The people who can take an idea or concept and make it a reality are known as "architects." An architect is adept at taking general principles and concepts, and then using his imagination to envision a reality. A great architect is adept at taking this one step further, and that is to envision the steps necessary to go from concept to reality. The greatest architects are able to inspire people to flesh out that reality and are able to come up with visions that are not only possible but durable.
Life is our existence. Religion is how we use our imaginations to knit ourselves together into communities of story and vision. Architecture is how we go from such visions to reality. The material world is like any field of stones and wood. The same stones that can build ugly and forbidding fortresses, or be thrown against the walls of a fortress, or used to create something beautiful like a Cathedral. Bad architects fail to see that. They build edifices that are missing something important from the vision. Those edifices, composed too much of idea or composed too much of debased vision, fail. Missing the foundation stones of reality they collapse, or missing the soaring imagination of principle and noble ideation, they sink into the mud. History is built on the bones of limited imaginations.
Ideas are like the stones. They can be used to rebuild reality into something beautiful, or they can be used to box in minds, to build prisons. The prisons built by ideas are as forbidding and insurmountable, in the hands of an evil architect, as any prison built of cement or stone.
This going from concept to reality is where most ideas reveal their weaknesses. This confusing of "present state" with what must be, is where people lock themselves into their own prisons. History, religion, experience, are meant to guide us, not imprison us. All through history there have been many architects, with visions of a reality that "could be" or that should be. Often those visions have involved ruthlessly tearing apart theold structures of reality. Yet, pull down the stones, and even the mightiest of people, like Samson, will perish in the edifice of their own destruction. It seems that each time people try to envision a better reality it involves either imposing ideals on this reality or taking the present reality as if it is what has to be.
Modern architects realized a long time ago that to create a live-able reality, we need the inputs from many architects. We need to broaden the model of architecture to include the realization that nobody does architecture alone. A great Cathedral is not built by a single man, no matter that we often give one person credit in hindsight. It requires the inputs and views of many people to flesh out the reality needed to go from vision to reality. We need to be able to envision what we want from scientific, engineering, and common man views. So when i talk about the "architectures" of a better reality, I am also talking about a reality that is designed to look at itself from multiple points of view. The best, the smartest, the most brilliant person, may not be the one who warns that there is a weakness in a supporting arch or that there is an easier way to do something. From the front-man to the humble janitor, in great architecture all the players are important. The key is that someone has to articulate a vision that others can embrace, fall in love with. Then, all involved see the same end goal. A Cathedral, or a Pyramid, whatever that structure, that central imagination comes to be fleshed out and articulated from all sides.
I was in the store looking at pictures from Masonic history, and what struck me was the notion of "architecture" that is conveyed there. Pure principles are pure because they can be applied rationally to improve the process. The rules and theorums of the triangle can be applied to building buildings, or to controlling radio waves (sines and cosines). Likewise moral principles can be used to guide our efforts to create a better society. If we design a better world we can design in better ways to achieve better results.
The greatest sources of principles for guiding the US, are our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The architects of the Constitution had a vision for our world. That vision was imperfect, but perfectable. To build this vision into reality, we have to be architects of a 'more perfect union.' It's a nice vision isn't it? Why not make it a reality. The stones can be used for good or ill. Their good is not in the stones, it is in the hearts and minds that guide them.
Chris
Posted by cholte at November 19, 2006 05:34 PM