“Design is only design if it communicates knowledge.” – Enzo Mari

In todays society more than ever we are surrounded and defined by objects. These objects rule our daily lives and serve as symbols of who we are and what we want to achieve. But would we really want them representing us if we knew what they were and where they came from?

The emotional aspect of design has been discussed a lot in respect to the longevity of an object, but it is the Politics of these objects that should be investigated. How these objects represent us and our culture is incredibly important, the emotional aspect of it will reveal its self after the Politics have been understood. Politics has been rife in Art for centuries but it is now time for Designers to become politicised and allow for that message to be disseminated through their work. If there’s a Revolution in the way Designers think then maybe this will filter down through to the user. 

This is when the indomitable William Morris appears and delivers some brilliant advice:

“If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”

This sentence will be the epitaph of this essay as it can be analysed and understood on multiple levels. Its brilliance lies in its simplicity, but we shouldn’t be fooled because as Mies van der Rohesaid ‘Less is more’

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After all, it is the design industry that produces the everyday wares for the people. So it only makes sense that these objects come with a message and represent a new way of thinking and being.

This is a call to arms for all Designers, from furniture to architecture, things must change! You are at the forefront for changing the way our World is used and abused. You have the powers to influence our very way of life, from our health habits 

 to the way we interact with others (insert ref.), by designing meaning into your products through material choice, means of production and intellectual content. These all combine to de-alienate the object and rescue it from commodity fetishism.

This essay will attempt to explain why there is a need for Designers to politicise their work by looking at and contextualising a series of objects. It will also try to understand what steps need to be taken for this to happen, and how people may benefit from it, if at all. Trying to understand what amounts to a ‘good’ object is the most important part of this essay because once that is established a link can be made to our current Global ideas on design and mass consumption. This essay wants to make people question the objects that they use everyday without thinking. The intricate processes, materials and labour all add up to produce this inanimate object that ‘YOU’ are holding. If the masses start to question these things then there is hope for the Industry and more importantly society as a whole, for it is the consumer that dictates the market. No where is this more evident than when Walmart (the world’s third largest employer, with 2.1 million employees)

 admitted it only stocked free range and organic products because the consumer wanted it to INSERT REF. 

This essay will draw a link between the advantages of a more spiritually holistic approach to Industrial design instead of our current culture of the alienated object. It will also tackle the issue of Individualism and how Capitalism, through the insatiable drive for profit and consumption, has allowed a cult of celebrity to rein. This cult venerates the individual and needs to stop and allow a collective mindset to take hold. It does not promise to solve the problems but to start a debate that reaches further than design, one that gets Humans talking about their collective future on this planet. One that will involve the politicised object. 

The environment will be used as one of the analytical tools as it is cited as being one of the main problems that Humanity faces together. Slavoj Zizek, the prominent philosopher explains this is his book ‘First as Tragedy, Then As Farce’:

“What unites us is that, in contrast to the classic image of proletariat who have “nothing to lose but their chains” we are in danger of losing everything: the threat is that we will be reduced to abstract subjects devoid of all substantial content, dispossessed of our symbolic substance, our genetic base heavily manipulated, vegetating in an unlivable environment. This triple threat to our entire being renders us proletarians, reduced to “substanceless  subjectivity”.”

Politics and Design

The word politics will be used a lot in this essay so its definition in this context is essential. Politics as it is defined is ‘a particular set of political beliefs or principles’ and  ‘the activities associated with the governance of a country’

.  When looking at our planet we can see that there is huge problem with rising sea levels, global warming and deforestation. If we look at these problems and their causes they can be traced back to the Capitalist economic system and our implementation of the alienation of labour. This constant drive for profit has created a material culture that design panders to and plays a huge part in. Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, sums it up incredibly well when he issued a letter on climate change in 2008.

“Sisters and brothers, today Mother earth is ill...Everything began with the industrial revolution in 1750, which gave birth to the capitalist system. In two and a half centuries, the so called “developed” countries have consumed a large part of the fossil fuels created over five million centuries....Competition and the thirst for profit without limits of the capitalist system are destroying our planet. Under Capitalism we are not human beings but consumers. Under Capitalism Mother Earth does not exist, instead there are raw materials.”

