What do you do?

 The following was a submission for 'Seniors Writing 2022' on the theme 'Diversity'

We’ve all been asked, way too many times. It’s a fall-back conversational opener, but it’s also a lazy way to think we ‘know’ someone when in truth it’s simply a means to mentally label and consign them to a metaphorical box. We’re expected to answer with a one word occupational ‘tag’; banker, teacher, mum, plumber, receptionist, CEO, nutritionist, lawyer, etc. as if it somehow summed us up. Is that all I am? Is that all you are? We are surely none of us so crudely and simply categorised? So readily consigned to a neat little compartment; the job title, the assumed stereotype, the preconceived notions, the cultural prejudices?

Many years back I was invited to submit a personal ‘update’ for inclusion within a small publication on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of my leaving high school – a place I had found largely pointless and from which I was only too happy to depart at the earliest opportunity on completing year 10 – a largely naive ‘boy’ of just fifteen years; so the anniversary year wasn’t even strictly correct as I’d actually left school two years prior to most of my soon-to-be HSC graduate ‘peers’.

With inspiration from something similar published in Brian Eno’s A Year with Swollen Appendices, I sent in a reasonably swiftly compiled and hence far from comprehensive, alphabetically arranged list of numerous ‘occupations’ or ‘qualities’ that I felt comfortable identifying with; that I felt might paint a picture of my various activities and evolving personality across the intervening decades. From artist, bisexual, curator and designer; through father, gardener, idler and liar; to motorcyclist, neuter, pacifist and reader; plus surfer, thinker, wanker, youth worker and much else besides. I think I hoped to subvert their expectations and shake up any residual mental pictures they might hold of their onetime classmate, assuming they remembered me at all which I felt was far from guaranteed.

We are all of us complex, multi-faceted individuals experiencing lives rich with variety and contradiction in every aspect of our being; tasks we undertake, thoughts we conceive, beliefs we hold, belongings we cherish, people we love, desires we conceal, habits we tolerate, actions we regret. Amongst his many insightful observations Albert Einstein once extolled, during a college commencement address in 1938 (please forgive the gendered language of his time), a desire that humanity exhibit “a sociable interest in a happier lot for all men” and “that every individual should have the opportunity to develop the gifts which may be latent in him. Alone in that way can the individual obtain the satisfaction to which he is justly entitled; and alone in that way can the community achieve its richest flowering” adding “we must not only tolerate differences between individuals and between groups, but we should indeed welcome them and look upon them as an enriching of our existence.” How simple it seems. Yet so far, and perhaps ever receding, from such a reality we still find ourselves.

I believe the simplest way to sidestep our lazy cultural preference for ‘black or white’ binary categorisations of our lived experiences and ingrained prejudices is to acknowledge, first within ourselves and then within all our fellow beings, the extraordinarily rich and complex amalgam of who indeed we are, and who perchance we might yet become. Rather than just me or you, us or them, Asian or African, male or female, Christian or Muslim, gay or straight, friend or enemy; recognise instead that every single one of these, and other, characteristics exist within a vast spectrum of complex possibility. A child of immigrants can be both Vietnamese and Australian; in Japan it is common to practice both Shinto and Buddhist faiths simultaneously; bisexuality may be widely misunderstood but is neither diminished nor negated through being so; and is an enemy truly anything more than someone we choose not to understand or over whom we wish to exert power? When we recognise the infinite complexity of ‘who’ an individual might be, we cannot but help to also recognise that we are all of us similarly, almost incomprehensibly, rich with a veritable kaleidoscope of variety and potential. We may have much in common, we may have much that varies, but every single one of us is uniquely suited, uniquely qualified, to be who we are. And if we are all unique, then surely we are united by that common possession of singularity?

