Grandiosity of civilizations is easily observed but that same
grandiosity
applies to Buildings architecture as well as death circuses.
The Human need for Grand Gestures may be at the root of civilization.
Jerry Sabloff, the president of the Santa Fe Institute, whose
specialty is the archaeology (and thus the life) of everyday Mayan
civilization, gave a little talk in late December to a small group
where he mentioned in passing that the great architectural monuments
of a civilization are nearly always erected early in that
civilization's ascendancy--the Egyptian pyramids, the Mayan ziggurats,
etc.
I thought about this, both in connection with Hitlerian architecture
(godawful but appears early in the Nazi ascendancy, and trails on into
the 1960s--since I consider New York's Lincoln Center Albert Speer's
last hurrah) and also in connection with the American skyscraper,
which emerged in the very late 1800s with the invention of the
elevator, and reached its heyday in the 1930s. Sabloff did not mention
concomitant civil violence, and I don't have enough knowledge to
propose a theory about it.
The spectacle of architecture in the oil-rich states, such as Dubai,
might be another example.
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