The question of scale is one that seems to plague us continually in our daily lives and in our approach not only to design but to our environmental concerns. What is considered an acceptable scale and to whom is it acceptable? Considering the film Powers of Ten, both extreme ends of the scale certainly make me feel that we as a species and even a planet are completely irrelevant and so, ultimately, our decisions are meaningless. As we zoom out and begin (and I stress the word begin) to comprehend how vast the space is that our universe occupies and expands into our entire galaxy, let alone planet, is irrelevant to the rest of the cosmos and could be gone tomorrow without consequence. Yet as we zoom in I began to realize something that I had not thought about before; we are irrelevant to the elements which compose us. We really are nothing more than a random arrangement of amino acids (mostly carbon based) which not only exist independently of us, but independently of our planet. We owe them no duty of protection since when we cease to exist they will continue on just as they had long before our world was even close to producing us. So what even matters in this world? While I still stand by my belief that in the broader sense nothing really matters, when we place the scale firmly on ‘human’ everything begins to matter. It matters to us how we are composed and what happens in the wider universe. It also happens to matter a great deal what we do to each other and to the environment that supports us. Not that we are endangering it in any real way, but that we are endangering its ability to support us; we are damaging its human scale, that is, our human scale. I find my conclusion that everything matters in the human scale rather disconcerting. Not least because we show callous disregard for each other and nature, but that so much of what matters is entirely out of control. We can have little control over anything that happens beyond our planet and even less control over those infinitesimally small particles that compose us (that is, since we could not have any part in our inception we can have no true control over our continuing chemical existence at that microscopic scale). So I suppose that since everything seems to matter we should be quite sure of everything we do. Then again, if nothing truly matters why not just do whatever we feel like. I am coming to the conclusion that it is this paradox of beliefs that is the real problem at the human scale.