Yes, we may form close bonds with others in whom we find one or two points of similarity with our own cultural background, philosophical beliefs, sexual preferences, occupational endeavours or sports of choice, but we and they are so much more than a handful of commonalities. The more we recognise the extraordinary richness of every individual, the more we see that indeed we are all united in and by our diversity. Plus the more it should be apparent that it is this very diversity that lends humanity, our individual and communal lived experiences, the sense of identity and belonging which at heart we all crave. We shouldn’t merely be tolerating difference and diversity but actively seeking, embracing and rejoicing in it. Our sense of self can at times seem intrinsic, ingrained, dominant, even supreme, but lets look beyond this learned individualist mindset and recognise the truth of humanity’s collective interdependence; the genuine strength to be gained from a unity of difference. A world rich and strong in diversity.

Que scay-je? (What do I know?)

 Having first encountered and become intrigued by Michel de Montaigne in Alain de Botton’s The Consolations of Philosophy, I was recommended Sarah Bakewell’s delightful and illuminating How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer. I subsequently resolved that there was nothing for it but to read his own words, in full, and procured a copy of Donald Frame’s translation The Complete Essays of Montaigne. I am savouring the content and, as yet, have completed only two of the three original books included in this largish volume (just over 900 dense pages), but am thoroughly enjoying each new encounter with his thoughts. Even his odd, and yet therefore perhaps entirely apposite (as seemingly every essay deviates from its stated theme), inclusion of the ‘Apology for Raymond Sebond’ (Book II, Essay 12) which, at 140 pages, far exceeds the length of all other entries, is dotted with his acquired wisdom and self-deprecating observations. For me, the strength of so much of Montaigne’s writing is the genuine sense of its being truly ‘lived’ wisdom, despite his great fondness for his library collection. Following is just a small taste of my favourite excerpts from Book I. They are numbered by Book and Essay e.g. I:4

I:4

‘Anger at things that happen shows small wit;

For all our wrath concerns them not a bit.’

Attributed to an unknown poet in Plutarch

I:5

‘I put my trust easily in another man’s word. But I should do so reluctantly whenever I would give the impression of acting from despair and want of courage rather than freely and through trust in his honesty.’

I:9

‘We are men, and hold together, only by our word.

I:11

‘The frenzied curiosity of our nature, which wastes its time anticipating future things, as if it did not have enough to do digesting the present.’

I:14

‘I live from day to day, and content myself with having enough to meet my present and ordinary needs; for the extraordinary, all the provision in the world could not suffice.’

I:20

‘It is uncertain where death awaits us; let us await it everywhere.’

‘When death comes, let it find me at my work.’

Attributed to Ovid

I:24

‘An able reader often discovers in other men’s writings perfections beyond those that the author put in or perceived, and lends them richer meanings and aspects.’

I:25

‘We should [ask] who is better learned, not who is more learned. We labour only to fill our memory, and leave the understanding and the conscience empty.’

I:26

‘Learning, even when it is taken most directly, can only teach us about wisdom, integrity and resolution … Put [your] children from the first in contact with deeds, and instruct them, not by hearsay, but by the test of action, forming and moulding them in a living way, not only by precepts and words, but principally by examples and works; so that learning might be not merely a knowledge in their soul, but its character and habit; not an acquisition but a natural possession.’

‘For doubting pleases me no less than knowing.’

Attributed to Dante

I:30

‘The archer who overshoots the target misses as much as the one who does not reach it.’

I:32

‘Who does not willingly exchange health, rest and life for reputation and glory, the most useless, worthless, and false coin that is current among us?’

I:42

‘It is the enjoying, not the possessing, that makes us happy.’

I:53

‘Everything, no matter what it is, that falls within our knowledge and enjoyment, we find unsatisfactory; and we go gaping after things to come and unknown, inasmuch as things present do not satiate us. Not, in my opinion, that they do not have the wherewithal to satiate us, but that we seize them with a sick and disordered grasp … Our appetite is irresolute and uncertain: It does not know how to keep anything or enjoy anything in the right way. Man, thinking that it is the fault of these things, fills and feeds himself on other things that he does not know and does not understand, to which he applies his desires and his hopes, and which he holds in honour and reverence.’

