One of the frustrating consequences of thinking too much… your ideas get longer and longer and fit into fewer and fewer schedules.
All posts by anomalogue
Design Science
Design Thinking is the scientific method applied to problems of the concrete, the local, the particular and the ontologically messy, as opposed to science which is abstract, universal and ontologically pure.
Perhaps Design Science would be a better name?
The design of truth
What kind of truth do you know? That depends on what kind of reality you inhabit and what kind of life you are trying to lead.
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A truth relates a knower to some part of reality and allows that knower to participate in that reality in some capacity to some degree.
Two truths can conflict in the same way that two good user interface design approaches can be incompatible with one another. And this is barely metaphorical: truth is a person’s interface with a local bit of reality.
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A choice of truth can be between truth and falseness: Does it represent accurately, or does it distort or obscure? But a choice of truth can also be between effective and ineffective: Can the truth be used to do what needs doing, or does it lead to paralysis or mistakes? And finally, choice can be between valuable and valueless: Does this truth lead to something good and beautiful, or something depressing and repellent?
Truth is a mixture — and sometimes a designed system — of factuality, actuality and importance.
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We can design truth, and we are allowed to, but what we design can succeed or fail at what it aims to be and do and mean. Is this relativism? Absolutely — but it is neither purely subjective, nor arbitrary.
(This is what my book The Ten-Thousand Everythings is about.)
Chord: eyes and ears
A chord of Nietzsche quotes:
“He who sees badly sees less and less; he who listens badly hears more than has been said.”
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“Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings — always darker, emptier, simpler.”
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“He is a thinker: that means he knows how to make things simpler than they are.”
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“He who wants to mediate between two resolute thinkers shows that he is mediocre: he has no eye for what is unique; seeing things as similar and making things the same is the sign of weak eyes.”
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“Of all the arts that grow up on a particular cultural soil under particular social and political conditions, music makes its appearance last, in the autumn and deliquescence of the culture to which it belongs: at a time when the first signs and harbingers of a new spring are as a rule already perceptible; sometimes, indeed, music resounds into a new and astonished world like the language of an age that has vanished and arrives too late. … It lies in the nature of music that the fruits of its great cultural vintages grow unpalatable more quickly and are more speedily ruined than the fruits of the plastic arts, let alone those that have ripened on the tree of knowledge: for of all the products of the human artistic sense ideas are the most enduring and durable.”
Practical xenophilia
It’s not enough to feel xenophilic, nor is it sufficient to make efforts to think xenophilically (to engage in speculative empathy).
Xenophilia requires action. These actions are a radical implementation of the scientific method, applied to all things: immerse in a reality you wish to understand, observe, listen carefully, submit to being taught, participate in it, test your understandings…
Over the last three decades much work has been done to develop and implement practical xenophelia and this work has gone by many names: User-Centered Design, User Experience, Design Thinking, Service Design, to name a few.
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From now on for me UX does not stand for User Experience: it stands for Ubiquitous Xenophilia.
Protected: Infant of man
Making a book
Removed from a letter to some friends:
The book I’m working on is about designing well-crafted, habitable delusions, and it is itself a well-crafted, habitable delusion.
Viewed from my angle, philosophy is a species of design. We are allowed to design truth.
Who’s going to stop us? Objectivity? God? Pretty much the only authority who can drop the hammer is the intellectual conscience of the individual reader, but this is where those qualifications “well-crafted” and “habitable” enter the picture.
I’m not saying reality is not meaningless as Rust says, but I am saying that if you put a good UI on reality, you can design a better experience “using” it. And that UI is what we call truth. Philosophy is the UI we interact with to make sense of and interact with the OS that is our daily lives, running on the overwhelmingly hopelessly complex platform called reality.
A philosophy can and should be run through the framework of Useful / Usable / Desirable: A badly-design interface might be useless (it will be buggy, conflict with daily experience, and will prevent us from interacting with reality and accomplishing what we need to accomplish). In other words, it can be FALSE. But it can also be unusable — just too complicated to actually use well. So we are confused or forced to muddle, or we just decide not to think because our philosophy makes thinking such an awful chore. Or undesirable.
