moral idealism: classic or dud?

The thing about morality, it removes human action from the realm of cause and effect and into the realm of blame and recrimination. This tends to muddy the waters a bit.

In romantic relationships, you want your loved one to be happy, glad to be alive. You want to contribute to their happiness, to your own, and to the happiness of the people around you both, and not to contribute to anyone's misery. It's a practical question, which need not have moral overtones necessarily.

The thing about morality, it removes human action from the realm of cause and effect and into the realm of blame and recrimination. This tends to muddy the waters a bit.

Sounds like a less severe version of my friend's advice. I'm increasingly thinking that this might be the way to go -- cut out the over-analysis and focus more on the consequences of my actions. High-minded moral idealism is just so... attractive to me, though. It's probably the remnants of Catholic pulpit-pounding that still linger in my secular mind. "Ghosts of dead religious beliefs haunt the world" and all that. :)

How does this style of moral thinking tend to work out for you overall, if you don't mind my asking?

In romantic relationships, you want your loved one to be happy, glad to be alive. You want to contribute to their happiness, to your own, and to the happiness of the people around you both, and not to contribute to anyone's misery. It's a practical question, which need not have moral overtones necessarily.

Yes... amen to that. This is the principle I desperately try to apply in my current relationship. It's harder than it sounds, though, especially when what might ultimately make a loved one is giving them space, giving them room to mature, when it might result directly in their ending up with someone else. Of course at this point we're diverging away from a philosophical discussion into my complaining about my own convulted love life, so I'll stop talking about it. :)

Thanks for your opinions!

'When he/she does this, I get this painful feeling here and have these painful thoughts' might be a good starting point. It occurs to me that if you can learn not to be intimidated by the inner pain his or her actions cause you, you will be more able to give this person space to mature without freaking out.

uh, this is kind of way too long and probably no one else cares, but it's gnawing at me and i'm not sure what to think.

me and a "friend" just had a bit of an argument. she's in grad school studying landscape architecture, and like me, she's big on the issues of overconsumption, consumerism, suburban sprawl, etc. for an assignment she's currently agonizing over, her class is being asked to design a 10 acre plot of land that's currently semi-rural, but is quickly being overtaken by the 'burbs.

her professor is pushing students to design the plot of land using New Urbanism/Smart Growth ideals - walkable neighborhoods, easily accessible public spaces, balanced development of housing and jobs. this would be in contrast to the typical suburban sprawl development with endless cul-de-sacs and mandatory car ownership. however, the professor is also pushing for the kinda icky form of New Urbanism that ends up looking a lot like Celebration, Florida - it's basically like living inside a mall, very consumer-oriented. some people would call it "totally fake."

my "friend" is very passionate (with reason) about pushing for more dense housing in urban settings, since that's the least resource-intensive living arrangement on average. so she's against the idea of building a disneyland suburb, even if it is a "walkable community".

the problem is that no one else in her class, including her professor, cares at all about overconsumption/resources. everyone else is going with the professor's advice to build a bunch of TGI Friday's, etc, and have received permission to move ahead to the "production" stage (basically the part where the design is set and it's time to execute the drawings/plans etc). Except for my friend. she keeps proposing environmentally friendly ideas (essentially, leaving the land as wilderness/park and clumping dense housing in one section) and keeps getting shot down by the professor. she's been in the studio past midnight the last 6 days, struggling and crying. and she thinks "everyone is against her".

including me, now. because i made the argument that as a landscape architect, she doesn't have control over some things, such as the sprawling populace and the zoning of the land. and she totally disagrees with her professor, who is sort of analogous to a hypothetical future boss she might have in a landscape architecture firm. in this scenario, the best she can do given the circumstances is to try to tilt the plan as much as possible to a community that's environmentally friendly and "authentic". the option that she wants - leave the plot of land empty and make people live in the city - doesn't exist.

but she sees this as "giving in" and "conforming" and argues that that's the kind of thinking that's fucking over the world in the first place. and i'm basically feeling like a dick because i'm advising her to give in and conform and do the best she can. and that since it's just a class, she could look at this as an opportunity to learn more about something that she disagrees with so that she's better able to criticize it in the future.

