Stephen Gerard Dietemann Design

There are times when optimism is difficult and we are currently living in such times. It is impossible to watch the news or read the paper without sensing the fact that the events of the world are reflecting dramatically distorted policy and thinking. Increasingly ideology and fear rule, creating a world of enemies, a sense of deepening isolation, and a resort to force -- or the threat of force -- not as last resort but as initial response. Ironically, while Americans dread the reemergence of an old pestilence, smallpox, an equally antiquated, self-righteous nationalism and a mindless neo-colonialism have again reared their ugly heads, threatening horrors at least as horrendous as any virus or bacteria could hope to inflict upon us. The center, it does seems, cannot hold.

But one need not look only at the headlines to be concerned. While the images of our latest foray into the third world are dramatic, many back page articles are equally frightening. Going through my newspaper cut-out files I found an article from the New York Times of February 3, 2003, entitled, “North of Beijing, California Dreams Come True”, by Elisabeth Rosenthal. The article describes the development of western style homes in China, “replicas of southern California homes, designed by Southern California architects, with model homes decorated by Los Angeles interior designers.” Styles range from ‘French country estate to Spanish stucco castles’. The homes start at $500,000.00; many are much more expensive. Needless to say they are all nestled in ‘gated communities’. Amusingly, the article notes that ‘shacks’ for cooking have been constructed just outside the brand new California-style open kitchens since the California kitchens are not particularly suited to Chinese cooking; hopefully the TV dinner will not be far behind and remedy this problem. Adding to the surreal nature of the whole thing is the fact that these gated communities (typical name for these developments: Watermark-Longbeach) are located nowhere near a large city like Los Angeles, but instead surrounded by villages and fields. At least Los Angele’s suburbs have Los Angeles.

Okay, I admit it is an easy target. My biases -- I have long admired traditional Chinese architecture and long been disturbed by the pseudo-historical revival styles of American suburban houses – make such developments in China (or anywhere else in the world for that matter) an especially tempting target to ridicule. But these houses prompt far more serious concerns, concerns that present a direct challenge to each of us as well. First, such houses are dramatic breaks with traditional Chinese building and design. The abandoned, unworkable kitchens are a symptom of this disconnect, eerily reminiscent of Le Corbusier’s housing in Chandigar, India. But such a cultural disconnect can have far more dangerous implications, as was evident during the rise of Khomeini in Iran where western art and culture had been forced down the throats of a culture -- like China incidentally -- far older than our own and with a exceedingly beautiful aesthetic of its own. As was the case with Iran before the revolution, things may look good from the outside but below the surface resentment grows, as we learned so painfully in Iran.

Second, economically a further gulf is accentuated between those who can afford such houses and those who cannot -- the distance between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ grows precariously. No imbalance can be sustained for long and the remedy, as history has so often chronicled, is many times not pretty. It is not by chance that these homes are developed within gated communities. The average Chinese earns less than six thousand dollars a year - a bit less than would be required to purchase such a house.

Third, such development is ecologically unsustainable. There simply is not enough earth to allow the majority of the world’s population to live anywhere near this level of material luxury. Such western style developments require huge amounts of materials and energy, materials and energy that is simply not available. The ‘ecological footprint’ of each resident in such a development, if multiplied by the number of people on the earth, requires the resources of several earths. We have but one.

So this is the challenge to each of us: are we willing to simplify our lifestyles, our material requirements, our endless splurging of energy, so that all the people on the planet might have a sustainable standard of living we would not want ourselves or our children to live below? This is not simply a question of altruism or a challenge to the popular view of ourselves as a ‘good’ people, but a matter of our own survival. If the answer is ‘no’, then what we are seeing in Iraq is only the beginning of a state of war that will stretch as far as the eye can see. It will be a ugly, brutish business and it will not be kept at a safe distance from the ‘homeland’.

Bush, by the way, is well aware of this and we have now learned his answer. The bigger question is: does he really speak for the rest of us as well?