Is this a perfect example of human conformity?

Post Reply New Topic

Why neighbours should get so bothered about how someone else decorates their own house is bizarre.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/k ... 69761.html

To me this sums up the dark side of the human race. For many people, there's a weird desire to control how other people behave even when there is no reason to beyond just wanting them to not be different.

Actually the colors and stripe pattern make me feel dizzy and nauseated. Otherwise I wouldn't care. Should've used some darker stripes with less contrast. Easier on the eyes.

This isn't an artistic expression; the house owner admitted she is doing it to oppose some nearby development. She's holding the neighborhood hostage until she gets her way. She vows to pursue appeals through the courts "until I get bored."

Sounds like a right b***h of a neighbor, to me. So, to answer the question posed in the title of this thread, no. It's not human conformity. It's just neighbors who are fed up.

The house looks beautiful to me. If you want me to know I'm supposed to be offended, you need something more explicit, like a giant hand painted on the wall giving me the finger, or some verbal insult written there in big letters.

I support the right of the individual so I think she should be able to paint her house like that.

As snowman said its not particularly offensive either.

It could be worse--she could live in that soul-sucking den of American suburban busybodies known as a "housing association." It's a real estate development in which dozens of houses are built at once as a neighborhood, with the appearance and maintenance of the houses being regulated by an association of the houses' residents. Our neighbor was always getting a Letter from the Association telling her that she'd violated something with some minor decoration. Once she was forced to remove a tasteful copper awning. Another time she had to move a small Japanese stone lantern out of her front yard. She had to fight them on the koi pond which was out of sight in her back yard behind a fence. They could tell you what color to paint your house.

I could see it being important if it was a historic district or the buildings were old and of historic value, but these were colonial knock-offs no more than 30 years old. My neighbor finally had enough and retired to the country, where I presume she is putting Japanese folderol wherever the hell she wants.

That was very hard to look at so I couldn't imagine how it must feel for the neighbors too to have to see it all the time. I imagine it also affects them too, hurts their eyes, etc.

kinda bumfuzzled my eyes. had to close the tap immediately.

Having grown up in a world where such things as brutalist architecture were imposed on all of us, I feel that when somebody gives me a say on the visual aesthetics of "my" town, I'll be more inclined to agree with the right of a neighbourhood to control the appearance of an individual's property, though I have some sympathy with the neighbours. It's hard to see a code of conduct that wouldn't involve somebody oppressing somebody else, so maybe anarchy is the nearest we can get to perfection here. Our city council doesn't allow small, tasteful windmills, on the grounds of aesthetics, but they don't stop satellite dishes of the same size. And they claim to be serious about green ethics.

Does the individual have a right to see only beauty as they go about their daily life? It would be great, but I don't see how it could be done. Everybody would have a different idea of what was ugly - mine would include most advertising and the Tesco logo, most cars, many modern buildings especially shopping malls, those yellow lines on the road, fluorescent colours, police uniforms, used beer cans, football flags, car parks, people in silly trousers, baseball hats, and business suits.

ummmm, I actually, really and truly, dig that Jetsons thing. And I am not being ironic or mocking or anything. I really like that stuff....the flying saucer houses and all.....

Edit: Apparently so did Irwin Allen


Love that whole design aesthetic. *swoon*

Things like building codes, zoning laws, and homeowners' associations' rules have been thorns in my side for as long as I've known about them. I've always found it annoying that so much of what houses look like is regulated, from aesthetics to safety to just supposed practicality concerns.

On the other hand, I am a very visual person and find some neighborhoods more beautiful than others, and so it might bother me if there were a hideous building outside my window that I couldn't help but look at every day. Though I wouldn't care if something were in someone's yard behind a fence. Sometimes different is nice--for instance there used to be one house on the opposite side of the valley from where my parents' house is that was painted bright pinkish red, and it actually added character to the hillside--but if every home were a wildly different color and they clashed strongly it wouldn't be so great. In that respect, I have more understanding for rules that regulate what the outside of a house looks like (within reason) than the inside.

As far as the inside, there are apparently rules as to the height and width of stairways, for instance. I look at it like if I were to put a huge amount of money into building a house, if I wanted one of the stairs to be a zip line and the hallway below to be a trampoline, I should be able to do that.