goodness

Writing isn’t a conveyor belt bearing the reader to “the point” at the end of the piece, where the meaning will be revealed.
Good writing is significant everywhere,
Delightful everywhere.

Back before COVID-19 hit the global scene, I thought it would be pleasant to have a list of the good things in life. This list wouldn’t be an exhaustive account of all the checked boxes on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, but rather would document small pleasures which evoke some kind of clear and specific emotional response. If I had The Sads, I could pull up this list and sink down into the sensory details of, say, that strong hit of pine scent you randomly get on a hiking trail.

Now that we’re all in the thick of this pandemic, this new tiny side project—Good Things—has offered me a peaceful little portal to things I miss. Your mileage may vary, but I’ve found that reading my personal list of good things can be comforting as I help protect my community by sheltering in place.

In both early Christianity and Islam, theologians made a claim about architecture likely to sound so peculiar to modern ears as to be worth of sustained examination: they proposed that beautiful buildings had the power to improve us morally and spiritually. They believed that, rather than corrupting us, rather than being an idle indulgence for the decadent, exquisite surroundings could edge us towards perfection. A beautiful building could reinforce our resolve to be good.

Behind this distinctive claim lay another astonishing belief: that of an equivalence between the visual and ethical realms.

If you look for the light,
you can often find it.
But if you look for the dark,
that is all you will ever see.

— Uncle Iroh

I have not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed
To its idolatries a patient knee,—
Nor coined my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo; in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such; I stood
Among them, but not of them; in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.

I have not loved the world, nor the world me,—
But let us part fair foes; I do believe,
Though I have found them not, that there may be
Words which are things,—hopes which will not deceive,
And virtues which are merciful, nor weave
Snares for the falling: I would also deem
O’er others’ griefs that some sincerely grieve;
That two, or one, are almost what they seem,—
That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream.

All of the moves that we make in space will tend toward being in accord with this phenomenon of wholeness / beauty / life if we’re willing to bring the requisite level of care to the doing of our work.

Alexander says that each of us possess the means for accessing this order within ourselves and — here’s where he loses most other architects and many in the so-called sciences in academia — he contends that what we’re connecting with inside of ourselves is an objective criterion for what good means.

Applying the criterion is easy: you ask yourself some questions:

With any action you might take with regard to placement, and with regard to the situatedness of things in space you ask yourself: does this move increase wholeness / beauty / life?

Does the intervention you’re taking intensify the feelings of wholeness in you as the maker when you are performing the work?

How does your work on this one part enhance what’s going on among wholes at the system level?