January 21, 2021

Grokking

(Reasoning)

“Making is motivated by fundamental empathy.”  Elaine Scary

“Grok” /ˈɡrɒk/ is a word coined by Robert A. Heinlein in his 1961 science-fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land, where it is defined as follows: Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthling assumptions) as color means to a blind man. The Oxford English Dictionary defines to grok as “to understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport with” and “to empathize or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment”.” (Wikipedia)

Our mirror neurons physiologically dispose us toward empathic relatedness to humans and other creatures. Author, futurist and social critic Jeremy Rifkin, in a public lecture at RSA, “The Empathic Civilization,” draws on evolutionary biology, neuro-cognitive science, and developmental theory to explain why we as humans are wired to belong and to empathize. Rifkin states that this empathic resonance gives us access to our vulnerability and sets us up for human connection. Empathy arises in relation to suffering and in response to human frailty and finitude. Empathy is rooted in the acknowledgment of our mortality and the celebration of our being alive. Although we humans have a predisposition toward empathy, our capacity to act from empathy and to enact compassionate structures is determined by our form of mind. The heart of Rifkin’s argument is that because consciousness evolves, “to emphasize is to civilize”. He invites us to extend our empathy to the entire human race beyond even global diasporic religious, ethnic, and national ties.

As designing storytellers, how can we, following Rifkin, begin to “rethink the human narrative” and “prepare the groundwork for an empathic civilization”? (Rifkin). As swords into plowshares, by virtue of our human trait of empathic sociability, we have the potential - although not the guarantee - to design the groundwork for empathic civilizations yet to come. Design scripts for restorative human artifacts and services can lay the groundwork for the emergence of an empathic civilization. This begins not with the design brief but with the Being of the designer. Critical thinking tends to move us out of our body and into our mind. Changing the ‘inner game’ (Gallwey) of designing demands the capacity for depth— the capacity to turn inward to access grounded conscious awareness, and the capacity to turn toward the other — the source of empathic imagination. This embodied attunement attends not only to objective formal qualities and performance metrics of the gross domain, but also to subtle, sensory, and relational within the flows of the systems we bound. According to psychologist and author of Buddha’s Brain, Dr. Rick Hansen, “The more embodied we are according to neuroscience, more more capacity for empathy we develop in relating to others” (Hansen).

Emergent realms of designing such as experience design are highly relational, requiring empathic resonance with the subject in space and time. Empathy involves deep listening and deep observation that arises from a disposition of curiosity and proceeds without an agenda. Because designers empathically perform and prototype behavioral scripts that enact values, they are values chameleons who empathically get inside the experience of others. Designers have first hand understandings of how design can help cohere community and establish real rapport - or inadvertently produce fragmentation and alienation. In order to be successful at this level of conscious design, one has to first be very clear about one’s own values and identity, and then to relax personal attachments enough to enter into the experience of another.

In the professional spheres of design, empathy is the new black. In fact, empathic design has become such a popular meme that it has generated its own backlash, described as “f*** empathy” by IDEO Chicago consultant Murphy MacDonald in reflecting on the craze that myopically fixates on empathy in superficial, trendy ways (LearnXDesign Keynote, Chicago).  His point was that although empathic design approaches may be tired from overuse, they signal the critical importance of perspective seeking and perspective taking capacities. The designer’s ability to take all the perspectives represented in any design brief determines to large extent the degree of respect and understanding that can be brought to and designed response. MacDonald stresses that true empathy is earned by experientially walking in the shoes of the other. He notes that designers have the privilege of actively observing and listening for explicit and tacit client needs, and then transforming those observations into actionable creative inquiries - ie. “how might we…?” (MacDonald).

Experience Design, (Shedroff); Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, (Patnaik); and Emotionally Durable Design: Objects, Experiences and Empathy, (Chapman) are titles of three books representing a recent trend that has captured the imaginations of designers who wish to play a role in re-enchanting lived experience by means of heightening awareness of the preciousness of our human bonds. The relational texture of empathic design is an open ended invitation to interaction that has no instrumental agenda. Empathic design is sensitively choreographed to key touch points of the design brief. Empathic design becomes available in order to recognize express store unexpressed needs of the client or stakeholder. These newer realms of designing such as experience design and interaction design are highly relational and require empathic resonance with the subject and depending on the context of applicability, they may require a stance toward relationally so intimate on the part of the designer that they would more properly be called intra-action or intra-experience design (Barad).

In two insightful books, Wired to Care and Needfinding: The Why and How of Uncovering People’s Needs author and Jump Associates founding Principal Dev Patnaik, articulates his empathic designing business model. In an interview (cite XXX) Patnaik discussed empathy in the context of professional design practice. He states that modernity has blunted our instinctually empathic nature and that success in conventional modern terms distances us from our visceral embodied experience of suffering and mire. Designing for “people like me” is not empathy, but rather narcissism. Empathy, he says, springs from a longing to serve people who are different from me. From a gut impulse to step outside myself and connect with people who are not like me. He cites JetBlue as an exemplar of a corporate culture of empathy because c-suite executives travel coach class several times a week to understand firsthand the texture of the consumer experience. How can designers develop their capacity for empathy? Patnaik suggests that it’s a muscle that can be developed like any other through daily practice until it becomes a habit.

Interaction design expert, author and educator, Jon Kolko states, “At the core of this shift is learning to gain empathy, to gain confidence in inferential leaps, and to work through ambiguity with iterative making. These capabilities support a worldview of autonomy and an identity of volition. By learning to see the world through the eyes of others, design students can better see and articulate artificial boundaries or constraints around a problem space. They can triangulate on an opportunity space that’s contained by attitude and opinions of constituents. This adds clarity to ambiguity, and paints”objectivity” around subjective circumstances. Inferential leaps of logic help students see opportunity instead of problems, so they can consider how the world might be if things were different. These jumps recognize the impermanence of group behavior and attitudes. And by making things, design students describe these opportunities in a concrete way, tell stories about changes, and make concrete the abstract. Through making, they create room for dialogue, conflict, resolution, and forward movement.” (Kolko)

Purveyors of designed services and experiences of the future will benefit from embodiment practices and inner work to develop capacity to grok as an integral aspect of designing praxis. These may include meditation and somatic practices, role playing, and other means of relaxing the identity and developing the empathic imagination and the capacity for intimacy. As you go through your day, experiment with active witnessing of your touch points with the human systems you participate in. Reflect on how a conscious, empathic relationship with “Nature” might perform empathy. What does the design (object, system, event, environment, structure) relationally elicit and via what modalities?  

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