MyDoorsAreOpen
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2003
- Messages
- 8,549
Has anyone else walked around the downtown area of a major northeastern US city and seen one of these embedded in the asphalt? The central message is essentially the same cryptic four lines on all of them.
I have a vague memory of walking through New York City as a young teenager and seeing one or two of these tiles. It gave me an oddly nostalgic feeling to find out that there was a documentary made in 2011, in which a couple of artists from the Philly area tackle the mystery of who created them, and what he's trying to say:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9KRkHF51_0
I encourage anyone to watch this surprisingly emotionally moving documentary, which raises philosophical questions about having a mission in life and the nature of human communication. I won't spoil it except to say that in the end some of the mystery remains, because the most likely suspect is highly elusive and reclusive, and clearly does not want to speak out or be contacted.
The tiles also contain other messages on the side, which remind me a bit of the preaching that used to adorn the packages of Dr. Bronner's soap products -- almost coherent. It would be all too easy to dismiss this entire phenomenon as the work of a paranoid, mentally ill man, and decide that that's all there is to say. But I'm reminded of Paul Simon singing that "the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls", and I hav to wonder -- if there was an ordinary, unconnected and unschooled man with an idea that could really change the world, would we be able to tell him apart from a complete nutter? I've seen plot devices in fiction whereby a true prophet hides himself among mentally ill street people, either because that's the way he's received and told he belongs, or to keep people from discovering and exploiting his gift.
The Toynbee Tiler's deep and abiding faith in the importance of spreading an idea very important to him is what's so stunning about this whole phenomenon. I have to wonder, could Saint Paul, the original spreader of the story of Jesus, have been something like this man? It would be all too easy to pity this man, but I don't pity him at all. For him, life is incredibly meaningful.
Furthering the analogy with Saint Paul, since the documentary was released, the Toynbee Tiles have become something of a cult phenomenon among hip, artsy types on the internet -- I'm honestly surprised there's been no discussion of it on BL. Apparently there are now many new people making these tiles and affixing them to their city's streets. The mysterious and elusive original tiler's sidebar message of "You must make and glue tiles" has been heeded, and the meme has taken off.
I've been so taken with this documentary and the mystery of the tiles recently that I've done some background reading on Arnold J. Toynbee, the historian referenced by these tiles. I place Toynbee in the same category as Carl Jung and Ayn Rand -- intellectuals whose popular appeal far outshines the merit they're accorded by modern academe, because they happen to have said a lot of things people want to hear. Toynbee was an excellent writer, who gave his voluminous accounts of world history a sweeping, epic quality that few have captured since.
The idea that Toynbee is most remembered for has nothing to do with the planet Jupiter. A theme he brings up constantly in his work is that societies need to aim their sights on impossibly grand goals, in order to achieve progress and accomplishments that are just within reach. In other words, idealism and belief in a glorious distant future is the dynamo of any truly dynamic society. Nowadays Toynbee's unabashedly teleological approach to history makes scholars cringe, but I think he makes a good point. It's something I've intuited for a while now, and is a great rebuttal to the modern and postmodern experiments with the dismantling of meaning, endpoints, and ideology in general. Simply put, the future belongs to those who dare to believe in things.
And this idea (as opposed to anything about the physical resurrection of dead earthlings on Jupiter) is what I thank the Toynbee Tiler for bringing to my attention, because it's truly an idea worth consideration. Forgive me for dreaming big, but again going back to the analogy of Saint Paul, I wonder if the proliferation of Toynbee's Idea in this phenomenon represents the beginning of the proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes, the beginning or source of whole new ideologies and lofty ideas on the destiny of mankind, as the modern world slowly paves over the ruins of our old ideologies which don't serve us anymore.
Any thoughts, comments, or photographs would be welcome.
I have a vague memory of walking through New York City as a young teenager and seeing one or two of these tiles. It gave me an oddly nostalgic feeling to find out that there was a documentary made in 2011, in which a couple of artists from the Philly area tackle the mystery of who created them, and what he's trying to say:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9KRkHF51_0
I encourage anyone to watch this surprisingly emotionally moving documentary, which raises philosophical questions about having a mission in life and the nature of human communication. I won't spoil it except to say that in the end some of the mystery remains, because the most likely suspect is highly elusive and reclusive, and clearly does not want to speak out or be contacted.
The tiles also contain other messages on the side, which remind me a bit of the preaching that used to adorn the packages of Dr. Bronner's soap products -- almost coherent. It would be all too easy to dismiss this entire phenomenon as the work of a paranoid, mentally ill man, and decide that that's all there is to say. But I'm reminded of Paul Simon singing that "the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls", and I hav to wonder -- if there was an ordinary, unconnected and unschooled man with an idea that could really change the world, would we be able to tell him apart from a complete nutter? I've seen plot devices in fiction whereby a true prophet hides himself among mentally ill street people, either because that's the way he's received and told he belongs, or to keep people from discovering and exploiting his gift.
The Toynbee Tiler's deep and abiding faith in the importance of spreading an idea very important to him is what's so stunning about this whole phenomenon. I have to wonder, could Saint Paul, the original spreader of the story of Jesus, have been something like this man? It would be all too easy to pity this man, but I don't pity him at all. For him, life is incredibly meaningful.
Furthering the analogy with Saint Paul, since the documentary was released, the Toynbee Tiles have become something of a cult phenomenon among hip, artsy types on the internet -- I'm honestly surprised there's been no discussion of it on BL. Apparently there are now many new people making these tiles and affixing them to their city's streets. The mysterious and elusive original tiler's sidebar message of "You must make and glue tiles" has been heeded, and the meme has taken off.
I've been so taken with this documentary and the mystery of the tiles recently that I've done some background reading on Arnold J. Toynbee, the historian referenced by these tiles. I place Toynbee in the same category as Carl Jung and Ayn Rand -- intellectuals whose popular appeal far outshines the merit they're accorded by modern academe, because they happen to have said a lot of things people want to hear. Toynbee was an excellent writer, who gave his voluminous accounts of world history a sweeping, epic quality that few have captured since.
The idea that Toynbee is most remembered for has nothing to do with the planet Jupiter. A theme he brings up constantly in his work is that societies need to aim their sights on impossibly grand goals, in order to achieve progress and accomplishments that are just within reach. In other words, idealism and belief in a glorious distant future is the dynamo of any truly dynamic society. Nowadays Toynbee's unabashedly teleological approach to history makes scholars cringe, but I think he makes a good point. It's something I've intuited for a while now, and is a great rebuttal to the modern and postmodern experiments with the dismantling of meaning, endpoints, and ideology in general. Simply put, the future belongs to those who dare to believe in things.
And this idea (as opposed to anything about the physical resurrection of dead earthlings on Jupiter) is what I thank the Toynbee Tiler for bringing to my attention, because it's truly an idea worth consideration. Forgive me for dreaming big, but again going back to the analogy of Saint Paul, I wonder if the proliferation of Toynbee's Idea in this phenomenon represents the beginning of the proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes, the beginning or source of whole new ideologies and lofty ideas on the destiny of mankind, as the modern world slowly paves over the ruins of our old ideologies which don't serve us anymore.
Any thoughts, comments, or photographs would be welcome.
