Living in a material world
“The true reality of an object lies only in a part of it; the rest is the heavy tribute it pays to the material world in exchange for its existence in space.” — Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, New Directions, 2017, p. 76.
Architecture exemplifies this observation. Buildings fall into two broad categories — those that aim for this pared-down essence and those that make a display of the tribute paid. Bucky Fuller idealized the former, seeking lightness in the manner of Zeno’s paradox. His self-proclaimed disciple Norman Foster makes a fetish of the tribute, structure rendered as ornament.
So-called minimalism, if mired in materiality, uses endurance as its building blocks or shrinks things — tiny houses, guestroom capsules, sleeping pods — in hopes we won’t notice their solidity. Traditional Japanese houses, with demountable wooden frames, and tatami mats and shoji screens that are ephemeral by design, are the exception.
At a certain point, Fuller introduced time into his concept of lightness. Four-dimensional houses were as physically light as he could make them, but they were also intended to be lived in as needed. If this idea is played out, everything might change. We can imagine a service economy in which a fresh set of clothes follows us from place to place, arriving in the night. For ultimate portability, even our shoes might change — espadrilles, sandals, clogs, or boots instead of shoes designed more exactly for our feet. We may retain one seasonal outdoor pair, shed each quarter.
To extend Pessoa’s observation, this lightness also involves a sleight of hand, an apparatus no less weighty for being external to the houses it serves. The burden of it is carried by others. As we dispose of retail, the goods we still purchase come from warehouses in delivery trucks. Despite the threat of automation, workers still handle this. Artisanal workshops and the specialty markets, breweries, and restaurants and cafés associated with different locales are the walkable counterpart. How the great “houses” of art, design, and fashion find a place is not yet clear to me. Perhaps they form networks of affiliates that both produce bespoke goods and import them for their high-end clientele? If life is local and segmented, retail rents will fall back to earth. The food and beverage business will split between the commodities and imports obtainable in bulk and what a region’s farms and vineyards raise to sell seasonally to local buyers through local shops.
The warehouse trade may shift to reflect the way politics is affecting trade. The urge to decouple, for example, reflects a clearer sense of the weight of the tribute. And, of course, this can be extended to much else — intellectual property, for example, which we’ve more or less handed over to gain access to a market we saw as vast and growing wealthier. True, but a market innately given to import substitution. Ironically, architecture was a leading indicator — the high-grade steel and tailored façades imported from Korea were supplanted by Chinese models five years later — reinforced by a mercantile economy. China needs somewhere to which to export its factories. Southeast Asia has priced itself out, so Africa is the logical choice — resource- and labor-rich. China will revive its countryside, recreating a docile, agrarian village cohort and tone down its restless cities. Only the bought-off, upwardly mobile middle classes will thrive in cities, served by an underclass of ambitious migrants. Industry will be tamed and pollution will be reduced. All that will move to Africa, which will grow fetid catering to this new colonial power.
The big democracies — Brazil, the USA, and India — resemble each other in their contradictions. Parts of them aspire to rise to a higher standard; other parts are mired in corruption and ignorance. But they can no longer hide their problems. They will either reform together or experience greater fragmentation. Regions, to the extent they control their own fates, will see smaller versions of the same divisions.
A kind of soft oligarchy is already in view, making concessions to the underclass at the expense of the professional middle class to remain in power. Progressive politicians negotiate this process. They extract concessions and buy the support of blocks of voters who feel shut out and blame the professional middle class for this. New national policies to tax the sources of oligarchic wealth may undo this regional condition, forcing corporations to pay the real cost of their regional impact, another sleight of hand.
“Object” as Pessoa saw it should be widely applied — not just buildings or blood diamonds, but everything that trades on its essence and keeps the apparatus hidden or unmentioned, whether it takes the form of sweatshops, exploited labor, pollution, or profits that in a societal sense are unearned, even grotesque. The rest is too large, too out of scale with everything around it, to be ignored. We have to reckon with its true reality: the size of the tribute.
