We participate in many services and systems and many of them, to put it mildly, have flaws. Dating, job-seeking, grocery shopping, transportation, taking turns at a deli counter, deciding what to eat for dinner or wear to school. Queueing to get through a revolving door, competing for merchandise in auctions, donating to an institution or trying to succeed in a business venture.
Do we believe we can improve these experiences for ourselves, our customers and communities? Do we want to? If yes, how do we proceed? I believe a good place to start is to recognize gaps between promise and delivery, and that we have choices about these gaps.
What follows is my draft exploration of such issues. You will not find proof or scientific rigor here, and I do not promise profound revelations. If anything, I hope to advance the cause of stating the obvious, which we often seem quite bad at doing. Talking about realities that we experience, or sense, that we are aware of consciously but do not admit or only instinctively and therefore don’t know how to admit, can be healing and productive.
(Also, please note that I will discuss relatively mundane opportunities to effect change in free and civil circumstances. I do not presume to speak for, or offer advice to, those who need solutions to dire situations.)
Part 1
Grudin’s Law (via Don Norman): “When those who benefit are not those who do the work, then the technology is likely to fail or, at least, be subverted.”
- Donald Norman, Things That Make Us Smart
Sometimes we put our own products, practices, or ideas into the world, other times we use the ones others put in place. None of them is perfect. None of them works quite as advertised.
I have experienced customer support tools from different sides, including their construction. Such systems always vow to give relevant and rapid, problem-solving assistance that is easily available to and usable by customers. Often, however, they work much differently in practice, beginning with how they are made. Priorities might be set from the top of an executive chain. Measurements, protocols, terminology and interface design may all be chosen this way as well. In some cases advice from specialists is secondary, the needs of help staff are not sufficiently considered, and end user input may not be gathered at all. Needless to say, “help” can be as frustrating as the problems it is meant to solve.
We use dating websites and social media to make friends and romantic mates. Remote, anonymous mediators help to decide what information we should supply to one another, and this often includes banal or strange details like what our favorite animal is, what the last thing we thought was, or what foods we’d want on a desert island. Opportunities to interact with others follow a few, uninspired and unnatural models, like the classified ad (for dating) or the soap box rant (most other social media). None of this is exactly terrible but it does not add much to real, live human interaction other than noise and distance. Thus online forums for meeting people transform into performance arenas: political battles, jokes, voyeurism, hit counts, with the best gags (in all senses of the word) making their way to other social sites. Almost everyone I know who has used these systems is displeased with the high level of effort required to date or socialize, and the very low rate of return. The few who defend them talk about social media as an inescapable presence. One could say we feed them because they must be fed...but what happened to the sustenance we were supposed to get out of them?
Most of us have looked for a job. There is a whole constellation of tools and rituals that make up this chaotic, inefficient, unpredictable process. First, what is it like for you just to discover jobs that are relevant to you? How many sites do you visit and do they offer redundant, complementary, contradictory, or irrelevant information, and why? How many hundreds of postings do you read to find just one near to your location, interests, or skills? Have you encountered job postings that list impossibly precise prerequisites that you suspect describe a specific person, or job listings so full of buzzwords that you worry that the company might not know what they need? Then, at the application stage, how many channels of communication do you monitor? How many combinations of resume, cover letter, CV, portfolio, website, and references do you generate? When do you follow up, and do you call, email, stop by in person, or have a friend put in a good word for you? Why does or doesn’t a company contact you and which ones should you move on or move on from? Interviews are another exponential leap in variables. “Looking for work” has very little logic or procedure to it at all: as it stands, it is more like a test of endurance.
What, in each of these situations, is going wrong? I think Jonathan Grudin’s observation, via Donald Norman, is a great place to start: “those who benefit are not those who do the work.” I’ll alter this for clarity: the interests of those who control a system are not the interests of those who use a system, therefore the system and its users work at cross-purposes and someone winds up frustrated.
