Waste
Who decides?
When I was in Rome long ago I went to the Vatican. That place is a wonder. I was an 18 year old kid from New Brunswick and had never seen such stuff before. Bernini's columns holding up St. Peter's Baldachin had me agog. They seemed to squirm before my eyes tho I knew they were made of bronze.
At the time I was working my way thru being an atheist after having been raised as a Baptist (loosely). Baptist churches are very good at making people feel awe and reverence but it was much more austere. One part of me was muttering inside my head "What a waste of energy that might have been helping the poor" and another part of me was yelling "O WOW".
I imagine the building of cathedrals in Europe - these were projects that took generations to complete. Some are still going on I think. I can imagine clerics in charge of the books saying that we can't afford to give alms to the poor - we have to pay the carvers first and the poor can just get a real job.
From ancient times societies have felt the need to spend lots of resources on grandiose buildings. Wouldn't it be more efficient to use those resources to make society better? The young philosopher says - "define what is a 'better society?'"
History can be the story of what happened as told by the victors. One of the ways that victors boast about their victories is by building glorious monuments of various sorts. They have money to burn. And that can certainly stimulate an economy with benefits way beyond the monument. Economic networks emerge that use the stability that a society that can build monuments enables opportunities to take up other investment opportunities.
What happens in practice though is that a lot of people find themselves outside of that economic circuit - nowadays money to help those people is classed as waste that should be cut. Sounds good in a way - why should we support unproductive people? But really - society isn't prepared to let unproductive people just die.
A while ago I read an article that opined that the first sign of a morality was a humanoid fossil with signs of a healed broken leg. The article claimed that in nature without society a broken bone means death - you can't get to the spring for water or get to the fruit just out of reach or dodge predators.
Each day I walk up and down Water Street doing my errands on foot. I pass cars caught in grid lock. I get to my destination, pay with a card and load my backpack and head home. No parking fees or even the hassle of finding a parking spot involved.
A while ago I hired another tenant in my building to help me get a bunch of old computers to a recycling place. He had access to car sharing place and we loaded up the car and went to the recycling place and dumped everything responsibly. As we were returning home my friend gestured at the traffic - soon this will all be gone he said disapprovingly.
We'd been talking about the idea of a 15 minute city - the idea that it's good to have everything you need - your job, your stores, your medical - be available within a 15 minute walk
Seems like a good idea to me. But not absolute. He took it as some sort of absolute. He took it to mean that people could not pass from their zone to another zone with out a permission paper.
We were sitting stuck in a traffic jam. He didn't see the waste of fuel and machinery. We were in a shared car which is in constant use rather than a private car which spends most of it's time parked.
Returning to my first point - is opulence a waste? In one of King Lears speeches he said "question not the need". His point was that humans need more than bare necessities. My guess is that opulence stands as a symbol of society as a whole - a visible symbol that we are more than just a herd of individuals.
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.