Comments on: Howling Tower: World of Wonder

By: Michael Kelley

Michael Kelley — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 05:00:15 +0000

@The Recursion King – It must be sad living in your world.

By: The Recursion King

The Recursion King — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 15:57:57 +0000

“The mass of humanity beginning to claw its equality from the clutches of the elite is well worth the price of some romantic ruins.” What utter tosh. We have all been made slaves to greedy capitalists who ultimately have no morals and whose only real goal is to make as much money as possible… and pay as little tax as they can get away with. They’ll turn the earth over, raze forests, pollute oceans and cause wars and genocide if it will make them more money at the end of it… And somehow that is better than serving king and country? We’ve got it all backwards. Were slaves, through mortgages, through how everything costs money, through rising inflation, through debt, and so on. In the past… water was free! Now our water supplies are locked up by water companies who force us to pay.. to pay to live. It’s not safe to drink rain water any more thanks to the pollution of these greedy masters of our civilisation. Need I go on?

By: Mark Mueller

Mark Mueller — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 17:07:15 +0000

The greatest marvel of the modern age, to my mind, is the modern city. Modern cities depend on a infrastructures that vastly outsrip anything the ancients had, and as a result are able to accommodate populations that ancient or medieval cities could not ever hope to achieve. To say that our greatest achievments are organisation and infrastructure may not seem as grandiose as the pyramids of egypts, but I don’t consider it any less of an accomplishment. As a result of it, nearly every single person in the wetern world possesses a level of comfort, health, and safety that rivals ancient kings. And to my mind, you have to be a little jaded not to see a city skyline lit up at night as a sight inspiring delight and awe, and we don’t have just one of those, but thousands. Furthermore, this infrastructure allows unprecedented levels of personal freedom. Slavery is abolished in the western world, something that would have been unthinkable in the ancient. Our horizons are not limited to our own town, nation or even continent, but most peopel, if they wish it, (not merely the wealthiest) have the power to make their life anywhere they wish in the world.

By: Azazyll

Azazyll — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 16:31:03 +0000

Very few civilizations, including most Native American ones, truly lived in harmony with their environment when they had the means to exploit it. Protecting the environment is the hard road, not the obvious one.

Moving on, I agree with Winter’s assessment that our physical monuments are less grand, but our achievements are no less great. The efforts and wealth of millions have gone into putting a man on the moon, to wiping out smallpox and rinderpest, and to sharing our knowledge on an unprecedented scale with projects like Wikipedia. The difference is that we no longer live in a civilization where the cost of labor is comprable with the cost of food, and so the few cannot dictate that the resources of the many will be spent on self-aggrandizing (albeit magnificent) projects. The mass of humanity beginning to claw its equality from the clutches of the elite is well worth the price of some romantic ruins. And I say this as a person who has delved the pyramids, climbed the great wall, and gazed in wonder on the Parthenon. My professional life is the study the past, but I would never say I would trade modernity for it.

We have toilets, after all

By: The Recursion King

The Recursion King — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 13:24:17 +0000

Fitz, if that was the goal, then the builders, designers and engineers utterly failed. The Empire State Building is nowhere near as impressive as the Pyramids. It’s not even in the same league. There is absolutely no mystery to it, no grace, no wonder and no imagination. 5 thousand years from now it will not even be there. No, the author is quite correct in his assessments. Our civilisation is deluded; we have been infected with the Roman arrogance that says, ‘We are superior! Everyone else is a barbarian!’ when in actual fact, nothing could be further than the truth. We cannot even live our lives in harmony with the environment around us, something many ancient cultures learned to do because it is vital if we are to survive – and for the myriad species of life that share that same environment with us.

By: Fitz

Fitz — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 11:22:57 +0000

I think in the early part of the 20th century there were efforts to match the ancient world. Look at the craftsmanship of the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, the St. Louis Arch, or even Mount Rushmore. These are all magnificent structures right here in our Country and all on a scale that equals or exceeds many of the ancient’s wonders.

By: Hyathin

Hyathin — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 01:18:07 +0000

You made me think of Ted Chiang’s “Tower of Babylon.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babylon_(story)

By: Steve Winter

Steve Winter — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 00:22:17 +0000

Vaelorn is correct. The Egyptian government made use of slaves, especially during the reigns of conquest-minded pharoahs like Thutmose II and Rameses III (IIRC), but the pyramids were built by free men. http://harvardmagazine.com/2003/07/who-built-the-pyramids-html I’m sure they had days when they wished for some other job, but I have days like that, too.