I:54

‘It is a marvelous testimony of the weakness of our judgement that it recommends things for their rarity or novelty, or even for their difficulty, even if they are neither good nor useful.’

I:56

‘We must not ask that all things should obey our will, but that our will should obey wisdom.’

Therefore I must conclude this post with the following:

I:26

‘Since it is philosophy that teaches us to live, and since there is a lesson in it for childhood as well as for the other ages, why is it not imparted to children?’

Design

I have spent the greater part of my life as a designer (and so have you). However, though I make that statement with a degree of pride, I simultaneously do so with a degree of hesitancy, as I am certain that the greater portion of readers will not truly understand what I mean by it. This is no fault of theirs but the natural consequence of an almost society-wide confusion as to what ‘design’ actually is. And it is a confusion that I am sorry to say has been actively promoted for many decades and across many avenues of communication including, somewhat absurdly, design educators and the design media.

Now this is a dangerous topic for me to commence writing upon, as I know I am susceptible to falling foul of my passion and ending up writing a manifesto, when what I intend this post to be is simply another loosely themed selection of quotations and observations I have gathered together in my various notebooks over the years, as mentioned in an earlier entry. (Beauty, June 2021)

I don’t delude myself that anyone actually reads this blog but, wordy as I can sometimes be, I do want it to have some semblance of brevity and focus. Plus I think clarity is paramount so I’m simply going to try, as succinctly as possible, to first elucidate what I understand design to be. These are not exclusively my thoughts; a great many very good designers would, I think, agree. I shall therefore be borrowing some of their words in my explanation, as follows: (Please accept my apologies in advance for the predominantly and unneccesarily male-gendered language of some of the quotations.)

Design is NOT styling.

Victor Papanek, in his landmark publication Design for the Real World (1974), states:

‘Design is the conscious effort to impose meaningful order’ and ‘All men are designers … for design is basic to all human activity’ because ‘It is the prime function of the designer to solve problems.’

He then explains that for a design solution to be truly regarded as successful it needs to meet six functional requirements which he labels; Method, Use, Need, Telesis, Association and Aesthetics. I am not going to explain them all in detail here but that last one, aesthetics, is important to my current discussion. Of aesthetics he asks ‘Does it appeal to our senses of beauty and delight?’ and he ranks it equally with his other five functional requirements. To be clear, he considers beauty to be an integral function of good design, and I agree with him one hundred percent.

So what then is styling and how is it different?

Robert Pirsig, in his equally landmark work Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (also, appropriately, published in 1974) brutally but accurately describes style as:

‘Technological ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness in an effort to produce beauty and profit.’

In other words, aesthetics are included as an equal functional requirement of good design, but a solution that is poorly resolved, perhaps difficult to understand or use, potentially prone to malfunction or breakage, and maybe environmentally hazardous to produce, could still find an eager buying public if it has been overlaid with a veneer of styling that conforms to a current ‘fashion’ or ‘trend’ created by marketers and promoted by multinational businesses as the ‘next big thing’.

Design is all about function; does it truly work, on every possible level? Styling is simply trying to sell something by making it conform to an evanescent desire; keeping up with the ‘new cool fad’ or the ‘latest craze’.

So, that’s my rant. I’m sorry it makes for such a very long introduction! Back now to my notebooks and some thoughts I have collected from numerous sources on the topic of design. What has any of this to do with the ostensible overarching intent of AEON: An Eternity Of Now? Simply that I believe truly good design can be an enabler. It can help us to create environments, processes, experiences, personal encounters and artefacts etc. that genuinely enhance our lives; that create opportunities for personal and communal betterment; that could potentially permit us to honestly consider ourselves worthy custodians of this beautiful blue planet we call home.