Are we aware of this fact in our daily lives? Are those who control the systems even aware? Why or why not?
Part 2
“Discover the real problems”
- Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things
If we’re lucky, systems as they stand warn us of total disaster (in my experience they are as likely to end in disaster and the ship goes down while its captain and crew read one last weekly report). Meanwhile even well-intended systems overlook chronic conditions. Not even control, but the feeling of control is too much of a priority. Protecting that feeling denies dysfunction and ignorance, and neglects real human needs. If we have only known “standing on a boat,” we’d often rather sink than swim. (What is swimming, after all?) Why is this the case? Recently, the fields of design and user experience have opened new paths of inquiry in my search for answers to these questions, including some unexpected insights I suspect that design as a discipline did not mean to give to me.
For decades, I have sought to understand the reasons why we keep doing unhelpful things, and even protect bad systems. Valuable insights as well as false leads have come to me and gone over the years. I am unsatisfied with simplistic claims that humans are dumb and/or corrupt. I believe there is more at work. I wrestle with the powers and flaws of every tool I wield, every perspective I entertain. I struggle with my own inertia and that which surrounds me. My jobs, relationships, education, travels, and other life experiences have illuminated some paths and obscured others. In the last two years my imagination has been quite captured by design and user experience as a tool to understand and remedy some of our bad tendencies.
These resources can help us become productively aware of flaws in our practices. They challenge some of the basic ways we gather information and identify problems. They also alter how we decide to shape tools, systems, and even speech.
Design thinking is modestly revolutionary (it still has a practical power structure, which I’ll touch on). It focuses heavily on what users and recipients of a system say they need, in defiance of our long tradition of submitting to what an owner, expert, or manager says everyone needs. For example, if you build a tool, it is at least as important what task people want to complete as it is what you want to make: after all, finding and fulfilling a need is more valuable than trying to invent a need (or, worse, tricking people into thinking you can meet their need). Design thinking also liberates us from the habit of thinking that we should do something once and perfectly. It is interesting how many times disciplines from poetry to hard sciences have demonstrated the power of multiple drafts, parallel experiments, or leaving behind failed efforts, yet we still become addicted to a single idea or path. Design thinking draws us away from that single-mindedness. Finally, it usurps the lone genius myth by demonstrating the promise of team efforts. Most of us do not need to be larger than life to participate in meaningful, transformative work.
Of course, even with my limited exposure, I have realized that design and user experience are not perfect. As mentioned, I received an ironic lesson about how we can fail to observe, interpret, and decide well even in a system constructed to reduce our blindness and complacency. I attended a design thinking seminar, where the advertised topic was how to cultivate an environment of creative vitality. The guest speaker talked about how to embrace risk and encourage more, and more valuable, idea-generation and experimentation by staff, with the goal of doing a better job of meeting customer needs. I absorbed her words with childish curiosity and enthusiasm.
Then the Q&A began, and I quickly observed a disconnect between the speaker’s attitude and the tone of the audience’s responses (I think my lack of sophistication made me alert to the mixed signals). Here, in approximate terms, are the sorts of questions the speaker received:
- How can we control the risk of risk-taking?
- How do we make sure that only the right people are allowed to take risks?
- How do we steer the ways our risk-takers take risks?
I suspect that this uncharitable attitude guaranteed a discouraged staff and confirmed her negative expectations. However, no one at this seminar about nurturing innovation, not even the speaker, protested the strategy or observed a disconnect between the vision of liberating and encouraging staff and the practice of managing innovation by stifling opportunities and only enabling those who “deserved it.” In fact, the further the conversation drifted toward practical questions the more a managerial mentality took over from the design ideal. Our habits of thought and action can be so strong that even in the middle of a discussion about breaking out of our ruts, we may manage to stay right inside of one.
That evening has returned to me many times as I think about the different levels of reality on which we operate and as I try to understand why we stubbornly use and even promote bad tools and systems. Everyone at that seminar believed the stated vision, and everyone (or everyone who spoke up) endorsed a contrasting operating principle. We have now seen several examples of this, and I am sure you can think of others.
