The weekly color supplements that come with our black and white newspaper are perhaps more revealing than they intend to be about the distribution of wealth. One such supplement recently included, among the promotions for expensive jewelry and watches, a twenty-one page special section for homes in desirable Florida locations – a feast of real estate pornography - apartments, penthouses, and luxury residences priced from around three million dollars up to twenty million, Each one, according to the publicity, is a little slice of paradise which, at those prices, it should be. Don’t think I am envious. It would take more than $3 million to persuade me to live in a desirable Florida location, paradise or not. Think of who you might meet there.
There are several interesting mental conditions that seem to accompany wealth and power. Some, like the personal delusions of grandeur are merely pathetic and sometimes funny. Others, like the urge to dominate, are dangerous. But the one that leaves the greatest physical mark on our landscape is what I call the edifice complex. Those who have more than their fair share of everything else also want more than their fair share of physical space. The world must see how important they are.
There have always been excesses in the real estate market - monstrosities like Downton Abbey. and the massive houses scattered along the shores of Long Island. The ancient Romans set the standard with their huge villas, grand Temples, statues, and triumphal arches, each one a futile grasp at immortality. Statues are out of fashion. But, in terms of overinflated buildings and grandiose schemes, we are not doing too badly in the twenty-first century. Vainglorious projects are in fashion again, if they were ever out of fashion.
The average human being, kings and emperors included, is quite a small creature occupying some twelve square feet of vertical space and about four square feet of floor space, if he doesn’t wave his arms. We feel small, we are small, and it may be this smallness and fragility of the human frame in relation to the vastness of the wider world that lies behind the desire for disproportionate size in our homes and SUVs, and massiveness in our public buildings. Occupying space makes us feel safer and more powerful.
The kings and emperors of the past flaunted their power in vast palaces, and not much has changed. The palace of Recep Erdogan in Turkey has 1150 rooms. President Erdogan it’s not a particularly large man. How on earth can he occupy, let alone use, 1150 rooms? The answer of course is that he doesn’t. The rooms are purely symbolic. See how important I am. Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, described by one commentator as Arabia’s own Ozymandias, has planned an epic folly in the desert, a gigantic structure to rival the pyramids. Vladimir Putin has a secluded, heavily fortified complex near Moscow, a massive Italian-style palace on the Black Sea, and half a dozen other substantial estates. Closer to home we can see that the edifice complex is not limited to foreigners with Olympian pretensions. A two-hundred and fifty foot triumphal arch and a ninety-thousand square foot ballroom are probably only the tip of the monumental iceberg.
