Ivory Towers and Pipe Dreams

"Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential."
~Ayn Rand

I began reading Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead yesterday and it brought to mind an art project from when I was in high school. Everyone was supposed to design a house. The picture on this blogspot is the house I designed.
(click image to enlarge)

It is a somewhat hilarious memory because... well, the design problems are self-evident. First off, try supporting half the house with a staircase. Something tells me there's going to be structural problems here. Yes, the upside-down pyramid is suspended in the air by the staircase running from the low portion of the house.

I would guess that if the structure were built in Minnesota, you might also have a problem with accumulating snow adding additional weight. Furthermore, from my observation living in the Northland, flat roofs are notorious for springing leaks over time. Leaky roofs are not a fun thing to deal with either.

But when the model you build is made of paper, and your only barrier is the imagination, a young person can dream up some pretty far out images. Just don't ask too many questions, like what would the re-sale value be? Or, what would a wife think of the amount of closet space here and the lack of windows?

An unrealistic hope or fantasy is known as a pipe dream, the origin of the phrase being an allusion to the stimulated imaginations of opium smokers. Many a business has crashed and burned because their product or process or service was ultimately a pipe dream. Like my house here, it may have been imaginative, but was decidedly not practical.

(This isn't to say that such a house could never be built. Or that the idea could not be modified to become a little more stable. For example, if the upside-down portion were supported by its tip, and thin rods made of some super-alloy supported the corners...)

In point of fact, much of what man has achieved is because he didn't allow his imagination to be restricted too much by reality based thinking. Da Vinci wrestled with the problems of flight, and must have been thought a kook by many. He was simply ahead of his time. The Wright brothers showed that gravity could be defeated. And today there are people with jet propelled suits doing solo flights that make the Wright brothers' contraption to be but a baby buggy.

While it's true that some ideas are created in ivory tower environs that have no possibility of practical implementation, it is also true that what seemed absurd from one point of view is quite astonishing from another.

So let the kids dream. Tomorrow it will be their world anyways.