Human spirit and the scope of design
A long time ago someone has said “you shall love your neighbor as yourself”. It is a challenging principle in a time where happiness often is achieved by ignoring your neighbor rights and needs. However, searching for sustainable ways of living requires from us the adoption of a principle far more challenging: “you shall love people of future generations that you don´t even know that will exist and that are not even necessarily related to you”. If the previous principle has already proved to be difficult to implement, if not impossible in many regions of the globe, what could be said about this late enlarged principle?
Hence, I understand that the most fundamental (radical) improvement that could lead the all society towards sustainability lies on the human spirit. Using the words of our colleague Geetha Narayanan (Newsletter 07): that is what makes each of us humans, that which endures beyond matter.
Yes, induction of market forces can drive sustainability forward faster. Yes, speeding up changes in consumption patterns can be achieved through education. And, yes, we should work to include sustainability on the main agenda of every world leader. However, it is the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish and the ideals to which we are dedicated are determinants on the future we are shaping today and that is beyond conventional design.
Some people could say that improvements on the human spirit are outside of the scope of design. Contrary to this opinion I believe that Design as well as any other profession can make a direct contribution to changes or improvements in the society values and aspirations and that does not mean transforming design into a religion. Improving the transparency on the ethics of production of a given product or implementing processes that enable consumer´s co-responsibility for a product life cycle are examples of how designers can operate as channels for positive change.
In South America design clearly is far from delivering the changes that it potentially could provide or induce. The good news is that emergent changes on the direction of sustainability are expanding in numbers, involving since large corporations until self-employed workers operating in their own home.
On many of these cases the change is so positive that theme for design could be more “supporting-the-change” or “disseminating-the-change” than actually change the change. At the same time, the continent currently presents large economical and social changes that in many instances replicate environmental or social mistakes that have already being made by developed nations in the past. Here is an opportunity to change the change.
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