What is common among of all these situations? What is one of the “real problems” Mr. Norman encourages us to discover? We are often more invested in feeling a sense of control and security than we are in experiencing actual wellness in our systems and tools.
Part 3.
In Which We Analyze the Obvious (We are All Wearing the Emperor’s New Clothes)
Whether a tool or system is perfect or not, whether we act consciously or not, we reinforce what is familiar, and this includes how we see or try to “change” the familiar. We reinforce obviously, if we write or promote the “rules,” and we reinforce just by operating in a system. Often we do it willingly. Sometimes we do it under protest. Sometimes we rebel completely against a system - or we think so, but do we really stray far enough from its rules to invent something better (or do we adopt another system that is cosmetically different but suffers from the same underlying flaws)? I submit that our fierce protectiveness of control and security badly damages our ability to perceive and respond to problems.
Whatever the situation, life demands (or so we believe) that we think a little and act a lot. In the urgent mess of living, excellence is a luxury. We sift through a lot of junk for a glimmer of promise, hold our noses and dive into a decision, hoping to surface with something that is not rotten (never mind something gold). What if it is rotten, though? Do we try again? Do we call the garbage treasure?
Frequently we help bad products and services endure along with the good because we don’t believe we have time or resources to do more than get frustrated. Sometimes we won’t even consider that we could do otherwise.
Submitting to the status quo can actually be a way to preserve the belief that we are superior to circumstances. If we deny existing circumstances, say they don’t matter, or say we chose them, we protect our belief in the power and dignity of personal action. If we look too closely at the unhelpfulness, unfairness, or plain brokenness of the choices available to us, it is not just our ability to complete tasks which is threatened: our self-image may also be damaged. What is the real substance of our actions if they are truly constrained by circumstances? What dignity can we wrestle from such a state of affairs?
How often, then, do we use bad systems and ignore or even embrace their flaws? We complete our mission and move on, and at the same time we quietly declare that we are above the situation. This acceptance helps us to feel that we control our surroundings. Our accomplishments are ours, not the product of any system, even if we witness luck, outside intervention, or crooked scales.
Talk like this can wear thin, though. Even if a lot of people say the same things as us and use the same tools and strategies as us, ultimately we need to get things done and if a system doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. We can claim, like Frank Sinatra, “I did it my way,” but can we announce, “I got what I wanted?” If not, “our way” doesn’t convince us. Nothing speaks louder than results.
As a result we often don’t fully submit. We pretend to play by the rules to give ourselves space and cover to operate in a different way. To put it crudely, we cheat.
When we compare our circumstances and our needs, often we sense a gap between what must be achieved and our ability to achieve it. We look for ways to take back control, and we often find these means outside of the stated or accepted way of doing things:
“Think...of those beleaguered college admissions officers, faced with more applications than they can possibly read with care, most of which are indistinguishable...who just need one piece of information...to make them feel justified in writing RJ (Reject) and moving on….”
In his most recent book, How to Think, Mr. Jacobs uses the word triage to label a lot of our daily processing and decision-making. I think this is a perfect term for the attitude we adopt toward the world. Triage is meant for battlefields and emergency rooms. Now, we feel like we are living in unfathomable informational arenas that are swollen with competitors, and triage operates in every corner of our lives and minds.
Systems, most of which are commercial and which penetrate deeply into the everyday operations of our lives, infect us with near-frantic levels of pressure and urgency and thus inflame the emotional state that compels us to submit to these broken tools or die. Dread overwhelms our judgment. I perceive two main conditions propagated by the tools that surround us: an air of relentless, infinite competition and another atmosphere of oppressively dense information.