whoa, tldr;

anyway, i feel awful because everyone is against her basically (her classmates are poking fun of her for basically staging an environmental protest, and her professor told her if she didn't like consumerism, she shouldn't live in america), and here i am basically telling her the same thing in different words - do the best you can given the circumstances, etc.

basically basically basically basically basically basically basically basically basically basically

so i guess this is basically basically basically basically just my diary now, but the context is that a few years ago i felt close to the same way as her, promising myself that i would never be a part of a project that i didn't agree with, that i would be part of the problem. i didn't go so far as to refuse to comply with a class assignment, but i thought that in the "real world" i wouldn't compromise.

flash forward to now, and i compromise all of the time. i have to. i have a dozen layers of bosses above me on the chain, and i have to do what they say. i definitely push my own perspective on things, and every once in a while they even listen to me and change their plans, but for the most part they don't. and i find myself having to give presentations pushing for ideas that i don't agree with 100%, because i have to.

but i miss that feeling of thinking you'll never compromise. and when i advise my friend to give in for now and "pick your battles", it feels like i'm handing a pack of cigarettes to an 8-year-old.

register concerns suggest alternatives follow instructions even if they make you sick dat's life

proposal: http://grab.by/92DE

knowing quite a few people who do architecture and, um architecture theory (I imagine that has a real name), it seems that this is pretty much The Big Issue if you have those kinds of concerns. And the way they try to work with it tends to be thinking in terms of negotiation rather than compromise - if you think in terms of having to constantly kowtow to the ruthless machine of big capitalism then nothing's going to work, but if that's the kind of criteria you're working with you have to think through how to work between and around them and plug in your particular ethos in the little gaps left by The Man.

but srsly its just for a class and has no irl impact what so ever and is therefor particularly not worth getting upset abt - she should try being creative w/in the set constraints - might actually come up w/something new and compelling rather than the same old polemic which is just an idea she heard and thought was good anyway

there's also the 'just for a class' thing, ya. "Just churn out some shit" is a favourite piece of academic advice of mine, tho people don't tend to listen. :'(

i made the same point re: "just for a class", and her response was that she has to present her "idea" in front of a panel of three outside experts (people who work at landscape architecture firms) and justify her ideas and try to convince them that she as great ideas. but her professor isn't allowing her to move forward with her own ideas (he has control over when things move to the "production" stage, and he won't let her go to that stage until she puts some TGI Friday's in), so she'll have to basically stand in front of everyone and say she loves this idea that she actually hates.

i made the point that i have to do the same thing pretty often myself, but that didn't really help.

i dont think it necessarily has to be rote shit, but as the project isnt going to actually get built its p much stripped of any moral impact, perhaps making room for a more playful flexible approach

as far as the three experts she could say 'this is how i tried to incorporate my ideals re landscape design into the constraints of the project as presented by my professor who i regarded as a stand in for irl wrongheaded zoning regulations/developers/etc'

the best creativity is almost always born from constraints

i mean its school right, try to learn something, no need to rush theres a whole life of stubbornness and defeat ahead

that's really good advice from both of you, thanks. i like the idea of looking at it as a negotiation rather than a compromise. and ice cr?m i like your idea of framing the presentation as a sort of salvaging of a landscape against a set of constraints.

it's gotta be much easier to design an environmentally plot
j/k

but seriously, this dilemma sounds like an episode of How I Met Your Mother

*environmentally friendly
damnit

but seriously, this dilemma sounds like an episode of How I Met Your Mother

hahaha, i've never seen that show, but regardless i am NOT going to mention that so that i don't get my ass kicked!

Surely she doesn't think that once she graduates, The Man is gonna be all 'ah yeah you go ahead and build whatever you want, no worries'. Use this as a lesson in dealing with it, IMO. I have to officially support all kinds of shit I don't agree with at work - as does everyone, I'm sure - and I don't feel like it's evidence of my moral failings or whatever.

she's obv right but whether or not she wins this proxy battle and even some of her battles in the real world...as popular as celebration-style new urbanism is/was, how much has it actually affected the american landscape? it's pretty much inconsequential.

big picture is always political so I'd try to convince her 'it doesn't really matter as much as you think it does'...I guess you already said it in "i made the argument that as a landscape architect, she doesn't have control over some things, such as the sprawling populace and the zoning of the land." but yeah the real fight is going to be won or lost on the political battlefield not in some landscape architecture classroom...

