Thesis: Article #1 - Segregation Of Joy
Article 1 out of 8 from thesis: "Creatures With Creations & Their Segregation Of Joy"
Govert Flint - 2014
Design Academy Eindhoven, MA Contextual Design
#1 OBSERVATION - SEGREGATION OF JOY
Western society is that efficient in producing food, the majority of its citizens seem to be able to make a living with almost any activity. The only real difference between ‘job’ and ‘activity’ seems to be 'job' is providing income.
By continuously specializing jobs over the past centuries, we also organize our lives more than ever. By planning our activities in advance, we unintentionally plan not only what we are going to do, but also to what extent we can express ourselves. For example, the office demands a different level of controlling emotions than a bar or being at home. So by planning, we do not only plan out time. We also plan the extent we can express our feelings.
Design contributes to this development of segregating emotions. Our environments are specifically designed for certain scenarios. The webcam and the keyboard are both products for communication, although both products facilitate different movements. Both products, therefore, have a different emotional framework. While being angry, typing the text: “Fuck you, you don’t give a shit” makes my arms and hands move differently in comparison to telling it to a person by webcam. If I would release my anger while typing, I would probably break the keyboard (although the webcam would not break while releasing anger). Typing angry on a keyboard gives me a choice: either I release my anger and break the keyboard, or I suppress my temper. This is an example how products contribute to the segregation of expressing ourselves.
You could state the separation between labor (productivity) and leisure equals a separation between energy and the ability to release it (energy being a combination of emotions and movement). Social order, media, education and the process of becoming adults are all contributing factors to emotional control. Controlled behavior is simply necessary for having a safe society. The canalization of our emotions is not necessarily a bad thing.
Nevertheless, making our society more and more efficient makes our actual lives less effective. Our current definition of innovation seems to imply the strive for fewer movement. Before driving a car, we drove horses. Now the car itself (a product that requires attention, movement in the feet and the arms) is about to be replaced by self-driving cars, providing us the ease not to move at all. As a result of our current 'innovation', most of us lack enough body movement during work, making us go to the gym. For working 8 hours, I need to work an additional hour in my spare time to keep my body fit.
Not only sports gained popularity. Since Second World War, leisure activities like traveling, entertainment, gaming, and music have become major industries, meeting growing demand. Leisure became a real need. The lack of informal social interaction makes us want to go to festivals. The lack of changing environment contributes to our need to travel. We all fill our spare time by compensating the basic human needs we lack in our educational and working environments.
The paradox is that while our surrounding and our products become more efficient, us 'creatures' start having an overload of physical energy, making us underuse what our bodies and minds are ‘designed’ for. Although work might gain efficiency, when you perceive technological innovation from the 'creatures' point of view (nutrition, movement, social relations), our lives become segregated from natural functioning. Our creations might become more efficient, but by being so, they contribute to making us creatures function actually less efficient: spending money and time being off work on maintaining our health and happiness.