Competition: if we do not act immediately, someone else will win that house, that job, that date, that sociopolitical victory. Like a greyhound chasing a stuffed rabbit, how often do we fully understand what we are after, or what to do if we catch the prize? Nevertheless we can hardly conceive of not operating this way. Who has the luxury to pause and question what works or what really matters, when a multitude of other hungry curs will race past our indecision to chomp onto life’s shrinking opportunities, or worse, what if some rabid creature of fate devours us while we ponder? Thus we surrender to this breathless race, frantically trying to sniff out the true path to victory (the functional rules, the cheater’s path) and avoid the fruitless course (the stated rules).
Information Overload: The amount of stimulus thrust in our faces today is immense. I often worry that a lot of what is handed to us, as well as the formal measures by which systems are judged, are effectively noise, just an accumulation of graphs and charts that offer a theater of productivity and stability. These routine “results” cloak the really important information. The false comfort they provide suppresses the valuable investigations that few have the courage or insight to conduct, and lead us to bad conclusions and bad actions.
Of course (the status quo implies), if we are unhappy with this we can leap the fence out of one overwhelmingly complicated space into a seemingly-boundless wilderness of data, chaos, competition, structure-yet-to-be, revolution-that-may-or-may-not-occur, catharsis or doom in which nothing is very well-understood or settled yet, and in which we are still obligated to make meaningful decisions to survive. Naturally, for the sake of our self-image, we must also prove that going outside of the known was not the dumbest choice ever.
Our modern tools inflame our sense of competition and information overload, undermine our confidence that we can competently address these forces, and finally promise that they can help rescue us from them. Yet day to day, even as we humbly make use of the “best” tools and systems at hand, millions, billions of us struggle to achieve results that are relevant, sensible, and useful.
Meanwhile, in our public isolation, don’t we silently arrive at millions, billions of conclusions about how things are broken and how they ought to really work? As we stumble we may quietly dare to ask who decides what factors matter, how those factors are assembled into systems, rules, life advice, how well we comprehend the real steps we must take to achieve success, and finally whether it is even possible for us to make powerful, timely decisions based upon what these systems give us to work with.
Our tools and systems do not just discourage us, I believe that they drive us to despair. We are antagonized and defeated by the status quo, and as we learn helplessness we submit some more and despair some more. Ultimately it may not matter whether malice informs any given system: the point is quite simply that our tools and systems do not help us, they do not serve us, therefore they are not for us.
We feel deeply, just as deeply as our fear and need to protect our security and pride, that the tools we are compelled to use serve alien purposes or maybe no coherent purposes, which is why we encounter so much grief as we use them.
Conclusion
Whether a tool or system is perfect or not, whether we act consciously or not, we reinforce what is familiar, and this includes how we see or try to “change” the familiar. We reinforce obviously, if we write or promote the “rules,” and we reinforce just by operating in a system. Often we do it willingly. Sometimes we do it under protest. Sometimes we rebel completely against a system - or we think so, but do we really stray far enough from its rules to invent something better (or do we adopt another system that is cosmetically different but suffers from the same underlying flaws)? I submit that our fierce protectiveness of control and security badly damages our ability to perceive and respond to problems.
Whatever the situation, life demands (or so we believe) that we think a little and act a lot. In the urgent mess of living, excellence is a luxury. We sift through a lot of junk for a glimmer of promise, hold our noses and dive into a decision, hoping to surface with something that is not rotten (never mind something gold). What if it is rotten, though? Do we try again? Do we call the garbage treasure?
Frequently we help bad products and services endure along with the good because we don’t believe we have time or resources to do more than get frustrated. Sometimes we won’t even consider that we could do otherwise.
Submitting to the status quo can actually be a way to preserve the belief that we are superior to circumstances. If we deny existing circumstances, say they don’t matter, or say we chose them, we protect our belief in the power and dignity of personal action. If we look too closely at the unhelpfulness, unfairness, or plain brokenness of the choices available to us, it is not just our ability to complete tasks which is threatened: our self-image may also be damaged. What is the real substance of our actions if they are truly constrained by circumstances? What dignity can we wrestle from such a state of affairs?
