Weeknotes #4: Nature of Order Reading Seminar
Fall Semester 2020 / 29 October
Notes on the Nature of Order Seminar series — part of the Building Beauty Post-Graduate Diploma in Architecture. A weekly running reflection for myself, for friends, and for those curious about Christopher Alexander’s work and its importance in shaping a healthy, living world.
October 29, 2020. It is the 4th seminar, in which:
- We have read the Nature of Order Book 1, The Phenomenon of Life, pp. 299–350 on the Mirror of the Self
- We have read The Discovery of Architecture pp. 3–20, on the idea of self as community
- Munishwar Ashish Ganju and Narendra Dengle, (Muni, and Narenda, in seminar) introduce the notion of self as community
- Yodan reviews the results of a Mirror of the Self online test, taken by students in seminar
- We wade through the notion of what it means for something to be more like oneself
Mirror of the Self: A Simple Test
Here is a crucial piece of infrastructure in the Alexandrian worldview. An empirical keystone of the cosmology that posits a deep, real, and essentially important connection between human feeling and the structure of the world around us. There is a test that any of us may perform, called the mirror of the self.
What we grapple with, when we begin to approach the mirror of the self, are the boundaries of the rational Cartesian subject/object divide, the limits of what might be known scientifically, and the philosophical reality of what we mean by ‘deeply personal’ and ‘one’s self.’
We’ll dip our toes into these murky waters but first, let’s talk about what exactly the mirror of the self test is.
The Structure of the Test
Take any two objects. Any two roughly similar things. Physical, photographic, mock-up prototype, literary passage… Have these two things so that you can hold them both in your attention, and then ask yourself, “Which of these two things is a better picture of my true self?”
Naively, that’s all there is to it. We can perform this test on buildings, furniture, music, oil paintings, corporate meetings, dance, graphic novels, the stroke of a letterform, the frame of a window, the shape of a sewer drain. We just put them side by side, and ask that simple question.
But of course, there’s more. In attempting to exercise one’s judgment, this question — if we endeavor to answer it truthfully, from a place of deep feeling —brings forth a number of issues related to the objects in question, and more importantly, in understanding what it is that we really “like.”
The Thesis behind the Mirror
When we begin to use the mirror of the self, we grapple with the boundaries of the rational Cartesian subject/object divide, the limits of what might be known scientifically, and the philosophical reality of what we mean by ‘personal’ or ‘one’s self.’
The core thesis behind the mirror, is this: What we as humans truly and deeply like, what nourishes our inner selves, is the presence of a strong field of centers, of living structure. We know this because when we are in the presence of a stronger field of centers, we can feel this as a degree of life, that is stronger or weaker than in some other place: and it feels like us. The fact that this life in structure exists, and we can learn to sense it—and will find, ultimately, empirical agreement about where that life exists—means that we can judge the value of space based on the strength of its life, on the degree to which it brings forth the field of centers. And this universal sensitivity to life is the one criteria we ought to value the most: because it is us, in the fullest and most elegant sense of what ‘us’ might be.
The implications, if true, are astounding, and it will take another three and one-third books to sketch them all in outline, to connect them to a broader theory of architecture, order, and life. Alexander recognizes the challenge he faces here: “The idea that truth is to be found in the self, not in the world beyond ourselves, seems questionable from almost any reasonable empirical point of view (p.349).”
And yet we carry on—Alexander believes in all soberness that this is true. That the inner truth exists across cultures because the self is universal. That the mechanical criteria for value we find in a majority-based politics or money-based economy are a false picture of value, driving from our hearts that which we should truly value.
The Difficulty of “Self”
Muni and Narenda provide an introduction to the seminar that speaks well to what Alexander is trying to get at with this test. Their essay, The Discovery of Architecture, follows four threads…
First, they look at the Self, where everything begins. Next is the act of building, of shaping our world, a fundamental expression of Self. Third we move to the idea of maintenance and regeneration, given the simple recognition that no building can exist by itself, everything built is a part of a system of ongoing use and interaction. Finally, they look at the issue of learning: the very act of maintenance teaches us how to build better, gives us a truer look at what the Self is trying to accomplish, and instructs us how to learn and act more true to that Self the more we pay attention.
In the first thread, Self, they build out the idea of Self as community. Of course, there is a relationship between people and the process of building. It is a fantasy to believe that one might envision, enact, and maintain built structure as a pure isolated entity. It is an idea of a Self built from mutual cooperation.
Observer Effects
It speaks to the same thread of “self” that Alexander asks us to connect with in the mirror of the self test. With a larger and expansive view of self — as part of a system, as part of a cooperative community — we can re-evaluate Alexander’s question with a deeper sense of what we’re looking for when we talk about self.
We can also view the act of judgment in the mirror of the self as a form of meditation. We are asked to go beyond the surface, to go beyond personal idiosyncrasies of what we “like” in the modern sense. (Alexander uses the term ‘liking’ to describe what happens here, but it is a move far and away different from what happens when we tap a thumbs-up on Facebook, click a heart on Twitter, or say that “I like yellow.”) He is instead asking about our eternal Self, the same one we begin to find in Discovery of Architecture.
What this test attempts to do, how it trains the observer’s sensitivity, is to burn away those stories we tell ourselves that come from a place of ego, image, and media-trained “instinct.” Alexander posits, in a central piece of the theory of centers and wholeness, that there is, common to humans across cultures, geographies, and age, a core and universal sense of personal feeling. The type of feeling that speaks to our sorrows, our joys, our hopes, and our dreams. The reverence, awe, longing, fragility, and peace that true beauty engenders in all of us.
