WT: Communicating Sustainable Values

Research blog for MA Sustainable Design ADM05 Studio module: Project focus is on communicating the values of sustainability. This is an informal academic journal intended to chronicle my thinking as I progress through the project.

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MINIBREIF: Tower Blocks, Districts, and Displacement: Dystopian trends and “Utopianising” embedded sustainable ideas.

So the other day I came across this article:

https://theconversation.com/vertical-cruise-ships-heres-how-we-can-remake-housing-towers-to-be-safer-and-better-places-to-live-142381

It discusses the promising process of retrofitting old tower blocks to provide new social housing, rather than demolish and build new.  Great idea and much better in terms of sustainability but it got me thinking. 

The title of the article referred to ‘verticle cruise ships’ but of course, cruise ships arent solely residential like the tower block, i began to think, what if instead of retrofitting purley for residential, what would be the effect of integrating retail/commercial/agriculture - a variety of functions into the tower block, creating ‘vertical communities’. It made me think of the film ‘High Rise’ which featured a tower block like this (with some heavy handed class metaphors) but eventually the social order collapses and it becomes defunct.  

I recently started watching a show called Snowpiercer - the premise of which is everyone lives on a giant 1000 carriage train that circumnavigates the globe after a calamity that froze the world. In the show, the train carriages are multi-functional, some residential, some house vertical farms, etc. So again, we have this premise of mixed use environments portrayed in a dystopian setting.

Now, all of this is very tangential to what my project is focussed on which is communication. What i began to notice was that ideas that potentially have value and could be solutions to many problems are introduced to us through the lens of dystopian films. I would argue this taints the public/mass perception of these concepts before they are even proposed. As good as science fiction is at inspiring us to dream up incredible futures, it can be equally as harmful if we hide valuable ideas inside negative storytelling. This isnt to say we shouldnt stop exploring dystopia as a genre but it’s worth noting that it could be having an impact on how we view the legitimacy of certain ideas. 

Which brings me to my self-assigned mini brief: to collect and identify potential sustainable solutions embedded within dystopian narratives. The second stage would then be to re-design the film posters to highlight these notions in a more positive context. The goal is to show how film as a medium has incredible power in translating big ideas to a mass audience, and how through ‘utopianising’ these films we can explore how the context within which an idea is introduced to us can impact how that idea is perceived. 

I will post a portfolio once completed 

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Frankie boyle and Owen Jones Discussion (2017)

This was actually something I stumbled across in my own time but within it brought to my attention some relevant (albeit to different degrees) concepts that I thought were worth logging.

Boyle makes a comment about the 2016 Paris riots and how the ring-structure of the city allowed the police to stop the rioters/protesters from reaching the center. Now riots aside, what I thought was interesting was the impact that urban design can have on social order and structure, but also how architecture and urban design is a very powerful tool for communicating social value. Boyle refers to Paris’ arrondissement arrangement as ‘rings of poor people who come in to clean hotels’. Now, I wouldn't say I'm informed but even a quick google search seemed to confirm that Paris has a longstanding issue with wealth inequality and because of rampant gentrification there is a growing rural/urban divide that is very visible in the greater Paris area. If we allow our urban areas to spiral and create ‘frontlines’ between classes/communities/cultures this arguably reinforces negative ideological notions such as systemic racism and classism. What it does however is draw stark contrasts between areas that cannot be ignored. In atomosiing populations like this you actually create a very visible problem. 

The conversation turns onto the state of media - primarily news. They both make references to tabloid culture, and to the sensationalised tone that is (apparently) required of news in order to maintain relevance. This made me think of the news as the primary vehicle for the government/state to translate their ‘values’ to us. 

Lastly, Boyle brings up cultural morality and how in britain, because of the terrible actions of our government (both past and present) we are unable as a people to attain a moral existence and so we are forced to look inward and create moral structures from our own ‘tastes’. We create a faux morality based on what we as individuals think is right/wrong, rather than having a collective cultural moral code that binds us as a community to adhere to the same standards. Now, theres loads of points of contention when talking about this but where i saw relevance was in a kind of moral assessment of britain and a hypothesis as to what has eroded our collective moral codes (whatever they may be). 

More ‘food for thought’ than reference material but interest enough to drop in.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyFZX39joSM

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Two Diagrams i should’ve posted earlier. Immedietley after Formative hand in to try and organise my thinking by collecting key themes/areas of interest and working out to which of my categories they fit with. 

