Design
On limits of planning and the potential of agency
You can’t design everything. Actually, most things cannot be designed – if you pay close enough attention1, that is.
There is a frustrating beauty in the fact that the world does what it does. A Subjectivity that keeps us going, seeking, and striving.
For the designer, especially the well-read, articulate, slightly senior one, there is a fallacy that the design muscle can tackle everything.
It is generally in this pseudo-objective space that confusion about the nature of the world begins, where we genuinely think we can shoe-horn reality onto a canvas, where we hold the brush.
This is reinforced by fitting into spaces of low context confusion, where veneer is more important than meaning. We meet others who do the same, and we all race to the bottom, meaning we forego.
Once we scrutinize these ideas, the spaces we are in will have no advice to offer the well-intentioned, striving thinker, because clarity is the currency. Any living ideas seem useless, like boredom, or things that we feel but cannot yet explain.
The alternative is to accept the complexity of the world, and that subjective systems (nature, people, culture) cannot be designed, but are receptive to agency. And find spaces that allow for high context confusion, where meaning is more important than articulation. Words that can carry their meaning benefit from deconstruction rather than disappearing. They allow for integration and can live and grow from each instantiation.
This week, I invite you to visit www.creative-surplus.com.