Radjaïdjah Blog

The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you are supposed to go up. And down when you’re supposed to go down. When you’re supposed to go up find the highest tower and climb to the top. When your are supposed to go down find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997)

In Feÿ Castle (Burgundy, France) there is a well, a deep well. One of the kind which makes you realize: it would be a great idea to bury a time capsule at the very bottom.

Living for a few days with the Feÿtopian tribe in the Feÿ Castle is akin to an immersion inside a a strange mix between a digital Kibbutz, Abbaye de Thélème, and Rusty Lake.

Just to illustrate this, the utopian Thelemite motto in Rabelais’ Gargantua Faÿ ce que vouldras (do what you’ll wish) leads to a fringe and tempting theory: the name Feÿ is simply a disguised version of Faÿ, and this very naming is a purposeful indication that it was always in the mind of the founders that this noble castle should at a later stage become a phalanstery.

Living in the Feÿ community brings a number of interrogations, as people do their best to be kind one to eachother.

Great public benefits arise from private virtues but isn’t it true that greater public benefits arise from private vices, as Mandeville described in the Fable of the Bees? Probably this is a question of dimension, of critical size.

On the Feÿ domain stands a beautiful forest. Sometimes the color tone can transition from spring green to viridian. Sometimes it is also easy to get stranded or floored there, however with lysergic power comes lysergic responsibility and collective nurturing helps prevent such fate to happen. Sometimes in the forest the infamous Codex Serafinianus helps to remind why Nature imitates Art. Sometimes in the forest you can see the music of the spheres.

Now it becomes a bit clearer. Individual oscillate in life, and one of the purpose of communities is to enter a collective mode of vibration. In other words, resonance. This is also what religion has been trying to achieve. Religion, seen as a collective hallucination or as a collective realization or as a collective construction (whatever the difference between the three might be).

And here comes the Elephant in the forest.

A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: "We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable". So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, "This being is like a thick snake". For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. As for another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant, "is a wall". Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.

Now it becomes clearer: the concept of extitution is here to enhance the perceptual set of social groups and communities, and therefore to act on them.

If tokens can be considered as bottom-up, extitutional currencies, is a related point to consider.

A challenge of adulthood is: how to move oneself gracefully in the fluid of life? In “The possibility of an Island”, the author quotes Arthur Schopenhauer: "human existence resembles a theatre performance which, begun by living actors, is ended by automatons dressed in the same costumes."

So it might be the case that extitutions offer to transform into life magicians.

In conclusion, after spending a few days in the Feÿ Castle for an extitutional workshop, and acknowledging its spiritual gravity, one can ask: is it an autotelic journey, or is it for higher purposes?

But of course, one can ask the same question for their life: is life autotelic or for higher purposes?

Quel est le point commun entre : l'éclairage bleu d'une boîte de nuit, les fenêtres hautes d'une salle, une large avenue à Paris, et un banc public avec accoudoir central ?

Facile : ces designs nous améliorent la vie. Avec un éclairage bleu nous avons l'air plus beaux, les fenêtres hautes optimisent l'ensoleillement d'une salle, dans une avenue large nous pouvons circuler plus fluidement, et un accoudoir central sur un banc permet à davantage de personnes de s'accouder, ce qui est bien plus confortable. C'est bien ça ?

Pas du tout.

Dans les toilettes publiques suisses, comme dans de nombreuses discothèques et bars, et sous certains ponts, la lumière est bleue. Il n'y a pas de but esthétique, l'objectif de l'éclairage bleuté est d'empêcher les toxicomanes de distinguer leurs veines lorsqu'ils essayent de se piquer. Similairement, un éclairage rose est aussi utilisé dans certains endroits pour dissuader les adolescents d'y venir car... la lumière rose met en valeur l'acné^[1].

À l'école, les élèves ont tendance à être distraits par les événements extérieurs, et regardent souvent par la fenêtre d'un air rêveur. Qu'à cela ne tienne, disent les architectes, il suffit de placer les fenêtre plus en hauteur, et le problème est résolu.

Georges-Eugène Haussmann fit construire de grands axes à Paris, afin, entres autres, d'empêcher d'éventuels révolutionnaires d'ériger des barricades et de bloquer la ville, ce qui est bien plus simple dans des rues étroites. Il y a donc une idée sous-jacente de contrôle des foules.

Quant à l'accoudoir central des bancs publics, il servent à éviter que des gens s'allongent dessus. Les municipalités font d'ailleurs preuve d'une imagination débordante pour empêcher les SDF de dormir sur les bancs.

Au final, le point commun est le suivant : le design vise à influer sur le comportement d'une certaine catégorie de la population. Il s'agit d'éléments d'architecture de contrôle.