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Das Kapital

Marx's work on alienated labor, cited as background for soul-destroying work.

Extracted from this book

Claims (36)

A person will feel healed, made whole, during any process in which life and living structure are created in the world.
A person's own feeling of wholeness is the very best criterion for the wholeness of a thing he is trying to make.
A thing which has the field of centers always does make a person near it feel more whole.
Almost every person experiences the making of wholeness, like food.
Generalization from personal and student experience.
Each enlargement of the I enlarges each of us.
Each person is nourished, made more whole, by making something which has life.
Even one act of making the field of centers changes a person, bringing calmness, quietness, and peacefulness.
In each of us, a person is existing, or waiting to exist; the most free version of that person occasionally appears briefly.
It is only when you finally are personal, when you really put your humanness into the things you make, that you genuinely reach the wholeness.
Life is a thing which can only be reached by humanness, by the personal, by the individual, childish temperament.
Living structure and the process of creating it has a positive effect on the process of creation, similar to the Mozart effect.
Patterns like ALCOVE unlock feelings which people have but are not aware they have, leading to greater awareness and self-knowledge.
People are deeply nourished by the process of creating wholeness.
The ALCOVE pattern gave permission, legitimacy, and information about how life might increase through an intimate smaller space opening off a larger one.
The art of making something living is sought again and again, avidly — it is like food.
The creation of living centers in the world increases the I in those who have contact with it.
The creation of wholeness in the world is like food; it makes a person's own self mobilized, liberated, made more strong.
The fifteen properties help create a mental state in which suppressed feelings are allowed to be experienced and developed.
The inner landscape of living structure becomes part of you, and being in touch with it is being in touch with the I.
The making of life, the making of beauty, has a profound interaction with our happiness, affecting well-being for days.
The modern architectural office is alienated and soul-destroying, as experienced by most students and workers.
The more you use the properties, the more you find they correspond to your feeling, giving permission to liberate your feeling.
The positive feeling comes about only when the field of living centers is actually achieved; otherwise there is frustration.
The presence of I-stuff in works of art induces a religious experience, making people feel closer to God, even non-religious.
The process by which a person comes in touch with wholeness is linked to human growth, self-knowledge, and discovery of the true self.
The relation between a person's own wholeness and the wholeness of things in their environment is a direct consequence of the nature of wholeness itself.
The rewarding and life-enhancing nature of work comes into focus when the thing made has life, and the makers begin to change dramatically.
The smallest success in making life extends and fills my experience for hours or days; the absence starves me.
The structure described in these four books is a mirror of the human heart, giving you a key to unlock your own heart.
The structure of wholeness, the more you encounter it, makes you more and more able to feel the reality and existence of the Ground.
There is a direct connection between the living structure of the world and the achieved person-ness we experience in ourselves.
When I make something which has wholeness or life, I become more alive; when I make something dead, I become less alive.
When I-stuff is created, it nourishes the maker.
Core thesis of the chapter.
When they make things which have life and living centers in them, they experience satisfaction and healing; when they fail, they feel dejected, dull, even dead.
When you make a beautiful thing, the depth of the person within becomes more vivid, lives more intensely for a moment.
When you make a beautiful thing, you feel happy for days; when you make something ugly, you may be depressed for days.

Findings (5)

80–90% of University of Oregon architecture students returned from office internships shocked, vowing never to work in an office
Reported statistic illustrating the alienating nature of conventional architectural work.
Alexander personally experienced that making beauty induces happiness for days, making ugliness induces depression
First-person longitudinal observation of the emotional aftermath of making.
Barbara Winslow reached peacefulness and health simply from making the field of centers, as recorded in her 1978 thesis
Empirical diary evidence of the healing effect of creating wholeness.
Mozart's music improves performance on intelligence tests, problem solving, and spatial reasoning (Rauscher & Shaw)
Scientific finding cited as analogous to the positive effect of living structure on creation.
Presence of I-stuff in art makes people feel closer to God, reported by both religious and non-religious people (McGelligot)
Observation that the wholeness quality induces a religious experience.

Hypotheses (1)

If there were indeed a realm of I, an actual self in the material universe, then we could understand the nourishment as the creation of living centers increasing this I in those who have contact with it.
Speculative explanatory framework linking the I to the healing effect.

Neighborhood — ranked by edge-count

Chapters (1)

chapter

Chapter 9: Making Wholeness Heals The Maker
cites
Chapter in Vol 4 of The Nature of Order exploring how making wholeness heals the maker.

Thinkers (1)

thinker

Karl Marx
authored
Philosopher cited for theory of alienated labor.