Phil Paine on reading Jane Jacobs

Phil Paine discusses the noted New York/Toronto thinker, Jane Jacobs, who died recently, and tells us one of the most important insights he learned from her:

I first read her when I was a young teenager, and one sentence of hers had a profound impact: “There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.” Remembering this sentence saved me many times from being taken in by the endless waves of fake “rationalism”, pseudo-science, and mysticism masquerading as reason that characterized the century I grew up in.

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