Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
It reads uncomfortably close to an anti-intellectual discourse so popular in the far-right.
a) Genuinely widely preferred, with many articles on this, ranging from aesthetic preferences through to scientific studies of how eyes move and what causes fatigue. There is genuine value to architecture before modern architecture -- and...
b) A stalking horse for right-wing thinking.
It's really interesting how this happens and it mirrors other right-wing techniques. A common way to get people into right-wing thinking is to find something that is genuinely unpopular or that people have concerns about, yet which has constrained discourse. Examples: lower incomes. You then talk about the good old days, and reframe it: lower incomes becomes, 'people taking your income, agh those immigrants'. Architecture becomes, '1940 and before were better, oh and everyone was white then'. You get the idea.
Another popular one on social media is the Greek and classical world, especially its comparative lack in modern education compared to, say, 1900. That's an easy intro to colonialism and racism, disguised in the neutral or even interesting format of ancient history.
Once you recognise this, you see it everywhere.
But don't let this fool you re older architecture having genuine value. We just have to avoid saying people have no taste, or referring to their preferences as 'pabulum'. That is condescending, makes normal people feel unheard, and then when someone does hear them on the innocuous subject of architecture, they pay attention to what else that person says.
The pattern is 1. take something that's true then 2. use it to imply the Truth. Step 3. is if anyone doubts 2, challenge them to disprove 1. Even if you don't deny that 1 is true and just challenging that 2 doesn't follow from 1, the waters have already been muddied in the eyes of many onlookers.
It's silly that this works but there's so much over-communication now that simplicity is very effective. People often repeat the fallacies verbatim too.
And that is why all the pollsters were caught flat-footed by Trump in 2016. The people who did feel unheard learned to not respond.
When politics exclude a group, or a group feels excluded, it's easy to lure the group into supporting anti-politics, which is a nice way to say "fascism".
This is kind of where we are now, with the far-right preying on the most vulnerable people that feel ignored by politicians.
So? Many people (not all) are right-wing because they want to preserve beauty. Being a right-wing is not a rare thing, it's the second most popular belief system in the West.
>Another popular one on social media is the Greek and classical world, especially its comparative lack in modern education compared to, say, 1900. That's an easy intro to colonialism and racism
Racism is much less of a thing in Europe, compared to the USA, yet fascination with Antiquity is just the same or even higher.
The author writes an article observing that people find more beauty in traditional architecture and you immediately slander him as a racist white guy who wants to go back to 1950s segregation? You think you're the reasonable one in this conversation?
There isn't just "some" racism and segregation, either. Check the text messages sent by cops in the Karen Reid case. What are the odds that the most racist cops in the state worked that case?
Go touch grass, it's healthy. (And get off bluesky)
> Go touch grass, it's healthy. (And get off bluesky)
You seem to have been triggered by the OP pointing out that a lot of this traditionalist architecture movement is - yes - racist old white dudes who want everything to be like it was when they were kids. Nostalgia is a powerful force, but it's worth remembering that the times filled with traditionalist architecture also had entire lower classes that slept in Flop Houses [0] and Shantytowns [1].
Ultimately traditionalist architecture may look nicer, but it's not surprising that buildings which cost more to build also look nicer.
If someone simply pointing the driving force behind this upsets you so much that you start posting replies like this, I would advise spending less time on X. Go outside, take a break from your "culture war". It's healthy.
No, it's not racist, no matter how much you try to make it so. It's exhausting and tired and makes people like Trump win. Racism is bad, good looking buildings are ... good.
Absolutely ridiculous, please listen to yourselves and please, please, think long and hard about how median American's would respond to this nonsense. (If you know any)