it in my own lifetime. And any man, you know, I
think you have to believe that what your behavior and what you're going to
do all of your life is going to be a little speck, a little break building
this creature which I call the image of God. So if you don't, if you
cannot believe that, and if you cannot take your anguish, try to make use
in those terms, then you're going to be frustrated no matter what's going
to happen, you're going to feel that you're wasting wasting your life, but
you're not wasting your life your life. You can your life is an infinite
national parcel of something much bigger, much greater than and much more
powerful. But this thing is in the making, it's not there for the taking
has not been given to us in the past doesn't exist that outside of
ourselves. It's us making us from the virus up to
come on smack. So I
I admitted to being confused. But
when you talk about the transition from mattered to spirit, it's an idea
that I've heard so much about lately are in the past few years, you know,
just because I've directed myself in that area that that I'm familiar with
it, but not really a new comprehension of
maybe maybe you should try to to see spirit not as a you know, as a
perfect, the utterly beautiful, utterly everything. But consider the
origin of the spirit what spirit might have been at the beginning?
Tennessee at the beginning, Spirit was they a kind of very vague and very
dumb and dull perception what things were around around you. And I mean by
this not you were conceived so the conception of life itself at the
beginning of life as soon as matter or mass energy, for some reason,
promote away from the deterministic or the reduction mystic, the structure
of the universe. Spirit was born. So if you can conceive that it is very
dim consciousness. The first manifestation of spirit then maybe. And then
you try to follow it almost cinematically to the evolution of life. Then
the fact that now spirit is still are very in a sense, very limited and
dull and unwise
and
yeah,
full of holes and unexplainable thing. I think you can accept possibly
your condition and the condition of
any other person. A mission of any animal condition of any plant. And so
but if we say spirit is everything and has always been there and now and
we are just trying to go back to that perfection. Then I think we are in
for
for total distributions for
for a breakdown all rooms. Yeah. I'd like to talk about our history on a
practical basis. Just for a little while you talk about uh the idea of
Arcosanti bringing about a an entire political and economic change. How
can one Stark Asana is completed and and functioning? How can it exist in
a in a nation where we're still adhering to the old ideas of the hope is
not that would exist in a steady state environment. The hope is that it
would be a trigger or the match that lies with a fire. Mm hmm. It doesn't
do that. It might be just turning claim of heritage. Mm hmm. People are
privileged. People are lost. People that are trying to survive and make it
until they have to die
once people. So I see it as a dynamic
point. Which might help to change. Not just
the rise in that point with the life. Oh, labor circles, once people are
in are cast on a the setup as far as labor goals will be different from
what we find it now. Is it morning? Well, that would be very much in the
hands of the people. I'm not, I don't legislate their job trying to the
final environment. Their jobs are described in the book. It's not so nice
job. I think you put it. Oh well, yeah, but I think that I was trying to
suggest very strongly that we should not leave an illusion that we are
going to get rid of old oils and all sorts of routines and so on. In fact
, I said that routine years can be made, made it to grace so that uh we
can enjoy even the humblest kind of activities that were engaged in. One
of the not so nice jobs you mentioned was police work. And that implies
more than oil and routine. A policeman has to have something. There's
another person involved in that job criminal or something. Yeah. Well
there is, I think there are aspects of police work which are not enjoyable
when you have to resort to violence. For instance. I don't think that's
enjoyable.
So if you can have a society that might do with less violence and
including mental violence, then the police work might be transformed into
Mhm. Into a doctor who knows what no single knows what politically, how
will things be administered in Arkansas. There again, uh you have to ask
the people are going to be there. We are beginning now to have those
things coming up. It's something you don't want to share your thoughts.
You must have had some thoughts. Well, it's first of all, I'm not I'm not
that knowledgeable about politics, but politics is an instrument. So, if
we establish Mhm. Uh those things are priority, then evidently we think
that that man has to be fundamentally a political animal or fundamentally
an economic animal. That's not true. Man is fundamentally a religious or
creative animal. By saying, you're not knowledgeable in politics. You're
implying that people who know about politics will then decide what goes on
in our Cassani and people who know about politics out here and don't know
about. Well, it's about that's part that's part of being able to integrate
the remote information with the environmental information. And if you can
define an environment which is strong enough to really engage people in
that kind of information, understanding than possibly the political mind.
My gear itself to a larger chunk of reality, which is what it was not
what's happening now. The political animal is a very abstract the best
example is what we did with Vietnam. If there is a clear cut indication of
what the synthetic mind very bright mind can come up as far as distortion
of reality is to see what McNamara Yeah. Rostov and the Bundys were able
to call a cop in asia fantastic
twist
in every day. They should have, they should have being asked to do some
physical work. But like the chinese do every six months or so I'm involved
with people that do that kind of work for their life, then maybe they
would begin to understand what yet this person is. Is there anything going
on in the world now that you would see is something that can be
incorporated or presenting on that basis? Political or economic? Well, I
wish I knew more about china know so little what's happening there. I wish
I knew more about Israel, that's something good and what happens in this
country in many communities. So I'm not, I would never dream of saying
that everything that is around now, he's bad or irrelevant. Yeah, I would
say that what we have is very precious. We just have to try to be more
discriminative. So I'm not for destroying or or for for a sterile created
. I think I have some right to criticize because I think I can often
alternatives. Is there any historical precedents for for something like
Carcassonne and and more than that is in looking back over the path, man
is taken, you know, in recorded history. Do you see that he's gone the
wrong way completely. And that's what's led him to think when the
technological thing exploded because of the ability we had to latch on of
energy and introduce instruments. Could use energy by the by the boat we
went a while. Yes, that was a dangerous synthetic knowledge. That's right.
And the exhilaration of power that comes from having power available. So
the intelligence of man works for for the spirit and works also against
the spirit. That's why we have to be very careful when we get into using
technology.
Mhm.
Yeah. Mhm.
No,
mm.
When the trolley is clean reach, a
feeling of I was some crazy guy in the desert digging holes. Now I'm a
crazy guy with some crazy theories but it was becoming accepted so that
people start to read about recent. Once we get something going on in in
terms of bricks or mortar or concrete that will come and look and then at
that point someone might decide that there's something very positive there.
We are finding out that affluence. He's not such a blessing and we're
finding out that it's not such a blessing because afghans tends to to
desensitize more than what we were expecting. So instead of making people
more sensitive to environment, to other people, to the institutions that
we have invented, we see that people tends to be to withdraw or just to
enjoy what we call the comfort of a certain environment and ignore things
which are for a very, very important, such as such as the ability to to
seek new things to not be satisfied, or what there is the ability to enjoy
things of a more subtle quality, which means in general that we tend to
because to start or to reverse the process of life which is going from
matter into spirit.
Yeah.