Is it just me or is this a...
Is it just me or is this a forum about design?
I can understand some discussion of philosophy influencing design and vice versa. However, I don't think that diatribe contributes anything to this discussion. Better off posting that stuff on political forums.
I suppose
we are being asked to look at ourselves in the mirror.
It's high time. Today an economist suggested that, for fattened Americans, at least, the party is (or should be) over. In trimming our wasteful ways, our credit card debt, our appetites, and our waistlines, we will begin to regain some of what we've lost.
This necessarily would imply that the businesses that "serve" us will also come in for a trimming. Al Gore used to proclaim that there's money to be made in the new energy economy; now's the time to ask him (if he's still around) just what he meant. We're going to need to learn how to make money in new ways, filling new needs (that were always there, somewhere, buried under our consumption.
Koen wrote "Our societies discard well functioning products at an unbelievable rate. The dumps are full with products that work perfectly well but that have been discarded in a moment of disillusion with the service it renders or it has been made obsolete by the next technical or functional development." And some of what he said subsequently seemed to acknowledge that, to some extent at least, we the consumer have been led to buy things we didn't need.
To my mind, the three seminal mid-century American designers he named -- Bel Geddes, Dreyfuss, Loewy -- were the first of the fantasists: The streamliners, the alchemists who turned ordinary mechanism into a Hollywood layer cake, with a cherry on top. In other words, to assure the hopeful investor in manufacturing that his expensive tooling would pay off in numbers of units sold, these men were employed to add "sizzle to the steak," to make the Little Guy want something Big, to build a dream world on the magazine page and "grab em." And it worked -- these guys had what it took. Anything could be streamlined, whether it needed it or not ! Pencil sharpeners, toasters, baby carriages, and telephones became miniature rockets, jet planes, and dirigibles. And for sixty years now, we've filled those order books and turned our wages into someone else's pile of gold.
Can we regain our senses ? Is it too late to come down to Earth, to realize that we don't need a quarter of all this "stuff" we've been sold ? Can we eat better (if not cheaper) while killing off the factory farm that's fouling our water and being kept alive with government welfare and unnecessary chemical pesticides and fertilizers, all because of a food-supply scare in the seventies ? Can we reconnect with our communities while cutting back on sprawl and unnecessary motor commuting, relearning how to live more simply and sanely ? Will we even see the desirability of these changes ?
dc - sorry but actually not...
dc - sorry but actually not just scs. This is an internet forum (albeit a fairly highbrow one) where I personally believe posts should be kept as concise and to the point as possible....I sometimes wonder who you are writing these very lengthy posts for? This is not to excuse scooby's rudeness btw.
Did anyone mention paper...
Did anyone mention paper plates yet, especially the really flimsy bright white ones, especially at the monthly Methodist church potluck.
Your heavier three compartment ones are a bit better, but there's a lot of really good food at the Methodist potluck. And so Grandma Benson's baked macaroni and cheese will likely have to share a space right next to the green jello stuff Miss Campbell always makes.
You don't have to take everything they put on the tables, my mom used to tell me. It's good advice. Undoubtedly. But this is the Methodist potluck.
paulanna...
This is an internet forum where where I believe persons should write more expansively, so that issues of substance can be grappled with with fitting dexterity.
It is okay for you to write in bullets.
It is okay for me to write at length.
The page down button is there for you and all to scroll past my posts.
Do not tread on me and I agree not to complain about the lack of depth, over simplied grunts, or insufficiently dexterous characterizations of some others' posts.
As a designer, you should know that there are many paths to finding fitting solutions and there are many things requiring more and less complicated designs to solve them.
I fit the length of my posts to the issues I deal with.
I would not ask you to design me a chair with no legs simply because I thought your chair with legs too complicated.
Capice?
Paulanna, I forgot to answer who I am writing for...
I decided sometime ago that the societies that I had visited so far, did not work very well.
I decided that many persons in positions of authority had never really thought much about how to make things better. They had their hands full trying to manage the structures that were there already.
I decided that there were many persons in society that made things for persons in positions of authority in society that could perhaps be challenged to be more aware of these persons in authority, and more aware of the institutions and structures that their authority depends on, and so might do a better, happier job of creating things for them. The things I had in mind ranged from the institutions that academics and policy wonks craft for persons in authority, all the way to forks and spoons that persons in authority of their diets use to eat with.
I decided to think about this phenomenon of authority, of doer and done for, of creator and created for, in the broadest sense possible, from the most powerful central banker ruling over a global financial empire, to a solitary individual ruling over his/her bathroom.