I plan to use this as a reference to physically locate my thinking. After a longer research period i would like to re-create these and compare to reflect on the projects focus

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Nick Bostrum: Values

Tom recommended I look into Nick Bostrum for some philosophical context. At first, most of what appeared was dominated by AI and its ethical issues so i struggled to see the relevance but then after watching a short talk, I noticed a parallel between Bostrums preventative measures for controlling superintelligence in AI and my work. 

Bostrums proposes that one solution to the problem of ‘runaway superintelligence’ could be to structure future AI to learn to share our human values, so as to prevent it sumising that humans are a threat to any of its programmed objectives. 

So where I am discussing the transfer of values from one ideological context (capitalism, neoliberalism, etc.) to another (the ideal ‘sustainable’ future*), Bostrum is talking about the transfer of values between human > non human intelligence. 

Bostrum also nods to the myth of King Midas and his golden touch. Even in a conversation about AI - one of the most infamous futuristic concepts - we can't help but refer back to myth and lore. Myths are such a focal point for how we taught/teach morality and value systems that I want to look into them further. 

With regards to Bostrums other work, i'm unsure as to the extent which it is relevant. Apart from surface parallels, I feel the work is pulling me in a more philosophical/existential direction than I want to take. I want to remain in the practical/pragmatic sphere and to try to act and think more in the present about what is required in the short-term future in the impending transitionary period.

*This in itself would need clarifying, for a quick definition, to me it means a future ideology that does not function at the expense of select groups of participants, or the physical environment it exists within. Further exploration of the ‘ideal’ scenario is definitely needed. 

Links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnT1xgZgkpk

https://www.nickbostrom.com/

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Rutger Berger: Morals and Money

I’ve become obsessed with Rutger Berger. After stumbling across his interview on Channel4’s ‘Ways to change the world’ podcast, I’ve been watching and reading as much Rutger content as possible. Not only because his views appeal to/confirm my own, but also because I see several of his key philosophies as having very interesting impact on our societies transition to sustainability, as well as touching on themes such as communication, human behaviour, and our ability to act. Here’s a brief summary of some relevant points: 

Berger talks about the notion of ‘Survival of the friendliest’ as a new concept that scientists are exploring as an explanation for humans' ability to become the dominant species. Getting rid of the competitive, selfish, egotistical profile of human nature, scientists [berger says] are instead noting the significance of our ability to cooperate, to be friendly, to empathise with others as a more realistic explanation. Berger discusses how obsolete ‘veneer theory’ has become in explaining human nature and that in actuality, we are (en masse) good, boring, and ordinary - rather than selfish, hateful, and violent which many philosophers of the enlightenment would have you believe (he mentions Hobbs of ‘nasty brutish and short’ fame, and his rival thinker Rousseau as being key figures in this debate). 

Where I believe this relates to the communication of sustainable values is it confirms my choice of ‘target’ so to speak. If - as both I and Berger believe - people are generally innately good and cooperative, then it is our social conditioning, i.e. the morals and values oru society instills within us, that is leading us astray. That, in order to successfully transition to a sustainable future, we need to replace the ideologies we hold that exaggerate our ‘worst characteristics as humans’ (as berger remarks - the selfish, egotistical, greed etc)  with an ideological system that prioritises and emphasises the good ones - the friendly, cooperative side of us. I’m hardly the first person to call for the dismantling of capitalism, but I would argue there are some preliminary steps that should and need to be taken if we are to make this transition sustainable. I’ve mentioned before  that the vehicles of capitalist ideology are clearly so effective and efficient that perhaps there is a way to ‘trojan horse’ the values of sustainability into our societies, while we transition out of capitalism. More on that another time. 

Sources:

Poverty isn't a lack of character; it's a lack of cash | Rutger Bregman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydKcaIE6O1k

Davos 2019: Historian Rutger Bregman berates billionaires at World Economic Forum over tax avoidance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5LtFnmPruU

Rutger Bregman . Utopia for Realists- The Case for a Universal Basic Income: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x2vh5eMjGI

Rutger Bregman on elites, survival of the friendliest, rethinking human history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYubG-SthWs

'Capitalism will always create bullshit jobs' | Owen Jones meets Rutger Bregman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsutNKH7KiE&t=319s 

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ARTICLE NOTES: why facts don’t change our minds?

SOURCE: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds?utm_campaign=falcon&utm_social-type=owned&utm_brand=tny&utm_medium=social&mbid=social_twitter&utm_source=twitter

“Once formed,” the researchers observed dryly, “impressions are remarkably perseverant.”