yeah, i def pointed out that the city council and the city planners that influence the zoning are the big players, and that the role of the energy/resource-conscious landscape architecture is unfortunately confined to doing the best she/can can considering the circumstances.

it was not a winning argument. :-/

i should point out that my "friend" is also my fiancee so please don't make fun of her

congrats!

i dont think you have to totally cede power to political higher ups - change comes from the grass roots too - its more a matter of correct flexibility and long view - like if youre too resigned from (mixed use) jump street youre gonna end up in an unhappy powerless situation - if youre too ridged no one will be willing to deal w/you - if you find the sweet spot theres a chance to get to a place where you can flourish

obvs theres a million other factors too, but you know life is too complex or w/e

Thing is I think this isn't entirely a question of moral idealism vs. not. Designing an 'environmentally sound' development that no one actually wants to finance, build or live in is beyond idealism, it's just futility.

I also think your friend has some confused ideas about authenticity. There's nothing especially "authentic" or "organic" about building an ultra-dense urban-style suburb in the middle of a rural nowhere. Cities are dense for many reasons beyond resource conservation, and suburbs are also not as dense precisely because people choose to live in them for lower density living, among other things.

If your friend wants to be idealistic and believes more people should live in dense, urban-style environments, that's fine, but I think in that case she should consider doing broader work than just designing for developers, i.e. be an advocate, become a developer herself, find ways to actually market these more environmentally sound developments to people and make them desirable, etc.

Also in re authenticity -- the authenticity of a place, inasmuch as I believe in that, tends to develop as people live in it, whether it's celebration-style florida or a city or whatever. You can't really plan organic development. It's oxymoronic.

they already are pretty desirable, see: manhattan/sf housing prices xp

I think that if you have a job which is part of 'the machine' then you have to accept that how you go about effecting change is different to if you are working from the outside. There's no reason why you can't espouse grass-roots idealism and compromise/reformism, you just have to know what is appropriate in which circumstances.

everywhere has zoning, at least in america, so in sense everywhere is planned

cept houston

but I mean fuck houston

they already are pretty desirable, see: manhattan/sf housing prices xp

― iatee, Saturday, February 19, 2011 1:13 PM Bookmark

Right, but Manhattan isn't just expensive because people love density. It's expensive because Wall Street and big law firms and the fashion industry and media etc. etc. create jobs that pay high salaries and the people with those jobs spend large chunks of their salaries on apartments near their jobs.

Also, point remains that most people don't want to live in places like Manhattan.

Also, point remains that most people don't want to live in places like Manhattan.

most people don't have the option to live in places like manhattan, because the only place like manhattan is manhattan and they can't afford to live in manhattan.

Right, but Manhattan isn't just expensive because people love density. It's expensive because Wall Street and big law firms and the fashion industry and media etc. etc. create jobs that pay high salaries and the people with those jobs spend large chunks of their salaries on apartments near their jobs.

this does not explain the ridiculous rent prices in, say, bay ridge or corona.

wall street etc are there because its dense, whether or not most people want to live in manhattan is immaterial, housing prices in dense places demonstrate that theres more demand than supply for such living, so why isnt there more dense housing in america for the people who want to live in it to live in, bad zoning policies mostly

make dense mixed use construction legal in more places inner suburbs particularly, build out more public transpo, and seeing as dense living has been found by study upon study to be more efficient and productive by myriad mesures our country will be a better place

i prefer moral dealwithitism

why do you hate the american auto manufacturers so much ice cr?m

take your job killing ideas and get off of my propertay

i prefer moral dealwithitism

― buzza, Saturday, February 19, 2011 1:33 PM (42 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

as long as im the one wearing the sunglasses

i h8 the american auto industry because their cars do not fly mostly

i mean its 2011 ffs!

flying cars might increase density cause it'd be cooler to live on the 40th story and your friends who didn't have a flying car couldn't visit you

this does not explain the ridiculous rent prices in, say, bay ridge or corona.