This threat to our environment and therefore our entire existence is echoed in Tony Fry’s book ‘Design as Politics’. Fry argues that because of this impending catastrophe “Unsettlement will give rise to a new mode of dwelling, which itself will require a huge design effort.....It is with this prospect in mind that the proposition  of ‘design as politics’ will be explored.”

Both Fry and Morales agree that the current politic system is one that consumes and destroys. Fry also goes onto say that “design gives material form and directionality to the ideological embodiment of a particular politics.”

 So all industrial design is tacitly connected with global issues and politics.

Objects in context

The chai cup

No more is the above statement evident than in India and with their love of Chai. Chai has long been served in a small unglazed cup that is then discarded after drinking the tea. The genius of this is that after a while in the sun and Monsoon rain it disintegrates

, “ Indian clay returning to Indian soil. A perfect ecological model.”

 But this tradition is changing in modern India with the clay being replaced with plastic, and now, instead of piles of clay by the railways and roads, its plastic, that on average doesn’t biodegrade for 450 years.

 Apart from the environmental impact, the loss of these cups affects the craftsmen who produce them, which then alienates them in the name of ‘progress’ and ‘modernisation’. For these craftsmen “making cups is their families' living, their children's future.” 

 With this is mind we see a picture emerging of an object that symbolises a countries attitude politically and spiritually. Later in the essay the spiritual will be expanded upon and this reference will be understood.

The problems with plastics in the design world

While studying this chai cup, the problem of plastic has come up, and it this material that aids in the alienation of the object. Daniel Miller explains ‘that artefacts are intrinsically alienating, they come with little or no information concerning the conditions of their production and distribution and the consumer holds no social relationship to their producers’.

This statement embodies the fact people know very little about the processes behind plastic as a material before it evens reaches the factory where it is used to manufacture an object. But what is evident is that virtually all plastics in common use today are based on fossil fuels. Their manufacture therefore contributes to the greenhouse gas effect, as well as using irreplaceable recourses.

 This creates a further barrier between the person and the object which needs to be broken down. One way to de-alienate the object it to use appropriate materials, ones that don’t depend on fossil fuels. By doing this we can start to bring the object back into our lives and appreciate it for what it represents. This then brings up the point of the spiritually holistic approach to design and the philosophy of Taoism. This chai cup is made from environmentally damaging materials which has a knock on effect that causes people and the planet to suffer needlessly. If this object was to be one that summed up modern Indian then it is a grave picture indeed. It represents a countries' modernisation at the cost of its citizens mental and physical well being, but then again that is the cost of Capitalism and another reason why it should be stopped.

Enzo Mari and Autoprogettazione?

To offer some light at the end of the tunnel we can look at an Italian  designer called Enzo Mari. In particular, attention will be payed to his political views and how that influenced a brilliant project called ‘autoprogettazione?’. This phrase literally translates as ‘self-design’

, with only muttering these words we are already breaking down the barriers of alienation. This is because Mari describes it as ‘A project for making easy to assemble furniture using rough boards and nails. An elementary technique to teach anyone to look at present production with a critical eye.’

 The brilliance of Mari is  that he is a designer but also a critique of society. With his ‘self-design’ project he is commenting on what Capitalism has done to the way we interact with what surrounds us. By sending plans away for people to make the objects, he has brought them closer to the object and instilled value in them. What these objects represents politically is a move away from commodity fetishism. Guy Julier explains that ‘a fetish is something which is believed to have supernatural power. Commodities become fetishisied in that they are thought to embody the power of Human relations. Once the commodity is is divorced from its productive base, then it is free to take on a range of cultural values about itself. Thus through advertising, display, branding, salesmanship and other forms of mediation, it is conferred with myths which in turn appear to be ‘natural’ to it.’