Remind me later to connect all this with Leo Strauss and the neocons.
The creativity of agnonism
The predominance of war or appeasement undermines the creative accomplishments of diplomacy.
The predominance of corporate capitalism or communism undermines the creative accomplishments of politics — and the market.
The predominance of collectivism or individualism undermines the creative accomplishments of friendship.
The predominance of conviction or skepticism undermines the creative accomplishments of philosophy.
The predominance of lust or alienation undermines the creative accomplishments of love.
The predominance of intolerance or tolerance undermines the creative accomplishments of religion.
And so on.
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Releasing ourselves from the painful tension of internal conflict by neutralizing one force to liberate another — it gives us energy and all the answers — but the foundation it provides is less fundamental than it is base.
Art in the age of work
I just stumbled upon a very relevant passage from The Wanderer and His Shadow:
Art in the age of work. — We possess the conscience of an industrious age: and this conscience does not permit us to bestow our best hours and mornings on art, however grand and worthy this art may be. To us art counts as a leisure, a recreational activity: we devote to it the remnants of our time and energies. — This is the most general circumstance through which the relationship of art to life has been altered: when it makes its grand demands on the time and energy of the recipients of art it has the conscience of the industrious and able against it, it is directed to the conscienceless and lazy, who, however, are in accordance with their nature unfavourably inclined precisely towards grand art and feel the claims it makes to be presumptuous. It may therefore be that grand art is facing its end from lack of air and the room to breathe it: unless, that is, grand art tries, through a kind of coarsening and disguising, to become at home in (or at least to endure) that other air which is in reality the natural element only of petty art, of the art of recreation and distraction. And this is now happening everywhere; artists of grand art too now promise recreation and distraction, they too direct their attentions to the tired and weary, they too entreat of them the evening hours of their working day — just as do the artists of entertainment, who are content to have achieved a victory over the serious brow and the sunken eye. What artifices, then, do their greater comrades employ? They have in their dispensary the mightiest means of excitation capable of terrifying even the half-dead; they have narcotics, intoxicants, convulsives, paroxysms of tears: with these they overpower the tired and weary, arouse them to a fatigued overliveliness and make them beside themselves with rapture and terror. On account of the perilousness of these means it employs, ought one to denounce grand art in the forms in which it now exists — opera, tragedy and music — as the most deceitful of sinners? Not at all: for it would a hundred times prefer to dwell in the pure element of the quietness of morning and address itself to the expectant, wakeful, energetic soul. Let us be grateful to it that it has consented to live as it does rather than flee away: but let us also admit to ourselves that an age which shall one day bring back true festivals of joy and freedom will have no use for our art.
Art
An artist’s work is not begun until the work is enveloped in a new world.
An artist’s work is not complete until a new world envelops the work.
Why design research is the greatest
Why do I love design research? Two reasons:
- Design research often destroys existing knowledge and expertise, creating new philosophical problems (as Wittgenstein elegantly defined it: “I don’t know my way about”). This is what I do.
- Design research produces social solidarity. When a team observes the same realities, reflects together, produces hypotheses and prototypes together and tests them together, and develops a “common sense” — the members of the team become friends in a uniquely substantial way. It is the exact opposite of loneliness.
Why should companies love design research? Two reasons:
- Problems that defy existing knowledge and expertise are the ones with the most innovation potential. Radically new problems produce the most radical, freshest-feeling innovations. Design research exposes these new expertise-resistant problems.
- The team alignment resulting from design research creates more cohesive, efficient and inspired teams.
The intolerable span
If something is lacking in an organization, the deficit rarely persists from simple unavailability of whatever is missing. More often the deficit is actively maintained, either from a direct allergy or an indirect displacement.
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People and organizations selectively include and exclude people, ideas, practices — this is how they preserve themselves as the being they are.
When something is introduced that cannot be simply subsumed or appended to what already is there — if a new entity requires deep change of political structure, of conceptual framing, of habits — the organization will repel that thing as a threat to its existence.
This is why organizational change is so hard. Organizations want to persist — to survive and grow and thrive in its own way, just like every individual biological organism wants to survive and grow and thrive.
