Several years ago why trying to build a megastructure on New York Harbor, the New York Wheel, I spent some time studying the whys and wherefore of megastructures in the history of mankind. People don’t “have to” build megastructures, but throughout history they’ve chosen to for several noteworthy reasons. The biggest of these is for demonstrating power and authority. Massive structures like pyramids show “we have the resources, organization, and power to do this.” They’re physical proof of a ruler’s or civilization’s strength. When you see the Great Pyramid of Giza, you immediately understand that whoever built it commanded enormous resources and labor. Then there is the religious and spiritual purpose. Many megastructures served sacred functions – tombs for the afterlife (Egyptian pyramids), temples to gods (ziggurats), or connections between earth and heaven. That’s why they reach towards the heaven and cause people to look up at them. These weren’t considered optional luxuries… they were seen as essential for cosmic order, ensuring good harvests, or guaranteeing the pharaoh’s safe journey to the afterlife (which protected the whole kingdom). As I learned during our trip to Egypt a few years ago, it wasn’t slaves who built the pyramids for the most part, it was citizens who wanted to cement their place in the afterlife with the divine ruler…they felt they needed to help this divine project to do so. These are also unifying projects. Building something massive gives a civilization a common purpose. It creates jobs, requires coordination, brings people together, and generates shared pride. The effort itself can strengthen social bonds and national identity. But then there is also the need to prove immortality and legacy. Rulers and civilizations want to be remembered. A pyramid lasts thousands of years – far longer than any human life. It’s a way of saying “I was here, I mattered, remember me.” And it works – we’re still talking about pharaohs from 4,500 years ago. My favorite and best suggested trip of all time is to go down the Nile and see the incredible remains of the great Egyptian civilization. Some megastructures even serve utilitarian purposes – the Great Wall of China for defense, aqueducts for water, or massive irrigation systems. But even these often exceed strict necessity and become symbols. The motivations remain similar: prestige, legacy, demonstrating capability, national pride, and pushing technological boundaries.
The core truth in all of this is that human beings are driven by more than survival. We want meaning, legacy, beauty, and to be part of something larger than ourselves. Megastructures fulfill deep psychological and social needs – they’re about transcendence, not just utility. Today I read about the controversy over the Obama presidential center on the South Side of Chicago. It is being nicknamed the Obamalisk. I was and am a big supporter of Obama despite the arguments against his presidency…and they are many. The main negative arguments that have been made are things like the governmental “overreach” of the ACA, the sluggishness of the recovery from the 2008 crisis, the “wastefulness” of the stimulus spending (note that is in direct conflict with the prior criticism, but when did that ever stop Republicans?), the lack of enforcement in foreign policy in places like Syria and Russia/Ukraine…not to mention Libya (think Benghazi), the doubling of the national debt, over-regulation, and the start of major-league national divisiveness (not so much his doing as reaction to him as our first Black president). These criticisms actually came from various political perspectives – conservative, libertarian, and even progressive critics who felt he didn’t go far enough on certain issues. Every presidency faces substantial criticism, and whether these critiques are fair or significant is often a matter of political perspective and a high degree of historical perspective. Supporters would counter many of these points with defenses about inherited challenges, Republican obstruction in Congress, the complexity of governing, and positive achievements in healthcare access, economic recovery, clean energy, and other areas.
This morning I read a wonderful opinion piece in the Washington Post. It was an article laying out the likelihood of whether or not America was facing a fall of its “empire” as happened to Rome and other great empires. This is a subject that has come up many times in the past few years and, it is said, is often referenced in many other times when things looked most bleak. It spoke of the fact that the ancient Greek historian Thucydides spoke of two mindsets when thinking of the demise of the Golden Era of Greece. There were the Athenian’s, eager to venture out into the world to acquire something new, and the Spartan’s, intent on staying home to guard what they already had. It was the Athenian spirit that is most often associated with the Golden Ages. That’s when civilization was open to influences from merchants and migrants, and when they let people experiment with new ideas and innovations. This is directly why they prospered. This required tolerance of pluralism as well as institutions and norms to restrain rulers’ arbitrary use of power. The authors accept that it is difficult to uphold open societies for long. When cultures turn anxious, for whatever external or internal reasons, curiosity tends to give way to control and open trade falls in favor of barriers. When this happens, the populace tends to long for strongmen and hunt for scapegoats. In times of trouble, the Abbasid Caliphate (the Golden Age of Islam) and Renaissance Italy imposed orthodoxy and persecuted heretics. Even open-minded Athens sentenced Socrates to death. In 1672, the usually tolerant Dutch lynched Johan de Witt, the statesman who had led them to prosperity, and purged their universities of Enlightenment thinkers. History shows us that great civilizations do not end by fate or old age, they end (or revive) by choice and a required amount of tolerance. This is not dissimilar to when Europe, after the devastation of two world wars in the 20th century, chose peaceful exchange and common institutions over conflict. It gave us the prosperity of the past 80 years.
So, as to the Obamalisk under construction in Chicago, what a symbol to validate all that these thoughts embed. Here we have perhaps the most controversial city of our times. A city that long-time residents have said has been ruined by corrupt left-leaning and liberal policies. It is hard to deny the extent of corruption in this heavily Democratic city, and it is equally hard to ignore the urban decay. And the “Spartan” government of Donald Trump has decided that the solution is a strongman tactic of sending in the military to take control against the wishes of the Governor and Mayor. Meanwhile, Barack Obama, who hails from Chicago politically, is busy building an edifice that sticks out like a sore thumb (literally) on the landscape of this battleground. Yesterday we had the No Kings protests against the Trump Administration. But we should not be celebrating the “Califate of Obama” at the same time. I’m sure Obama (who I generally respect a great deal) was well-intentioned in this project, but I sure wish we weren’t being forced to say, “All Hail!” to yet another and new pyramid when we should be working to come together to revive our great civilization before it goes the way of the worst of the great empires.