Populism rhymes with Cannibalism

Bill Moggridge at IDEO would gently remind us from time to time that...

“Designers argue with images, not words.”

Yet he was himself a great verbal explainer. He could tell it like it is. Or like it should be; paint worlds with words for us. Odd, how we needed words about the necessity for more than words. It’s like the Japanese Zen concept of 不立文字 (or ?furiomonji? in my best attempt at transliteration, if you know better, please tell us!) About how in spite of the words built-in prescription: ?never an empire of words alone? ... we still must signify speech, thought, emotion &c by pictograms we then think, feel, say, tell. What the Zen masters of Nara were exploring was the nanoscale loop connecting thought, speech, writing and action. Because we must ?just do it?? but that is also an act of speech.

So words are fundamentally important even in the visual world and for the visual currency we work in. But standard dictionary definitions may not always capture all the essential aspects. Even though the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and the original Spanish (Castilian) Diccionario de la Real Academia (RAE) work along historical lines. Other languages have similar efforts. (What is the best in your language?)

(Image above: the OED defines ‘populism.’)

So I have decided to start accumulating a lexicon. I start with the very topical word “populism.” And here is my first —actually my v12 by the time you read this— prototype page spread:

PRINCIPLES

There are the 3 principles of my dictionary or will be as it takes shape. (And since my first sample page spread celebrates the word populism I will continue in that vein.)

[1] Symmetry, [2] Duality and [3] Transparency. I describe them below but in summary... 1. A symmetric definition incorporates all sides of the concept. 2. A dualist definition recognizes inherent conflicts. And 3. A transparent definition is valid everywhere for everyone.

SYMMETRY

Number 1 is SYMMETRY. There are always two sides (often more) to every definition: one for those who benefit from the concept being captured in language, another for those who suffer from the concept being captured in language. In language, as in politics or physics, energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only transformed. In policy what is done for some is undone for others...

A symmetric definition incorporates all sides of the concept.

Consider for example those who benefit from cannibalism —the anthropophagi— and those who provide the benefit of cannibalism —the eaten. Both make the cannibal business model? viable. (Notice how the eaten are not properly named? Only euphemistically referenced? There’s power politics at work for you; for or against you depending on which side of the struggle you fall.)

Science does concern itself with nomenclature, as should Design. We cannot design to change the world if we cannot even talk about the world directly. Thus predator and prey, thanks to Science, enter our vocabulary as a significant word pair.

Are you predator or prey? It is rare in nature to see prey vote predators into office. But it does happen. We are part of nature, are we not? DISCLOSURE: I am a vegetarian carnivore. (See Note 3 at bottom of scroll.)

DUALITY

Number 2 is DUALITY. Related to symmetry above and its necessary counterpart: asymmetry. Duality is the notion that definitions need and could use a double-entry system, an accounting schema. Because definitions are often necessarily a contrast between what is being defined and its nearest true opposites. When we define a word we should bear in mind its debit and credit columns and the possibility of extraneous, unaccounted for columns.

A dualist definition recognizes all inherent conflicts.

To continue with our populism example (and the related cannibalism) consider the cost of what the media has been calling a “populist uprising.” The lovely OED tells us that populism in the first place consists of...

“The policies or principles of any of various political parties which seek to represent the interests of ordinary people.”

And so we should ask Question A:

Who will foot the bill for “representing the interests of ordinary people?” That cost and its price —cost and price are rarely equal— goes into one of the columns of the double-entry system. (I will let you decide which one. This is important. This is why we need definitions.)

Next, we should ask Question B:

Who will pocket the gains from purportedly “representing the interests of ordinary people?” That profit goes into the other column of the double-entry system. (Again, I will let you decide which one.)

But there is a third aspect...

Accounting needs a purpose.

...otherwise you are keeping the books for... whom? what?

In business forgetting the purpose is what turns accountants into bean counters. An easy way of knowing when a company has lost its edge is to look at their accounting practice. If they have one. Otherwise you have to look at their accounting practices. If they have any of those. Otherwise you have to consider calling the Department of Commerce, or the SEC, or the FBI, or the Press, or all of the above.

And worse than forgetting the purpose is falsifying the purpose. In accounting, that is not only unprofessional but also criminal. There are severe legal penalties for cooking the books. And cooking the books is not only changing numbers, it is also misattributing numbers.

Finally, we should ask Question C:

What are the cost and the gain mentioned above for the purpose of __________, to be attained by which mechanism? You know, the Business Plan for the Business Model? For example:

“We will make a profit by making sugar-free but delicious ice cream and selling it at a premium to health-preoccupied consumers.”

Of course, note also how sugar-free may not mean free from other ingredients that cause weight gain or health issues, as the hilarious packaging in the photograph below illustrates:

(In the image above: Chuckles, my favorite candy, provided some chuckles at O’Hare International Airport. But sugar is no joke! See sugar kills for more information.)