And this is also how it is with individual souls. A soul knows in a wordlessly certain way that deep change is death. A soul can detect even the faintest trace of deep change in an idea.
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A soul can find many ways to excuse itself. We lead very busy lives. The more important I am, the busier I am, and the more brusque I am permitted to be. The important man is allowed more and more to fend off anything new. This is why the weak get smarter and the powerful become more… conservative.
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Of course, deep change is also ground-clearing for rebirth, but it is impossible to believe in such things: only faith suffices.
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If you think you know something that another person needs to know, please understand: there is probably a good reason this person does not yet know.
If you think you have a talent or skill some other organization needs but does not have, please understand: there is probably a good reason this organization does not have this capability.
And if you have discovered a disruptive insight, do not be fooled into believing that people will be grateful for it. Do not be fooled into thinking that it is mere aversion to risk that makes people resist. Do not be fooled by any functionalist explanation: the aversion is instinctive fear of death: dread.
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A bit from the book I am writing, The Ten-Thousand Everythings:
We resist deep change, not because we love the old or hate the new, but because of the intolerable span of dread that separates the old from the new.
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Do you know it when you are confronting the dread of a truly new thing?
Do you know your way across the intolerable span?
Can you want to cross it?
Passenger
A person who is self-interested and unconcerned with what anyone thinks about it, will sometimes have a change of heart and become intensely other-interested.
Such a person believes he has experienced a conversion and has arrived at genuine concern for the other, when in fact he has taken only a baby-step.
A painful journey lies ahead.
The first leg of the journey is realizing that his change of heart and sacrifice of “self-interests” is mere preparation for a far greater sacrifice.
The second leg is wrestling with whether he is truly prepared to pay such a price. He had no idea what — and even less, who — was at stake.
In the third leg, he must calculate whether he even can afford to complete his journey once he has paid what turns out to be the fare. As he looks up from his tallying, he sees for the first time the reproachful glances of the other passengers who have paid their way.
In the fourth leg, he digs deep and pays up. Now he begins to move.
Another origin myth
What seemed to be the solid earth was surveyed, and it was discovered to be an island, and not a very large one. It was in fact a very tiny island. It bobbed and swayed and creaked. The thin planks under his feet had never been rock. And the planks were flimsy and began to dissolve. Soon his only support was the foamy film of the ocean’s surface. He flailed and grabbed at the sky and found clouds strangely substantial in his grip. He pulled and kicked and rose upward. But it wasn’t the clouds pulling him upward, it was the day itself. He was swimming into the sky in the clarity of azure. As the sun set, he continued to rise. Gold and purple, green and translucent twilight carried his body outward. But as stars appeared in the firmament and snowflakes sparkled on his skin, he felt the memory of weight and a welcome tug on his body; a descent and the touch of ground under his feet. The earth was there again, founded on an uninterrupted plain, solid, and permanent. And the people standing there beside him on the rock had never left, their feet were planted in this ground, and they had never been wrong.
Rethinking totalities
The problem with totalities is not that they are total — it is that totalities are so often reductive or aggressive.
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The worst totalities are excessively inclusionary and exclusionary at the same time: kill and eat it, or get far, far away from it. Fight or flight, and nothing in-between.
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Perhaps if we were to entertain totalities as subtotals, or treat horizons as something that can fall in a range between accidental and insubstantial artifact of standpoint and an impregnable wall we must faithfully tend and defend, we could enjoy some relative stability of identity with minimal aggression. Perhaps it is a matter of material — a permeable membrane or a transparent shell — or shape — a spiral or a circle with a mouth.
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But actually — more and more I resist conceptualizing understanding in terms of horizons. Horizons are seen, and entities are seen against horizons and put in perspective through a vision. This whole family of analogues promotes an ocular notion of knowledge.
Some knowledge is of things known at a distance, but much of knowledge is kinesthetic and/or participatory. As much as eye-awareness dominates hearing-awareness, both positively obliterate touch-awareness, scent- and taste-awareness, and these obliterated awarenesses are primary faculties in philosophy.
