January 21, 2021

Inter-Depending

(Independing)

“Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.” Mahatma Gandhi

“If it’s not grown, it must be mined” Attribution?

Close your eyes and imagine a world without the essential element Indium. Got it? Next, picture how your designing practice would have to change in order to account for the unavailability of the element Selenium. If you’re like most industrial designers you know virtually nothing about the properties of Indium, or the fact that it’s a crucial component in displays for smart phones and other devices. New research from Yale University issues a challenge to designers and engineers to raise their own awareness and that of their clients about the relationship between trendy gadgets and environmental criticality. Thomas Graedel, Professor of Industrial Ecology at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies is lead author of the first-ever peer-reviewed assessment of the status of the 62 metals and metalloids that make up the periodic table of the elements.

Viewed from the planetary perspective, the presumption that elementary substances are a “standing reserve” like a magical bank account with a balance that never gets depleted despite frequent withdrawals, is quite bizarre but nevertheless has been our Modern go-to fantasy. “Running out” of whatever we feel sustains us — say Selenium -used in the production of glass and photovoltaics, as well as in nutritional treatments for cancer, is a lesson in situatedness for our late Modern consideration. The expectation of not “running out” only makes sense inside the widely held assumption that we in the developed world should always have enough. For example the frame “Peak Oil” narrates the prospect of “running out” of the commodities humans need, ie. “fossil fuels”. As consumers, we may worry about running out of eggs or toilet paper. Manufacturers may worry about running out of the raw material components that comprise their products such as dimensional fiberboard. “Running out” of an elemental substance tells the story from the perspective of modern human beings. From the planetary perspective it’s just another massive extinction. A set of fundamental properties is becoming scarce, in this case resulting in the possibility of the impossibility of “seleniuming”. Although the postmodern ecological worldview has challenged the dualisms that reduce the natural world to objective commodities, our consumptive performative contradictions continue.

The Yale study, coming from a postmodern perspective, suggests a much starker encounter with “running out” to is yet come. A lower and thus even more fundamental order of substance— the very elements that compose materials — are at risk of disappearance, raising the possibility of critical scarcities of elements that are essential for life. Because absolute measures of abundance or scarcity reveal less than the relative ratios of available metals, the Yale study, “Criticality of Metals and Metalloids” focused on “criticality” - a broader, more inclusive measure than strict geological availability. This required an integrative inter-systemic approach, similar to a PESTLE analysis (an acronym for considerations of political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors). The complex interplay between technological advancements, including advancements in recycling and recovery, geopolitical, regulatory and policy contexts were also taken into account. Further enhancing transparency and legibility of the study, criticality was assessed in three areas “supply risk, environmental implications, and vulnerability to human imposed supply restrictions”

What makes this audit especially interesting is that it identified the crucial role that product designers, engineers and consumers play in this arena, “These findings illustrate the urgency for new product designs that make it easier to reclaim materials for re-use” (Dennehy). Explicitly linking criticalities of the 62 known metals and metalloids to technological artifacts, product design, and the post-consumer waste and recovery stream, he hailed industrial and product designers directly, both challenging us to a whole new levels of impact analysis, as well as inviting us to have a seat at the table as active participants in this global change initiative. “I think these results should send a message to product designers to spend more time thinking about what happens after their products are no longer being used,” Graedel said. “So much of what makes the recycling of these materials difficult is their design. It seems as if it’s time to think a little bit more about the end of these beautiful products.” The future of design for disassembly, and design for deep-time product lifecycles will entail closer working collaborations between experts such as industrial designers, design anthropologists, materials scientists, psychologists, and industrial ecologists concerning not only the raw materials needed to produce product but the energy required to produce, mine, and extract these raw materials. Integral theory demonstrates that phenomena inter-dependently arise in all dimensions of experience. This means that states of insufficiency or abundance are never discreetly confined to the physiosphere but rather also arise as concepts, political ideologies, values, relationships, behaviors and inter-systemic effects. Copper mining for example can be located and measured in time and space, but also exists as a global inquiry, a political process, a commodity import and export, a vital component of a healthy immune system, and a substance with physical properties that lend themselves to various instrumental and non-instrumental ends. Material finitude is at once subject to, and yet wholly independent of, human existential framings and interventions. Matter outlives us. Material finitude can serve as a tangible entry point for encountering internal limits in the intangible dimensions of our human experience. Finitude can surface our fears of separation, abandonment, and death. Attending to this sufficiency — insufficiency polarity leads us to the root values driving consumption that in turn drive extraction and waste production. <Coupling - Decoupling>

Although humans are physiologically and biochemically dependent on the Earth, in the late Modern era we have preferred to identify ourselves as independent sovereign subjects. Perceived scarcity is a gift that redirects our attention to the values that underlie the un-resourceful patterns that result in consequences we don’t intend or expect. This gift is about getting that in our situatedness we are always already coexisting with other humans and other beings (Derrida). Our interdependencies —the bridges between self and other — are the way we perform and extend ethics. Integral Theory expresses this as phenomena as holons — parts that are simultaneously wholes — compromising holarchies, nested orders of increasing depth and complexity. The copper in my headphones connects me holographically with a vast network of global debts and dependencies. I participate in the extraction of copper and other elements from the Earth. I physically, mentally, emotionally, and systemically grok that all my choices literally and figuratively, matter.

For better or worse, designing reveals our mutual vulnerabilities and inter-dependencies. Sufficiency- insufficiency, plentitude — finitude, coupling - decoupling. These existential polarity dynamics require naked encounters with our limits and our needs. In the embodied realization that no supply is unlimited — and that in fact nothing lasts forever —we touch our mortality, getting a glimpse of the myriad ways that we are inter-dependently entangled in relations with elements, materials, things and beings. Seeing ourselves as fragile and dependent does not require us to forfeit our independence, in fact the dynamic negotiation between these poles can shift the way we look at the abundant banquet of materials and goods that enrich our lives. I hope to share my vision that professional design can become a form of mutuality capable of enacting a global ethics of sparing and flourishing. May these challenges to our assumptions jog us into recognition that we biopsychosocially, really, literally, really need others and need matter, and that acknowledging this interdependency makes us stronger.

Previous post Identifying (Disidentifying) “ I contain multitudes” Walt Whitman Corporate Social Responsibility, Humanitarian Aid or Social Innovation? What we Next post Inter-Relating (Dissociating) “It takes two to speak the truth — one to speak, and another to hear.” Henry David Thoreau In her thoughtful and