Quote from Ryan Augustine on June 17, 2023, 13:57

 

Wow, what a mouthful of word salad! Hope it went down easy.

 

It is the contention of this article that the environment one lives in is directly influential in how that person lives their life. That is not to say that a person’s personality, nor his inner self are determined by said environment, far from it. It is to say that how he operates, his relationships, work, day to day life, even thoughts and dreams are largely the consequence of how he lives. The ocean does not change the nature of a fish, yet the fish is beholden to the great seas, their tides, storms and currents influence and dictate life to the fish.

So too does our environment influence us. Everything from the architecture to the institutions like schools and courts work to shape our behavior. Most people now find themselves living in cities of varying size some big, some large. For those fortunate few that do not, even they must go into the cities from time to time, it is a fact of life. It is thus the purpose of this article to analyze the modern city and the direction it is heading in, what it will look like in the near future, and what that will mean for us.

The old adage is to understand where we are going we must know where we have been, and I think this holds especially true for the issue at hand. Of course one could cut down a forest and not have enough trees to write the books necessary to contain all the information dealing with the history of cities, but I will do my best to provide a coherent summary. Cities were, almost universally, historically built in a grid pattern. That is they were built with intersecting roads with a central open area which functioned as a Market, a forum, or meeting place. In this area the adjacent buildings housed the important institutions of Church and government. (As an aside thus it was so that not just intellectually, but physically Church and state were always meant to function together.)

Cities were designed in such a manner because it was imminently practical as it allowed ease of access from any point of the city to market, the well, and the city center. It also made cities compact as in those days most travel was by foot and walking long distances unnecessarily was a very non functional idea. Furthermore having everything together and in a grid layout made for ease of navigation and defense for obvious reasons.

These principles of urban planning worked exceedingly well for many thousands of years, they helped to spur and grow civilization by forcing interactions by an individual with the whole population of the city. Thus on any given day a citizen of ancient Athens could walk down to the market to buy grapes and hear Socrates teaching in the forum, turn and strike up a conversation with another citizen buying olive oil from across the city about the high prices of Spartan loincloths, or the robes one should wear to the theater than night. By way of these myriads of interactions, occurring daily a great exchange of ideas and a greater sense of cohesion was built and maintained in the ancient city state. Is it no wonder then that ancient Greed a small area, with such a high density of city states developed such a diverse and unique and strong culture? Compare that with the migrating steppe tribes whose occupied the huge swath of lands between the black sea and China and one does not find a tenth of the culture.

 

Of course that is not the whole picture, many other cities existed across the world which did not contribute a tenth as much as the Greeks. There are obviously other factors at play such as the degree of freedom enjoyed, the virtue of the people, their desire for truth, and even their genetics. All of these things and more are a vital interplay. Perhaps it is better said that when the institutions of the city were noble they brought out the best in man and when they were terrible man was oppressed into fear, darkness, and groupthink. For instance the Aztecs had their cities too, yet their gods were cruel demons. What contributions to humanity are the Aztecs known for today? My point is not that the physical city structure was the catalyst for the development of high culture, but that the physical environment man built for himself was so designed that it acted as a great enabler for that development to take place. Much as good crops need good soil, and healthy fish need clean water.

This is not to say either that the rural countryside did not have any contribution, quite the contrary. The quiet life of deep thought and reflection have provided some of the greatest thinkers in the Western tradition. Furthermore the interplay of city and country was not as divided back then as it was today. Farmers brought their crops into market daily and they would often be the chief messengers of the wide world, and also the most eager for news. Thus a man from the country would often find himself in the city where he would interact with the other philosophers of the day, then after his business was done he could retire to the country for a long solitude to develop what ideas he had encountered. Again things back then were not as they are today.

Speaking of today things in Urban planning began to change about 100 years ago. It was a combination of technologies and social restructuring which kicked off the evolution into what is manifesting before our eyes as we now see them. Firstly the automobile greatly enhanced the distance one could travel to work and also to meet his needs. Throughout human history man had lived where he had worked. If he made his living in the factory he lived by the factory, if he made his living selling clothes he lived above his shop, you get the point. Now with the automobile there was a separation developing inside cities where people lived further and further from their work. (really who can blame them? would you want to live next to the slaughterhouse, even if you were a butcher?) The result of this was the segregation of cities. Segregation in the sense that commercial, industrial, and residential areas were now allocated to separate parts of the cities, whereas before they had been all jumbled up.

