Parochial Aesthetics

"Your parochial aesthetics are a thing to be hidden, not flaunted"

[parochialaesthetics]

Living often means being able to lead ourselves to some other, less comfortable place to make meaning.

A Different Early Season - by Spencer Pitman - NONDUCOR

[klr]

Messy thought, neat thought

The Process of Design Squiggle by Damien Newman, Central Office of Design.

The pattern of alternating messy thought with neat thought seems to come up across many disciplines. It disappoints me when I hear people waste time arguing for only one of these two modalities, as if only one of the two is always the way to operate. 

The argument seems very related to the age-old “innovative vs. efficient thinking” debate mentioned in Chapter K of The ABCs of How We Learn: 26 Scientifically Proven Approaches, How They Work, and When to Use Them. Daniel L. Schwartz, Jessica M. Tsang, and Kristen P. Blair – in which the conclusion of their research was that both modes of thought are useful, and help each other when alternated, starting with innovative thought. Here’s a little refresher visual from the book:

In design, people alternate between being generative (e.g. “encourage wild ideas!” in a brainstorm), and then focusing down using a more critical or pragmatic lens. This can also be called “creating choices vs. making choices.” I mention it in my talk at LayersConf 2015, during which I visualize the process of iteration: generating lots of design alternatives, then culling the options down using constraints. It seems like there are hundreds of diagrams of this.

A few more visualizations of the design process. The areas that show widening are generative phases, the narrowing are the moments of editing.

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[parochialaesthetics]

“You have to be twice as good as them to get half of what they have!”

[parochialaesthetics]

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(via SUPERFLUX (@superfluxstudio) • Instagram photos and videos)

[parochialaesthetics]

Clarity, readability, simplicity, are all aspects of maintainability. Can the thing you worked hard to build be maintained after you’re gone? What can you do today to make it easier for those that come after you?

The Zen of Go

[parochialaesthetics]

If you care hard enough about your work to be the one doing the stuff everyone else hates, you're thanked by doing more and more of that work you don't like, until that's all you do. And then there's nothing left for you to enjoy.

The Little Printf

[parochialaesthetics]

They reap not where they labored; we reap what they have sown; our harvest may be garnered by ages yet unknown. The days of old have dowered us with gifts beyond all praise; our Father, make us faithful to serve the coming days.

Hymn Lyrics - Our Father, by whose servants

[parochialaesthetics]

People get bored because they are boring. If you do not want to be bored, then become more curious about, involved in, and fascinated by what you are doing.

Extended Massive Orgasm by Steve Bodansky: Summary, Notes and Lessons - Nat Eliason

[parochialaesthetics]

In his seminal book Seeing Like a State, James Scott describes what he calls “high modernists:” lovers of orders who mistake complexity for chaos, and rush to rearrange it from the ground up in a more centralized, orderly fashion. Scott argues that high modernists end up optimizing for a system’s legibility from their perspective, at the expense of its performance from that of the user. Indeed, that love of order is above all else about appearances. Streets arranged in grids, people waiting in clean lines, cars running at the same speed… But everything that looks good doesn’t necessarily work well. In fact, those two traits are opposed more often than not: efficiency tends to look messy, and good looks tend to be inefficient. This is because complex systems — like laws, cities, or corporate processes — are the products of a thousand factors, each pulling in a different direction. And even if each factor is tidy taken separately, things quickly get messy when they all merge together.

The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up – Florent Crivello

[parochialaesthetics]

When high position is stolen from you, and access to the heights of wealth and power denied, there is little one can do about it—except write. History is thus rarely a “weapon of the weak.” The judgments of the historian do not serve the margins. They do not even serve the masses. They are a weapon in the hand of defeated elites, the voices of men and women who could be in power, but are not. What was true in Thucydides day is true in our own. The simplest explanation for modern academics' hostility to 21st century capitalism's  “structures of power” is their complete exclusion from them.

The Scholar's Stage: History is Written by the Losers

[parochialaesthetics]

A man dies only once. His death may be a matter weighty as Mount Tai or light as a feather. It all depends on the reason for which he dies.

The Scholar's Stage: History is Written by the Losers

[parochialaesthetics]

Someone told me not long after I moved to New York that in order to succeed, you have to understand which rules you’re supposed to break. If you break the wrong rules, you’re finished. And so the easiest thing to do is follow all the rules. But then you consign yourself to a lower status. The real trick is understanding what rules are not meant for you.

What Happens to All the Asian-American Overachievers When the Test-Taking Ends? -- New York Magazine - Nymag

[parochialaesthetics]

Perhaps the most impossible thing we all want is for the things that happen to us to make sense. Our most tragic impulse is the one to make meaning when life is just a series of contingencies. It leads some people, like myself, to have a hard time getting over being wounded. I fixate, I wallow, I simultaneously feel humiliated that I could care for someone so obviously unworthy and convinced I will never find anyone as good again.

Pocket

[parochialaesthetics]

Remember that you can't have pools of light without the darker places in between.

A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander et al

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(via Ask Olive: I’m Afraid, He’s Afraid – Spiralbound – Medium)

[parochialaesthetics]

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.

Steve Jobs

[parochialaesthetics]

I have met the circumstances that are larger than my capacity to be gracious, it turns out. I have come up against the limits of my goodness: someone I love has what I want, and he probably always will. What else is there to do for it? I might as well work.

https://granta.com/envy/

Envy | Kathryn Chetkovich | Granta Magazine

‘Why does it hurt only to read good work by the living?’ Kathryn Chetkovich in Granta 82: Life's Like That.