This then signals a move towards the left and the re-acquisition of the object for the people. Mari echoes this when he said ‘Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, there’s a common spirit in the air: finally we are free–free from every theory, from every ideology. That ideology demeaned it’s self into horror is true, but it’s like saying someone ate too much and wasn’t well and could no longer eat..... The ideology of the market of exponential growth is one of death. The refutation of any kind of ideology is the total acceptance of the global market: total acceptance of being a cyborg. When I was young, I was a passionate reader of science fiction. Now, however, it bothers me, because walking down this road I see it coming true.’

This could be considered by many to be idealistic in concept but it is a war cry against his and our current political system. It is a critique of Capitalism paired down to a collection of objects. This is a prime example of how designers can help change people’s mentality. Every Designer should take on these ideals and it should not be down to just individuals. This conversation must be taken on within the whole industry and really explored through collaboration. This project is also in keeping with the Tao. The Tao and the spiritual aspect keeps on coming up in this essay. You the reader are being alienated from it on purpose, this is because when later on, Taoism is defined, this whole essay and the message it wants to convey will fall into place. Therefore de-alienating it.

But. Unfortunately a reference has to be made back to Tony Fry’s quote about how “design gives material form and directionality to the ideological embodiment of a particular politics.”

 Artek, the Finnish furniture company, has recently re-released Mari’s ‘Sedia 1’ chair in collaboration with Hamburg-based professor of design theory, Friedrich von Borries, and artist Mikael Mikael.

 What they have done is replace the nails for gold plated ones, in what has been described as a ‘deliberately provocative interpretation’

. This is not deeply provocative but deeply disturbing, if we are to take Fry’s quote seriously, which this essay intends to do, then this represents a society that has paid no attention to the message Mari originally intended. This ‘interpretation’ is just cheap sensationalism. It represents a society that prefers style over substance, which unfortunately, is ours.

Taoism and design

The Man in The High Castle

The spiritual in Design can often be mistaken for emotional longevity. But as mentioned in the introduction it is the Politics of the object that leads on to the emotions and the visceral reaction. Science Fiction has been mentioned earlier in the essay and it is now that it will be put into the context of this essay.

Philip K. Dick in his book ‘The Man In The High Castle’ describes a dystopian future where the Japanese and Nazis have won the Second World War and the United States of America is a nation divided and defeated, the west is Japanese, the east German. But the most important aspect of the book is its reference to craft and in particular a series of objects that have been made by an American silversmith called Frank Frink. And it is in this book that we find a brilliant example of the power an object can wield. But, more importantly it justifies Fry’s earlier statement because it sets a scenario where a ruling Japanese man experiences first hand the ‘ideological embodiment of a particular politics.’

“Here is a piece of metal which has been melted until it has become shapeless. It represents nothing. Nor does it have design, of any intentional sort....Yet, I have for several days inspected it, and for no logical reason I feel a certain emotional fondness.... It somehow partakes of Tao. It is balanced. The forces within are stabilised.”

Following this, another important part of this book is when a member of the Japanese ruling elite (Paul Kasoura) offers a deal where the piece of silver can be mass produced. But after understanding what the object represents and the Politics that it embodies he (Bob Childan) turns the offer down.

“Bob Childan's decision not to turn American jewelry into cheap trinkets is a big moment, as he realizes the choices Paul Kasoura offers him and finds a way to take pride in himself, rather than in a lost past."”

This is important because this object is the physical manifestation of an oppressed and defeated people. But it is a positive message, it is one of hope for the future of America and the freedom of expression through art and craft.

But it is also in Dick’s book and with the mention of Tao that a comparison can be made with this Eastern philosophy and the design culture we have now. In the book ‘Tao Te Ching’ or ‘The Book of the Way’  Lao Tzu (551-497 B.C.E) introduces us to a way of being, one that is balanced and in harmony with the Universe. 

“It’s clear from his teachings that he deeply cared about society, if society means the welfare of one’s fellow human beings; his book is, among other things, a treatise on the art of government, whether of a country or of a child.”

