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19.17
Can city models on Earth be "heavenly?"
 
     
  Even today, with super cities, in many provincial towns across the planet we find places of work mixed in between homes. In these village atmospheres, families can share the experiences of work, of children playing nearby and also of being able to share meals together.  
  Yet even with more people seeking to work from home in cities across first world countries, these same dynamics are simply not possible due to the way we have now structured our cities. Our work too often is a substantial distance from our place of work and the place of work of our immediate family. The place where we live may be hundreds (or thousands of kilometres) away from our extended family. Our children even, may go to school or college many kilometres from both our home and our place of work.  
  Put simply, the cities that we have allowed to be created, the cities in which we live  
  In some towns, workshops mix with houses, children run arond where work is going on, the members of thefamily help in the work, the family may possibly eat lunch together or the people working there.  
  Family, work and play are one continuous stream, helping nourish everyone.  
  But a pattern which prevents us from resolving our conflict forces, leaves us almost perpetually in a state of tension  
  For if we live in a world where work is separated from family life, or where courtywards turn us away, or where windows are merely holes in the wall, we experience the stress of these inner and conflicting forces constantly. We can never come to rest.  
  We are living then in a world so made, so patterned, that we cannot by any stratagem defeat the tension, solve the problem or resolve the conflict. In this kind of world, the conflicts do not go away. They stay within us, nagging, tense.. The build-up of stress, however minor, stays within us. We live ina state of heightened alertness, higher stress, more adrenalin, all the time.  
  This stress is then no longer functional at all. It becomes a huge drain on the system. Since the organisms capacity to enter the stressed state is already partly "used up" because it is perpetually in this state, our capacity to react to new problems, dangers and conflicts does down, because the organism is constantly exhausted by the perpetual state of stress.  
  And so the "bad" patterns- the window which doesn't work, the dead courtyard, the badly locatd workplace- these stress us, undermine us, affect us continuously. Indeed, in this fashion each bad pattern in our environment constantly reduces us, cuts us down, reduces our ability to meet new challenges, reduces our capacity to live and helps to make us dead.  
  And so the "bad" patterns- the window which doesn't work, the dead courtyard, the badly locatd workplace- these stress us, undermine us, affect us continuously. Indeed, in this fashion each bad pattern in our environment constantly reduces us, cuts us down, reduces our ability to meet new challenges, reduces our capacity to live and helps to make us dead.  
  While, on the other hand, the corresponding "good" patterns, when they are correctly made, help us to be alive, because they allow us to resolve our conflicts for ourselves. As we encounter them, we are always fresh, in the face of new encounters, new problems, and we are continuously renewed and made alive.  
     
     
     
     
     
   
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
 
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