Saturday, May 21, 2011

The Venus Project

These are some images from Jacque Fresco's Venus Project website. It is at www.thevenusproject.com. It is about a Jacque Fresco's plans for rebuilding society along lines developed by him. It is becoming popular among New Age and Left people, particularly in Britain.












This is based on forgetting that it has already been proposed and tried -- with disastrous results. If one looks at Le Corbusier's designs they are so initially appealing that one forgets the monumental egotism of supposing that one person, or one person and the party chairman, whether Stalin or Tito, can and should decide how everyone else should live. In this case the pathological egotism is that of Jacque Fresco rather than of Le Corbusier but the result is the same.

I remember hitch-hiking through Novy Belgrade in Yugoslavia in 1978 when Tito was in power there. It was a Le Corbusier worker's paradise development of huge apartment blocks and looked-great-in-the-model landscaping. It was also a vast horrible dehumanizing slum which no one wanted to live in if they could help it. Soviet postwar architecture was largely based on Le Corbusier's imagery of vast futuristic buildings. Soviet architecture is the very byword of horrible oppressive inhuman concrete monumentalism. The architecture itself was a significant part of what the peoples who lived under those regimes rejected about Communism, as much as the corrupt party regimes. I guarantee you Jacque Fresco is the same cocksure egotistic asshole who knows what's good for everyone else as Le Corbusier was.

I will re-phrase the question about whether we are brave enough to rebuild our societies around Jacque Fresco's images and principles. Let us ask instead if we are brave enough to let go of our egocentric controllingness enough to let other people decide for themselves how they should live? Are we brave enough to risk that it will still work out all right in the end even without us and those who believe what we believe being in charge? Can we trust other people to decide things for themselves, even life and death important things, and, after taking a deep breath, give up control? Just let the chips fall where they may? Just step out in faith and hope that things will be okay even without our making sure they are not going awry, that order will, I say will, will emerge from uncontrol, from chaos?

Never mind Dylan's Chimes of Freedom Flashing. Have we got the Brass Balls of Freedom on us?

The capitalists are as much guilty of dehumanizing architecture and design as Le Corbusier-ist communists. One has only to drive through the taupe sameness of a vast California condominium development or housing tract to want to scream and run away. Whether the motive is ideology and party control or corporate profit, the result is the same. The capitalists have the slight advantage of having to answer to a market, albeit a market they can readily manipulate. The Communists answered to no one. To whom does the Venus Project answer?


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4 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:17 PM

    lol, looks like a jewish conspiracy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous8:06 AM

    "I guarantee you Jacque Fresco is the same cocksure egotistic asshole who knows what's good for everyone else as Le Corbusier was". I'm currently stringing this out into an 8'000 word essay!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Anonymous,
      Please post a link here when your essay is complete.

      Delete