These residential areas most often manifested themselves into neighborhoods where people self-segregated along lines of religious, ethnic, and racial commonality for it is the natural tendency for people to proximate to those most like to themselves. The phrase “opposites attract” really is not true.

So in homogeneous countries unban the status quo was not really changed insofar as the social structure was not much altered. In heterogeneous countries different ethnic communities found themselves more isolated and freer to self-determination. This state may have continued existing as such indefinitely however social(ist) planners realized (or perhaps it had been planned long ago) that the technological revolutions provided the necessary catalyst to remake the urban environment and thus revolutionize social dynamics.

To understand what these planners did, we must understand their goals. The philosophy of the planners is that of communism. Communism as a term is a bit obsequious. There are lots of definitions which seem to float around: Marxism, Leninism, Socialism. As a philosophy communism seems to adapt itself to the times in order to appear most attractive ever changing its belief system to lure people into its trap. This is not by accident, but by design. Yet it retains an essence which to which I proffer this seeming eccentric definition: Communism is the philosophy which seeks to transform the world into a black goo. That is an amorphous, ugly, completely degenerate world, devoid of any borders or distinctions. A goo has no structure and is only made up of atoms, thus everything in it is completely atomized, yet uniform. The atoms in the goo are likewise completely powerless and must go where the tides push them. (Ironically those planners feel they can build a better society, better man in such a world, yet they fail to realize they will also have to live in it)

Understanding this was and is the goal of the urban planners their actions can be analyzed by in this light. Their attack upon the cityscape was thus to diversify the populations living in the cities then homogenize said populations into a new synthetic man. (Synthetic in the sense that the process was racial, ethnic, religious synthesis I believe that Comrade E. Michael Jones has written a book on the subject, which I have not read) This was a very important process, yet it is not the subject of this article so I will have to gloss over it, yet the reader should understand this was an ongoing process which occurred in conjunction to what I hereafter describe.

The other revolution was to design cities that discouraged people from social interaction. Thus like atoms are molecules without bonds to atomize society requires the social bonds to be broken. This was achieved by the uglification of the downtown city landscape. Before the city center was dominated with the most beautiful buildings a culture could produce and was designed to encourage the public to traffic and mingle. The new architecture was purposely created to be harsh, unforgiving, and ugly to discourage this behavior. The buildings were made with exposed concrete, built overbearingly, and in inhuman proportions. Huge public housing units, affectionately known as projects, were constructed adjacent to the downtown areas to house the lowest common denominators of society as to attract drugs and crime to the downtown areas. This process continued until it had worked so well that nobody wanted to live in these buildings and thus many had to be torn down. This phenomenon is known today as sustainability 😉. Thus the downtown of cities was made into an inhospitable place and by way of physical change to the urban environment people became detached and distanced from the institutions which were housed therewithin. Civic participation, virtue, a sense of belonging and ownership to one’s country and culture declined precipitously.

Next the social planners attacked the commercial districts, the other place where people mingled, exchanged ideas, and was a source of cohesion. Main street in cities and towns was replaced by the mall, an unattractive warehouse like building which turned shopping into a frantic materialistic experience. This was in turn replaced by the big box store which made commercialism into an extension of work. Like going to the DMV. Now with the advent of the interment most people do their shopping online and in this aspect of their lives have become isolated, atomized. This is not to say that any commercial modality does not have its benefits, but these revolutions need to be understood in the context of how cities are designed to achieve the communist goal.

