civilized ku # 30 ~ Small is beautiful
Thursday, May 24, 2007 at 08:39AM 
Someone's little piece of heaven on earth • click to embiggenJust outside of town, sandwiched between the elk ranch and the granite quarry on Rt. 9, is this little gem. Over the past few years, it has been slowly remodeled into what you see here. In someone's opinion, it is a little piece of heaven on earth, and, BTW, it's not a summer home, it's a full-time residence.
What this house and home brings to mind is a book - Small Is Beautiful, Economics As If People Mattered by E. F. Schumacher - which was published in 1973 soon after the energy crisis of the same year rattled American's (and the world's) cages. In the opinion of The New Republic, the book is ...Enormously broad in scope, pithily threads from Galbraith and Gandhi, capitalism and Buddhism, science and psychology. It has also been called ... the perfect antidote to the economics of globalization. As relevant today as when it was first published ...
Schumacher was a British economist who was amongst the first to point out that our economy was unsustainable. He also believed that the workplace should be dignified and meaningful first, efficient second, and that nature is priceless.
Schumacher's economic ideas where fueled to great extent by Keynes, Galbraith, and 'Buddhist' economics. In a quote near and dear to my heart, he states that "... [the modern economist] is used to measuring the 'standard of living' by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is 'better off' than a man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption. . . . The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity."
I really like the part about The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. I like it a lot.
In a later book - A Guide for the Perplexed - Schumacher, in somewhat of an aside to his main point, wrote about art. He suggests that there is a lot of confusion about the nature and meaning of art (sounds familiar). In order to clear this up, he states that one must consider art with relation to its effect on human beings.
He thinks that most art fits into one of two categories - entertainment, that which is created to primarily effect feelings, and propaganda, that which is created to effect our will. For the most part, this concept jives with the idea (derived from the book, Einstein's Space and Van Gogh's Sky, Physical Reality and Beyond) expressed by me here on The Landscapist that art is divided into two categories - decorative, that which is created to turn the mind off, and, fine art, that which is created to engage the mind.
I have posited that the best art is that which combines both of the latter properties, art that is both decorative and informative, that which I strive for in my pictures. Schumacher also believes in a combination of entertainment and propaganda which appeals to amn's higher intellectual and emotional faculties with the intent of communicating truth.
IMO, there's something a little weird going on when an economist, a theoretical physicist and a psychologist (the last two are the authors of Einstein's Space/Van Gogh's Sky) seem to have a much more succinct idea of what art is than most artists are able to express.
So, how about contemplating this (from Schumacher) the next time you're thinking about creating meaningful art (not to mention a 'righteous' way of living) -
"The way in which we experience and interpret the world obviously depends very much indeed on the kind of ideas that fill our minds. If they are mainly small, weak, superficial, and incoherent, life will appear insipid, uninteresting, petty, and chaotic. It is difficult to bear the resultant feeling of emptiness, and the vacuum of our minds may only too easily be filled by some big, fantastic notion – political or otherwise – which suddenly seems to illumine everything and to give meaning and purpose to our existence. It needs no emphasis that herein lies one of the great dangers of our time."
Reader Comments (2)
What a beautiful little house. Someone is obviously proud of it. Smaller is beautiful is a great thing to strive for.
You might be interested in the Tiny House Co. Neat designs.
Cheers,
Joe