― iatee, Saturday, February 19, 2011 1:20 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wall street etc are there because its dense, whether or not most people want to live in manhattan is immaterial, housing prices in dense places demonstrate that theres more demand than supply for such living, so why isnt there more dense housing in america for the people who want to live in it to live in, bad zoning policies mostly

― ice cr?m, Saturday, February 19, 2011 1:23 PM Bookmark

This isn't exactly true. New York developed the way it did largely for economic reasons -- e.g. it's one of the best locations for a port on the east coast in terms of ease of access by water, straight shot to other parts of the country by rail (happens to line up with gaps in mountain ranges etc.). Wall Street goes pretty far back and has survived several rounds of changing views of whether city life or country life or suburban life is the better ideal. I mean saying that it's expensive cause it's dense and dense is desirable -- well why is it dense in the first place?

But it is true that restrictive zoning within New York drives up rents. You are absolutely right about that. I'm just saying there are other reasons New York is desirable besides density, whereas, there are many other cities with potentially dense downtown areas that no one seems to want to live in.

(was trying to say that Wall Street is there largely because other business was there, if that's not clear)

ps elevators would also not exist anymore

elevators are like streetcars, the flying auto industry would sabotage the industry

xp

But it is true that restrictive zoning within New York drives up rents. You are absolutely right about that. I'm just saying there are other reasons New York is desirable besides density, whereas, there are many other cities with potentially dense downtown areas that no one seems to want to live in.

comparing any other american city's downtown to nyc is misleading because basically no other american cities actually have a half-decent public transit system and none are anywhere comparable in density, not even comparable to the boroughs. even sf is pretty car-centric!

makes more sense to compare nyc to foreign cities w/ good transit, and yeah, they're generally popular and expensive. put a 468 stop subway system in another american city and I would bet a few people might move there.

hurting

a. no one is talking abt why new york is where it is particularly, there are reasons why dense cities find them selves in harbors and not on top of mountains, its interesting but not particularly essential to this conversation

b. there is a v high correlation between urban density and housing prices in the whole country not just new york but boston san franscisco dc

c. you are over estimating the availability of density opportunities in other places, there are in almost all cases zoning and infrastructure impediments to dense mixed use living

Key quote from Z_S's revive post:

her professor told her if she didn't like consumerism, she shouldn't live in america

If this isn't a big red flag, I don't know what could be. So, she's stuck. I break it down like this:

She's in a class where the prof doesn't want to teach the skill set she most wants to learn. If she veers too far away from the course the prof has set for the class, then she'll be wasting her time even attending, and may as well self-teach in isolation. If she stays with the course as given, she'll learn a skill set she more or less hates and will resist ever applying.

The moral content of this dilemma is minimal, unless she prefers to proselytize the prof for a come-to-Jesus conversion to her moral outlook. She is not being asked to discard her morality, only to disregard it. The practical moral effects are already neutralized by her recognition of her philosophical disagreement about the values being taught.

I would counsel using the class as opportunistically as possible for the best outcome for her own purposes. She should calibrate the value of placating the prof by flattering his views against the value of learning as much of what she wants to know as possible. She will know better than anyone the extent to which her prof's grade of her work is important to her, as opposed to her own personal growth in a direction she desires.

haha her professor still kinda otm

but yeah if anything the crazy housing prices in boston/sf/dc/chicago/la despite having pretty shitty transit when compared to similar global cities just highlights that in 2011 there's so much demand for dense living that the consumer will take what they can get at this point

SIR I WILL NOT HAVE U BESMIRCH THE GOOD NAME OF THE T THAT WAY! PARTICULARLY NOT THE B GREEN LINE

It's not as if opponents of horizontal development only advocate Portland or Manhattan density levels. I live in a subdivision in Orlando and it feels every bit as busy and dense and noisy as my room in Stoke Newington did. People might want the quiet and remote, nut their impulses often work against them. Suburban living is really urban living.

Hurting is right that you can't plan an "authentic" neightborhood, and that's something that phony new urbanism projects and conventional horizontal development both suffer from, that intent to build and plan ahead of need.

Think it's either cynical or naive to think of school as anything other than a credentialing process.

