Statement 76

The place to begin – as an architectural theorist – is with an anti-teleological position. But to find that position is not a one time operation. Teleologies exist at multiple scales and operations, and in multiples places and contexts, some very obvious, some very hidden. But if we, for example, assume that there is no set place or time of a beginning (apart from the Big Bang) and no set place or time of an ending (except from the collapse of the universe) then the Human (along with everything else) is just a construct somewhere in between, with set markers having to do with its biological, historical and theoretical presence. Biologically, perhaps 2.8 million years ago; historically, some 1.5 million years ago, and theoretically, - well that is a bit more complicated and brings us into the center of the problem. Was it at the moment we ‘lived’ with our ancestors? Was it when we demoted the ancestors in favor of deities? Was it when we demoted the deities in favor of Reason? Was when we demoted Reason into the capitalist world of data mining? Will it be when we demote capitalism in favor of AI? It does not really matter. We have ‘arrived’ at a moment where the human is indeed a theoretical (quais-theoretical/pseudo-theoretical/theoretically theoretical) proposition operated upon by nations, corporations and data collectors and the like, even though it now seems to escape any mentally-describable determinacy whatsoever. Disciplines like Anthropology and Sociology sound like they belong to the Middle Ages, so inadequate are they to the task. So too the discipline of Architecture that generally reduces the bandwidth of reality down to something like .001 of the spectrum, purifying teleology into aesthetic clarity. There is an obvious narcissistic relationship between reducing the input and solving the problem. We should radically increase the input level and confound the problem.