This is the simplest explanation of our current problem I can see. The grindingly slow transition to sustainable practices is in my mind predominantly caused by our inability to shift decades of a narrative that says everything is fine and not to worry about it

Mercier and Sperber’s argument runs, more or less, as follows: Humans’ biggest advantage over other species is our ability to coöperate. Coöperation is difficult to establish and almost as difficult to sustain. For any individual, freeloading is always the best course of action. Reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems or even to help us draw conclusions from unfamiliar data; rather, it developed to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups. Reason is an adaptation to the hypersocial niche humans have evolved for themselves,” (Mercier and Sperber) 

Interesting to note the difficulty in maintaining cooperation is as/if not more than establishing it in the first place. It’s almost as if after the rush of cooperative/collectivism after World Wars, and the rise of globalism and the “global community”, we’ve reached a point of ‘co-operation fatigue’ where it feels like, en masse, people are just done with working/thinking together.

The notion of reason being a socially oriented practice rather than a factual/objective one, is interesting to me as it confirms what i already thought (an ironic nod to the confirmation bias that is an issue here); that people aren’t swayed by facts/evidence like we want them to be

“confirmation bias,” the tendency people have to embrace information that supports their beliefs and reject information that contradicts them. 

Just a good clear definition that’s worth saving. It makes me think, if we look for facts to suit our beliefs then in order to get people to “believe” in sustainability, then we need to address our social/culture values and how they are instilled in the first place

Mercier and Sperber suggest a mouse that thinks the way we do. Such a mouse, “bent on confirming its belief that there are no cats around,” would soon be dinner. 

Great analogy; the cat in this case is whatever existential/systemic problem you want it to be. 

Living in small bands of hunter-gatherers, our ancestors were primarily concerned with their social standing...There was little advantage in reasoning clearly, while much was to be gained from winning arguments.

It’ll be worth exploring this link between social standing/’cultural capital’ and winning arguments. So, knowledge or facts don't just have practical functions but are inherently social. 

Mercier and Sperber write, “This is one of many cases in which the environment changed too quickly for natural selection to catch up.”

So I would think that the acceleration of technological development has a part to play in this, particularly communications technologies. For most of human history our ability to communicate was dependent on some form of natural system (not sure if that's the best phrase for it). What i mean is that if we wanted to send a message, we had to deliver it ourselves, write it down and give it to someone or a painstakingly trained animal - to deliver. All of this took time and so the spread of information was limited to the speed of the delivery methods. In only about 150-200 years, we can now send messages instantly and so the spread of information has accelerated dramatically causing all kinds of problems. 

Sloman and Fernbach see this effect, which they call the “illusion of explanatory depth,” just about everywhere. People believe that they know way more than they actually do

Definitely going to look into this, seems very relevant. I’d be curious to know if there are any studies related to climate awareness/sustainability that explore this concept.

So well do we collaborate, Sloman and Fernbach argue, that we can hardly tell where our own understanding ends and others’ begins.

This gives me hope. The idea that our perception of our own knowledge extends beyond what we personally know gives me the impression that if we can curate our ‘knowledge networks’ better then we can manage what information comes in and what doesn't. It makes me think of how I deal with politics these days. I have 4-5 people - who are much more involved/have more of an understanding than I do - who I trust to keep me updated on what is going on. But then, applying this at a larger, less personal scale, it becomes a trust/validation issue, a question of: WHO? 

When it comes to new technologies, incomplete understanding is empowering. Where it gets us into trouble, according to Sloman and Fernbach, is in the political domain. It’s one thing for me to flush a toilet without knowing how it operates, and another for me to favor (or oppose) an immigration ban without knowing what I’m talking about.

So it's like, we’ve applied the same mentality to politics as we take on with mundane/ordinary/everyday technologies. So, how we apply this thinking isn't determined by the seriousness/complexity of what is trying to be understood - so what is this mindset determined by? What we want to know? 

“As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding,” Sloman and Fernbach write.

Good quote: simply put. If we can’t aim for ‘deep understanding’ then maybe we have to aim for a more emotional response ‘deep caring’.

