Many of you have probably already read this excerpt from the Norton Lectures of Charles Eames. His words are a bit circumlocutious, but I find the point so enlightening.
There's sort of a parable I'd like to . . . In India . . . I guess it's a parable: In India, sort of the lowest, the poorest, the, those, those without and the lowest in caste, eat very often--particularly in southern India--they eat off of a banana leaf. And those a little bit up the scale, eat off of a sort of a un . . . a low-fired ceramic dish. And a little bit higher, why, they have a glaze on--a thing they call a "tali"--they use a banana leaf and then the ceramic as a tali upon which they put all the food. And there get to be some fairly elegant glazed talis, but it graduates to--if you're up the scale a little bit more--why, a brass tali, and a bell-bronze tali is absolutely marvelous, it has a sort of a ring to it. And then things get to be a little questionable. There are things like silver-plated talis and there are solid silver talis and I suppose some nut has had a gold tali that he's eaten off of, but I've never seen one. But you can go beyond that and the guys that have not only means, but a certain amount of knowledge and understanding, go the next step and they eat off of a banana leaf. And I think that in these times when we fall back and regroup, that somehow or other, the banana leaf parable sort of got to get working there, because I'm not prepared to say that the banana leaf that one eats off of is the same as the other eats off of, but it's that process that has happened within the man that changes the banana leaf. And as we attack these problems--and I hope and I expect that the total amount of energy used in this world is going to go from high to medium to a little bit lower--the banana leaf idea might have a great part in it.
Yes, well,
he gets there in the end.
I suppose when you have an industrial and commercial machine the likes of none ever seen on the face of the Earth, geared to (creating and) fulfilling every conceivable whim of ease, fun, and self-indulgent luxury, with plenty of energy to fuel it, the result would be the America (and its imitators) that we see today. Will we be able to "ease off the mountain" and return to some kind of environmental balance -- and, not incidentally, balance with the have-nots of the world -- given the dedication some have to remaining in the clouds ?
Will the waters have to rise, and the skies darken, before the message becomes sufficiently clear to a sufficiently large number of citizens ? Stay tuned. . .
For me, the point of the...
For me, the point of the parable is that appreciating simplicity and function can be a stage of intellectual and philosophical maturity.
A very poor person's only chair may be a spare wooden thing that he owns because he can't afford anything more. As he gets a little money and education, maybe even nouveau riche, he wants his surroundings to reflect his better life--a statement to himself and his neighbors that he's made it. Think Babbit. Think massive Cadillacs and SUVs.
If, however, our Babbit grows intellectually and philosophically, he'll come to understand that the unnecessary complexity and ornamentation can be detrimental aesthetically and existentially. So he gives up a gilded status chair for a wooden thing, maybe a simple DCM. He rides his bike to work, he buys locally, etc., not because he has to anymore but because he chooses to. He's gone back to the banana leaf, not because it's the only thing around, but because it functions so well, it's beautiful in its simplicity, and attaining it doesn't require him to sacrifice his life and his values.
If you need any help, please contact us at – info@designaddict.com