How often, then, do we use bad systems and ignore or even embrace their flaws? We complete our mission and move on, and at the same time we quietly declare that we are above the situation. This acceptance helps us to feel that we control our surroundings. Our accomplishments are ours, not the product of any system, even if we witness luck, outside intervention, or crooked scales.
Talk like this can wear thin, though. Even if a lot of people say the same things as us and use the same tools and strategies as us, ultimately we need to get things done and if a system doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. We can claim, like Frank Sinatra, “I did it my way,” but can we announce, “I got what I wanted?” If not, “our way” doesn’t convince us. Nothing speaks louder than results.
As a result we often don’t fully submit. We pretend to play by the rules to give ourselves space and cover to operate in a different way. To put it crudely, we cheat.
When we compare our circumstances and our needs, often we sense a gap between what must be achieved and our ability to achieve it. We look for ways to take back control, and we often find these means outside of the stated or accepted way of doing things:
- On a pre-recorded phone support system, we learn what words or numbers will interrupt the drone and reach a live person (I have seen websites devoted to this).
- In jobs, we attend happy hours with our boss to gain an edge at performance reviews.
- In a membership situation, when “loyalty” seems to hold no sway, we threaten to cancel a subscription, leave a bad review, or whatever else will win the price or bonus we want.
- When traveling to a destination, if we are behind schedule we drive over the speed limit, skip in line, jump a ticket gate, and so forth.
- In personal relationships, we use anger, intimidation or passive-aggression to achieve results.
Some of these examples may be well-known to you. You might argue that they are not cheats at all, or that they are so common as to hardly count as rule-breaking. Maybe they have been integrated into the systems they were meant to defeat, or they have become systems in their own right. You might argue that you don’t participate in these examples or other obvious ones you can think of, and so you are not a cheater (I’ll simply urge you to be honest, for your own good, and if after a second look you still see no evidence of cheating in your life, then bless you). Perhaps, on top of all of this, such hacks don’t even work, making them pretty bad ways of cheating.
Let us assume we have discovered an effective and beneficial way to break a stubborn, unhelpful tool or service. Is it better to hide or reveal this alternative? There may be many consequences to disclosure: punishment, closure of the loophole, an influx of opportunists who clog the new route and render it ineffectual. If someone becomes aware of our suspicious successes, we might initiate them in order to keep them quiet, as long as we believe we can maintain control. In general, though, disclosure is risky.
Cheating demonstrates Grudin’s Law (which was quoted earlier). However, cheating may depend on the status quo for success, so it becomes a hidden, second system that adds additional, confusing factors to the situation. Outsiders then witness the stated rules of the system, the practical outcomes of the system, but also the practical outcomes of the unstated cheating. Then they look for additional ways to bend or exploit the system to achieve what the winners have achieved: more Grudin’s Law, more brokenness. In short, we observe problems, figure out solutions, hide or ration the solutions to preserve an advantage, pay lip service to the system and let an even more broken system emerge.
Ego complicates matters further. We may have a hard time admitting the usefulness of our own cheat to ourselves, because even if it gets results, and even if it gratifies our pride to rebel against the so-called natural order, we have just undermined the stability of the so-called natural order! If that foundation is shaken, might not the security of our will also be threatened? Our past and future achievements become vulnerable to circumstance. Perhaps then, side roads stay secret (even from ourselves and even while we take advantage of them), not just to stay effective, but also to preserve our deep desire for power and security and our sense that we earned them.
Speaking of systems, I believe that the phenomenon of cheating and the priorities that inform it also help us to understand one of our grand, broken, and oppressive modern tools: management. I do not strictly refer to a business title or those who hold that title, because we employ the tools of management in many areas of life. When we create systems and try to conquer dilemmas (in work, dating, socializing, friendships, politics, etc.) we often assume a management perspective. We believe we must treat everything - situations, people, resources, cheats - as liabilities to regulate. Accurately or not, I identify management closely with risk management.
