How does the world have its effect on us?

The living structure of the world is not only real and objective, but also tied inextricably, it seems, to the very nature of our human self.

One can hardly doubt, then, that the physical structure of the world, and especially the world of buildings where we spend most of our time, has a massive effect on us; that our good fortune, our future, our very ability to live, is profoundly tied up with the presence or absence of living structure in the world around us.

I shall argue that the geometry of the physical world — its space — has the most profound impact possible on human beings: it has impact on the most important of all human qualities, our inner freedom, or the sense of life each person has. It touches on internal freedom, freedom of the spirit.

I shall argue that the right kind of physical environment, when it has living structure, nourishes freedom of the spirit in human beings. In the wrong kind, lacking living structure, freedom of the spirit can be destroyed or weakened.

Our emotional freedom, our spirit, is nurtured and supported by those environments which are themselves alive. In an environment which has living structure each of us tends, more easily, to become alive.

#book/The Nature of Order/1 The Phenomenon of Life/10 The impact of living structure on human life#

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Key concepts in The Nature of Order
A list of key concepts in _The Nature of Order_, in order of appearance in the four books.

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