We infantilize ourselves Here in the US, we expect government and law to be our conscience. Our superego, you could say. It has something to do with liberal individualism, and something to do with capitalism, but I don't understand much of the theoretical aspect—what I see is what I live in. Americans are in a way crazy. We infantilize ourselves. We don't think of ourselves as citizens—parts of something larger to which we have profound responsibilities. We think of ourselves as citizens when it comes to our rights and privileges, but not our responsibilities. We abdicate our civic responsibilities to the government and expect the government, in effect, to legislate morality. David Foster Wallace, The Pale King societygovernmentpoliticsmoralitycivics
168. Connection to the Earth Problem A house feels isolated from the nature around it, unless its floors are interleaved directly with the earth that is around the house. Solution Connect the building to the earth around it by building a series of paths and terraces and steps around the edge. Place them deliberately to make the boundary ambiguous—so that it is impossible to say exactly where the building stops and earth begins. Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein & Sara Ishikawa, A Pattern Language Deep Interlock