Experience teaches me that when we analyze and live according to such a mindset, we only see crises of control. Thus, if a problem is discovered which the system as it stands cannot resolve, especially if it is not discovered by us (woe unto the messenger), we feel threatened and look for ways to make the problem go away. The primary mission is to remove the danger to our power and security, and we are lucky if we accidentally fix the problem in the process.
Let us assume we have discovered an effective and beneficial way to break a stubborn, unhelpful tool or service. Is it better to hide or reveal this alternative? There may be many consequences to disclosure: punishment, closure of the loophole, an influx of opportunists who clog the new route and render it ineffectual. If someone becomes aware of our suspicious successes, we might initiate them in order to keep them quiet, as long as we believe we can maintain control. In general, though, disclosure is risky.
Cheating demonstrates Grudin’s Law (which was quoted earlier). However, cheating may depend on the status quo for success, so it becomes a hidden, second system that adds additional, confusing factors to the situation. Outsiders then witness the stated rules of the system, the practical outcomes of the system, but also the practical outcomes of the unstated cheating. Then they look for additional ways to bend or exploit the system to achieve what the winners have achieved: more Grudin’s Law, more brokenness. In short, we observe problems, figure out solutions, hide or ration the solutions to preserve an advantage, pay lip service to the system and let an even more broken system emerge.
Ego complicates matters further. We may have a hard time admitting the usefulness of our own cheat to ourselves, because even if it gets results, and even if it gratifies our pride to rebel against the so-called natural order, we have just undermined the stability of the so-called natural order! If that foundation is shaken, might not the security of our will also be threatened? Our past and future achievements become vulnerable to circumstance. Perhaps then, side roads stay secret (even from ourselves and even while we take advantage of them), not just to stay effective, but also to preserve our deep desire for power and security and our sense that we earned them.
Speaking of systems, I believe that the phenomenon of cheating and the priorities that inform it also help us to understand one of our grand, broken, and oppressive modern tools: management. I do not strictly refer to a business title or those who hold that title, because we employ the tools of management in many areas of life. When we create systems and try to conquer dilemmas (in work, dating, socializing, friendships, politics, etc.) we often assume a management perspective. We believe we must treat everything - situations, people, resources, cheats - as liabilities to regulate. Accurately or not, I identify management closely with risk management.
Experience teaches me that when we analyze and live according to such a mindset, we only see crises of control. Thus, if a problem is discovered which the system as it stands cannot resolve, especially if it is not discovered by us (woe unto the messenger), we feel threatened and look for ways to make the problem go away. The primary mission is to remove the danger to our power and security, and we are lucky if we accidentally fix the problem in the process.
Part 4.
“Think...of those beleaguered college admissions officers, faced with more applications than they can possibly read with care, most of which are indistinguishable...who just need one piece of information...to make them feel justified in writing RJ (Reject) and moving on….”
- Alan Jacobs, How to Think
In his most recent book, How to Think, Mr. Jacobs uses the word triage to label a lot of our daily processing and decision-making. I think this is a perfect term for the attitude we adopt toward the world. Triage is meant for battlefields and emergency rooms. Now, we feel like we are living in unfathomable informational arenas that are swollen with competitors, and triage operates in every corner of our lives and minds.
Systems, most of which are commercial and which penetrate deeply into the everyday operations of our lives, infect us with near-frantic levels of pressure and urgency and thus inflame the emotional state that compels us to submit to these broken tools or die. Dread overwhelms our judgment. I perceive two main conditions propagated by the tools that surround us: an air of relentless, infinite competition and another atmosphere of oppressively dense information.
