January 21, 2021

Enowning

(Enmeshing)

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. George Bernard Shaw

When I ask my students what their life serves, I get perplexed expressions that indicate that they have never been asked to reflect inwardly or to consider their own values as designers. Truth and authenticity have been mostly on ice during the postmodern era. Postmodernity lent us the insight that there are no context-independent truths - yet having seen this we need not collapse in relativism. Becoming oneself — endeavoring to become who we uniquely are — is a process of taking possession of (enowning) oneself through inner reflection and personal development as part a lifelong process that may result in degrees of noncompliance with the normative expectations of society.

Designers enter the professions faced with what looks like a choice between reasonable and unreasonable designing — either reproducing formulaic methods in a secure job, or developing the courage and entrepreneurial spirit that unreasonable design would necessitate. Sustain what? Many of my students are suspicious of ‘green design’. They feel that the lifestyle branding approach to sustainability lacks substance and they are hungry for something real. Remaining reasonable, on the level of a logical, sensible goal, sustainability lacks the fierceness to grab me and shake my bones. Yet unsustainability - as our fundamental way of being alive - is a freakishly strange and inexhaustively rich horizon within which to live and create. The crisis of unsustainability calls forth the unreasonably creative self because it requires the constant re-encountering of who we are, how we are and what we are becoming.

The green design ethos suffers from underwhelming vanilla-ness and fuzziness. Worse, because green/ eco design is often positioned as an alternative to conventional design, it can come off as pessimistic, righteous, judgmental or just plain boring. The wimpy lack of fierceness of design for sustainability —aiming too low and aiming at the wrong targets — has been described by many critics who up the ante on design for sustainability (McDunough, Daley, Hershock, Fry, Ehrenfeld). As visionary architect William McDonough says, “being “less bad” doesn’t cut it.” It is naïve to assume that reasonable or “less bad” behavioral modifications will somehow enable us to make the quantum reframes required to adapt to today’s challenges and flourish.

In Sustainability by Design, John Ehrenfeld devotes a lot of ink to unpacking this problem of reasonableness. Why is reasonableness a problem? Reasonableness is a powerful social norm that upholds deep structuring influences in our business and academic cultures. By reinforcing consensus reality, norms and mores, we lean toward the status quo and enact the values of what Jane Jacob called the Guardian culture. If we always do what we’ve always done (with slight modifications) we’ll always get what we’ve always got. Reasonable approaches have their place - for example approaches that insert people and planet into the normative profit equation, can lay the groundwork for unreasonable design initiatives, while still delivering the expected cost savings and demonstrating corporate social responsibility.

Reasonable approaches aren’t wrong. They are healthy, adaptive responses to disequibrium. Designers play a role by fostering the diffusion of both reasonable and unreasonable tactics, while being crystal clear about the difference. Reasonable tactics often reduce the complexity of human beings and living ecosystems in ways that alienate more people than they enroll. Reasonableness is often the end result of attempts at consensus which often end up yielding mediocre solutions that no one really wants. Whether we are technological optimists for example, or technological pessimists,  weak compromises are not compelling. Further, reasonable tactics may provide a false sense of security that appropriate measures are being taken, shifting the burden away from the root problems of which “unsustainability” is merely a symptom.

Our collective understandings of our challenges are always evolving and in the process becoming deeper and less reasonable. An example of an unreasonable designing stance would be debugging a good existing design patent to take it from good to great - in service of the greater good. This may involve various ways of enhancing experience, streamlining and lightening the production impact, removing the barriers to market such as lowering the price point to reach underserved markets or reducing the distribution impact. Behavioral approaches, when linked to the full diversity of values and beliefs that underlie our behaviors, are motivating and powerful. Well articulated service designs for example, can give positive feedback about lifestyle choices, while also offering unreasonable challenges to existing consumptive habits.

Enowning is taking possession of our authentic self. Enownment is a prerequisite to being unreasonable with respect to creatively going beyond professional and societal norms. Status quo commercial design practice, not entirely irrelevant but profoundly marginal, is no match for the embedded logics of unsustainable and interlocking crisis systems. Status quo commercial designed is too reasonable to address the tremendous structuring challenges of our times. These demand the fully engaged and unreasonable presence of designing human beings. By showing up as themselves, designers develop an unreasonable creative change agenda. A sense of ownership of existing conditions empowers them to imagine otherwise. For example, understanding the complex factors of desire, production, and consumption that “design” landfills as a byproduct of our contemporary lifestyles. From this ability to recognize collective patterns, designers can then imagine otherwise - alternative scenarios for the future of waste systems, including elimination of the very concept of waste itself.

I urge my students to ‘whatever you do, be relevant’. Refusal to conform and daring to be unruly with respect to conventional professional design practices is to live the continuous unfoldment of the Mystery — an exquisite gift. However, prepare to be an outlier. Enownment requires the capacity to take responsibility for one’s choices rather than making choices from the influences of the cultures we belong to. Everybody else is being reasonable in the big and little ways they think, eat, shop, couple, work, relax, play, and design. If you want your work to be more than hot and trendy, and you’re willing to tolerate the self-doubt that can arise when you’re not following the crowd, you will discover how your unique creative gifts can serve the world. Learning to listen to the voice of your own becoming is a crucial component of crafting an unreasonable designing platform in service of the greater Good. ​Reflecting on the relational networks that have introduced you to the world, supported and influenced you, in what ways have you benefited? And in what ways have these forms of socialization perhaps held you back? How do your unique talents, passions and dreams situate you to express and to serve the world via design?

Echoing the words of John F. Kennedy, design philosopher Philippe d’Anjou reminds us that “ the question of sustainability becomes not what sustainability can do for design but rather what design can do for sustainability.” Emerging designers today have an extraordinary opportunity to become conscious of their power to create good via unreasonable stories and evocative models. Reading this I hope you will gain appreciation for how best practices in sustainable design —so crucial yet so profoundly reasonable — are necessary but not sufficient. While reasonable design practices solve superficial problems really well, unreasonable design practices are juicy and uncompromisingly creative. They bring us face-to-face with challenges we would rather not confront. Unreasonable designing is the power to negate or create futures. Unreasonable design cultivates the conditions for the thriving by means of whole-hearted invitations that originate from ownership of our deepest values.

Previous post Empowering (Constraining) “Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it Next post Grieving (Stagnating) “Don’t just do something, stand there” George Shultz. “The refusal to feel takes a heavy toll. Not only is there an