“One does not act rightly toward one\\\'s fellows if one does not know how to act rightly towards the earth.”
Liberty Hyde Bailey

The Holy Earth

Tag Archives: Purpose

Inside Grand Seiko

Published: December 26, 2017
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“This is the minimum requirement in making a beautiful watch: First, each individual part must be beautiful.”  

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Christopher Alexander – Mechanistic: A Mental Toy

Published: December 26, 2017
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“The mechanistic idea of order can be traced to Descartes, around 1640. His idea was: if you want to know how something works, you can find out by pretending that it is a machine. You completely isolate the thing you are interested in … from everything else, and you invent a mechanistic model, a mental […]

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Ikigai: A Reason for Being (Purpose)

Published: October 22, 2016
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The concept of Ikigai: I don’t feel that I’ve been able to live in this convergence. I would also want to see another dimension in it … one that relates to happiness and well-being since I believe it is possible to live in this convergence with negative outcomes and personal sacrifice in well-being and happiness. […]

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David Graeber on Creating Each Other

Published: June 20, 2016
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imagining economies in which we primarily create each other … and along the way some “things”:

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Christopher Alexander on Essential Awe

Published: June 1, 2016
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“… In this conception, value is not something merely grafted onto space, as a passenger might be who carries no weight and does no work. It is part of the same nearly mechanical picture of space that we have come to believe in, and respect and trust. Yet, at the same time, in a most […]

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Christopher Alexander on an Extended Physics

Published: May 31, 2016
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“… In physics, the effort has always been to take the geometry of a material system and to derive from it, predictions about the dynamic behavior, forces, and causal interactions … which follow from a particular configuration. In art and building … Again we have geometry, but here we seek especially to derive from it, […]

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Christopher Alexander on a Gift to God

Published: May 26, 2016
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This felt like a demanding excerpt to put together. “When the field of centers appears in something, its deep feeling appears and it is … spirit made actual, spirit made manifest … It is not an indication of God living behind all things, but it is actually God itself … As we understand this more, […]

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Christopher Alexander on Never Truly Beautiful

Published: May 24, 2016
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“What kind of beauty could go so deep that a person would be afraid of creating it? … Working with architects, I have experienced it again and again. Many traditional shapes, especially the most profound shapes with deep and serious centers in them, for some reason trouble modern architects profoundly. Even when an architect does […]

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Christopher Alexander on Pleasing Yourself

Published: May 21, 2016
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“In order to create living structure, we must please ourselves … And you need only please yourself. But you must please yourself truly. And to do that you must first discover your own true self, come close enough to t, and to listen to it, so that it can be pleased. Does this sound absurd? […]

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Christopher Alexander on Making as Healing

Published: May 20, 2016
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“When the I-stuff is created, it nourishes the maker – not only the viewer, but the maker too. For some reason, the process of making things which are alive enlarges us, deepens our experience. I feel more alive for having done it. It is like food … What is the reason for this ‘food-like’ character […]

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Christopher Alexander on Tears, Sadness and Unity

Published: May 17, 2016
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This resonates deeply with me. A pursuit of happiness has never appealed or worked out for me. If what Alexander is true, then the oh-so-popular notion of “pursuit of happiness” is bound to hit a wall. My experiences of happiness seem to expire quickly, while my experiences of sadness seem to resonate deeper and longer […]

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Christopher Alexander on Devotional Atmosphere

Published: April 25, 2016
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“As a matter of observation, it is simply true to say that many of the most beautiful works of art in the world’s history, and many of the most profoundly living structures, large and small, that human beings have created, have been created within … a … mystical religious context. … What, then, about the […]

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Christopher Alexander on Ultra Mechanistic

Published: April 23, 2016
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For more on this dear-to-me subject see Robert Pirsig’s Lila and the work of Rupert Sheldrake … and this is just the opening of the book “Scientists often like to say that the materialist view of present-day science is potentially consistent with early any view of ethics or religion because it says nothing about these […]

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Christopher Alexander on Inert Matter

Published: April 21, 2016
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” … our view of matter is flawed … The substance which the 20th century world was made of remained the inert, mechanical space-time of Descartes, Newton and Einstein, of quantum mechanics and the string theorists. This mechanical substance is our cake. So far, our spiritual views and ethical views are only frosting on this […]

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Christopher Alexander on Our Birthright

Published: April 18, 2016
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deep sigh … there’s a book ending to contemplate … architecture!!! “I should like to make one last comment on the buildings I have shown, the processes, the forms. Throughout, in all this material, we touch on a birthright. Yet this birthright that I speak of, it is in the mind, in people’s minds. And […]

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Christopher Alexander on Wabi to Sabi – Rusty Beauty

Published: April 1, 2016
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I am starting to feel a build up of “missing” excerpts … from the first phase of my reading Alexander (before I started excerpting) and from some things which didn’t feel “excerptable” … in this case roughness. “… to get the perfect adaptation which is required by the unfolding of a field of centers, you […]

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Christopher Alexander on Traditional Elements

Published: March 28, 2016
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a beautiful illustration of the nature and manifestation of static quality “In a natural unfolding of the building – the wholeness of that configuration itself – generates centers at various key points … Consider an imaginary process in which a generalized building is conceived, in outlines, as a hazy volume … even without knowledge of […]

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Christopher Alexander on the Purpose of a Room

Published: March 26, 2016
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“In principle, a room is the sanctification and illumination of a life. It is your life made manifest. The room itself, like a cradle or a gathering together of a life is, in its essence, the place of a thousand joys and sorrows, the receptacle of your life and your children’s lives, the embodiment, in […]

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Reading Lila – Good

Published: May 2, 2010
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Take care of your goodness

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Reading Lila – Enlightment

Published: May 2, 2010
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Christ, Lincoln, Gandhi … that’s what they were really involved in, the cleansing of the world through the absorption of karmic garbage. They didn’t pass it on.

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