Competition: if we do not act immediately, someone else will win that house, that job, that date, that sociopolitical victory. Like a greyhound chasing a stuffed rabbit, how often do we fully understand what we are after, or what to do if we catch the prize? Nevertheless we can hardly conceive of not operating this way. Who has the luxury to pause and question what works or what really matters, when a multitude of other hungry curs will race past our indecision to chomp onto life’s shrinking opportunities, or worse, what if some rabid creature of fate devours us while we ponder? Thus we surrender to this breathless race, frantically trying to sniff out the true path to victory (the functional rules, the cheater’s path) and avoid the fruitless course (the stated rules).
Information Overload: The amount of stimulus thrust in our faces today is immense. I often worry that a lot of what is handed to us, as well as the formal measures by which systems are judged, are effectively noise, just an accumulation of graphs and charts that offer a theater of productivity and stability. These routine “results” cloak the really important information. The false comfort they provide suppresses the valuable investigations that few have the courage or insight to conduct, and lead us to bad conclusions and bad actions.
Of course (the status quo implies), if we are unhappy with this we can leap the fence out of one overwhelmingly complicated space into a seemingly-boundless wilderness of data, chaos, competition, structure-yet-to-be, revolution-that-may-or-may-not-occur, catharsis or doom in which nothing is very well-understood or settled yet, and in which we are still obligated to make meaningful decisions to survive. Naturally, for the sake of our self-image, we must also prove that going outside of the known was not the dumbest choice ever.
Our modern tools inflame our sense of competition and information overload, undermine our confidence that we can competently address these forces, and finally promise that they can help rescue us from them. Yet day to day, even as we humbly make use of the “best” tools and systems at hand, millions, billions of us struggle to achieve results that are relevant, sensible, and useful.
Meanwhile, in our public isolation, don’t we silently arrive at millions, billions of conclusions about how things are broken and how they ought to really work? As we stumble we may quietly dare to ask who decides what factors matter, how those factors are assembled into systems, rules, life advice, how well we comprehend the real steps we must take to achieve success, and finally whether it is even possible for us to make powerful, timely decisions based upon what these systems give us to work with.
Our tools and systems do not just discourage us, I believe that they drive us to despair. We are antagonized and defeated by the status quo, and as we learn helplessness we submit some more and despair some more. Ultimately it may not matter whether malice informs any given system: the point is quite simply that our tools and systems do not help us, they do not serve us, therefore they are not for us.
We feel deeply, just as deeply as our fear and need to protect our security and pride, that the tools we are compelled to use serve alien purposes or maybe no coherent purposes, which is why we encounter so much grief as we use them.
Conclusion
“Conviction in our ideas is dangerous not only because it leaves us vulnerable to false positives, but also because it stops us from generating the requisite variety to reach our creative potential.”
“The more experiments you run, the less constrained you become by your ideas from the past.”
I would also love for you to disagree with some or all of what I have just written. I would love for me to disagree. I hope to look back one day on the above thoughts (maybe even next week, who can say?) and realize that I misstated some things, over- and under-emphasized the wrong points, was blind to a revelation in thought or action that was right around the corner in society or myself.
Every day, many perspectives and forces work to expose the incompleteness or dysfunction of our surface systems, and that inspires me. People with whom we agree and with whom we disagree do the hard, valuable work of interrogating the facade of how we live, and excavating the underground tunnels where significant traffic moves. Regardless of the legitimacy or effectiveness of any particular perspective, I am grateful for challenges not to accept “the way it is” too easily.
Currently, we too often speak in service to formal measures and systems, and keep our valuable insights to ourselves. Too often we operate by a cynical, managerial code. In us lives a hunger for a known, manageable system of thought and behavior, but it is a mistake to set aside pursuit of what is true or beneficial just to defeat others and protect an image of power.
We also act and feel, and more careful attention here may begin to revitalize other areas of our lives. The urgency of motion, the desire for control, and the need to feel like we behave competently are not inherently wrong, but do we apply these impulses well? Do they help us in the ways we need help? The need to pause and question what we take for granted is also valuable. Do we make good use of these tools?
