>From: Derek Thornton <lists@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>It is well ventilated and well drained and there is adequate
>provision for daylight to enter. Easily cleanable toilet
>facilities have been provided, including one redundant
>bucket, plus a fresh change of clothing.
A perfect example of instrumental reason. And profoundly irrational in its
devotion to a mechanistic solution conceived in limited time and space, as
if the matter at hand were free-standing. Common sense and ethics have
been marginalized. Any outrage exhibited at the use of these structures
rages against the contrast between the complexity of reality and the naive,
childlike self-confidence of the false rationality causing them to be built
and used.
The argument causing them to be built is the always deceptively convincing
one of utility, need, and fairness. It always proceeds from a short-term
close-up position and is justified as being rational. The claim of
rationality keeps us focused in close-up onto symptoms and distanced far
away from causes. In meeting this goal the designer and his/her masters
have exhibited genius (but only in the target market for their ideas). That
the short-term, logical, linear, instrumental nature of this solution, and
the
context in which it is embedded, is the root of the problem may never be
dealt with by our civilization.
//Van
>It is well ventilated and well drained and there is adequate
>provision for daylight to enter. Easily cleanable toilet
>facilities have been provided, including one redundant
>bucket, plus a fresh change of clothing.
A perfect example of instrumental reason. And profoundly irrational in its
devotion to a mechanistic solution conceived in limited time and space, as
if the matter at hand were free-standing. Common sense and ethics have
been marginalized. Any outrage exhibited at the use of these structures
rages against the contrast between the complexity of reality and the naive,
childlike self-confidence of the false rationality causing them to be built
and used.
The argument causing them to be built is the always deceptively convincing
one of utility, need, and fairness. It always proceeds from a short-term
close-up position and is justified as being rational. The claim of
rationality keeps us focused in close-up onto symptoms and distanced far
away from causes. In meeting this goal the designer and his/her masters
have exhibited genius (but only in the target market for their ideas). That
the short-term, logical, linear, instrumental nature of this solution, and
the
context in which it is embedded, is the root of the problem may never be
dealt with by our civilization.
//Van