Pessimism, Optimism, and Responsibility

[Ken Friedman-2]

Dear All,

The threads of the past few days regarding the role of design and designers in sustainability raise many good points. There is much that we can do -- that's what I like about The Designers Accord. We need greater skills to do it than we traditionally teach in design schools that grew from the art and design tradition -- that's what I like about research-based education and evidence-based practice.

Terry is right to point to the serious problems that we encounter in dealing with multiple-loop systems. An entire range of issues oriented around reflective practice addresses what Chris Argyris and Donald Schon labeled double-loop learning in organizations. To this day, I remain astonished at the way so many people misread Schon, arguing incorrectly for reflective practice as a form of research while neglecting the key concepts Schon actually proposed. Without better tools to manage multiple-loop systems, it seems to me that designers of all kinds risk making problems worse by failing to understand the core issues in both the problem and the cycle of iterative consequences. This is true of economic, medical, and legislative designers as well as of industrial, engineering, and organizational designers.

In the 1980s and 1990s, The Union of International Associations in Brussels undertook a massive study to examine rhe nature of multiple-loop problems. Their work resulted in a reference work titled the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential. This document is available on CD-ROM, and it is also available as a free database accessible from the web. To see it, just to to the UIA web site and create a free user account.

http://www.uia.be/

In reading Fil Salustri's note, I find myself thinking of my own position on these matters. I am a pessimist in the sense that I do not hold out great hope for the human race in this century. I anticipate a near-extinction incident for humanity at the 90% level. This is not decimation as the Roman legions practiced it, executing one in ten, but novicimation as only seen in pandemics and genocidal incidents with nine of each ten dying.

Despite this, I am also an optimist. I am an optimist in believing that the changes we make now can save that remaining 10% rather than leaving everything to the cockroaches, the crocodiles, or whichever species might be left. Of course, we might really lucky and avoid the fate toward which we are now headed. If we do, it will be for the reason Louis Pasteur suggested: luck favors the prepared.

The question is not whether we can or should do something. The question is determining what appropriate action it is we should undertake. Whatever action it is, the appropriate action is always based on a simple principle: acting as though our actions make a difference to the result we hope for.

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS
Professor
Dean

Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia

[Karen Fu-2]

On Sat, Jul 4, 2009 at 12:54 PM, Ken
Friedman<KenFriedman@...> wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> The threads of the past few days regarding the role of design and designers in sustainability raise many good points. There is much that we can do -- that's what I like about The Designers Accord. We need greater skills to do it than we traditionally teach in design schools that grew from the art and design tradition -- that's what I like about research-based education and evidence-based practice.
>
><.snip>
> In reading Fil Salustri's note, I find myself thinking of my own position on these matters. I am a pessimist in the sense that I do not hold out great hope for the human race in this century. I anticipate a near-extinction incident for humanity at the 90% level. This is not decimation as the Roman legions practiced it, executing one in ten, but novicimation as only seen in pandemics and genocidal incidents with nine of each ten dying.
>
> Despite this, I am also an optimist. I am an optimist in believing that the changes we make now can save that remaining 10% rather than leaving everything to the cockroaches, the crocodiles, or whichever species might be left. Of course, we might really lucky and avoid the fate toward which we are now headed. If we do, it will be for the reason Louis Pasteur suggested: luck favors the prepared.
>
> The question is not whether we can or should do something. The question is determining what appropriate action it is we should undertake. Whatever action it is, the appropriate action is always based on a simple principle: acting as though our actions make a difference to the result we hope for.
>

start from the basic simple mico level : 'self'
and don't think too much.
Sheds the hair off before they get to turn white.

Time to disappear.

Best wishes.
Karen Fu
*naughty* *incorrigible* *blunt* forumer.

[Ken Friedman-2]

Hi, Karen,

Karen Fu wrote: "start from the basic simple mico level : 'self' and don't think too much."

While I appreciate the intention behind this reply, I do not see how this offers much help. A model of behavior based on these two principles -- 1) start with self as a basic, simple entity, 2) don't think too much -- is what got us to where we are.

If this model worked at all, it worked in a world with fewer than two or three billion people. The 2-billion-person world ended in the late 1920s, and the world passed 3 billion in 1960. I'd argue that this model did not really work very well for all the people who suffered at the hands of those who thought only from an image or perspective of a simple, micro-level self, but the environmental and ecological consequences of human behavior might still have been contained had we made a serious shift in behavior sometime between those two points. This would not have saved that 90% of the population of native Americans destroyed by the post-Columbian invasions, nor a similar percentage of indigenous Australians, let alone the 60,000,000 or so killed in World War II and the Holocaust. Nevertheless, the planet would have remained capable to sustaining human life and most other forms of life.

If the planet is to remain hospitable to human beings, we must see ourselves as social creatures nested in an environmental web. While simplicity and emergent order works well as a heuristic principle, we need to think more deeply than we do today to understand the simple actions that will create the emergent order we seek. And then we must act on what we learn.

Some of this is simple. None of this is easy.

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS
Professor
Dean

Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia

[davelab6]

2009/7/5 Ken Friedman <KenFriedman@...>:
>
> Karen Fu wrote: "start from the basic simple mico level : 'self' and don't think too much."
>
> While I appreciate the intention behind this reply, I do not see how this offers much help.

Perhaps. I agree that self-based thinking is no longer helpful; more
of what got us into a problem will not get us out of that problem.

However, while I think thinking is very important, on the other hand,
one must watch for "paralysis through analysis" :-)

So, I suggest that people join or start a Transition Towns initiative
in their local area, and consider learning and practicing permaculture
design in their back yards.

Cheers,
Dave