How people live, the residential neighborhood has also changed. Cities have become spread out and the grid system of roads and blocks have been replaced by the meandering street and main roadway. Cities no longer have the floorplan of a grid network their blueprints more resemble that of a watershed where many small creeks and stream run into main branches and rivers. There are some benefits to such as system as it is said that it more easily facilitates automobile traffic. Yet it comes at the cost of making public transportation and foot traffic infeasible. In achieving the communist goal cities are designed so as to make the idea of neighborly relations unattractive. One cannot simply walk over to a friend’s house in another neighborhood. Streets have become physically isolated from one another. Everything is compartmentalized and can be cut off easily. Psychologically this has had a great dampening effect on people’s concept of freedom and rights as they no longer feel as free as they once were to go anywhere they liked in a city. The principle of freedom remains, but it has become denatured physically. Just as a mouse in a maze has the freedom to travel to any part of the maze he wishes, yet the physical structure of a maze makes such an exercise oppressive. This design further lends itself to isolation and a lack of social involvement as people are corralled into their respective corners and feel like hunkering down in their little enclaves.

 

Today these urban revolutions continue in full swing. And the communist principles behind them have been applied to every aspect of designing the urban environment. Thus the average people finds themselves living in a world physically constructed to be hostile to their nature as a social animal. Going forward this article will analyze what the future will hold for the city through the application of these principles and how they have been applied in the past and present.

Human nature being what it is, intransigent, the great thrust to further isolate and corral people will be to play off their longing for and belief in the fights of freedom against the rights of private property. This conflict has already begun where the public forum, which goes back to ancient times, has been replaced by the online forum. The online forum, being privately owned can and does censor people and dictate the flow of information. This is by and large accepted because it is assumed to be an exercise in the private property rights of the company, even though the physical entity of the public forum has largely disappeared and the privately owned forum is becoming the last alternative. Thus principally the issue remains that one still retains the aforementioned freedom of expression, yet physically it has been designed away. The future holds many such conflicts engaging this stratagem where your rights will be put at variance against the rights of others, primarily property rights.

This stratagem was likewise employed, with a little variation, during the so-called pandemic where employers and businesses were the primary enforcers of the covid restrictions. The businesses were threatened financially and thus they enforced the restrictions to their respective employees and shoppers. The individual by and large had the freedom to do what they wanted, yet physically an individual must eat and work. Thus the average man who yearns for freedom and loves property rights was forced into a situation where enjoying his freedoms brought him into conflict with the rights of another. The future holds many such conflicts as a way of eroding away the freedoms and rights of man, by way of denying him the physical access to the places where he can enjoy them.

Like a bad shepard who lets the wolves come into the pasture to drive the sheep into the pen it is thus that an acceleration has been put on the cities to degenerate into homeless drug abuse and crime so as to drive away the people from what remains of their access and enjoyment of the urban centers of power and into managed estates. As the cities are flooded with vagrants and criminals the new developments being constructed are modeled after the HOA, or as it has been called by some the “15-minute city.” These developments are designed to isolate a community of diversified people into miniature economic zones with extremely limited ingress and egress options, gates and fences, and management agreements over a person’s private property. People are driven in and find this an attractive option because they fear the anarchy plaguing the city and like a castle wall these developments are designed to offer the law-abiding person a sense of security. Likewise, the agreements one has, and will have to sign with these management entities is sold on the premise that it will keep the undesirable criminal and homeless population out.

However, it is a Faustian bargain whereby the signee relinquishes their rights and places them at the mercy of the corporate model of control. So that in principle they still retain the rights, but physically their rights over property, free expression, etc. have been curtailed, eventually to be removed. Such developments are designed to be isolated and easily controlled, both by the roads, and utilities. Once we understand their nature we can call them what they are: Ghettos. (Definition: put in or restrict to an isolated or segregated area or group)

The future urban landscape will be one of many Ghettos, with all the accoutrements to appear attractive and nice for the good citizen. Behind the façade however the mechanism for a highly controlled, atomized, and technocratic society will be fully emplaced. As mentioned earlier these mechanisms will primarily employ the velveted glove approach of using the property rights of the Ghetto community to take away the real property rights of the individual. For example, the thrust to get everyone to abandon their gas-powered car and get a battery powered car will be carried out by denying gas stations the right to operate on ghetto property, ghetto air quality ordinances, and ghetto policy against devaluing the property of other ghetto occupants. The right to a gas-powered car will be construed as an assault against the property of the other ghetto occupants. One who owns a gas car will find himself defending that which he has a perfect right to against the abstracted so-called rights of others. The assault against him will be phrased in such terms as “You signed the HOA” and “It may not be against the law, but it is against policy.” Therefore in principle a man has every legal right to own a gas car, yet physically it will be made impossible. Just as a man has every right to seek justice and a right to the law, yet these institutions will be made inaccessible, and the legal and judicial institutional framework will be replaced by corporate policy and bylaws to which a man has no right to self-determination nor recourse.

