Paraphernalia

While Mies said it with 'Less is More', Slavoj Zizek speaks about 'More for Less.' His fundamental idea is that, if we abstain from adding any superficial ornaments, don't fill in all the gaps for the completed form of our products, this very loss will generate an additional meaning and create a depth in understanding the gap between the inside and the outside space of a building, that layer of reality which makes the whole notion of volumetrical territory as something that belongs to a certain human status or class in our highly layered society.

Aren't all of us trying to understand these internal immensities that give a way to us being visible to the outside world? How more could we establish this connect?

This is an old thought. What matters more is our reluctance to address and ponder upon them. In a world full of conflicts, divisions and establishing rights, we are filling our lives with disputes that really mean little.

I think the message in this picture is what most of us need in life. We need a simple understanding of our efforts, our emotions, our existential crisis questions and our endless woes of being the way we are. The realization that we are constantly feeding our brains (not, minds) with a standardized worldly interpretation of events happening around us, absorbing them in our capacity to unravel the mysteries and causes and then, spitting them back with a vengeance as our original thoughts, is only slightly embarrassing if not disturbing.

I have been asking myself a question for quite a while now. Quite implies a few years ranging from 1-3 in number. What are we doing with the information overload in the universe and how are we coping up with all the knowledge systems in hand? Do we have an answer yet? It takes a lot of TEDx talks, panel discussions, MOOC to figure out whether we can qualify ourselves to attempt an answer to such questions. 

What happens to the fundamental understanding of issues at hand? We are struggling with gripping levels of pollution worldwide, the global climate change, food crisis, water shortage, humanitarian crisis, war and peace, life and death. Stephen Hawking in a lecture on the Hartle--Hawking no boundary universe addressed to a crowd in Berkeley in 2013, mentioned Aristotle who believed that the "Universe had existed forever. Something eternal is more perfect than something created." He suggested the reason we see progress, was that floods, or other natural disasters, had repeatedly set civilization back to the beginning. When we leave the philosophy bit from the statement and closely ponder over our circumstances today, could we say that we are on the brink of destruction only to be revived back again? Who knows, if the Neanderthals judged their Sapiens competition in what calibre and ended being extinct. I have been reading Yuval Noah Harari's book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, which is categorized as Popular Science by Vintage Publishers. Quite a contradiction there, isn't it? I wonder why we tend to lap up science when it is presented in history format? Is it because the myth of creation is just too fancy a story to keep referring back to? Beyond all these questions, a certain rush to dwell upon the past as present has also resurfaced lately in my mind. With all the facts and facets of history doomed in a clever cocoon of educative entertainment these days, one can't be sure if everything we see and read is indeed true. 100 years of history is still new to a generation that is slowly waking up to deceit and foolery presented in the guise of new age development to them.

How do we ignite and seek conviction for ideas that shall take us forward away from the darkened horizons looming on our doorstep? Let's hope to keep this pursuit alive and pursue it with a vigor that shall seek answers to the many detrimental causes we have associated our lives with in this day and age.