Ideologies compact your mind; however, big ideas expand your mindsets [see photo].
If you look outside your ideology then you will find a host of "big ideas" that can enlarge you, your world view, and your mindset. One idea that makes my world larger today is "The Line". What is The Line? you may be asking yourself. Simply put... It is radical plan to build a carbon free city that is 500 metres high, 200 metres wide, and stretches across a middle eastern desert for 170 kilometres. The estimated cost is $US 1 Trillion but it will surely cost 10X that figure if it is ever successfully constructed. By the way the outer walls of "The Line" are glass and thus act like mirrors in the desert. This is a nice touch don't you think? Well whatever it is this is definitely a "big idea". And I must say it makes the world a better place [for me] just because it exists in some human minds.
I am particularly drawn to this idea because in the distant past I put forward something like it. Well sort of - let me explain. As an undergraduate I took a course in Urban Economics. One assignment was to reimagine a cityscape that we knew well and to come up with a radical new plan for it. Immediately my thoughts centred on a long road in Sydney [Australia] that was the main artery from the outer city in the West into the inner city in the East. This road was a congested mess with trucks, buses, cars, motorbikes, etc stuck in a sludge of pollution and stop-go progress into and out of the city. On both sides of this road there were strip retailers and car yards. My plan was to build a new city long this route. At the bottom level [well below] the trains run. At the next level the truck and delivery vehicles move in unison. At the next level all means of private transport move rather freely. This brings us to the ground level where the shops and recreational facilities are created to flourish. Beside, and above, them are the complexes of accommodation to suit both families and single folk. Beyond this line city on one side would be freeland full of trees and a newly established natural environs and on the other would be "mixed activity farmland". Clearly this was a young man's idea [not a viable plan]; and yet, I could see it being built and thus creating a new social order for our future.
Minimalist have access to "a unique spatial freedom" within their minds that can welcome Big Ideas even though these schemes may never come to fruition. The fact that so many Big Ideas exist today gives me great hope that the future will indeed be better than the past.
Richard.
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