381
in any city in the world. Each empowers a through-story that earnestly strives to
defy natural selection. There are other, human-rooted forces that clearly bifurcate
between our morphological and cultural evolutions. One has remained stable; the
other appears, for better or worse, out of control. We imagine everything.
The hat-trick that would work to liberate (or condemn) us to a separation from
the cave
10
began in the realm of bedding and beds, other décor; a continually warming hearth, a place to store things—things themselves, these alter egos of utility;
outhouses, sheds, a place for tools. And then, in total, a strange global vernacular of
human architectural styles tensed between needs just one step removed from caves
and emergency shelter and everyday utilitarianism (the premise there will be an
everyday, as was hastened by the differing advents of agriculture), to a show of
strength (e.g., a surrounding moat), formidable resistance. Versus the more welcoming open house, whether an inn, almshouse, a priest’s villae or countryside dwelling
proffering restraint over ostentation. In northwestern Europe for centuries such
homes were called Frisian byre-houses, with nearby buildings that might contain
animals, or farm equipment, or mulch, or slaves. European villages proper would
not emerge before the late eleventh century in parts of France, Catalonia, and
Bavaria.
11
Furniture historian Florence de Dampierre has speculated that Adam and Eve
stood in Paradise, but later on we began to sit down and that act of “sitting has been
something of a luxury in the panoply of human activity.”
12
Dampierre cites one early
sixteenth-century Spanish writer who comments, “We Christians sit at a proper
height, not on the ground like animals.”
13
More emblematic of our species’ recent
cultural evolution than furniture is the zoo narratology of building design and its
perpetual font of newly devised forms of isolating occupants. By what structures
and designs, inchoate or fabricated, we have chosen—our choices usurping those of
natural selection—to, in essence, separate ourselves endlessly, until we have safely
moved away from a lost Eden into ever the new one? Such choices conform to the
free will inherent in every question of our relationship with God, and the extent to
which we have also been separated. If we also remove the idea of God from the idea
of nature, by whatever philosophical devices or labyrinthine motives, then those
choices become a kind of destiny that the jungle, the Himalayan summit, or some
anonymous green sward could never replicate. Our minds are too much with us, as
Wordsworth rather intimated (Fig. 42.2).
10 See two essays by René Guenon, “The Heart and the Cave,” Studies in Comparative Religion,
Vol. 5, No. 1, Winter, 1971, World Wisdom, Inc.www.studiesincomparativereligion.com, http://
www.studiesincomparativereligion.com/Public/articles/The_Heart_and_the_Cave-by_Rene_
Guénon.aspx; and “The Mountain and the Cave,” Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 5, No. 2,
Spring, 1971, http://www.studiesincomparativereligion.com/Public/articles/The_Mountain_and_
the_Cave-by_Rene_Guenon.aspx.
11 See The Village & House in the Middle Ages, by Jean Chapelot and Robert Fossier, Translated by
Henry Cleere, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 1985, p. 129.
12 Florence de Dampierre, Chairs: A History, Abrams, New York, 2006, p. 7.
13 ibid., p.7.
42.2 Shelters and Co-adjacencies
in any city in the world. Each empowers a through-story that earnestly strives to
defy natural selection. There are other, human-rooted forces that clearly bifurcate
between our morphological and cultural evolutions. One has remained stable; the
other appears, for better or worse, out of control. We imagine everything.
The hat-trick that would work to liberate (or condemn) us to a separation from
the cave
10
began in the realm of bedding and beds, other décor; a continually warming hearth, a place to store things—things themselves, these alter egos of utility;
outhouses, sheds, a place for tools. And then, in total, a strange global vernacular of
human architectural styles tensed between needs just one step removed from caves
and emergency shelter and everyday utilitarianism (the premise there will be an
everyday, as was hastened by the differing advents of agriculture), to a show of
strength (e.g., a surrounding moat), formidable resistance. Versus the more welcoming open house, whether an inn, almshouse, a priest’s villae or countryside dwelling
proffering restraint over ostentation. In northwestern Europe for centuries such
homes were called Frisian byre-houses, with nearby buildings that might contain
animals, or farm equipment, or mulch, or slaves. European villages proper would
not emerge before the late eleventh century in parts of France, Catalonia, and
Bavaria.
11
Furniture historian Florence de Dampierre has speculated that Adam and Eve
stood in Paradise, but later on we began to sit down and that act of “sitting has been
something of a luxury in the panoply of human activity.”
12
Dampierre cites one early
sixteenth-century Spanish writer who comments, “We Christians sit at a proper
height, not on the ground like animals.”
13
More emblematic of our species’ recent
cultural evolution than furniture is the zoo narratology of building design and its
perpetual font of newly devised forms of isolating occupants. By what structures
and designs, inchoate or fabricated, we have chosen—our choices usurping those of
natural selection—to, in essence, separate ourselves endlessly, until we have safely
moved away from a lost Eden into ever the new one? Such choices conform to the
free will inherent in every question of our relationship with God, and the extent to
which we have also been separated. If we also remove the idea of God from the idea
of nature, by whatever philosophical devices or labyrinthine motives, then those
choices become a kind of destiny that the jungle, the Himalayan summit, or some
anonymous green sward could never replicate. Our minds are too much with us, as
Wordsworth rather intimated (Fig. 42.2).
10 See two essays by René Guenon, “The Heart and the Cave,” Studies in Comparative Religion,
Vol. 5, No. 1, Winter, 1971, World Wisdom, Inc.www.studiesincomparativereligion.com, http://
www.studiesincomparativereligion.com/Public/articles/The_Heart_and_the_Cave-by_Rene_
Guénon.aspx; and “The Mountain and the Cave,” Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 5, No. 2,
Spring, 1971, http://www.studiesincomparativereligion.com/Public/articles/The_Mountain_and_
the_Cave-by_Rene_Guenon.aspx.
11 See The Village & House in the Middle Ages, by Jean Chapelot and Robert Fossier, Translated by
Henry Cleere, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 1985, p. 129.
12 Florence de Dampierre, Chairs: A History, Abrams, New York, 2006, p. 7.
13 ibid., p.7.
42.2 Shelters and Co-adjacencies