I decided that designers and architects and artists and scientists were one constellation of persons in the businesses of creating, or at least developing things, that do for others things they do not have to do for themselves.
I decided I needed to engage them and see if I could trigger a dialogue with them about not only what they were designing, but the contexts that they were designing within.
continued
I decided that such a dialogue could alter the way that designers and architects and artists and scientists understand their contexts, not by me knowing more (I do not), but simply by me taking the time to engage them; that is, I decided the crucial catalyst; the taking of the time to engage others in creator/created for dialogue. I decided it needed to be done on as many levels as it could be done--ranging from as much simplicity and directness, as I could muster, to as much complexity and subtlety, as I could muster.
I decided that the internet was a cheap, quick medium for catalyzing such exchange--a medium that could have a multiplier effect albeit of undetermined extent.
I decided that if I reached out and found only a handful of designers and architects and artists and scientists willing to consider larger contexts in their work that I would have reached the few who were reachable by any civil means at all.
I decided that it was feasible to do.
I decided to do it.
I decided that if I reached some of them, that they would in turn inform me about the actual nuts and bolts of how they do their work and of their legacy reference points that institute their thinking, both in what it is open to and what it is resistant to, and so I would in turn be more effective in carrying on the dialogue; this is pretty much what has happened for me, anyway.
continued
There is a vast network of instituted order beyond the toaster one designs, or even the chair one collects; an order beyond the few pitiful -isms and rules one is given in school. This order sometimes is changing and sometimes is not. Sometimes it is good and sometimes it is evil. But always it is there and always it is constraining, and channelling, and biasing the things made. If the things made are lousy, if the things made are not meeting needs, if things could be being made that would be good and would meet the needs of persons, then one has no choice but to look at the grand order, the institutional framework, even to begin to understand which part of it might be redesigned to achieve the humane end of fitting things designed for potentates and persons. If the international trade institutions do not fit well, if the educational institutions do not fit very well, well then how can the products traded subject to international trade instiutions fit very well, and how can they fit persons educated in ways that fit ill? And conversely, if the persons creating the things have for whatever reason refused to make themselves aware of the grand order, even if that grand order were all to the good, well, how can those creators design things that fit the needs of a people so constrained in such a grand order?
I find persons in their work often concentrate so heavily on their work, in order to be good at it, that they simply set the receiver in their brains to a bandwidth--usually a very narrow one--to filter out the broader order--to effectively disconnect from it, rather than embrace it.
continued
In times of acute change from technological acceleration and re-instituting by the powers that be, in terms of tremendous catastrophies of policy at all levels of human organization, it is no longer enough for designers to close their minds to most of the bandwidth. It is also no longer enough for designers to dysfunctionally over-focus on silver bullet fixes--more -isms. They have to enter into the broadest dialogue with their times that that they are capable. They have to re-understand their world, as do all the persons they are creating for. There is no other choice than to resign oneself to be, as the Jews call the non Jews, goyim, or cattle, to be herded pastorally for a time, but eventually to ghastly slaughter.
Designers need to do the very opposite of what so many of us are predisposed to do in such times. They need to extend their antennae even further. They need to open the bandwidth wider. They need to seek broader and deeper contextual fit for what they design, not to some metaphysical standard, but simply to the best of their actual abilities.
I write to engage a few designers, a few architects, a few artists, a few scientists, who were probably already seeking this broader, deeper context; who were probably already in many respects far more in touch with it than I will ever be; but who were probably nonetheless operating in a kind of vacuum. They were wondering: is there anyone out their on the receiving end of what I am doing on the same wave length? Is there any point even to design things for such persons? Are they there? Are there any critics out their capable of thinking and understanding the problem and the solutions that I am exploring. Is there anyone left out there who gives a tinkerer's damn about the deep continuities of civilization, about the continued rational joining of past with future through eternal present. By posting thoughtfully here and elsewhere about a multitude of topics, I let them know that there are such persons left.
continued
These things I think about when I post.
Creativity and the civilization that it accretes is a collaboration, not just a process dictated by creative persons, or well capitalized producers, making things for the helpless goyim. If that were all there were going on, then civilization would have already lost the battle and become an act of animal husbandry, rather than civilization.
Creativity requires a creator and an appreciator, lest it reduce to atavism and narcissism in the creator and indolent subjugation in the appreciator.
These things I try to call attention to and prevent by posting.
The internet is a pool of thoughts. A post is a stone thrown in it. Once in awhile the ripple from the thrown stone splashes thought water on a receptive creature swimming in the virtual sea.
This I think about when I post.
I hope this clarifies my virtual purpose for you.
We wrote this message before...
