Committed to PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO KNOW Vol. 5 Num 131 Mon. October 04, 2004       Letters to Editor Intellectual poverty? Mujtaba Ahsan, Architectural Doctorate Programme, University of Hawai I speak of architecture as a part of the cultural whole and this must be read in that context. Have you ever wondered why historic preservation in architecture is a much-hyped academic and media cliché these days? Perhaps because it is sometimes seen as a cultural icon and an identity issue. This sensationalism also arises in part when there is a vacuum in modern design thinking. When a large part of the practice cannot innovate and give society a new icon and direction but finds it convenient and far easier to adopt off the shelf global models, the society suffers. It suffers from a lack of identity that arises from a failure to invent aesthetic and spatial inspirations and formulation of new icons. This inevitably leads to a distorted collage of borrowed aesthetics and displaced identity. The downside as said before, is a confused lack in character. The conventional motivation in dealing with this crisis is to go through a reinforcement of older icons, essentially backtracking in history. So it is no wonder that an impoverished intellect looks towards the past to reincarnate dead icons. The other attempt is to import icons from the global world, to use borrowed talents so to speak, in an effort to replace this vacuum. Either way, this is an indication of intellectual poverty. Today many of our societies look more towards the past than to the future and history becomes a major academic obsession, not to enrich the cultural treasure trove but to act impulsively in reaction to this apparent vacuum in the present. True freedom does not lie in winning a war, but in instilling the spirit, that drives society forward as a combined whole and breathes the magic of creativity and innovation that leads to progress. In every sphere of human activity this positive growth marks a culture of excellence. On the other hand, when stagnation and back tracking rules, it wilts and dies in time. Now the question is, which way do we want to go?