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by Zigurd 17d ago

[flagged]

vintagedave 17d ago
Something fascinating that you may not know: traditional architecture is one of those things that is simultaneously: a) Genuinely widely preferred, with many articles on this, ranging from aesthetic preferences through to scientific studies of how eyes move and what causes fatigue. There is genuine value to architecture before modern architecture -- and... b) A stalking horse for right-wing thinking. It's really interesting how this happens and it mirrors other right-wing techniques. A common way to get people into right-wing thinking is to find something that is genuinely unpopular or that people have concerns about, yet which has constrained discourse. Examples: lower incomes. You then talk about the good old days, and reframe it: lower incomes becomes, 'people taking your income, agh those immigrants'. Architecture becomes, '1940 and before were better, oh and everyone was white then'. You get the idea. Another popular one on social media is the Greek and classical world, especially its comparative lack in modern education compared to, say, 1900. That's an easy intro to colonialism and racism, disguised in the neutral or even interesting format of ancient history. Once you recognise this, you see it everywhere. But don't let this fool you re older architecture having genuine value. We just have to avoid saying people have no taste, or referring to their preferences as 'pabulum'. That is condescending, makes normal people feel unheard, and then when someone does hear them on the innocuous subject of architecture, they pay attention to what else that person says.
- Zigurd 17d ago
  I'm kind of counting on normal being in the minority here.
  - rbanffy 17d ago
    Abnormal isn't distributed along a single axis.
- 0xWTF 17d ago
  > That is condescending, makes normal people feel unheard, and then when someone does hear them on the innocuous subject And that is why all the pollsters were caught flat-footed by Trump in 2016. The people who did feel unheard learned to not respond.
  - rbanffy 17d ago
    > The people who did feel unheard learned to not respond When politics exclude a group, or a group feels excluded, it's easy to lure the group into supporting anti-politics, which is a nice way to say "fascism". This is kind of where we are now, with the far-right preying on the most vulnerable people that feel ignored by politicians.
- asimpletune 17d ago
  Very well put. I've also heard it said like this, "abusing the truth is the easiest way to lie". The pattern is 1. take something that's true then 2. use it to imply the Truth. Step 3. is if anyone doubts 2, challenge them to disprove 1. Even if you don't deny that 1 is true and just challenging that 2 doesn't follow from 1, the waters have already been muddied in the eyes of many onlookers. It's silly that this works but there's so much over-communication now that simplicity is very effective. People often repeat the fallacies verbatim too.
- card_zero 17d ago
  I might object that being right-wing, or having fear of the effects of immigrants even, does not necessarily entail racism. But it would be more interesting to say that they are related, and that valuable ideas about nice traditional architecture and nostalgia for the good old days are also genuinely related to racism and colonialism and fascism, which means that there's something of value to extract from all that garbage before you can do a clean separation of the ideas. Mercifully I don't have time to write this comment right now, but it was probably going to include the word "culture" in several places.
- analog31 17d ago
  This is the "two truths and a lie" methodology.
- aboardRat4 17d ago
  >stalking horse for right-wing thinking. So? Many people (not all) are right-wing because they want to preserve beauty. Being a right-wing is not a rare thing, it's the second most popular belief system in the West. >Another popular one on social media is the Greek and classical world, especially its comparative lack in modern education compared to, say, 1900. That's an easy intro to colonialism and racism Racism is much less of a thing in Europe, compared to the USA, yet fascination with Antiquity is just the same or even higher.