Sloman and Fernbach see in this result a little candle for a dark world. If we—or our friends or the pundits on CNN—spent less time pontificating and more trying to work through the implications of policy proposals, we’d realize how clueless we are and moderate our views. This, they write, “may be the only form of thinking that will shatter the illusion of explanatory depth and change people’s attitude

This idea of moderation is interesting. It arcs back to what i mentioned before about monitoring our ‘knowledge networks’. I believe there are people in social groups who act as moderators and i would be curious to explore if this is linked to some trait/correlates with something. If we can find a link to how certain people hold and use influence maybe then we can further examine the social functions of moderators and how they apply to knowledge

Science moves forward, even as we remain stuck in place.

Nice quote to reflect on. There are many potential technological solutions to systemic problems but the bigger issue is in applying them.

 They cite research suggesting that people experience genuine pleasure—a rush of dopamine—when processing information that supports their beliefs. “It feels good to ‘stick to our guns’ even if we are wrong,” they observe.

This is baffling to me. I’d like to explore if this is related to the cultural shaming of ‘being wrong’ that seems to happen. It comes through our education where there is a perceived shame and negativity around being wrong. Could be worth exploring education as a primary vehicle in how we instill cultural/social values.

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Covid Capital

I’ve been thining about ways in which covid has had an impact on my perception of design and the state of affairs. To start with I wanted to draw a parralell between viruses and the spread of ideology. 

Much like a virus, potent ideas can spread and mutate rapidly through cultures and societies before being recognised for the dangerous ideas they are. They grow exponentially, they have a variety of delivery methods, etc etc. There are more virus analogies you could use to talk about this and i’m sure there have been many articles comparing capitalism to a virus - thinking here of the ‘we are the virus’ woke posts that have been littering twitter and instagram since news of natures “recovery” due ot the corona induced slow-down in our cities.

What I was more thinking about, is the vehicles of beliefs and how in capitalism/neoliberalism/consumerism we communicate ideas through set channels - like advertising, poltical doctrine, semiotics, culturally specific rhetoric, etc. 

The model of replication that capitalism uses is obviously so powerful - obvious because of how ubiquitous these values now are, and how much damage they have done. What I cant stop thinking about is that there must be a way to harness, in a meaningful way. these ideological vehicles to convey more sustinable messages and values into people. I mean, yeh there have been attempts i.e. green washing - but will have to look more into that before commenting.  

Like how vaccines can be made from old or dead viruses, can we repurpose capitalist/consumerist models of communication to spread a more sustianable narrative and value system? 

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Let’s get started...

So this blog’s intention is to act as a kind of ‘academic diary’, chronicling my thoughts, collecting sources, freely exploring ideas through the beginning of my studio practice. Part exercise in critical journaling, part free meandering self-expression, the aim here is to have an informal place to think and explore ideas in a structured way. 

I will spend some time working on an ‘about the project’ page so as to provide more context but for now let his breif note suffice. 

Coming out of my futures model (which explored intergrating materials in the creation of new regional identities as a way of accelerating the uptake of sustainable material use, and creating a network of material knowledge), I have been focussed on defining my areas of interest and trying to vaguely map out where i see the progression from this position. 

As far as i can tell, there are four main areas (which definitley overlap): 

1) Time: 

Specifically im interested in areas such as: near-future design, actionable futures, design fiction, science-fixtion, forcasting/bascating methodologies, specualtive design, etc. Creating work that looks to the slight-future, or creating future-past perspectives can have a big impact as commentary on how we are currently acting. We need to have something to aim for so building preferred futures will be essential in mapping our transition to sustinable futures. 

2) People:

Particaulary the areas of design activism, co-design, community building, design anthropology. Im a big believer in de-centralising traditional aspects of governance to allow people to have more sovereignty over their spaces and a major part of sustainable transitions will have to include the people, the stakeholders. In terms of activism, I want to epxlore more the Fuad-Lukes notion of “activism artefacts” and how these can enable and accelerate social change.

3) Things

I’m a big fan of objects and materiasl. I think we have de-materialised our ways of thinking to the point where we are alienated from the profound meaning materials have on ourselves. I aim to eplore more the connection between ourselves and our values through a material or object context.  

4) Stories

and finally, the unifying factor in all of these is storytelling/narritive. Looking at the stories we have created to make our current way of life acceptable - even ideal - will be the beginning of untangleing or identifying areas in which we can activate change as designers. Everthing tells us a story. The materials we use, the groups we form, the time we live in; there is a narrative in everything and for centuries now, that narrative has led us astray. Recaliming control of the story, instilling a more sustainable narrative, will be how we get people interested in the direly needed sustainable transition. 

So, that’s where I am now. I look forward to finding out where we go.