detente

One of the key things that interests me about Arcosanti, including the work that is ongoing there today, is its potential to be a great player in the realm of industry. Great, to me, does mean large, and largeness's attendant connotation, powerful. These are, to my mind, at least things to think about. Great also means useful, and then, particularly in the context of Arcosanti's ethical heritage, great means insightful and carefully purposeful. Industry means, at one level, getting things done, and, at another, more prosaic level, things like factories and the production of goods, real estate, or the creation of what Paolo called habitat, also literature and events, opportunities for people to engage in thought together, at least as examples, plus, the great bugaboo, finance. These are all things that industry means, to my way of thinking.

This thing that interests me about Arcosanti is its quality of being a collective of thinkers, and actors, of being a home to them, and a forum for them. As such it seems to me Arcosanti has access to resources - human resources, as recently noted, and also the resource that Paolo's work represents, that body of ideas, manifested in art, and memory, that Arcosanti is so intimately engaged with - that, really, I would say, will be applied towards the problem of industry. This is a key reason I remain, as a kind of spectator, quite interested in Arcosanti.

These ideas are, in a sense, and I say this because I think I can claim to know the place fairly well, foreign to Arcosanti. I think they are important concepts, sources of progress in the world, essential components of human progress, important resources for human progress. Perhaps my goal is to encourage a kind of detente between Arcosanti and these aspects of human affairs. Oh my goodness, this is so patently wrong! I am not, actually, concerned with Arcosanti's goals, but with my own! Those do mirror Arcosanti's goals, to some extent, even significantly, but they are my own goals. I am on an industrial mission - also, incidentally, an urbanistic mission, but that is in fact somewhat incidental - and I am trying to figure out how to connect with resources. My longstanding bad habit has been to think about Arcosanti, when I think about that. Arcosanti is a resource, or has that quality to it, and it is a place I'm connected with - that's part of my story - but the reality is, I am not really connected to Arcosanti As A Resource. I don't deserve to be. It's not one of my so called rights. And so, I have approached Arcosanti - rather again and again - offering them a kind of deal, my ideas, in exchange for some of their resources. What a laugh. What do they want with more ideas? What am I bringing to them that is actually useful or helpful? They have let me know, sometimes with gestures, sometimes explicitly, in words, that that is how they feel. That may not be extremely smart, on their part, but it is, in a way, reasonable. They, after all, have their own missions (Arcosanti is a group of people), their own mission, and I am probably only interfering. And my approach is, has been, in fact, in a real way, not reasonable. It's an immature approach. I am going to pursue my mission, my goals. That has nothing to do with Arcosanti, in the present, and may well not, in any future present, though my connection with Arcosanti, my experience there, my familiarity with Paolo's work and thought, will always be an influence, and a resource, for me. I am not writing this - this is simple self observation - for Arcosanti (except in my secret hopes). I am writing it to make a statement. I do feel I have a right to claim my experience at Arcosanti, my thinking about Arcology, as a part of who I am. It is galling to me not to state that claim, when I state to the world who I am, or that I am here. I am making that claim public, and asking the world to have a moment's patience with me, as I do that.

Principles of Finance

The nature of finance is generally not well understood.

The three types of financial entities I want to discuss are publicly traded companies, privately held companies, otherwise known as partnerships, and non profits.

Each of these kinds of financial entities could be called a storehouse for wealth. They each could be called a kind of bank. Investors deposit funds into these banks in the expectation of a return on their investment. This return is of two types. First, investors expect the entity to apply the funds deposited towards what is called "the means of production", and they expect the result to be what is called production, or products, or industry. (The word industry has two connotations. One is factories and the like, and a stream of goods and services. The other, which is more old fashioned, is simply productive work.)

The second expectation that investors have is a financial return on their investment. This expectation is often mistaken for greed. It is true that the desire for wealth is an important motivator in human affairs, and perhaps that is greed, but perhaps a distinction can be made between the desire for wealth and greed. It is true that investors can be greedy, and charlatans, or fools, can cater to that impulse with ill constructed schemes, but that tends to lead to trouble. Fools get punished. But there is a deeper meaning to return on investment. When people work, they can acquire wealth, and one thing they can do with that wealth is store it for the future. Public companies and partnerships, and also, banks, create opportunities for storing wealth, and, simultaneously, for putting that wealth to productive use, which can be, on the one hand, a benefit to society, and, at the same time, offers investors the opportunity to increase their wealth, through the simple act of investing, which is, at its root, saving.

getting together

We really do need to work on things like getting people to drive a lot less, and fly a lot less (flying is kind of driving, I guess), and use less air conditioning, and lighting, and pavement, and also, throw less stuff away, and also, helping people be more generally prosperous, and also, less reliant on an insane health "system" - less reliant on an insane industrial system, actually, of which the health system is a part.