Contrary to my earlier notebook extracts, many of these are short and removed from their original context. Hopefully, perhaps with short explanatory notes where necessary, they will still stand as insightful observations or thoughts on the wonderful potentiality of good design in our lives. You may notice a couple of repetitions on the themes of experimentation and failure, questioning and responsibility, but I feel they add an important emphasis.

From Alain de Botton’s The Architecture of Happiness:

‘To design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know.’

‘What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.’

‘We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land they have replaced. We owe it to the worms and the trees that the buildings we cover them with will stand as promises of the highest and most intelligent kinds of happiness.’

From the Gaffa Galleries’ exhibition Chromology:

‘Our goal is to prompt a pause. To create a space for the observer to question what exactly it is that they value about an object or thing.’

‘For us, design is not about production lines, it’s about human beings enriching the lives of other human beings. It’s about the energy invested in the creation of a hand-made thing.’

‘When the work moves from our hands to yours, it becomes part of your story. One that you create.’

From David Harvey discussing Rebel Cities:

‘What kind of city we want to make cannot be separated from what kind of people we want to be.’

From Bertrand Russell’s In Praise of Idleness:

‘“Fruitful Monotony”, when apparent boredom transforms the seemingly idle brain into a powerful tool capable of generating bold new ideas.’

From Douglas Adams’ Mostly Harmless: (Explaining the technology of Unfiltered Perception.)

‘It wasn’t a complicated technological idea. It was just a question of leaving a bit out.’

Note: Sometimes, indeed often, design wisdom can come from unlikely places. This typically concise excerpt of Adams’ prose beautifully captures an oft overlooked or ignorantly ridiculed design maxim – less truly can be more.

From Sir Ken Robinson’s The Element:

‘What is true is that if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.’

‘Intelligence, applied to imagination, can lead to creativity.’

‘Creativity is the strongest example of the dynamic nature of intelligence, and it can call on all areas of our minds and being.’

From Shaun Usher’s Lists of Note:

Immaculate Heart College, Art Department Rules

Rule One ‘Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while.’

Rule Four ‘Consider everything an experiment.’

Rule Eight ‘Don’t try to create and analyse at the same time. They’re different processes.’

Lesley Loko quoted in Assemble Papers Issue #11:

‘In the act of design there is an implicit faith in the idea of something that isn’t yet here, something that’s about to come.’

Just a little more design wisdom from Victor Papanek:

‘Design must become an innovative, highly creative, cross-disciplinary tool responsive to the true needs of men.’

‘Design as a problem-solving activity can never, by definition, yield the one right answer: It will always produce an infinite number of answers, some “righter” and some “wronger.”’

‘The creative designer … must be given not only the chance to experiment, but also the chance to fail … Here, possibly, is the crux of the matter: To instil in the designer a willingness for experimentation, coupled with a sense of responsibility for his failures. Unfortunately, both a sense of responsibility and an atmosphere permissive to failure are rare indeed.’

‘Designers often attempt to go beyond the primary functional requirements of Method, Use, Need, Telesis, Association and Aesthetics; they strive for a more concise statement: Precision, simplicity. The particular satisfaction derived from the simplicity of a thing can be called elegance. When we speak of an ‘elegant’ solution, we refer to something consciously evolved by men which reduces the complex to the simple.’

And in closing, Peter Brook quoted in John Heilpern’s Conference of the Birds: (Discussing the creative process.)

‘The moment you arrive anywhere, you limit the distance you might have travelled.’

Travel well people. May your monotony be fruitful and your solutions elegant!

Freedom!

