The Human Geo-Nome

There’s nothing quite like sitting at a round table of intellectuals to make a man like myself, who is of average IQ, to suddenly become self-aware in the worst of ways. Suddenly, I’m paying too much attention to my choice of words, which I find quickly are being second-guessed and examined to a point of conversational paralysis. When I speak with friends, I expect the margins of error to be a bit wider than if we were, say, writing a college paper. I don’t expect the speaker to always pick the "right" word. Usually, the choice words, no matter how carefully selected, are an approximation of the intended meaning. But a good listener gets the general idea and keeps the conversation moving forward.

Not here. Not this day. This is an academic tribunal.

The conversation was about Genetic Engineering, a topic that can easily tributary into other, more sensitive topics, depending on who else is at the table. Race is an unavoidable topic when discussing Genetic Engineering. So is Class. Religion, too. Definitely Health-Care. Hours later, when driving home, another topic that is orthogonal with Genetic Engineering occurred to me:

Environment.

My High-Brow discussion with my friends took place in a High-Class Environment. Considering the money that its home owners paid, I’ll assume that questions about space and design by the buyers were met with satisfactory answers. As a visitor of this environment, my first impression of its space was one of comfort. In psychology we’ve classified different types of space proximity. We consider tighter and closer spaces being intimate or invasive zones. As you step away the space is deemed impersonal and/or safe. Affluent homes are usually designed with enough insulating space to have a sense of privacy, while maintaining a close proximity to inspire community.

The drive home was a different story. I passed through an economically staggering environment where the space is engineered to virtually no space at all. The homes are all tight and congested. The agenda here, clearly, was massification and maximizing the number of houses in a given space. The goal was to earmark a space, no matter how small, for this enormous population called the poor.

As humans push ever closer to perfecting the “typos” in the human genome, it becomes unclear if the technology will be even more selective than evolution itself -- favoring the rich and powerful over the poor and disenfranchised. The Human Environment (The Geo-Nome) may be our only touchstone for predicting how genome technology will be applied. Certainly, we have ample resources to rehabilitate depressed habitats for the poor. HUD money should pay for the application of these technologies. And yet, from the look of the faces of these dying buildings we can see that natural selection has given way to economic selection. Old and sick buildings, and the people who occupy them, are left to their fate.

In her excellent book The Cinema of Mamoru Oshii which chronicles the work of CyberPunk film and animation director Mamoru Oshii, the author Dani Cavallaro writes, "It is possible to think about buildings as bodies... it could be argued that cities themselves both are and have bodies: the city is born, grows, conceives, reproduces and dies... it follows certain diets, it develops diseases, neurosis and disabilities, such as congestion, tumorous overgrowth, hyperactivity and the fear of alien interactions." Environmental bodies eventually evolve into prosthetics for the human body, where the space around us goes from an impersonal enclosure to a more inclusive embodiment. Cars have this effect on their owners, who after a certain period, have a widened proprioception that includes the length and width of their car. This heightened sense of space becomes particularly useful when parallel parking. The Bodies symbiotic relationship with its GeoNomic Prosthetic would then mean that the health of the environment determines the health of its inhabitants. The cure for most Environmental Diseases have long since been discovered, and yet, the GeoNome remains untreated in poor environments.

Buildings, as bodies, also share in the discrimination of their inhabitants.
As newer and better buildings emerge, the older one’s are conveniently segregated away from modernity. A few of the “old-timers” are preserved, but the overwhelming majority are condemned or abandoned. The only option that remains to such buildings are to serve as an accomplice in the criminal activity of their neglected human counter-parts, no longer functioning as a home but rather a hide-out for drugs,rape and gang activity.

But there is an upside to the underground.

The expression “Man, Heal Thyself” takes a whole new meaning when Underground Populations take their limited resources and with them create a rich and diverse cultural Environment that you will never find in the sterile, controlled homogeneity of Suburban Engineering. What I didn’t say in my earlier diagnosis of Suburbia, that after all of its controlled comfort and security, there was also an atmosphere that was, to put it plainly, just plain boring. Perfection is a nice thought, but is seldom inspiring.

This dynamic textured landscape of forgotten and neglected environments is the result, in part, of its forgotten and neglected artists who emerge as illicit saviors of these dying structures. By "tagging" the buildings with their names and art, they rehabilitate these old structures. I have to believe that this salvation is mutual.The environment and its people may not be cured from their poverty, but they arereborn into a second life that could never be manufactured or engineered.