OK, if you just accepted that at face value, you weren't fully paying attention. Anyone who uses the word "need", at least, in something like that, is trying to sell you a line.

I want to work on these things, I think other people do to, and people sometimes get things done by working together, and even just by getting together. Getting people to get together and work on that list of goals is the purpose of this post.

ideaist

I guess I've pretty much had it with Arcosanti and the Cosanti Foundation. I mean, go guys, all the best, but I don't see them doing anything particularly interesting or promising, or innovative or imaginative. Still a nice place to visit, a great work opportunity, if you fit in. Me, I can't even bring myself to go to events. They hate me up there. Why? Um, I'm awkward, and I care. Nice of them to be so nice!

In my twenties I got super passionate about arcology, went to Arcosanti, lived there for a while - great experience, or, well, really fun. Kept trying to be part of it for the next twenty years. Really formative for me ... though you could argue that doesn't entirely speak well for it. Well, we'll see. I may salvage something out of my life, even yet ... career-wise, I mean. (Married a girl I met there. She's awesome.)

Just the way I thought, think ... not my fault ... but I thought we could actually build arcologies. Still do, I guess, but that takes some 'splainin'. Anyway, my thought was, if we could make building arcologies really cheap (to put it the simplest possible way), by doing some clever engineering work, they would get built. I had some idea about creating layered structure for pillars that would make them strong, something like that. It was bullshit.

The question I was asking, though, was, how would we build these things? Maybe the answer is obvious to people who (I guess, unlike me) are smart, but I kind of needed to think about it. (I mentioned thinking about it to Soleri. Guess what: he dismissed my idea as dumb.)

Any ... way, after I thought about it for a couple of years, I suddenly had a pretty amazing insight. So, I kind of could care less about building arcologies, today. I really did think this over, and Paolo's designs for cities actually SUCK. I mean, they're beautiful, which I do find really interesting, but when you study them more deeply, they're horrible, like giant feet stomping on the landscape. In the end, he didn't get it right. Good effort, something to teach us - which I hope to write about - but in the end, he didn't figure it out, and then went completely off the rails. For example, Arcosanti is mostly really cool, although you can see the crap starting to creep into it here and there, but the plans for the future of Arcosanti, that you see here and there in their promotional material, are just weird office towers. There's not actually anything arcological about them.

If we actually work to understand what's beautiful about Paolo's drawings, it's something we can use, I think, to make really cool new cities - actually, as I see it, out of today's cities (which, by the way, are kind of cool, if you look at it the right way). I question whether anyone at Arcosanti actually gets that. Paolo didn't get it himself. He was actually just on autopilot, with interesting results, to be sure, but at some point someone needs to take the wheel, or we'll just fly off into oblivion. Oh, well, nothing wrong with oblivion. It's been a good ride.

Well, one thing Paolo didn't think about very much - he actually said as much, over and over, so I'm not just casting aspersions - was how to actually build arcologies. I felt like I was kind of out there, because I really did think about that. I already described one of those thoughts, which was, make building them super cheap. I do not mean cheesy, I mean efficient. You need a system, and what I dreamt up - it just popped into my mind - was just such a system. So, I don't see anyone using that kind of system in any kind of construction ... I feel like I've invented something. Now, here's the question: if you invent something, what should you do with it? Well, you should secure a patent, license the system, and build a very big industrial company. Right? If we are going to build something fantastic - see, I don't want to call it arcology any more. It's a nice word, it's actually kind of the right word, but it sounds silly, and it comes with some baggage I can't really deal with - build something fantastic, in the way of new city type stuff - it's probably going to be by doing business.

If any of my readers find the idea of developing an industrial product interesting - going for patents, licensing, marketing, going for huge profits - and have some useful insights for me, as far as how to proceed (I'm kind of lost), or some resources, connections, for example - and if you think it's possible I could have a legit idea, and if you can contemplate actually talking to me, and being my partner, or giving it consideration (and I'm not going to describe my idea unless I'm pretty comfortable with you as a partner), well, that is what I'm looking for. This thing I dreamed up has, I think, some pretty interesting implications for just building in general. It could make it possible to build stuff that, today, is pretty much just fantasy, an actual practical (meaning, in a way, easy) thing. I know it's kind of a laugh, but, any takers on someone with an idea?