matchbok3 17d ago
[flagged]
- Zigurd 17d ago
  [flagged]
  - matchbok3 17d ago
    You seem to be making up arguments against some caricature that you have built in your mind in order to satisfy some form of virtue signaling or sanctimonious belief. Whatever it is, it makes no sense and I feel dumber for having read it. Go touch grass, it's healthy. (And get off bluesky)
    - solid_fuel 17d ago
      > You seem to be making up arguments against some caricature that you have built in your mind in order to satisfy some form of virtue signaling or sanctimonious belief. Whatever it is, it makes no sense and I feel dumber for having read it. > Go touch grass, it's healthy. (And get off bluesky) You seem to have been triggered by the OP pointing out that a lot of this traditionalist architecture movement is - yes - racist old white dudes who want everything to be like it was when they were kids. Nostalgia is a powerful force, but it's worth remembering that the times filled with traditionalist architecture also had entire lower classes that slept in Flop Houses [0] and Shantytowns [1]. Ultimately traditionalist architecture may look nicer, but it's not surprising that buildings which cost more to build also look nicer. If someone simply pointing the driving force behind this upsets you so much that you start posting replies like this, I would advise spending less time on X. Go outside, take a break from your "culture war". It's healthy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flophouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flophouse [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanty_town https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanty_town
      - matchbok3 17d ago
        Overcomplicating things and referencing vague connections does not make an argument inherently better. Just longer. No, it's not racist, no matter how much you try to make it so. It's exhausting and tired and makes people like Trump win. Racism is bad, good looking buildings are ... good. Absolutely ridiculous, please listen to yourselves and please, please, think long and hard about how median American's would respond to this nonsense. (If you know any)
rbanffy 17d ago
> This whole newsletter is a white guy advocating for a 1950s world. But with flock cameras. It reads uncomfortably close to an anti-intellectual discourse so popular in the far-right.
- vixen99 17d ago
  If think you have a substantive point to make why not spell it out rather than indulging in empty rhetorical flourish. Who's the anti-intellectual?
  - rbanffy 17d ago
    The article feels like it was written by someone with conservative views, someone who resents change, and believes in a nostalgic view of the past. It becomes anti-intellectual when it points out the divergence between the opinion of experts and the laypeople on what constitutes a building fit for purpose, and takes those two opinions as equivalent. It's kind of similar to the general "two-sides" thing where, if you talk to, say, a climatologist who talks about a community consensus on global warming, there will be someone who has never studied the climate, exposes a completely different opinion, sometimes in opposition to observed facts. In this case, in architecture, the thing to measure is not the opinion of people, but how they use the architectural object - how their relationship with the environment changes in that space and why. I brought to this discussion three examples of architectural landmarks that turned a somewhat degraded space into vibrant community spaces. Architects don't design buildings - they design the interaction of the building users with their environment.
tomhow 17d ago
Please observe the guidelines if you want to keep participating here, particularly these ones: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[flagged]

