Why The Human Scale

Sometimes we may look at hypostyle buildings, even hypostyle ideology, really - well that's what it amounts to - and are overcome momentarily by the scale.

It's so big. It's bigger than we are. It's more important.

This is also, the hypostyle

Of course this is not always so. There are some buildings large though they may be, which have totally other objectives than simply the brute force of the megalithic. Or the monolithic.

If you find yourself visiting Chartres Cathedral, and go inside and look up into the vault of the upper space, even before you notice how high it is and how much like the imaginary heavens of religious narrative this space is, you will almost certainly be aware of the fall of coloured shafts of light onto your body.

And, if at night, the glitter and glints of candle-light off gold and silver and polished brasswork everwhere, will instil in you feelings of being in the presence of illumination.

The reason the Greek philosophers spoke of things 'on the human scale,' was because they knew something we don't any longer: they knew that giants, if they were only megalithic monoliths, always fall.

Like so many other Bible stories, the story of David and Goliath is completely the reverse of the truth. David never killed Goliath. Goliath fell all by himself. You see, David himself, was surprised at what happened, never understanding the merely coincident nature of his stone flinging and Goliath's fall. Unlike the Greeks, David presumed the matter to have been an act of god; the Greeks would have said it was about the certainty of failure - the predestined failure of the giant, who was 'not on the human scale.'

The difference between the Greek conception of god and what divinity does and what its purpose and position is in the Universe, and the Masoretic view, is that the Greeks held that there was a material, physical, predictable consequence to patterns, rather than that god or the gods go about making new decisions from moment to moment depending on who worships them 'the hardest.'

More like the ancient Chinese, the Greeks also held that the gods were often quite distant to the simple daily affairs of men, favouring only a very very rare few and for very distinct reasons, and being largely indifferent to the rest.

The Greeks would not therefore, have automatically said that god favoured David to have his stone kill Goliath. Whether he practised stone flinging or not!

All giants - and these are not the same as the titanic, to the Greeks - would of course go through their natural profile of existence, and come back down to the Earth at a certain point in accordance with their inherent necessity to conform to gravity and the fact that they exceeded the ideal scale for living on this planet.

Their centre-of-gravity combined with their weight and mass made them vulnerable.

The idea of not going beyond the human scale in building, and in architecture, and in many other matters is that if you cannot see beyond what is your horizon vista limit, it is pointless to have things built and placed to that distance away. And if things are too high or too deep down, or too far across or too complex to move through, you will waste a lot of energy just having to move around. 

To the Greeks, therefore, if someone created something like this, it would have, far from making the Greek mind be impressed by the 'grandeur' or the awesomeness of it, evoked pathos. 

Not, the hypostyle...
And yet, a shawl made from this - antelope felt -
illegal if from the Chiru antelope, is utterly rare...
Warren Buffett does not own one. The shawl is
called 'Shahtoosh.' It's about $200,000. 

Now, one might say well but what happened to the Greeks - did they maintain their empires till now, unconquered and still advancing, so that we should take notice of them? But Diogenes laughed at Alexander. And few modern people understand 'Greece' is not one country, just as Sicily is not part of Italy except that the Italians believe that it should be...

History tends to tell only of the hypostyle, the exaggerated, the larger-than-life, and refrain to speak of what is just on the human scale.

You see, in reality, what goes up too far crashes and falls back to Earth - if by its own nature and characteristics it is not suited to go to or live in the heavens...

And what persists and abides on the Earth quietly and without too much noise, well, the operative phrase is 'without too much noise' - such a thing remains intact, and well.

The rest is just pathology. And this is why you see so much sneering on the mouths of people like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Bush, GHW. Or Tony Blair. What you are looking at is pathology; they are suffering. Instead of a smile even when they claim to be on top of things, you see some kind presumptuous and yet sort of cheese-y, feigned naughty, 'am I caught yet(?)' arrogance. There are many politicians like this - Widodo of Indonesia, Lee Kwan Yew bore it too while he was alive. LKY always seemed to be scoffing at the stupidity of the Western White Man.

Never being able to see beyond all the huge, vast complexities of their workings (IE machinations), never being able to go out into any street unguarded, never being able to sit comfortably in a true friend's chair, everything they have and do must be bought and paid for, for it cannot come into existence by harmony with Earthly and natural things...

And so what else can they do but enjoin this life onto everyone else - for you must be so stupid if you do not agree with them, and live the same way that they do, and also use the same ideologies and standards. Come, come with us. For it is pleasing to walk down to hell in the company of others, be they fools or the wicked as they are themselves.

Today, this week, you can be a millionaire, but not a billionaire or trillionaire - they are excessive.

And let your life's wealth come into existence by harmony with the Earthly world as it really is... And it will be.

But you will hardly be noticed.

As the shaft of coloured light through the stained glass windows of some gothic or even exotic cathedral, the unsighted will not sense nor feel your power, and your wealth.

And yet, this is the real thing.