Thus, the dejure American/Western style government which has been founded on the enlightenment ideals of Rights and Democracy will have been defacto replaced by committees and bureaucratic process, all for your own good of course 😉. This is simply communism masquerading as corporatism and in people’s minds such oppression will be reconciled as an expression of capitalism and the undiscerning will be driven further into socialism, thinking it the legitimate resistance. A very dangerous catch-22.

To physically describe the Ghetto it will, and is even now, being constructed to be attractive as possible whilst still employing all the principles of the urban revolution to further the communist goals of atomization and disenfranchisement. In the high-density ones, the buildings are plain and constructed with the same floorplans as the projects of yesterday only now they have blocks of color and random pieces of bright sheet metal to hide the ugly concrete. In the upper middle class and rich ghettos track homes of bland colors and no uniqueness are cheaply constructed and manicured to attract. Gone is the grid network, the public forum, the city square, any institution of meaningful power. Gone is any meeting place outside of a landscaped park with little or no trees which could provide a bit of privacy. In the wealthier ghettos perhaps an eccentric craft beer gastropub will be tolerated where checkered shirt men can go and quaff over the latest estrogenic overly hopped IPA and watch the sports teams in their pride uniforms play with balls.

Once the battery vehicle has achieved hegemony the communists can put the screws to the Ghetto. The necessary electrical infrastructure will not have been built to supply the power needs required for everyone to run their vehicles. Thus, an electrical energy scarcity will be weaponized with the boogieman of climate change to further lock people down in their ghettos. Yet instead of provoking animus towards the powers which have incarcerated them the people of the ghetto will be turned against one another using game theory. Power will be allocated to the Ghetto as a whole, managed by the Ghetto HOA corporation, not to the individual. Thus, one man’s use of power will be construed as taking power away from another man. The Ghetto community (if one could ever call it that) will be weaponized against the individual along the Marxist adage: “To each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” A vipers nest of informants will inhabit the community constantly monitoring one another. And one will have to fill out the necessary forms, online, in order to access and use the power one should have the rights too.

Even most of the rich will not be able to escape this fate. In many ways they are the most susceptible to it. For the future poor, the downtrodden and the homeless drug addicted are not of any meaning to these great plans. That is not to say that they are not every bit as human, nor have all the rights as the rest of us. It is just to say that once their purpose in the revolution has been realized they are inconsequential to continuing the revolution. Said revolution is primarily a conflict against the middle class and the rich of the west, those with agency. Yes, the rich are victims of this conflict too and by and large they already live in their gated communities, no? How long will it be until they arise from their downy beds to look upon their gilded fences and realize those spikes and bars keep them in as much as keep the riffraff out? During COVID how many of them, with all their wealth, could afford to tell the truth? A homeless man is richer than they are in that respect for he wanders the streets shouting whatever he wishes no matter how insane. To lose one’s golf club membership was too price to pay for the rich.

 

Alas this article was not meant to dishearten, but to show the direction that cities are travelling in, and what their final destination will be. I for one advocate fleeing the cities to the countryside if one can. Furthermore, I would like to add one more thing to this already lengthy article. Much has been put out which would seem to cause great fear of the future of the city planning such as eating the bugs, and eastern style block housing. I do not think those things will really manifest in the west, but they are put out there so that when the ghetto is presented to the occupant it does not seem so bad. After all the Ghetto will not appear to be those things to the prospective buyer, though the same principles of the bugs will run through them and that should bug you as it bugs me. Hope this article was helpful God Bless.