by Zigurd 17d ago

[flagged]

Something fascinating that you may not know: traditional architecture is one of those things that is simultaneously: a) Genuinely widely preferred, with many articles on this, ranging from aesthetic preferences through to scientific studies of how eyes move and what causes fatigue. There is genuine value to architecture before modern architecture -- and... b) A stalking horse for right-wing thinking. It's really interesting how this happens and it mirrors other right-wing techniques. A common way to get people into right-wing thinking is to find something that is genuinely unpopular or that people have concerns about, yet which has constrained discourse. Examples: lower incomes. You then talk about the good old days, and reframe it: lower incomes becomes, 'people taking your income, agh those immigrants'. Architecture becomes, '1940 and before were better, oh and everyone was white then'. You get the idea. Another popular one on social media is the Greek and classical world, especially its comparative lack in modern education compared to, say, 1900. That's an easy intro to colonialism and racism, disguised in the neutral or even interesting format of ancient history. Once you recognise this, you see it everywhere. But don't let this fool you re older architecture having genuine value. We just have to avoid saying people have no taste, or referring to their preferences as 'pabulum'. That is condescending, makes normal people feel unheard, and then when someone does hear them on the innocuous subject of architecture, they pay attention to what else that person says.

Zigurd 17d ago
I'm kind of counting on normal being in the minority here.
- rbanffy 17d ago
  Abnormal isn't distributed along a single axis.
0xWTF 17d ago
> That is condescending, makes normal people feel unheard, and then when someone does hear them on the innocuous subject And that is why all the pollsters were caught flat-footed by Trump in 2016. The people who did feel unheard learned to not respond.
- rbanffy 17d ago
  > The people who did feel unheard learned to not respond When politics exclude a group, or a group feels excluded, it's easy to lure the group into supporting anti-politics, which is a nice way to say "fascism". This is kind of where we are now, with the far-right preying on the most vulnerable people that feel ignored by politicians.
asimpletune 17d ago
Very well put. I've also heard it said like this, "abusing the truth is the easiest way to lie". The pattern is 1. take something that's true then 2. use it to imply the Truth. Step 3. is if anyone doubts 2, challenge them to disprove 1. Even if you don't deny that 1 is true and just challenging that 2 doesn't follow from 1, the waters have already been muddied in the eyes of many onlookers. It's silly that this works but there's so much over-communication now that simplicity is very effective. People often repeat the fallacies verbatim too.
card_zero 17d ago
I might object that being right-wing, or having fear of the effects of immigrants even, does not necessarily entail racism. But it would be more interesting to say that they are related, and that valuable ideas about nice traditional architecture and nostalgia for the good old days are also genuinely related to racism and colonialism and fascism, which means that there's something of value to extract from all that garbage before you can do a clean separation of the ideas. Mercifully I don't have time to write this comment right now, but it was probably going to include the word "culture" in several places.
analog31 17d ago
This is the "two truths and a lie" methodology.
aboardRat4 17d ago
>stalking horse for right-wing thinking. So? Many people (not all) are right-wing because they want to preserve beauty. Being a right-wing is not a rare thing, it's the second most popular belief system in the West. >Another popular one on social media is the Greek and classical world, especially its comparative lack in modern education compared to, say, 1900. That's an easy intro to colonialism and racism Racism is much less of a thing in Europe, compared to the USA, yet fascination with Antiquity is just the same or even higher.

matchbok3 17d ago

[flagged]

Zigurd 17d ago
[flagged]
- matchbok3 17d ago
  You seem to be making up arguments against some caricature that you have built in your mind in order to satisfy some form of virtue signaling or sanctimonious belief. Whatever it is, it makes no sense and I feel dumber for having read it. Go touch grass, it's healthy. (And get off bluesky)
  - solid_fuel 17d ago
    > You seem to be making up arguments against some caricature that you have built in your mind in order to satisfy some form of virtue signaling or sanctimonious belief. Whatever it is, it makes no sense and I feel dumber for having read it. > Go touch grass, it's healthy. (And get off bluesky) You seem to have been triggered by the OP pointing out that a lot of this traditionalist architecture movement is - yes - racist old white dudes who want everything to be like it was when they were kids. Nostalgia is a powerful force, but it's worth remembering that the times filled with traditionalist architecture also had entire lower classes that slept in Flop Houses [0] and Shantytowns [1]. Ultimately traditionalist architecture may look nicer, but it's not surprising that buildings which cost more to build also look nicer. If someone simply pointing the driving force behind this upsets you so much that you start posting replies like this, I would advise spending less time on X. Go outside, take a break from your "culture war". It's healthy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flophouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flophouse [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanty_town https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanty_town
    - matchbok3 17d ago
      Overcomplicating things and referencing vague connections does not make an argument inherently better. Just longer. No, it's not racist, no matter how much you try to make it so. It's exhausting and tired and makes people like Trump win. Racism is bad, good looking buildings are ... good. Absolutely ridiculous, please listen to yourselves and please, please, think long and hard about how median American's would respond to this nonsense. (If you know any)

rbanffy 17d ago

> This whole newsletter is a white guy advocating for a 1950s world. But with flock cameras. It reads uncomfortably close to an anti-intellectual discourse so popular in the far-right.

vixen99 17d ago
If think you have a substantive point to make why not spell it out rather than indulging in empty rhetorical flourish. Who's the anti-intellectual?
- rbanffy 17d ago
  The article feels like it was written by someone with conservative views, someone who resents change, and believes in a nostalgic view of the past. It becomes anti-intellectual when it points out the divergence between the opinion of experts and the laypeople on what constitutes a building fit for purpose, and takes those two opinions as equivalent. It's kind of similar to the general "two-sides" thing where, if you talk to, say, a climatologist who talks about a community consensus on global warming, there will be someone who has never studied the climate, exposes a completely different opinion, sometimes in opposition to observed facts. In this case, in architecture, the thing to measure is not the opinion of people, but how they use the architectural object - how their relationship with the environment changes in that space and why. I brought to this discussion three examples of architectural landmarks that turned a somewhat degraded space into vibrant community spaces. Architects don't design buildings - they design the interaction of the building users with their environment.

tomhow 17d ago

Please observe the guidelines if you want to keep participating here, particularly these ones: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html