But let us consider a more appropriate example:

“ We will improve the employment prospects of ordinary people by __________.”

Historically, and bizarrely enough, a favorite mechanism of populist governments is deregulation. (The Governance Plan or Policy Model or Hook.) A single mechanism, of course, does not a functional policy make. Just like “removing” just one (1) fattening ingredient does not a healthy or nutritious or satisfying food make. (But it may make an attractive food. Think about how this is related to what we designers do and should not do!)

I have no problem with deregulation. Or regulation. The fact is that we need a steady and dynamic process of continuous regulation and deregulation. But the monolithic application of any process is always worrisome. Monolithicism is heavy-handed —and that would be bad enough— but is usually also quite purposeful and purposefully opaque.

So-called populist “de-regulation” is usually a smoke-screen phrase for government-sanctioned looting of the economy by private concerns. It’s government at the exclusive service of private persons.

The above applies equally to left-leaning, centrist and right-leaning populist governments. Typically populist de-regulation is a smoke-screen phrase for government-sanctioned looting of the economy by private concerns other than the ordinary people. Sentimentalist de-regulation, always implemented in haste before the Press and the People can smell the funny smell, often results in direct transfers of wealth upwards from the lowest earners to the highest earners. One could wonder exactly what is populist about that.

What does all this has to do with Design? Plenty. Follow the money. After all the design thinking comes the time to “just do it?” Implementation is where policy and the planks of party platforms, design briefs and bribes hit the ground in a four-way crash.

And here we find, in the implementation phase, (exactly where we designers always fear our design intent is going to be operationalized away,) the place where things go funny. Populist governments rarely deregulate the lives of the ordinary people. For example, by lowering their taxes. Or allowing them to have greater choice. Or simplifying the processes and reducing the costs required to obtain services like health insurance and care. Or unionizing. Or getting registered to vote. Or suing third parties to seek redress. &c&c&c. On the contrary.

Instead, populist governments tend to deregulate the concerns of NOT-ordinary people.

Populist governments oddly show preference to corporate legal persons over natural legal persons. And who foots the bill for the deregulation of NOT-ordinary people? Ordinary people. And who pockets the gains from that? The NOT-ordinary people who get de-regulated. Go figure. I call that dualism. It’s why a good definition should incorporate the duality of the word’s reality. And the world’s.

Populist governments prefer corporate legal persons over natural legal persons. And who foots the bill for that? Ordinary people. And who pockets the gains from that? The NOT-ordinary people.

I highly recommend Jane Gleeson-White’s book on accounting and especially her book, SIX CAPITALS, about what we can do by changing our accounting practices. Designers, designthinkers, businesspeople as well as those in the policy and planning fields will benefit from these two books.

[ book cover here ]

( links to books here )

TRANSPARENCY

Number 3 is TRANSPARENCY. One of the most famous design principles behind the Mac user interface was transparency. Really. But it was called WYSIWYG. (What You See Is What You Get.) It is simple: If you are looking at your document on the computer screen and you send it to the printer, when you look at the printed document it looks exactly as it does on your screen. If you email your document to someone else, it will look on that person’s screen exactly as it does on yours.

A transparent definition is valid everywhere for everyone.

I apply “transparency” to the definition of words in that their meaning should not change from place to place or person to person. In order to apply equity rules we must first have equality rules. This is much harder to pull off in legal and civic platforms than in computing and other platforms.

It is a design problem. It’s about equality and equity before the law. So that, for example, the word taxation will mean the same to me, to you and to a millionaire or billionaire businessperson or politician. It does not mean we will all pay the same amount of taxes, for example. But we will all pay the fair amount of taxes. Based on how much value we derive from living in the society and political nation that allows us the benefits of that living. And we should all easily see and understand how much each paid and how it was calculated. (Then be able to intelligently ask ourselves and answer whether the tax rate differentials are fair.)

Only then can we make our own, informed, personal decisions: Is that fair? Is that good for the commonwealth? And if it’s not, we can go and do something about it.

GOOD DESIGN DEPENDS ON GOOD DEFINITIONS

How can we design the best products and services for our ultimate end users if we or our clients have little clarity about the basic facts? Who wants or needs this? Who is offering what to solve the problem, fulfill the expectation or surprise with new opportunity?

As businesspeople and designers the act of design involves opportunity, risk and responsibility. If we come up short, how can we hold ourselves accountable and have that accountability inform our practice? The buck stops here, right?

(In the image above shows President Truman in the Oval Office. The Truman Library website explains that “The saying ‘the buck stops here’ derives from the slang expression ‘pass the buck’ which means passing the responsibility on to someone else.” The image is from Getty Images via New York Magazine’s article: Everyone Is Butchering ‘the Buck Stops Here.’)

