January 21, 2021

Longing

(Resigning)

“Behind the searing certainty of the cynic, there is always, hidden somewhere, disappointed longing.”

John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes 1999

Can design be serious without being cynical? Familiar bus and billboard ads are splashed with trendy environmental marketing messages that link at-risk creatures, say Giant Pandas with changing climate. In “The Unexotic Underclass,” author C.Z. Nnaemeka dramatically lampoons this strategy, dubbing the objectified lifeforms as “charismatic mega fauna.” His term “un-exotic underclass” refers to the fetishization of people living in poverty and marginalized non-human animals in the so-called “Other 90%” of the total planetary economy disproportionately representing the developed world. In this article and others in the genre, social and humanitarian design are reversed-branded as ego driven fool’s errands. Those who see domains of design practice as mutually exclusive are fond of binaries such as market oriented vs. not market oriented, commercial vs. social. I often see creative designers feeling trapped between their own values and that of institutional pedagogy. If they take a stand for something they believe in, they run the risk of being labeled “naïve, condescending and preachy” (Dayton). Among college-age individuals, I believe that genuine concerns about climate futures are tempered by the academic climate of irony and ennui. I dare my students to design whole-hearted interactions, to design narratives of unabashed longing and aspiration, and to resist the temptation to self-censor in the face of fashionable cynicism.

My student Lou Kishfy asked, “If the world has a way of balancing itself out, why bother at all?  This contemporary quandary is phrased in various ways; “If the world is so broken, what’s the point?” or “In a world of overabundance, why design anything?” or “If it’s too late to reverse climate change, why do anything at all?” etc. Because designing is situated at the crux of these questions many are asking about the responsibility of design, and whether design can or should ‘save the world’.  Although this poorly formed question is easily dismissed or laughed off, I think designers can and should radically step up their game and dare to change the world.  I have never understood why this view is dismissed as the height of hubris and arrogance given the pervasive hubris and arrogance of the typical products of contemporary design. Yet there is truth in the critique of the Other. Design strategies seeking to ‘save the world’ do reinforce a reductive and dualistic mindset. A reframe may help - although our ‘design for sustainability’ tactics and strategies have been motivated by insufficient depth of understanding and inquiry, we have learned a great deal and made a lot of progress over the last five decades. What we retain is our hope. What we discard is our naïve detachment. On the other hand, terms like “charismatic mega fauna” and “the exotic underclass,” although motivated by astute media analysis and genuine political concern, tend to further polarize and fragment rather than yielding insight. Moreover, they further objectify the suffering of human beings and nonhuman creatures, trivializing their precarity with a mocking cynicism that assures the heart remains closed and numb. This lets designers off the hook in glib insinuations that the messy ambiguity of abject poverty and species extinction is nothing we need to take seriously because it’s all just marketing hype.

There has been tremendous growth and interest across all the design specialties in values-driven designing for a good, true and beautiful world. Consider the Designer’s Accord and the Do Good Design pledge. Although it may be true that at times such campaigns amount to so much marketing rhetoric, it also true that such campaigns are indicative of a massive ethical and identity shift in the design professions. Terms like social design and human-centered design arose out of a need to identify and value designing activities that differed from the conventional norms of the profession. For some, this represented a healthy, progressive diversification. Yet from a Modern worldview for example, human-centered design may look more like a tactic to claim the moral high ground for those designers who operate in certain politically correct ways with certain populations. Conversely, reactionary dismissals of social and human-centered design do nothing to extend meaningful understandings of the complex material, relational and ethical issues that inevitably comprise our design work lives.

Because the values that govern higher education today lean toward autonomy, being internally consistent and bulletproof (invulnerable to critique) are valued more than sincerity and vulnerability. Cynicism and suspicion of social and humanitarian design signals that there are many perspectives and world views, each with distinct value sets. The boundaries of the design professions are expanding to mirror this broadening range of designing actors. This is both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ news, as it will ultimately make for a more heterogeneous learning community along with increasing the creative potential inherent in the meeting of opposing approaches.

Reading this I hope that you will feel the longing in your own heart. I hope that you will research and reflect on the lives of visionaries who were ridiculed in their time yet are remembered for their contributions to the making of a better world. I hope you will question the cynicism and reactivity that currently polarize the professional design worlds And I hope you will participate in reframing these simplistic binaries. Cynicism is a mental ghetto that often results in ironic flights and anarchist rejections. I dare you instead to engage. As John Ehrenfeld eloquently stated, conscious design is “…radically hopeful but not naive.” (DFS). May an era of post-cynical designing emerge out of a fierce love for the unborn potential of the future.

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