8 February 2002 is inhumanity natural?


15:35 Eating outdoors in dry spell between showers.

I'm wondering if there isany way by which the present inhumanity of industrial living can be overcome? It has persisted since the beginning of 'industrialisation', as it is so inhumanly called, and has resisted the protests and efforts of many*. Why?

This question is leading me to ask if the tendency to industrial inhumanity is itself inherent to nature, (or to afternature - as I am calling the presence of people?)

And is the impulse to try to humanise technology and design also inherent to nature?

As I sit here, out of the wind, drinking my cooling tea and watching a paid servant (a human person!) clear away dirty cups and saucers etc. ...and hearing a (sub-human?) robin singing in a nearby bush ...I realise that these questions will take some answering. And that they may embody contradictions or misleading assumptions - but I feel that the question is nevertheless valid, and timely.

(provoked by being asked to write a brief synopsis of my career - in which I stated that my purpose has always been to try and humanise industrial living...am I attempting the impossible?)



*I was thinking of William Blake, William Wordsworth, William Morris, Walt Whitman, John Ruskin, Frank Lloyd Wright... the best known of many poets, artists and designers who have opposed the 'inhumanity' of industrialisation with constructive attempts at something better (though none have succeeded).

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