BLDG BLOG recently discussed the USA’s lack of investment in transport infrastructure while simultaneously highlighting the country’s choice to send 12 billion dollars into a war zone and then lose it (read more on this at The Guardian). It’s interesting.

I’m looking for a Christian to explain to me why they believe that people killed in recent flooding (or in the Indian Ocean tsunami for that matter) are not sinners who deserved to peril. I’m not interested if you believe that they are, I can follow the derived logic in this case, regardless of my views. I’m not looking to provoke or receive reactionary knee-jerk responses either. I’m just genuinely interested in people who feel able to override their biblical morals on a case-by-case basis.

A change of your homeland Prime Minister while living abroad is, I think, a bit like your parents moving house after you’ve left home. Who is this Gordon Ramsey guy anyway?

Being weary of change seems to be basic human nature. No matter how influential or forward thinking an individual is, dragging the rest of the population along with them is a big task.

Television, motorways, abolishment of slavery, mobile phones, theory of evolution, toothbrushes, medicine, air conditioning, elevators and other widely accepted concepts were all (probably) treated with mistrust and disdain upon their conception.

People hark back to their romanticised yesteryears, or even imagined yesteryears from before their time. Stability, calm and “the ways things were” are what keeps a population generally happy. Sure, there’s a lust for what might be in the future, but try and push people into it too quickly and there will be widespread panic.

So how does the human race advance and adopt technologies and ideologies so readily? I think the answer lies with a small tolerance of progression, along with the regular resetting of familiarity.

A generation will accept a certain amount of change and development before it becomes bogged down in closed minds and stubborn refusals. It is only when the next generation arrives, and is environmentally programmed with a new definition of normality, that we see huge leaps in acceptance.

This is probably obvious logic, but after thinking about it for a while, the realisation that rapid human progression only really happens in between generations and not during, was something that thrilled me. Can it be possible that this ‘invisible’ incubation period is the continual kick-start for everything, and that all us stick-in-the-muds can do is try and develop catalysts for it?

If generational cycles ever got into sync (through some mass disaster maybe), would society be propelled into a hyper state?

In contrast, would immortality leave us with a world of people reminiscing about past millennia, whilst refusing to have anything to do with those “hokey-pokey matter-warp-generators, thank you very much”.

Copenhagen was apparently built in an era besieged by heat waves and tropical weather. Everything about the city seems geared towards lazy summer afternoons: the large open areas, cafés with a majority of seating space outdoors, the building colours that complement deep blue skies, harbour swimming places, abundant public barbeque areas and a penchant for cycling and ice cream.

The forefathers must have been truly disappointed when, after their grand architecture and social engineering was complete, the meteorology switched and Denmark assumed its now all too familiar role as bearer of snow, ice, cold and five-hours-of-daylight for ten months of the year.

Curiously, the Danes seem unphased by their small window of opportunity and slip into floaty dresses and pavement culture in a matter of hours. The British embrace their brief days in the sun with an outfit hastily assembled from a teenage Spanish holiday topped off with a Kangol hat, before turning lobster red in a Weatherspoon’s beer garden. The danskere start holding street flea markets, throwing Mediterranean 40-person garden meals and hanging out on their ‘stoops’ in white vests like it’s a Los Angeles heatwave, in an eerily natural manner. Inevitably the following day is overcast, rainy, tens of degrees lower and everyone is back wearing scarves and lighting candles, apparently without any embarrassment hangover. Mystifying.

Humans have seemingly evolved to find beauty in nature and their environment (or possibly more accurately, in the golden ratio). It is easily observed, that when surrounded by an organic habitat, people are generally happier, calmer and more at ease. On the other hand, dangerous locations and organisms tend to have non-conforming, “grotesque” appearances, making us feel uncomfortable and on edge.

Cities have rapidly taken the place of nature in providing a surrounding for our lives, but evolution hasn’t had time to catch up and so the replication of what we naturally find gratifying becomes important. It is obvious that town planning and architecture originally played the biggest role in achieving this, but as our lives continue to get busier and more reliant on automation, it becomes vital that we integrate new systems into our existing worlds in an intelligent fashion.

Community-dividing roads that can only be crossed by dangerous underpasses, steps that force us into unnatural strides, buttons on cabin lights with a two second response time, superfluous repetition of information in public announcements, signage that constantly nags us to behave in a certain way, colour schemes with a purpose to hide dirt rather than visually please, and anything using Comic Sans are all examples of distress-causing aesthetics.

At the very least, these annoyances result in feelings of discomfort and disbelief that people capable of making such glaring errors have so much control over our well-being. However, at their most extreme, the abundance of ugly and uncooperative ergonomics can be so great that forming a cohesive society around them seems like an impossibility.

It’s nothing new to highlight the importance of functional design, which is why it’s so sad that many places are still completely devoid of it.