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Common sense was originally not “what everybody believes in common” but rather that sense of reality that arises from interpreting and synthesizing all sense data. The conflation of these two very different meanings into a single word is a symptom of deep philosophical naivety.
More symptomatic distortions: “materialism”, “idealism”, “realism”, “pragmatism”, “paradigm shift”, “experience”…
The mundane world has an uncanny appetite for words it cannot digest, a need to grip in its stumpy little fingers what is ungraspable. It can’t understand it, and it won’t understand it — yet, it cannot leave it alone. It’s like a young boy overwhelmed by his first crush…
He worshipped this new angel with furtive eye, till he saw that she had discovered him; then he pretended he did not know she was present, and began to “show off” in all sorts of absurd boyish ways, in order to win her admiration. He kept up this grotesque foolishness for some time; but by-and-by, while he was in the midst of some dangerous gymnastic performances, he glanced aside and saw that the little girl was wending her way toward the house. Tom came up to the fence and leaned on it, grieving, and hoping she would tarry yet awhile longer. She halted a moment on the steps and then moved toward the door. Tom heaved a great sigh as she put her foot on the threshold. . . . He returned, now, and hung about the fence till nightfall, “showing off,” as before; but the girl never exhibited herself again, though Tom comforted himself a little with the hope that she had been near some window, meantime, and been aware of his attentions. Finally he strode home reluctantly, with his poor head full of visions.
– Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
EMERGENCY!!!!!!!!
Emergencies are risky and costly and should not be declared frivolously.
When legitimate emergencies do happen, the heroes are not the hotheads who shriek first or loudest — the heroes are the ones who keep a cool head and maintain the ability to think clearly.
Who can innovate?
For all I know the innovation consultants are right that anybody can innovate.
But I will insist on adding one stipulation: anyone who really wants to can innovate.
“Really wants to” means wanting everything that goes with innovation — non-linearity, doubt, anxiety, ambiguity and profound disorientation.
Wanting all the conditions of innovation might be something not that many people can want, despite wanting to have the output.
Mistrust is costly
Overcoming mistrust is very expensive.
I tell my clients that research designed to overcome skepticism can cost three to five times as much as research designed simply to inform.
A month of coins
A month of coins purchased what? An explanation for an inexplicable abhorrence left in the wake of defied expectation. A base motive is better than no motive.
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Compare me to something and tell me what I am like.”
The first said to him, “You are like a just messenger.”
The second said to him, “You are like a wise philosopher.”
The third said to him, “Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like.
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“…Thought is one thing, the deed is another, and the image of the deed still another: the wheel of causality does not roll between them.
An image made this pale man pale.”
Self-seeker
Over breakfast, an evaporating dream is fortified with a confabulated plot which displaces the dream’s truth, but makes the dream memorable.
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Dreams are unintentional, undisciplined, unformed.
Sleeping, the mind is permitted to repose in native chaos and to proceed by accident — but chaos is as immemorable as a speech in a foreign language.
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We remember words, images, forms. We remember by words, by images, by forms. If we do not form reality as it occurs, and derive forms from reality as it occurs — collaborate with reality to instaurate truth — reality escapes and vanishes and we must imagine truth like fiction authors, or lose ourselves to amnesia.
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A life lived without intent, without discipline, and without articulation is in some ways is truer to life than one lived in the artifice of faith, routine and language. Reality is permitted to remain real: unprocessed experience.
But human nature abhors a vacuum. A self demands a history, an I, a future. It is of past-present-future that a self is made and it is by this that a self endures.
If one does not impose self on reality in the moment, it becomes necessary to do so later after the fact, after reality has receded into oblivion on a stream of babble — after reality has evaporated like a dream and is no longer present to represent itself.
Past is fictionalized. And since the future forms itself from past, future is also fictionalized. And consequentially, self is fictionalized.
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Seeking self as an activity separated from trying to understand this world and the beings who inhabit it, is guaranteed to prolong the quest forever, and to deprive the search not only of any possible resolution, but of all sense.
People who think they must “find themselves” before they can move on to other questions, are guaranteeing that they will find neither, because the self is found by finding the world.