What does it mean for a system to be nourishing?

I’m halfway through Christopher Alexander’s brief essay about architecture The Nature of Order, and many ideas have been coming through as I’ve read it. In his attempt to create a total understanding of what comprises architecture that draws people in, makes them feel at home, makes them feel alive – think old European cities, places in Asia that have lain untouched for thousands of years, or the single remaining block in your city where all of your neighbors still talk to each other – he, somewhat by necessity, needs to create a worldview that exists at opposition to something.

For him, that something is essentially modernism. He does not like Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, or any of the countless architects who design glass-cube buildings or anonymous apartment skyscrapers. But he also recognizes that there is a broad system of incentives that forces architects to do the sorts of things that raze old cities, create “dead” buildings, and, in Alexander’s words, “fuck up the world.”

I believe there is a direct throughline between the processes that create lifeless cities, and the current psychospiritual impoverishment afflicting the tech industry. We seek something, but we don’t know what that is. We keep messing up our work, and we don’t seem to know why.

The answer, Alexander believes, is within us. There is something deeply spiritual about being drawn to a place. The same with good technology; when something does a thing for you, and gets out of your way, you end up feeling something.