I suspect that if we pay more attention to the dissonance between what we say and what we do, or between what is advertised and what is delivered by us and in the world around us, what we ask for and what we get, if we have faith that our confusion or frustration (and frustration others encounter at our hands) means something, these observations alone will build up to something valuable.
Can we seek and rescue inspiration and effectiveness within our existing systems, or must we begin to replace them? Will some start with how we socialize, others with how we look for jobs (or choose who gets jobs), still others of us with how we select friends and life partners? Who wishes to reform how we decide what to eat or wear, even? There are so many challenges to pursue, but fortunately there are quite a great number of us to tackle these challenges.
Perhaps one common starting point for many of us is simply to celebrate the vast diversity we bring to bear upon the landscape of human experience. This is truly a wild and generous terrain, hungry to be filled with new discoveries, ideas and experiences, regardless of the spectacle of impoverishment and ruthless competition that existing systems try to inflict upon us. Instead of submitting to the anxious notion that we are all competitors for a few, mean scraps, why don’t we revel in all the many ways in which we may surprise or aid or challenge one another? Each in our own way, together and individually, we can design to delight.
Works Cited
Grant, Adam. Originals, Viking, 2016.
“The more experiments you run, the less constrained you become by your ideas from the past.”
- Adam Grant, Originals
I would also love for you to disagree with some or all of what I have just written. I would love for me to disagree. I hope to look back one day on the above thoughts (maybe even next week, who can say?) and realize that I misstated some things, over- and under-emphasized the wrong points, was blind to a revelation in thought or action that was right around the corner in society or myself.
Every day, many perspectives and forces work to expose the incompleteness or dysfunction of our surface systems, and that inspires me. People with whom we agree and with whom we disagree do the hard, valuable work of interrogating the facade of how we live, and excavating the underground tunnels where significant traffic moves. Regardless of the legitimacy or effectiveness of any particular perspective, I am grateful for challenges not to accept “the way it is” too easily.
Currently, we too often speak in service to formal measures and systems, and keep our valuable insights to ourselves. Too often we operate by a cynical, managerial code. In us lives a hunger for a known, manageable system of thought and behavior, but it is a mistake to set aside pursuit of what is true or beneficial just to defeat others and protect an image of power.
We also act and feel, and more careful attention here may begin to revitalize other areas of our lives. The urgency of motion, the desire for control, and the need to feel like we behave competently are not inherently wrong, but do we apply these impulses well? Do they help us in the ways we need help? The need to pause and question what we take for granted is also valuable. Do we make good use of these tools?
I suspect that if we pay more attention to the dissonance between what we say and what we do, or between what is advertised and what is delivered by us and in the world around us, what we ask for and what we get, if we have faith that our confusion or frustration (and frustration others encounter at our hands) means something, these observations alone will build up to something valuable.
Can we seek and rescue inspiration and effectiveness within our existing systems, or must we begin to replace them? Will some start with how we socialize, others with how we look for jobs (or choose who gets jobs), still others of us with how we select friends and life partners? Who wishes to reform how we decide what to eat or wear, even? There are so many challenges to pursue, but fortunately there are quite a great number of us to tackle these challenges.
Perhaps one common starting point for many of us is simply to celebrate the vast diversity we bring to bear upon the landscape of human experience. This is truly a wild and generous terrain, hungry to be filled with new discoveries, ideas and experiences, regardless of the spectacle of impoverishment and ruthless competition that existing systems try to inflict upon us. Instead of submitting to the anxious notion that we are all competitors for a few, mean scraps, why don’t we revel in all the many ways in which we may surprise or aid or challenge one another? Each in our own way, together and individually, we can design to delight.
Works Cited
Grant, Adam. Originals, Viking, 2016.
Jacobs, Alan. How to Think, Currency, 2017.
Norman, Donald. The Design of Everyday Things, 1988. Basic Books, 2013.
Norman, Donald. The Design of Everyday Things, 1988. Basic Books, 2013.
--. Things That Make Us Smart. Addison Wesley, 1993.
No comments:
Post a Comment