ZS's gf doesn't have to compromise when she gets out of school. Or she can go work for someone, compromise, and do legal activism on the side. Like that guy who asked to rewrite entries for the people who published the building and planning code bibles that developers usually defaulted to - they said to him, "For free? And you're respected in your field? Why not?" There are organizations who are going to want someone like ZS's gf to help them, and maybe even pay her. Or she could start her own non-profit, pair up with a like-minded lawyer and architect. There's some company in Miami that has a good legal team and has had little victories that have affected towns all over the state.

xpx3

no, he's a prat. what would he say to a foreign student who was spending vast sums to come to his architecture school to learn skills to take back to his own country?

'you're wasting your time'?

hopefully

if she doesnt like consumerism she shouldnt live in the world

xp a great deal because my post is tl;dr

So back to the classroom dilemma for a second: might it help to re-state the ultimate goal to yr friend, ZS? Personally at work when I'm in conflict w someone else and I feel strongly that they're wrong, I can fall into the battle of wills thing, like "I WILL NOT KOWTOW TO WRONGNESS, THIS IS BULLSHIT" stuff and the professional necessity of working it out feels like losing or giving up. That's when I know I have to reframe "winning" as getting the project done and being the grown-up -- imagine if someone else were watching the struggle and think about how it looks to be the one who handles the angry or jerky or misguided person gracefully and achieves a mutually satisfactory outcome, as opposed to taking their bait, getting caught up in the conflict they're creating, and being angry and reactive yourself.

So her prof is an ass, because he's going to make her present what she believes are shitty ideas that don't represent her ethic or aesthetic to outside people who aren't aware of the restrictions placed on the project. THAT is really deceptive and unfair, BUT like icey said, she needs to think about ways to gracefully and with no outward show of disapproval sketch out the limitations of the project in her presentation to the panel. This is about rising above.

Also, problem-solving is going to be the name of the game forEVER in the work world; in a way, she can backhandedly thank her asshole prof for setting her up with this dilemma.

there are certainly fields where it'd be worth the time/$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$/energy to come to a fine american university...but landscape architecture? urbanism? oh man

Nut = but

hurting

a. no one is talking abt why new york is where it is particularly, there are reasons why dense cities find them selves in harbors and not on top of mountains, its interesting but not particularly essential to this conversation

b. there is a v high correlation between urban density and housing prices in the whole country not just new york but boston san franscisco dc

c. you are over estimating the availability of density opportunities in other places, there are in almost all cases zoning and infrastructure impediments to dense mixed use living

― ice cr?m, Saturday, February 19, 2011 1:52 PM Bookmark

My point in the first place was that you can't just take a tract of land in the middle of nowhere, plan a high-density city, and get people to move there. You need jobs there. And it's not true that this is all due to zoning. There are rural areas with no zoning.

some wonderful advice again. all of you are A+ people, hope you know. :)

and yeah, xpost, i'm not sympathetic to the "love it or leave it" line of reasoning at all. stretching it a little bit, i know, but what if civil rights activists had succumbed to that thinking 50 years ago?

right but ice didn't suggest that and nobody really does, he suggested densifying inner suburbs xp

and building transit

we don't need to build a mahattan in kansas, we can add 2 million people to nyc and la and chicago

"her class is being asked to design a 10 acre plot of land that's currently semi-rural, but is quickly being overtaken by the 'burbs."

is what I was responding to

I'm all for densifying inner-ring suburbs of bustling cities. Already happening with Jersey City, Hoboken, Fort Lee, etc.

But even though it's wrong headed to create prefabricated communities (sort of think that this is a complaint of zs's gf in his op?), zoning activism could potentially reduce the amount of space we pave. My city would would be a lot less terrible with fewer parking lots and six-lane roads. The people who greenlight the roads and ok the zoning laws that require or fail to restrict the parking lots don't see that all of this pavement necessitates the need for more pavement.

its not true that theres no zoning in rural areas! xp

necessitates the need?

is what I was responding to

yeah but zs's finance already knew that this is a losing battle cause the prof is requiring them to create some form of burbs. I'm not sure what her project looked like but if it really was hyper-urbanism in the middle of nowhere then the prof probably does have a point, that wouldn't work. but also he's an idiot.

I'm all for densifying inner-ring suburbs of bustling cities. Already happening with Jersey City, Hoboken, Fort Lee, etc.

yeah jersey is one of the best examples of what should happen elsewhere, too bad about ARC