Bigger Picture

Is it just me or does this economy issue at hand scream we need to change our way of life? If I shared with you the statics of American's energy consumption compared to the world as a whole, and how every book I'm reading lately combines how we are depleting the earths resources, and how the end of times might occur soon it would make you do more than scratch your head. It seems the american dream has become the world's demise. If you think about it...we have designed a culture around "keeping up with the jones's" or buing bigger houses or cars or shiny things like celebrities have. Do you know that the majority of celebritys get those items for free to market for those companys. I mean really do we need entertainment like movies we pay 8-12.00 per person a weekend and then pay up to 20 to buy when it comes out? Do our kids have to the million stuffed animals from the disney movies to help walt disney's corporation? Or are we as my book so elequantly puts it "spending money we have yet to earn on things we don't even want to impress people we don't like? I have to tell you I'm the first to confess I chased after happiness with buying things and thinking I had nothing else to offer in my life for awhile except taking people on trips or buying them nice gifts and wanting to empress people, but I find it ironic that at this point in my life all the superficial stuff is fading into the background and all those who truly know and love me for who i am are still standing and now I'm going to school for Architecture in a time that the flash and shineyness will be gone and my job will be to fix the problems this "american dream" society has created. One that thought the world would keep reproducing whatever we needed with little disregard for the waste we generate.

Ive become enthralled with the philosophy that we need to look to nature to solve alot of our design and even economy systems like the olden days. We have studied birds for centuries learning how their flight patterns or flying in a V helps conserve their energy allowing the person out front to switch off to gain rest while migrating. Or how nautural process have no waste. Everything gets reused and cycled in one way or another. I find it entertaining how my generation will be taxed with the responsibility to sustain this resource we have been depleting much faster than we could ever replenish and build buildings or restore buildings in a manner that could be considered arcaic. We are one of the only societies that builds an entire "get away city" in the desert. Really....Palm Springs and Vegas? I mean no one can spend more than 4 days in vegas without coming home loosing everything or in the hospital from alcohol poisioning so why is it so popular? Why is it so sucessful? Why do we even consider it a destination? It's just an example...and I love Vegas by the way but honestly after 3 days I'm over it. So how could ones physicy allow you to love it in the first place. I guess moving forward I'm finding bits and peices or glimpses of what could appear as peices to this puzzle I explain as a weight of my destiny and what it is. Now that the curtain is pulling back somewhat I'm seeing it might not just be about a building it could be about a community, group of people, society or begining of a new cultural process and way of life.