New video on ART NOUVEAU (posted by HENI Talks[1] in February 2025) is embedded below. I’m juxtaposing this with the brilliant “The ghastly tragedy of the suburbs” by James Howard Kunstler[2] from 2004 embedded above; Kunstler’s ever-enduring critique and articulation can also be contrasted with Roger Scruton’s documentary on WHY BEAUTY MATTERS.[3]
In this post, I digress from antiviral nutrition, functional medicine clinical protocols, Human Microbiome and Dysbiosis, the critical importance of vitamin D, the utility of NAC, corruption of medicine (PDF) and hijacking of democracy by the technoglobalists, structured thinking vs collapse of the pillars of society, and the inflation/shrinkflation/greedflation scam to discuss one of my favorite topics art nouveau—see previous posts 1-6 listed below*
My recent reflections on architecture:
I’m very aware that I have somewhat of a pollyannic[4] relationship with good architecture – to me it symbolizes that humans can actually work together to create great and beautiful items of enduring quality, comfort, coziness and inspiration—see Roger Scruton’s documentary on WHY BEAUTY MATTERS.[5] More precisely, good architecture for me represents (present) and portends (past and future) the existence of a decent society, a society that cares about its membership of human beings, and that it is capable of working together to achieve greatness, inspiring itself while simultaneously honoring a rich past and preparing to maintain that continuum by inspiring future generations. I never see this actually happen in real life, but apparently it happened in the past –even within the past 120 years (eg, art nouveau[6] 1890-1910). In the present reality that really never seems to happen.
The combination of enduring Roman buildings, art nouveau, and beautiful European architecture and city planning was a large part of the reason that I relocated to Barcelona in 2013. The modest-yet-glamourous beauty of the post office in Barcelona[7] rivals any art museum in any American city – in other words, Europeans (of the past) put more artistic talent into a public building than Americans can muster for an entire museum. I know this from experience because I grew up in Houston Texas (metropolitan population of nearly 7MILLION)—a huge rich major metropolitan American city with zero planning, an overgrowth of asphalt parking lots, nothing for the public except for private malls, restaurants, theaters, and sports clubs; I’ve also lived for several years in each of Portland Oregon, Seattle, Fort Worth, Austin, Atlanta, Miami and Pittsburg so I have a very clear understanding of America’s (lack of) social planning and infrastructure.[8] The American social landscape/infrastructure is famously ugly, bland, and unkempt to the point of collapse[9], socially unserviceable and emotionally sterile, apparently based on a paradigm that humans don’t matter except as production-profit units.[10]Among the most brilliant perspectives and interpretations of these problems are those of James Howard Kunstler (video embedded above).
These explanations and perspectives are precisely why I had so much hope when I moved to Spain/Barcelona and also precisely why the place caused me such great depression after I realized that the beautiful architecture represented nothing of the current society, and therefore was kind of like looking at dead fossil bones of previous greatness. Barcelona in particular and Spain and Europe in general completely collapsed to the globalist fraud of 2020-2025[11] to the point of implementing the social surveillance-credit system[12] in 2021 and now (in 2025) the digital money system that will further collapse the already-horrible[13] European banking system[14], put all the money under centralized control, and facilitate the worst surveillance-control system outside of communist Russia and China.
BACKGROUND: My previous inputs on social and architectural BEAUTY:
Societal Architecture as Language of Life Experience and Health Outcomes
Architecture creates the society; Necessity of Social Beauty (3)
World Architecture Day 2022, crumbling infrastructure, the Beauty (4) we lost
Sorry I was away from my desk for a few days, but I was escaping the imminent collapse of Europe
VIDEO: By the time you’ve achieved 50 years of age (1), you should have memorized at least one poem
All videos are being re-uploaded in Feb-Mar 2025 to provide direct and reliable access through the substack platform:
Microbiome Dysbiosis (1) Course Overview and Introduction to Major Concepts and Mechanisms
Microbiome Dysbiosis (3) Prototypes of Dysbiosis-Induced Disease (VIDEO:1hour,42minutes=102minutes)
Microbiome Dysbiosis (7) Dysbiosis by Location—Genitourinary Tract
Microbiome Dysbiosis (8) Dysbiosis by Location—Blood, Tissue, Parenchymal Dysbioses
[1] youtube.com/watch?v=k20doHDjMwo
[3] https://healthythinking.substack.com/p/dr-roger-scruton-why-beauty-8-matters
[4] The meaning of POLLYANNA is a person characterized by irrepressible optimism and a tendency to find good in everything. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Pollyanna
[5] https://healthythinking.substack.com/p/dr-roger-scruton-why-beauty-8-matters
[6] https://healthythinking.substack.com/p/celebrating-the-beauty-7-of-creativity
[7] https://healthythinking.substack.com/p/societal-architecture-as-language
[8] https://healthythinking.substack.com/p/our-lives-need-more-beauty-2-and
[9] https://open.substack.com/pub/healthythinking/p/world-architecture-day-2022-crumbling
[10] https://healthythinking.substack.com/p/architectural-modernism-recapitulates
[12] https://healthythinking.substack.com/p/trash-dumpsters-in-europe-are-starting
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