The world according to Yona Friedman.

Consolations

#1 – We do not always understand ourselves.
#2 – We do not always need to understand ourselves.
#3 – We do not know always what we need.
#4 – It is not indispensable for us to know what we need.

Advice

#1 – Make love in the morning.
#2 – Make love at noon.
#3 – Make love in the evening.
#4 – Sleep at night.

Wisdom

#1 – Don’t trust kings.
#2 – Don’t trust people you do not know.
#3 – Don’t trust people you know.
#4 – You can trust your dog.

Sad truths

#1 – We live in a “now”.
#2 – We remember “now”s past.
#3 – We plan forward for “now”s to come.
#4 – Each “now” is an eternity in itself.

Noble truths

#1 – Small beings have better chances to survive. People should not depend on other people for their survival.
#2 – One should not efforce to convince other people transfered idea is always misunderstood.
#3 – Life contains innumerable micro-joys. Micro-joys are more important than great ones.
#4 – The universe consists of an infinity of erratic micro-events. Each of them is more important than are large ones.

Fundamental truths

#1 – I am.
#2 – You are.
#3 – They are.
#4 – We are.

Simple truths

#1 – We can not understand the universe.
#2 – We do not need to understand the universe.
#3 – We are able to imagine a universe which resembles ourselves.
#4 – The image we make about the universe leads to understand ourselves.

Unimportant truths

#1 – Everything is different from everything else.
#2 – You yourself are different from everybody else.
#3 – That difference is not really important to anybody but you.

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[F.O. – adapted from Yona Friedman,
Truths (1970-2000)]
Featured image:
Yona Friedman, Mobile architecture,
People’s architecture at MaXXI (2017)