Reaching a Peak
In all things artificial there is an evolution;
a progress that reaches a peak and then goes into decline. This is true of civilisations:
the Roman Empire, the Arab civilisation, the British Empire and currently the
American economic ‘empire’. It’s true of architecture. Of the great buildings
in the world few, if any, are modern: The Sistine chapel, the Blue Mosque in
Istanbul, St. Paul's cathedral in London. The skills have been lost but also
there is no economic justification for producing these buildings.
Europe, and particularly Italy, in the 14th to the 16th centuries went through a period known as the Renaissance (French for ‘rebirth’). During this time there was period of economic, artistic and spiritual growth. Out of this period came Christopher Wren, St Peter’s in Rome and the writings of Dante and Shakespeare; the art of Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo and the Elizabethan age in England. Although this period is seen as a period of great artistic growth nowadays, in fact the growth was economic, political and social as well.
It is often said that Leonardo was accomplished in both the sciences and the arts but in those days such artificial distinctions did not exist. An artist would draw a design for a flying machine. People were more balanced in their ability to use both hemispheres of their brain and the myopic left-brained ‘scientific’ thinking had not yet developed.
Countries and cities also reach a peak and go into a decline as circumstances change. The port of London was bustling up to the 1960’s and moved into decline after the advent of containerisation. New Zealand was, at one time, one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Music has declined to a banality from its peak in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Even in technology, purists say that audio quality was better when there were valve amplifiers and good quality records had a better tone than bit-sampled compact disks.
It’s also true of individuals. People go through a learning process and reach a peak and then often go into a decline. I mentioned before (‘Professional Incompetence’) about the stages that people go through when learning. The peak is reached at the stage of ‘Aware Competence’ and moves into decline at the stage of ‘Unaware Incompetence’. This is because when a person reaches this stage they act to a formula.
If you look at, say, the development of Hollywood movies or the development of the motorcar you can see a similar process in action. At the beginning there was a wide range of different techniques and designs. In the case of cars there were three and four wheeled vehicles, petrol and steam powered, and tiller steering. In movies people such as Eisenstein and Orson Wells developed new techniques in movie making. But then a formula set in and now all cars are petrol driven, have four wheels and another for steering, and movies follow a formula set by a ‘blockbuster’ that followed on from the previous success. Innovation is eschewed as being too risky.
We arrogantly think of ourselves as being at the peak of development but in fact in many areas we have degenerated, and part of this degeneracy is being blind to it.