Attempting to perform this test honestly, training one’s sensibility through years of repeated exposure and honest personal examination of places, objects, images, finding what one really likes, connects us back to the communal Self. It works to show us what is ultimately timeless.
Grappling with the Mirror
First Encounters
When one makes a comparison in the mirror of the self, it is deeply difficult, and at times disturbing, to ask ourselves what we truly like. Alexander’s deep-seated belief is that any person in the world can, eventually, really learn to be true to their own deep humanity in what they like. But it may take years to get there…
Would you like to try it? Building Beauty is working on a simple “mirror of the self” application to start experimenting with this idea at scale. Tomaž has helped me set up a link for anyone to try with some of Alexander’s canonical examples: Mirror of the Self
At first glance is also where we find it easy to fatuously dismiss the idea of the mirror of the self test as a naive game, as something that can have no “right” answer. In his own tests, among a range of images, Alexander has found a strong degree of agreement across cultures, geographies, and ages. (I do not have the results of these experiments, but we can now look to create larger empirical tests using the tool developed above.)
Just choosing one of the two is not really participating in the mirror of the self. We must first, even for just a moment, suspend our disbelief and assume that perhaps one of these objects really could be a better picture of my soul. And then, we choose the first time, knowing it may not be right, that in fact we should paste these images on our wall for a month, or sit with these mockups for a week, or sketch and re-sketch these examples for an hour, and see, really see, what we believe is right. Without a convicted curiosity about which may really be right, we are not even asking the right question.
Reframing the Question
And as we saw in seminar, and as Alexander details in the reading, it is not easy to get into this question. It seems too facile to ask “which is more like my true self” if we don’t know what our true self is—it’s absurd, what could that even mean? Imagine I present you with the example below, and ask you to choose which of these is really, deeply, an example of your true self?
And now I mean it: this is it, this your choice, one that you make now to reflect yourself for the ages. Please, consider, which of these is it, which one? First you’ll need to get over the fact that I’m asking you which of these two buildings most deeply resembles you. It’s not too hard, if you’ll just humor me for a few minutes for this one…
But then maybe you’ll consider the fact that you like chocolate. And you’ll see this is a chocolate shop, and you lean towards the left. But now you’re answering on an entirely different level, you’re still on the surface of this question. The idiosyncrasies of your personal affiliation with cocoa nuts and sugar are not what we’re assessing here. Or perhaps you’ve seen an architectural image or two, and you recognize the Eames house. (Well, if we’re going to get this test right, obviously it’s the architect’s house, eh?) And again, that’s not it — there is no externally validated correct answer in the mirror of the self. It takes time to allow ourselves to answer the real question that this test is asking.
So we try again: which of these two buildings is a better picture of yourself in its entirety? Your joys and sorrows, triumphs, laughs, lows, and dreams? Your fear and your weakness — all that is core to you as a whole being? Look at each one, and look at each one again. Does one of them make you feel more, resonate with that ineffable self that always watches, and never speaks? Does one of these structures draw you in to it more than the other?
Perhaps we’re getting closer. Alexander is more elegant in the formulations from this chapter:
- “The question I mean to ask is, of the two, which is more deeply connected to your eternal self? Which feels as if it is a better picture of your eternal self, your aspiration, the core of you that exists inside? (p.317).”
- “Assuming for a moment, that you believed in reincarnation, and that you were going to be reborn as one of these two things, then which one would you rather be in your next life? (p.320)”
Finally, he notes, that this is not about you yourself in an autobiographical sense, or what reminds you of your idiosyncrasies.
The Role of the Mirror
While it does form an empirical foundation of Alexander’s theory of centers and the ideas presented in the Nature of Order, the test is primarily a tool. One way for us to become more honestly connected to the life and the quality of those structures we encounter, and to guide our decisions toward creating structure that is more whole and more alive in our work.
If we accept the ideas of living structure and the nature of centers to be true, if we can assume that we have the capacity to learn how to sense and feel where the wholeness is really coming to life, then we may also take one further step: we can take the fifteen properties as instructive. The presence or absence of the properties working in harmony can be one guidepost that helps point to a correct decision (although we can never know until we’ve made the model, drawn the sketch, poured the concrete, framed the column…)
Learning to see when the properties work, and choosing to create those spaces and places where the properties exhibit themselves in harmony, may be able to point us closer to the core of our own selves.
A Tool for Practical Decision-making
Yodan brings seminar to a close and reminds us that in the process of building, we must be true to ourselves, but also that we may never really know the truth.
Sometimes that choice is very hard, and we can never be sure whether we’ve chosen well or not. And this can be a real problem. Often when we make these choices we can make them when the difference between them is not so not large. We have two choices and have to go one way, or the other way.
And each choice has ripple effects in the whole field of centers. It ripples throughout the context we’re working in, and we may only find out later it wasn’t a good choice. And that happens to anyone who’s done this kind of work. It’s a real issue, [this test] is not a thing that was constructed to make a point.
I think the important thing is to maintain, as much as we can, two opposing views at the same time. One is that there is a true choice in which one option is a truer mirror of the self, that it has more life, and that it is objectively “better.” And the other side is that none of us has the truth in our pockets, and we don’t know. Even if we make a choice and we’re absolutely sure that we’re right, we never really know until sometimes much later or after much more reflection, if we’ve made the right choice or not.
A conundrum. All we can do is strive to build and create as much life as possible, continually honing our sensitivity, our ability to understand and create beautiful structure that presents to us a mirror of ourselves.
And that’s week 4 in the books. See you next week.
Thanks to Building Beauty for creating the Nature of Order reading seminar, and keeping it a free and publicly accessible part of the program.
Whether or not you’re a builder, if you feel a spark in the above, I can only recommend you find your way to a personal copy of the Nature of Order. It’s a remarkable work.