DEFINITIONS FOR DESIGNERS

There are also three (3) parts to the definitions provided in my dictionary.

A. is the definition itself. (The first column of the ‘spread,’ in graphic design jargon. Do not confuse these page layout columns with the accounting columns mentioned above. But it is interesting how the page layout functionality of two-column writing-and-reading is directly connected with the measurement functionality of double-entry accounting, isn’t it?)

B. is what it has to do with design because this is after all a designer’s dictionary. (The second column.)

?C. is what to just do about it? because design is about action not just (wishful) thinking. (The third column.)

? ? ?

The definitions will change over time and are placed here only for illustration purposes. A good definition just like a good eukaryote genome —or a good design— is both stable and dynamic.

I am now at least content with that 3rd column. It’s hard to improve on “do unto others as you would like others to do unto you” which is attributed to Jesus but a construct of history in its best phrasing. It is a maxim hard to twist to our selfish advantage. A beautiful example of a user– or human–centric design requirement or principle —or experience principle. To my ears it is perhaps the best ever devised. (Do tell if you have other candidates.)

In more proper design-speak:

Design for others as you would like others to design for you.

And in transparent civics lingo:

Have the same designs on others and their property and rights that you would like others to have on you and yours.

And as ethical or political policy-talk:

Have the same intentions towards your fellow citizens’ life, liberty and pursuit of happiness that you would like them to have towards your own life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

If you allow me to conflate the gospel and the Constitution for a moment.

(DISCLOSURE: I am neither a Christian nor an American Exceptionalist. I would call myself a skeptical liberal materialist (SLM) and hopefully deserve the label. But one simply finds material where one finds it. Designers must be omnivores.)

By any yardstick, Jesus of Nazareth may be considered an exceptional behavior designer. An algorithmically effective moralist, I would venture. Ethicists worth their salt are behavior designers, right? This kind of reciprocity is what our first definition principle, symmetry, is after. And populism in spite of its name tends to result in a loss of reciprocity and symmetry. Not only in language but most importanlyt in practice!

Populism in spite of its name’s apparent meaning results in a loss of reciprocity and symmetry for The People who must need it.

? ? ?

This is all obviously still under construction. But here it is. No post-its-filled Eternal Parking Lot for this one. And more to come.

— Hector Moll-Carrillo (copyright ? 2017, 2019)

NOTE 1: A website will be available collecting all the words and definitions. Please stay tuned for its launch.

NOTE 2: Contributions —editorial, NOT monetary— are always welcome and will be credited. A standard kit will be available for easily building definitions.

NOTE 3: Yes, I consider myself a vegetarian carnivore. I only eat vegetarian animals. (Cows, not tigers; for example.) Except when it comes to seafood, of course. Or other orders. It’s complex. Naming and defining all the things we are and are not and do and do not and believe and do not believe, and the things in between, isn’t it?

NOTE 4: The law of conservation of energy is a major concept in physics and thromodynamics. It also is pertinent to information. Which make it very important for Design and designers who must work with energy and information all the time.

NOTE 5: The photograph used to illustrate this article is not a random choice.

NOTE 6: The dictionary image is from the cover of volume 5 of the 1737 Diccionario de Lengua Castellana, downloaded from Wikimedia Commons and to emphasize these phrases:

• “EN QUE SE EXPLICA” = ?in which it is explained...?
• “EL VERDADERO SENTIDO DE LAS VOCES,” = ?the true sense of the voices, ...?
• “SU NATURALEZA Y CALIDAD,” = ?their nature and quality, ...?
• “CON LAS PHRASES O MODOS DE HABLAR,” = ?with the phrases or modes of speaking, ...?
• “LOS PROVERBIOS O REFRANES,” = ?the proverbs or refrains, ...?
• “Y OTRAS COSAS CONVENIENTES” = ?and other things convenient...?
• “AL USO DE LA LENGUA.”= ?...to the use of the tongue.?

The above are my literal translations.

NOTE 7: The Business Plan is not the same thing as the Business Model although they may closely resemble each other. These two items are often confused and conflated. The Business Plan describes how to put the Business Model to work for a particular purpose.

NOTE 8: The reason populist governments are prone to nepotism —whether right, center or left-leaning— is straightforward. Populist governments have a strong belief in their popular mandate. (Or assume such a belief to be held by their electorate or choose to say so.) Regardless of the actual percentages of the vote they achieve in the election, they interpret even those often slim margins as a mandate to govern by decree. A “mandate” to govern by decree equals one to deregulate by decree and creates opaque conditions in which great permissiveness is possible by those who govern and regulate. Because deregulation is a myth, as practiced. Deregulation is an act of regulation in favor of a different interest group.

Deregulation is an act of regulation in favor of a different interest group.