The article is aimed at understanding how information impacts us as is evident from the line ‘Information, as such, may be morally neutral but it is certainly not inactive.’ This article also signifies how we protect ourselves from information that may oppose our beliefs and how we tend to exclude alien perceptions. Through the characters in J.K. Huysmans’ Against Nature, we see Des Esseintes who only surrounds himself with things that reaffirm his beliefs. He wished to remove himself from seeing humans toiling in Paris between four walls or trying to scrounge for money. He populated his new habitation with things he admired. His style of living was conserved but at the expense of losing contact with the outside world.
This is just an example of how people eclipse certain
aspects of the chaotic universe to generate moments of calm in an otherwise
confused existence. This tendency is manifested in certain disorders such as sensory
aphasia, amnesia neuroses and schizophrenia. At times, humans attempt to manipulate
their external world, instead if influencing their internal state. The focus of
this article is how one adjusts the nature around them to suit their whims. They
can do so in two ways: retreat and exclusion.
Retreat allows one to severe connections and live like hermits. A life
accompanied by fasts and prayers but in itself being a preparation. The
planning of such kind of lifestyle emerged with organized monasticism. The solitude
and antiquity of hermits is recreated in the Charterhouse with some
architectural props in which a wall is built around each monk to form a small
garden. It resembles a densely packed nest of isolated individuals. Here, the
architecture reduces the possibility of human contact. All self-isolation requires
participants to retreat to individual autonomy. Through extending this
philosophy, a mantle envelops the inhabitants in a familiar landscape, a place
to practice our ideological practices.
The Great Wall of China is a manifestation of the
principle of information exclusion. It served as a shield against voices of
alien culture. It was never a success from a military point of view but served
as an excellent tool to raise the hands of the nation to cover their eyes. Yet
retreat doesn’t always lead to weakening of social bonds as the people isolated
from the outside world, united by their condemnation of the present, begin to live
according to their crafted illusions. This meta-reality rivals with a
once-resistant reality. This is the nature of reflection, grace and solitude
also.
Intellects in the West have always championed the
causes of unity. Rosseau even said that some people ought to be forced to be
free, which meant that they should be forced to do the right things. Such an
organization gives rise to an isotropic civilization where everyone works
towards the same goal. Ideas of the nature of things are built into the
structure of surroundings which justifies one’s own beliefs.
Exclusion is a way to change the shape of society.
This is evident in the body of politics that hermetically aims to seal off
rebellious and distasteful parts of society. Much energy is devoted to eliminating
the acts which are not socially accepted. Thus, human beings will enclose those
whom they find offensive within walls without any remorse. They intend to
exclude the knowledge and sensation of the most disturbing influences by erecting
a barrier between himself and his objects of dissatisfaction. The barriers are
set up on grounds of what are called aesthetics, an attempt to mask the ugly.
Walls are simply not a barrier of transferring energy,
but prevent entropy of meaning and preserve the concept of our dream world.
This dream world could be personal or universal, as accepted by the whole
society. Walls are the armour we erect to preserve our personal integrity.
Thus, architecture offers a tool for humans to
construct walls and present images that they prefer, instead of the ones that
actually exist.
Still, humans have been unable to create a wall that
completely eclipses the reality outside. The things we are enclosed with end up
determining our interests and passions.
In 1830s, Millbank Penitentiary was redesigned to
prevent the communication between convicts in cells. Thus, in the Age of Reason,
the main efforts put to terminate all forms of communication between people of
dangerous character. Vice was a contagious disease of the spirit and was
thought to increase when associated with other like minds. Another example is
the Wakefield asylum where inmates were closed off from each other to prevent
the worsening of their condition due to those more clinically insane. The
asylum was elevated on a plateau to provide a view of the scenery, in an
attempt to soothe the unstable mind. This is an example in which architecture is
a means for the fabrication of a synthetic geography and used for the
involuntary improvement of the human mind.