there’s something about kyoto that makes me want to stay in it for a long while. It is not just aesthetic, but the understanding that it is essential and beautiful to incorporate a sense of peace in our everyday lives. That’s aesthetic to me, if done well. It shouldn’t be about visual bling for the sake of it, but a profound arrangement of space that makes people feel like they are part of an environment and the environment is part of them. It is not a luxury but a necessity. If I want to bring my old job into this, I would say this is what user experience in interaction design is about, the ability to arrange elements on a screen so that it makes the person feel like everything just makes sense. Friction is minimised. I cannot help but wonder if the damage to our environment is due to the fact that we no longer understand or remember what it feels like to have the sense of peace and richness that is possible when we live in harmony. Instead we have been conditioned to prioritise utility and efficiency, turning ourselves into machines. The cruelty we are doing to ourselves and our environment is now haunting us, and will continue to do so. I can only hope one day we will truly see the short-sightedness in our approach to life, to finally realise that damage to ourselves cause damage to the environment and others, and vice versa.