More and/or Less

As I type these words, there is a building under construction in Dubai which is expected to be over three times as tall as the former “Sears” tower in Chicago. This hotel/observatory excess is tentatively called the Dubai Creek Tower. It seems that the purpose of the building is primarily to be a tourist attraction which will enable its visitors to stand at the farthest removal from the planet (and its realities) via elevator. There is little about this construction which is not and will not be egotistic. When the prominent architect Daniel Burnham continued promoting the desire to “Make no little plans” while envisioning his “Chicago plan” of 1909 (which never happened), I doubt that his corporately sustained, fevered delusions ever imagined a folly of this magnitude, but I also can see how this is a sort of culmination of Burnham’s escapist deliriums of pretentious irresponsibilities.

I use the word “folly” in the same sense as did architects during the so-called “Romanticism” of the 18th/19th Century period whereby the wealthy could decorate their private acreage with nostalgic artificial replications of classical illusions to make themselves feel as if they had superior sensitivities and/or ethics and to celebrate and/or escape the reality of their craven capitalistic plundering and I also use the word as an appropriate assessment of the foolishness which would lead anyone to assume that constructing such an enormously expensive phallic extension is in any way a necessary response to what human society is needing at this late date in our abusive relationship with ourselves and nature.

People are struggling, suffering, and dying around the planet because of the willfully ignorant devotion to the religion of economic salvation through greedy privatized accumulation and the seemingly inescapable human love of militarized domination, but the perversity of the most dominant acolytes of the religion consistently call for more masturbatory gewgaws such as this towering vanity as if it is in some way a compensatory pragmatism. The likely billion dollar construction cost would certainly NOT be available for anything less replete with egotistic indifference to responsible behavior in regard to those people already being crushed under the movements of the global juggernaut of privatized capital.

There are numerous plants growing around the planet which display incredibly flexible structural developments which far exceed the delusional use of enormously heavy cables and girders to give the illusion that this building is something other than a gross waste of resources in the name of escapism, but it seems to be too much to ask of people to see what natural marvels surround them on the ground. We are expected to see this latest super-sized (for now) gewgaw carnival attraction as if it is some sort of proof of the supposed superiority of human ingenuity and skill. If anything, construction of this building is the same as the application of more gilding on a corrosive fetish while it is expected that we are to ignore the fact that the supposed fetishized fecundity has  all of the characteristics of bathing the planet and its humanity in flesh-eating acidity.

Like so many other excessive vanities which have been constructed over the Centuries (and are popping up like teenage pimples around the planet at this time), there is little reason to doubt that this enormous display of cable-strapped, militarily dependent bondage of a building will have a magnetic effect and will become one more goalpost in the competition to spew more carbonic toxicity on the path to our just reward. Another tourist destination for petroleum derived private profits.

The building’s design has been likened to an extended bud of a lily and its lines of open-air draped cables which extend from underneath the swollen “bud” of the 30 to 40(?) story habitable part of the building (which is expected to sit approximately 2,500 feet up on the shaft) are usually describe in terms of gracefulness and elegance. These delusional descriptions which ignore the fact that anything so densely strapped and propped up with steely massiveness for support is as unnatural and unrealistic as it would be to tell you that the monstrosity of the pyramidal tombs in Egypt or the monstrosity of the so-called Washington Monument obelisk are the manifestation of the descent of light from some heavenly future-past and simultaneously ignore the realities of their massive weight, their required expenditures of energy, and the loss of life which is connected to their existence. All of these constructions have more in common with criminal fraudulence and deception than with any real appreciation of any natural wonder as extraordinary and common as a lily. Massive delusions and ignoring abounds within the devious manipulations of those who cherish the vain displays of excessive monetary power.

It seems that the most common identity of humans which has emerged is that of a tourist. Our ability to disconnect from our everyday lives seems to be how we are supposed to judge our own value. Those who are trapped within bondage, like the people living in Gaza, Yemen, and numerous poor areas of major cities around the planet, are not to be seen. To see how their oppression contributes to the wealth of others is to become an infidel in the church of private capital. Through the manipulations of feelings of insecurity and the belief in militarized oppression, those most perversely enslaved to monetary accumulation continue to erase the most economically vulnerable, either through blatantly vicious force or through vain excessiveness and touristy distractions.

The Tower at Dubai Creek is a disgracefully arrogant and unnecessary theft  from a better future for us all. It is more of a drain than a building. Its height, like that of so many other vain excesses around the planet, is an illusion. It is not the lowest construction ever imagined, but it is a significant attribute of debauchery.

At this point in time, the lowest construction in human history may be the Pentagon and its international branches, but make no mistake, these constructions and the phallic Tower at Dubai Creek are indeed connected.