10 February 2012

McHarg on the despoilers

We cannot indulge the despoiler any longer. He must be identified for what he is, as one who destroys the inheritance of living and unborn Americans, an uglifier who is unworthy of the right to look his fellows in the eye be he who he is industrialist, merchant, developer, Christian, Jew or agnostic.  

Ian McHarg, 1965
White House Conference on Beauty for America

1 comment:

Bill Wolfe said...

Superb post! I read simple elegant stuff like this and despair at how far we've regressed into market driven barbarism:

"Beauty is not an easy thing to measure. It does not show up in the gross national product, in a weekly paycheck, or in profit and loss statements. But these things are not ends in themselves. They are a road to satisfaction and pleasure and the good life. Beauty
makes its own direct contribution to these final ends. Therefore it is one of the most important components of our true national income, not to be left out simply because statisticians cannot calculate its worth."