We wrote this message before DCWilson's last posts, so there are some redundant elements but this is what we wanted to say:
We usually try to keep a kind of neutral and discreet role on the forum. But this time, we think that we should set the record straight.
1. Nobody apart from us has the right to decide if the content of a thread has its place on DA or not.
2. We really don't understand the determination of some of you against contributions that are sometimes long (where is the problem?) but mostly intellectually stimulating and of great interest. We cannot place a warning [off topic] on this kind of threads because they are as topic as can be. What can one do to avoid to those who are bothered by them the annoyance of falling on this type of content? Place warnings like [be carefull working brains inside] or [Dc Wilson on board] ? 😉
Come on now, seriously, there will never be enough people to think about the causes of the dysfunctions of our systems and that are capable of placing human activities and their impacts into perspective. We consider it a chance and a privilege to count several of them amongst the users of our forum and we will always fight so that they can express themselves freely.
3. If you don't agree with the content of the messages, feel free to reply by arguing your point rather than making remarks on the form which doesn't add anything to the debate.
4. As for those who think that what is said above is without relation to design, one can wonder what is their definition of design. Designers, architects and urbanists are (or should be) at the root of the conception of all our functional environment (habitat, transportation, clothing, all functional objects...). How can one therefore uphold that their work has no sociologic or economic implication or pretend that they can conceive objects without being aware of the political, economical or environmental context in which we are living?
All of that
makes perfect sense to me. And it should be reiterated that those who find any content on this (or any) discussion forum are free to "move on," as it were.
As the matter of DC Wilson's writing has arisen, however, with several readers commenting in one way or another about the remarkable length (not necessarily to say impenetrability) of his posts, would it be appropriate to have an airing of the "elephant in the room" ?
I will await a decision by Patrick and Alix before proceeding. The point of such a discussion would be, presumably, to address whether Mr Wilson's style does or does not serve his own aims well -- whether those he hopes to address are not indeed discouraged from "wading through" in hopes of gaining the meaning of said posts.
(It is surely a mark of his maturity and good will that our friend Koen always seems find the gist of DC Wilson's messages, addressing it with good humor and a positive attitude.)
Rudeness is without a doubt the most offensive practice found here or anywhere -- far more troubling than other forms of self-indulgence -- and it is a real rarity on this forum. I would certainly hope that condition does not change. It should be embarrassing to all to have to be corrected by our hosts for questionable behavior.
Well, since anything goes...
Well, since anything goes and is not expected to be relevant to the thread subject....
Teaching Moral Values In Public Schools
As society evolves, so do the interpretations of modern moral values. Although the teaching, or even mentioning, of subjects such as homosexuality, feminism, diversity, sex education & abortion spark controversy, the underlying fundamentals of moral values must always be upheld and instilled in our children. Those fundamental moral values include honesty, responsibility, tolerance, self-discipline, respect for authority, self-esteem, fairness, hard work, thrift and more. The parent is the principal leader in shaping moral values within a child?s mind, but the lessons do not end at home. The educational system, with teachers at the frontline, share an equally important responsibility in reinforcing civilized society?s concepts of morality and values to their students on a daily basis through curriculum or correcting unacceptable student behavior.
Many parents strongly feel that the instruction of moral values to their children lies solely within the family and that exterior influences may distort a child?s sense of values. True, society often exhibits behavior that goes against the moral teachings of the parent. Society?s laissez-faire attitude toward irresponsible behavior of celebrities and civic leaders tells children that there are no consequences to actions. The constant media advertising of materialism, sexuality, fame,
status and convenience distorts a child?s sense of what is important to them. In this day and age, one wonders how many children value an XBox 360 over a pet? To illustrate this point, consider Linda Pastan?s poem ?Ethics? where she recounts her school teacher asking her class the following question:
?if there were a fire in a museum
which would you save, a Rembrandt painting
or an old woman who hadn?t many
years left anyhow?? (James 610)
The answer should be obvious to most people. But consider young Linda?s response to the teacher?s question in the poem:
??I replied
why not let the woman decide herself??
To which the teacher would later report that Linda:
?eschews the burdens of responsibility.?
Linda acknowledges that the old woman?s life is precious, but so is the Rembrandt painting. Which one is more important in the situation in the burning museum? Why should any importance be placed on anything over a human being?s life? Here is where the teaching of moral values comes into play, regardless of parent or teacher guidance.
Most parents successfully provide for the needs of the material needs of their children with clothing, toys, playtime, nutrition and healthcare. Unfortunately, while the material needs of most children are met, the intellectual and moral instruction are neglected.
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