January 21, 2021

Daring

(Hesitating)

“You have to be able to risk your identity for a bigger future than the present you are living.” Fernando Flores

If something is important enough you should try, even if the probable outcome is failure Elon Musk

Fear grips me in my belly. I’m right up against this challenge at the bleeding edge of my capacity to cope. I am whole-being tightening and contraction. As my world contracts, my perspective about my available options narrows to safe, familiar choices. I feel fear as I embark on any new project or venture, such as right at this very moment as I search inside myself for the courage to complete this book. I get quiet to really locate the fear in my body. This time it shows up as a jumpy, condensed energy in my solar plexus that makes the boundaries of my being seem smaller than they truly are. In fact, in moments I may mistake my fearful, small, self-protective and risk-avoidant feelings for my total identity.

In K–12 and higher education in the United States, we have educational norms and structures that encourage students to become skilled in giving correct answers as opposed to asking good questions. These habits extend to art and design education and there is vigorous debate right now about these educational paradigms, one of which is more linear and convergent, and the other of which is more nonlinear and divergent. We all need both capacities of course — this is an existential polarity that we are always dynamically managing. And, it’s helpful to remember that we have more than likely been conditioned to converge on the “right answer”. This norming orientation tends to discourage creative breakthroughs. Paradoxically, if we can cultivate a mindset of befriending failure —and perhaps even courting it —we can peel away some of our educational conditioning leaving us more open to recognizing fresh ideas when they arise.

Innovation proceeds by iteratively “failing forward” (Maxwell). In our failing forward via design, we make and remake reality on a contiguous basis. This failing forward goes by many names; innovation, risk, courage, creativity –and daring. In versioning culture, designers put infinite creative and disruptive models into play ranging from the malevolent to the superfluous. Consciously and iteratively failing forward we produce possibilities. But how do we discern the difference between daring and reckless? Sometimes, in our failing forward we fail to anticipate possible consequences of complex feedback loops that amplify malevolent habits and impacts. No design can claim to anticipate all the possible unintended consequences of its launch into the world. Yet it can and must take responsibility for anticipating consequences that are reasonable or possible.

Designing can be framed in terms of dialectical opposing forces of dynamic polarity. Daring design therefore exists in an existential continuum with prudence. Large-scale intentional design for social change is not neutral. Horrific abuses of power in the forms of systemic and instrumentalized violence and domination have tainted the notion of designing with the emerging future such that critics conflate it with social engineering. This has resulted in strong ideological prohibitions against intentional design at the scales of the social and civic arenas. Radical new ideas for societal betterment are often critiqued as being heavy-handed and dismissed as smacking of social engineering. This can lead to impotence and a sense of inertia on the part of designers and policymakers. Recognizing and creatively surfing this dynamic wave of human causality without getting stuck in limiting ideology, is a learning edge for integral design leaders.

Because I struggle with ongoing fear that if I speak my heart’s truth, I will lose love, connection and belonging, I am a continuing student of daring. As creatives, we instinctively know that without risk there is no opportunity — nothing at stake. Artists, designers, scientists and entrepreneurs are all wired to seek if not crave, risk. This state of risky uncertainty, which feels a bit dangerous to human beings yet is also the source of our greatest insights and creative breakthroughs, was dubbed ‘abductive reasoning’ by Charles Saunders Peirce. In his classic essay “The Workmanship of Risk” David Pye explored the existential polarity of safety and risk. Pye emphasize that creativity demands an active stance of constant daring because only in daring to fail may we dare to succeed. In the words of Daring Greatly author Brené Brown, they reach a point where the cost of failing to act is greater than the risk of possible failure.

Designing can offer people ways of living authentically. This often requires willingness to meet and exceed expected standards, to challenge existing formulas and typologies, and to introduce designs that transfer greater awareness of and responsibility for ethical choice making to individual citizens. The designer/client relationship imposes a great ethical responsibility. Designers who dare will face more complex challenges of discernment such whether to comply with industry norms such as specifying superficial ‘green’ solutions that ultimately don’t make a difference, or courageously inviting clients into an innovative (and risky) co-creative partnership aimed at achieving measurable quality-of-life enhancements. How can your designing introduce entirely new options that allow individuals to make the kinds of choices that provoke deeper thought and self-awareness?

Materials, product distribution platforms and aesthetics are part of the story. It’s also about how we use the sensations within our bodies as clues to design norms and taboos that we feel called to challenge via designed artifacts. Although we have frameworks for risk taking in design education, we often don’t have the embodied presence to consciously enact them from. Fortunately, designers often orient to the deep listening and keen observation skills that reveal unexpressed needs. They may have experience with practicing Non-violent Communication and participant observer research methods.  As creatives we can dare to be consciously dangerous to the kinds of status quo practices that keep us insulated from our fear, our vulnerability, and our humanity. We can dare to design products, processes and policies that elicit encounters with our hearts and our guts. Feeling into designed systems is a leading edge practice —a way of being that designs to account for all dimensions of reality. It starts with leaning into complexity, feeling the fear, and recognizing patterns within the field in their dangerous fullness. Daring Greatly author Brené Brown studies the interplay between human vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame. She epitomizes the daring and generous creative spirit. Check out her ted talk here.

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