ARCHITECTURE and the ASCETIC: John K
ARCHITECTURE AND THE ASCETIC: John K. Branner Traveling Fellowship Proposal SPACES OF MINIMAL CONSUMPTION 2012-2013 PREFACE Humans have an unmistakable propensity for consumption. It may be true that all over nature, mammals and rodents, insects, sea creatures, even bacteria and mi- crobes and so many things of this sort are virtually at the mercy of these overwhelming appetites and drives, and that all of life is somehow caught up in a stranglehold by the merciless laws of digestion. But nowhere in this world are the repercussions of a raging, binging, irrepressible urge to consume so embarrassingly visible all around as they are in the vast, sprawling detritus left in the wake of human civilization. But then, perhaps, like any other species, or anything at all for that matter, when one looks close enough these sorts of sweeping statements about the nature of things—what is and is not the case, finally and for all time—these generalizations are seen for what they really are, and one risks washing the shadows of certainty away in a cold light of suspicion. So, true enough, if one looks again more carefully at our most remarkable species, Homo sapiens, one will no doubt note the behavior of a certain contingent from within our ranks who, in fact, devote their whole lives to the very antithesis of wild consumption. For thousands of years, most peculiar individuals have been observed in our midst, who for a multitude of reasons have willfully abandoned what would otherwise have been considered to be, by any decent person, perfectly normal lives, and instead chosen to rid themselves of every possession, wander off into isolation, and make desperate attempts to resist their most basic instinct—to consume.
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