All objects have history, and that goes for words and thoughts and the pile of can openers sitting on a shelf at Target. Of course, objects are only the surface of underlying processes. We see the can opener, but not the processes that molded, shaped, assembled and transported it into our slice of consciousness. Similarly, we encounter a word – hear it, use it – mostly without thought, or if we do give it thought, it’s kind of like this:
Design (n): “A plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of a building, garment, or other object before it is made.”
Or my favorite:
“Purpose or planning that exists behind an action, fact, or object.” “Origin: late middle english from latin designare”
We can then go to find out that the latin designare was used in various ways so that it might be closer to “indicate,” “show,” “point out,” or “designate.” In other words, we end up with something that resembles a genealogical tree, with words sprouting off from one another across time, and it’s the words that we see / hear, just like it is the leaves of a tree and the shade of their canopy that we notice on a hot day.
But like I say, objects – and words are objects – are only the surface of underlying processes. They point elsewhere. Or to use some academic jargon, words are signs, which is just a fancy way of saying that words are “stand ins” for other things – the understudy that gets called up when the original actor comes down with strep throat. However, I’m not referring to that kind of “stand in.” Rather, I’d like us to take just a moment to think about how words are the bubbling output of something hidden. The social interactions across generations; the reverberations of a voice echoed within a womb; the pruned and flowering of an associative network of neurons within a nervous system.
In other words, we’re back to the tree metaphor that once led to designare and spread outward to “designate,” “indicate,” “point out,” and “design.” Each of these a specimen pinned under the glass to be cataloged and characterized. There are other things that could be noticed, though. Like, why did this tree of words grow in this particular way? Why did others take the form that they did? Why did that shoot emerge when it did, and why did that lineage seem to stop growing when it did?
This is a roundabout way to say that history is process, and it is process that throws and churns up the objects that inhabit our living. The poetry that we hear and the ears with which we hear it. The opportunities that we perceive and the mind that perceives them. The emotions that drift across our awareness, and the behaviors that emerge from their approach and departure. And yes, the can opener that sits on a shelf at a local Target. All are objects of history, which is to say that all are designed and open to change.
In psychology we call these historical processes contingencies, and maybe I’ll get around to writing about contingencies more explicitly some day. For right now, though, I’d like to stay focused on the idea of “design.” Because one way to think about contingencies is that they are the processes that mold our awareness, behavior, and all of the objects (animals, plants, roads, cars,…) with which we coexist. This design – or shaping in the psychological lingo — is happening whether we realize it or not, and I think I’d like to spend a bit of time writing about it. Indirectly at first, and then maybe a bit more directly. The idea is to spend some time thinking about a psyche – its habits, emotions, assumptions, self-talk, memories, i.e., all of the psyche’s production – as “stuff” that is available to notions of design.
Maybe. After all, this blog is an experiment.
Let me wrap up this post by quickly describing two stories: one famous and one personal, both of which relate to design. The first is a famous quote by the English theologian and writer, William Paley taken from his book Natural Theology.
“Let’s say you’re walking around and you find a watch on the ground. As you examine it, you marvel at the intricately complex interweaving of its parts, a means to an end. Surely you wouldn’t think this marvel would have come about by itself. The watch must have a maker. Just as the watch has such complex means to an end, so does nature to a much greater extent. Just look at the complexity of the human eye. Thus we must conclude that nature has a maker too.”
This quote from over 200 years ago, is an example of what is known as the “intelligent design” approach to understanding the forms of our existence. If you look back up at our dictionary definition of “design,” you immediately see where the quote is coming from: “Purpose or planning that exists behind an action, fact, or object.” In other words the notion of design is closely associated with notions of purpose. If an object is designed, then the object has purpose (and conversely, if a behavior seems to have purpose, then it must be designed). Paley wasn’t the first person to suggest that design implied the workings of a deity; in more ancient times, for example, the Pythagoreans pointed to mathematical regularities as evidence of divine creation. Furthermore, more recently, the notion of design and purpose has been co-opted by evolutionary theorists through assumptions of optimality. The idea is that the processes of design that exist in the natural world will produce forms that optimally solve particular problems. That is their purpose. So, whereas someone like Paley might look at the fin of a shark and inquire as to its divine purpose, an evolutionary theorist would look at the same fin and inquire as to the problem it has been optimized to solve.
