by hand

A NOTE ON PALLIATIVE MEASURES
“And every time slaves try to make their slavery more bearable they are striking a blow for their masters.” (Vaneigem, 1967:Chpt12) [1]

There may or may not be a place for politics, power, planning and architecture but at very best consumer protection, ‘better spaces’ and planning are insufficient (Bookchin, 1974:viii). “Vote, recycle and shut-up” is not enough (Zerzan, 1995). The roots of the crisis lie not merely in poor design, bad logistics, neglected neighborhoods, and inadequate material support (Bookchin, 1974:viii). Even the interventions of new types of domestic architecture (Tsukamoto’s 4^th Generation House, for example) and esthetically tender concessions that even radical urbanists may offer cannot substitute for meaningful social relations – really, will “green spaces,” “pleasant residential districts,” “equally pleasant factory and working areas” – not to mention “carefully placed skyscrapers [2]”, “aromatic aromas” and “edenic glades” – in themselves produce human(e), or even viable cities?  (Bookchin, 1974:vii, 95[3]; C.G., 2000; Zerzan, 2008a); Do even well-planned, easy to keep, attractively cheap, open to air, light, and sun residences hold any guarantee that dwelling will occur in them?[4] These ‘alternatives’ to destructive lifestyles are easily ‘recuperated’ back into the Spectacle,[5] and are offered up for consumption in the marketplace. (Greenbrier, 2006:200). We must encourage skepticism towards those brightly colored kindergartens (Vaneigem and Kotányi, 1961) because our lauded ‘heroes’ of design should actually be regarded a symptom of social malfunction, not anywhere near its cure! Their language is as logically unfounded as it is blind (Cacciari, 1980:6), and they indicate a pervasive sense of need for extraordinary power to perform for us services that are otherwise impossible but nonetheless deemed necessary for social life (Bamyeh, 2009:30). Now, when consumers gain more confidence in a ‘product’ (even and especially those lovely, safe, green[6] and articulate) the victory only increases society’s dependence at the cost and frustration of those (ever increasing in number) who cannot or would prefer not to partake.

“I almost laugh when I hear my closest comrades talk about alternatives in terms of communes, self-managed gardens and city allotments, multifunctional squats….”
(Antonio Negri, 2009:50)

The organized self-protection of the addict-consumer immediately and ultimately raises the quality of the dope and the power of the peddler (photographic and text examples – juxtapose pr photos with developer portraits) (Illich, 1973:37; 1978). We have participated unknowingly in the creation of a spurious reality, and then we have obligingly fed it to ourselves. We have colluded in our own doom (Dick, 1978)  – addiction to commodified goods and services >> intensive and extensive labor >> dullness, alienation, disempowerment >> depression, mental illness, suicide, drug addiction, dysfunctional and abusive relationships >> vicarious modes of existence (television, movies, pornography, video games etc) (Wilson, 2001).

Remember: “Urbanism doesn’t exist; it is only an “ideology” in Marx’s sense of the word. Architecture does really exist, like Coca-Cola: though coated with ideology, it is a real production, falsely satisfying a falsified need. Urbanism is comparable to the advertising about Coca-Cola — pure spectacular ideology. Modern capitalism, which organizes the reduction of all social life to a spectacle, is incapable of presenting any spectacle other than that of our own alienation.”
(Vaneigem and Kotányi, 1961)

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[1] “..the profit-sharing concept is interesting because it is the most logical aim for a super-Capitalism in which the dissatisfaction of the worker is overcome by making him feel that he too is a capitalist, and an active part in the system (Fromm, 1955:216).

[2] Where people jump from the 147^th floor to plunge to their death on the 108^th (BBC, 2011).

[3] Discussing abstract design, abstract “we” and sophisticated know-how.

[4] Heidegger (1971)

[5] Debord

[6] “Our little ecovillages won’t mean shit when the air, water, and soil finally become pure poison, which is what we are allowing to happen every moment we allow factories to continually churn out more goods that consumers just ‘need’” (Marshall, 2010).