For many years I deliberately avoided active engagement with the daily news across pretty much all media sources; TV, radio, press, online. I considered, not without reason I still believe, the great majority of its offerings to be nothing more or less than glorified gossip; titbits of titillation to keep the masses suitably amused or outraged, principally for the true purpose of garnering advertising revenue and other profits for the owners and shareholders. My only concession was a daily free local newspaper that did indeed keep me abreast of issues of importance in my immediate community – plus served to wrap my minimal (non compostable or recyclable) household waste, start my winter fires, build my no-dig veggie gardens and provide some small entertainment with a daily crossword. But with the COVID pandemic and the loss of over 100 print newspapers in Australia, I relented and purchased a subscription to The Sydney Morning Herald. (Bizarrely, and greedily, my free daily local paper with all its stock, printing and distribution costs covered by advertising, is only available in its infinitely-cheaper-to-publish-online version though a paid subscription. Not bloody likely!) Despite its not insignificant cost, the printed edition SMH has obvious benefits: choosing which articles to engage with, advertisements are easy to bypass, the ability to suit my own schedule, etc. but, as Alain de Botton states in his book The News, ‘To consult the news is to raise a seashell to our ears and to be overpowered by the roar of humanity.’ Sometimes that roar lingers in my head and gives me no peace until such time as I give vent to my reactions by either ranting to poor, unsuspecting and undeserving family and friends, or sitting at the laptop to write responses such as the following. Please know that I do so principally to regain some personal mental and emotional calm. Still, I hope you might find perhaps a vestige of merit in this or other of my scribbles?

I grow so weary of the constant demands for individual rights and individual freedoms that daily grace our various media. Rights and freedoms do not exist in glorious isolation but are in fact privileges accorded to responsible contributors to a society. Such is even written into the perhaps lesser known Articles of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Indeed, whilst Article 1 states ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.’ which is loudly and arrogantly proclaimed from soapboxes across the world, it also states ‘They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.’ which often seems conveniently overlooked.

Perhaps more significantly, but equally frequently, disregarded is the context provided by such as Article 29 which states ‘1. Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.’ and ‘2. In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.’ So we must discard our immature notions of glorying in a hedonistic individualist fantasy and recognise that true personal freedoms and the granting of personal rights to certain behaviours or privileges can only exist within a responsible, mutually supportive, collectivist culture. We must give before we can expect to receive.

What we see occurring and condemn in China and Russia is really no different to what we also see in America and Britain, and what we are experiencing here in Australia. Putin and his ‘oligarch’ cronies are really little different to Australian political parties headed by a ‘boys club’ of well connected private school graduates funded by opaque donations from property developers and business tycoons keen to protect their personal interests, status and wealth. It is the natural consequence of any system wherein the laws are made by people who have gained power through wealth and privilege that they will inherently and principally make laws that protect their positions; it is a self perpetuating and indeed escalating system that only leads to ever greater division between the haves and have nots; the powerful and the powerless; those protected from the worst of COVID by their wealth and privilege and those at the mercy of job loss and poor governance, crying ‘Freedom!’

The promotion of a minority ‘elite’ and the concomitant persecution of the majority ‘oppressed’ can only ever lead to societal division and civil unrest. It is the principal recipe for social collapse and is sustainable only in circumstances of totalitarian control; exactly the situation we witness causing current global conflicts and precisely what was supposedly (or wishfully?) consigned to the dustbin of history by the decline of feudalism and subsequent rise of modern democracy, though it has reared its ugly head on numerous occasions since and seems ever possible, and likely, to do so again.

Seriously people! Put your adolescent acquisitive desires aside and recognise that we are all one – the totality of humanity, to again quote the UN Declaration ‘without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status’ and to which I might add gender identity and sexuality plus no doubt other attributes I currently fail to identify. We each share 99.9% of our genetic make-up with all other modern humans. Even more importantly, our very survival upon this planet requires not only that we need to collectively and collaboratively work toward betterment for all human kind, but that we must do so in concert with the recognition that our survival is intrinsically dependent upon the parallel survival of every aspect and component of our planetary host – every living creature and plant, every natural environment and process, every complex system and cycle. Every single day we destroy more and more of everything that sustains our very existence as a species and every single day we continue to increasingly fragment the potential unity of human experience by vilifying and persecuting anyone who is not one of our 'tribe', whilst simultaneously, ignorantly and vaingloriously proclaiming ‘FREEDOM!’

For fuck’s sake, grow up.