Anyway, I’m bringing up Paley and “intelligent design” not to critique their ideas, but to simply point out that there is a long pedigree behind notions of history as process, and process as design. For some, that design (and therefore that history) is ipso facto evidence of a creator, and we, as elements of that creator’s design, possess purpose. For others, that design is evidence of a variety of scientific processes that reside under the umbrella of evolutionary theory.
Let’s get off the high horse, though. Blog post #2 and we’re already re-litigating the Scopes trial. What does design mean on a personal level? The answer to that question might take quite a few blog posts. To start an answer to that question, let me tell a story from when I was a kid.
Growing up in southeastern Tennessee with three brothers, my parents were keen on getting us outdoors. For family vacations we camped, went to beaches and canoed. When I got older canoeing turned into white water kayaking, and to this day I love the sound and rush of white water. But it wasn’t always this way. In fact, when I was a kid, canoeing was a bit terrifying! You see, when we went canoeing it was my dad with my oldest brother and me, and it was my mom with my other two brothers. The river of choice was a nearby class 2/3 river named the Hiwassee, and from the perspective of a young boy, inevitably bad things happened when our boats set out on that river. Boats flipped sending sputtering and gasping bodies downstream. Boats flipped pinning sputtering and gasping bodies against rocks. Boats flipped stranding sputtering and gasping bodies on small islands (only to be found much later in the day). It didn’t help that one of the more intense stretches of the river was named the Devil’s Shoal.
Anyway, as you can imagine the anxiety would build as the cars with their canoes strapped to their roofs bumped up the gravel road to the put-in. My poor oldest brother developed a genuine phobia.
All of this changed though, one day when a family friend of my parents took me down the river. His name was Dr. Collins, and in my experience he was a kind man, one who would join my father to coach a motley crew of a baseball team one year. On this trip down the Hiwassee he asked me join him in his canoe, and as we paddled and slid down the river, he talked. See the way the river looks there? It means this. Feel the way the boat is being tugged? Look at how the current is filling in behind that rock. See the deep rise of those waves? Hear that rush? …The entire trip down, Dr. Collins urged me to notice bits of the Hiwassee river in a way that I hadn’t before, and in noticing the river became process. There was no overcoming the river and its devil, but there was a way to find purpose within its signs – to design an awareness and set of behaviors that turned anxiety and terror into a sort of collaborative appreciation.
The paddler spoke to the river and the river answered back.
***
What I’m Listening To: The New Mastersounds
Jazzy / Bluesy / Funk at its best. If this music doesn’t make you happy, I don’t know what will. Saw this band perform live in Atlanta at Terminal West. So incredibly tight with rhythm handoffs and musical swagger, and so incredibly loose with their absence of overly scripted patter. If you have a chance to see them live, do yourself a favor and take it!
Something that got me thinking: Ta-Nehisi Coates
This is an interview with Terri Gross mostly about Coate’s new novel The Water Dancer. Coates is incredibly articulate and refreshingly blunt. His points about wanting to write a pulpy / adventure story that didn’t involve the vengeance constructs that are typical of the genre was interesting to me, especially given something like “Django Unchained,” which is a fantasy of pure vengeance. Coates’ angle is that vengeance wasn’t something “socially allowed” in African American history the way it has been in White history. Vengeance was typically and dominantly inflicted on blacks. Coates also raises the idea that the notion of “courage” within an African American pulp narrative would necessarily be different from the mainstream because of the manner in which the individual relates to the social system. I can’t do his ideas justice, though, so listen to the interview!…and then think about what the average superhero movie is saying, exactly.