Reply #45: Understood. But has a former Angelino, and San Diegan, this applies [View All]

[NNadir]

to the coast mostly.

Fifty km inland is a different story. There at least is the issue of cooling in the warmer climates. Granted that the Coast of California is generally mild.

Here in NJ, the McMansion is typically just as stupid as a Hummer.

There are lots of these things around here. I typical entry has a two story foyer featuring a dumb chandelier (generally with all kinds of tiny incandescent bulbs) and a garish winding staircase.

One could argue that two story houses are more efficient to heat under certain circumstances, but only if the stairways are small, or, in the case of a winding stairway, have fans. But they never have fans, or almost never do.

Sometimes I reflect on the life of Andrei Sakharov, who in his autobiography describes growing up in Stalinist times with two families crammed into a few small rooms with one shared tiny bathroom in a hallway. Sakharov, of course, did great things - some questionable things - but many great things. This is a man who almost single handedly really brought the Soviet Union down, mostly on the basis of highly developed intellect and furious moral insight. Except for the decade in which he was a "Hero of the Soviet Union," (and even then, probably their dacha was modest by New Jersey standards) he and Elena Bonner lived small until almost the end of his life, a light bulb, a desk, and small rooms crammed with papers and books. And still he saw further, and deeper, and lived on a higher plane than more than of us ever even dream of.

My guess is that no one needs a McMansion. If Sakharov did what he did growing up in the space of a 100 square meters chock full of other people, no one needs a McMansion. Maybe Sakharov would have grown up hollow in a larger space; I have known my share of hollow children raised in imperious spaces in imperious homes. (One such young man, about whom I cared a fair amount, and of whom I expected great things, is in his twenties, living down the great marble hallway separated spiritually from his family, in the great silence of the blaring big screen, locked in front of a computer doing who knows what - he has never had a useful job.)

Of course, it is probably the case that I am being a little more than hypocritical here. I don't live in what could be called a McMansion myself, but I have far more than most human beings, far more than Sakharov ever had, and many of my neighbors live in McMansions. Sometimes my wife is intimidated by these things, but as the moral light of my life, I can honestly say she would never aspire to live in such a thing. I often fall into the trap of wanting more of this and more of that, because overall, I love my hometown, and would rather fit in than think of, say, the people in Botswana. But, as there are Botswanans, there is, really, no intrinsic reason that I could justify what I already have.