In my personal journey I have been an architect far longer than a spiritualist. However, as with many of us who are ebbing into our third decade as professionals there are undeniable influences of the spiritual and internal journey reflecting in our projects. Much beyond a love for ancient construction, vernacular materials and the study of mandalas I find myself now doing a personal curation of spaces for my spirit.
Author : Self PC: Priya Rao
It’s only in unseen spiritual spaces that we areable to ‘drop the mind’ and surrender to a more emotional visceral experience of designand inspiration and the simple joys of discovery. It’s in thesemoments one meet one’screative inspirations andengage with culture. I find myself wondering when did I adopt a clinical attitude towards design?
Is professional education and practice encouraging us to drop the emotional quotient in our development processes and is there really any advantage to repressing such a huge part of our beings?
Is culture an expression of one’s true emotional experience after-all? Have we managed to unlearn a crucial part of culture in all expressions of work?
Timeless designs, as part of cultural perpetuityby definition have been known to carry its emotional knowledge through space and time. Yes cultural perpetuity does make knowledge immortal leaving behind heritage and wisdom for the future generations to inherit. Cultural perpetuation is knowledge transference.Yet, we continue to deny it as an essential exploration of our philosophy.
Cultural perpetuation, remains an unconquered frontier, intangible, conventionalnon-quantifiable and perhaps untapped to our comprehensions but the revivial of cultural conversations in social mdia, powered by innovation, technology and connections forged by the simple human desire to share in cuture will setthese secret wisdoms free. Today, I advocate for algorithms that help constructively bring together a cultural perpetuity revolution. Technologyhas the greatest influence on the value of our connection to each other and to culture of our times and the past.
It’s an important discussion to have “is there a space for technology to help with cultural perpetuity?”
Often times, we see technology and culture and history at opposing and contrary stances. This narrative may just be an impediment to our search for integrating our own culture with modern times.
Technology gives us scle, outreach, and allows for a democratic process to engage with culture. “As culture belongs to all and is ownen by none.”- author
This voyage to cultural identity is not a solitary expression of one soul, or my soul. It’s not the voice of my emotion alone. Cultural expression is the spirit of all the voices, thoughts and ideas of many souls. Its an experience of many identities, heterogenous but homogenized, its more than just the material, and the tangible, or the intangible and the communal, it’s the ver soul of its people timeless, immortal through the cultural expressions and artifacts, of perpetuity.
In the future, as we becomean even larger economy, can culture be the focus along with environmental / sustainability goals of all industry and policy. The inclusion of culture will bring concensus easily from the people and as the largest democracy of the the world it will entail an easier democratic process, thus achieving solutions that appeals to the emotional core in all of us.
In the current economic environment, there is a disproportionate emphasis on the bottom line. Perhaps it’s time we encourage the bigger questions of culture, identity, purpose, legacy, sovereignty, agency and personal fulfillment over the very oversimplified, failed profit driven model.
Are we trading courage for returns and creativity for mediocrity and conformity? Are we forgetting about culture because we take its existence and sustenance for granted?
Can a simple integration of the ‘whole of us’ in each and every individual: be a plausible step towards deeper understanding culture and better ethics? Do we shy away from broad spectrum conversation on culture, traditions and ethics because we deem it less or because we aren’t trained to express and explore bigger and more honest truths about our current realities. Are we hiding our frustrations and the lack of philosophical evolution and potential growth by divorcing parts of ourselves from our culture and identities?