With this analysis by Stephen Mitchell, the acclaimed Zen trained translator, a direct quote of Lao Tzu’s can put in context of the design industry.

“The World is sacred.

It can’t be improved.

  If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it.

  If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it.”

When reading these ancient words there can be no mistaking the power they exude. With Tzu’s reference to an object we can see parallels with the commodity culture that we have at the moment. As Morales says ‘Under Capitalism Mother Earth does not exist, instead there are raw materials”

. This is further justification that there needs to be a more holistic approach to design and the objects that are produced. If we took these words of advice then maybe our objects would be ‘balanced’ and would partake in Tao. Another passage from the ‘Tao” reads:

“When man interferes with Tao,

the sky becomes filthy,

the earth depleted,

the equilibrium crumbles,

creature become extinct”

The fact that that was written in the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE

 is incredible, mainly because all this is accurate and incredibly relevant today. This verse (above) rings so true because, if our objects did have Tao, and were balanced, then a majority of these problems would not exist. 

The Indian Fabric Industry

An example of this environmental degradation can be seen in the Indian textile industry, where there are huge problems with water body pollution caused by the discharge of untreated effluents and air emissions, notably Volatile Organic Compounds.

 To put this in context of an object we can create a thought experiment around a colourful piece of Indian fabric, one that a tourist may bring back from holiday. Donald A. Norman talks about the ‘visceral’ sense of an object in his book ‘Emotional Design’: 

“Visceral design is what nature does...... Thus, children's toys, clothes and furniture will often reflect visceral principles: bright, highly saturated primary colours.”

So when a human comes into contact with this object they will have a visceral reaction and therefore an emotional one. But, if there was transparency with the object and its manufacture/politics are revealed this emotional attachment would be severed and it would not be an object of worth. This is where the philosophy of Lao Tzu can be used because it argues for a holistic approach. An object that is in harmony with Tao is one that is whole, intrinsically linked with people and the Planet. When producing the fabric according to Tao, it means that it should be produced locally, with profits going back into the community and made from natural dies. But it also infers that there should be no exploitation of the environment or people. This then culminates in a balanced and a ‘good’ object.

Individualism and the celebrity

The alienation of the object is intrinsically linked with the Capitalist system and its unmitigated drive for profit, this system has allowed Individualism to thrive through constant competition and it is this that will be discussed next. 

Individualism is defined as; 

‘a social theory favoring freedom of action for individuals over collective or state control.’

This definition is an important one as it highlights the self, but it is not in the context of Lao Tzu’s self, one that is inter-connected with the universe and therefore at peace. It is the selfish self. What is even more telling is the example given along side the definition which reads ‘encouragement has been given to individualism, free enterprise, and the pursuit of profit’

. This links the the two together allowing for them to analysed in the same context. With these two thoughts in mind we can look at the consumer culture and what it has done to us as Humans. Guy Julier explains that ‘consumption becomes the leading device through which individuals construct their identities...modern concepts of individualism require that the goods one acquires and displays momentarily define one’s identity’.

This begs the question that if these objects that we consume represent us, what is that we represent? We as people, have been commodified through the purchase of these objects. Our very being is complicit with the destruction of the environment and the oppression of people across the globe, because of this we aren’t in sink with Tao and this is reason enough to have to change our ‘eating’ habits.

With all this in mind, it is time to bring Oscar Wilde to the dinner table and analyse what he has to say on Individualism. Wilde in his brilliant way argues for Individualism, but it is from a Socialist perspective. He argues that private property has harmed Individualism by confusing a man with what he posses and that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be.

This is an important interpretation of Individualism because it has a hint of Tao in it. It focuses on the whole and who someone is instead of what represents them. This in it’s self is reminiscent of Lao Tzu. But the most compelling statement Wilde makes is “What a man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance....Nobody will waste his life accumulating things and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the World. Most people exist, that is all.”

But as has been discussed before, there is a link between the object and the self. For the man to be in touch with the Tao he must only be surrounded by objects that embody Tao. So, having established that the Individualism that we need to fight against is the one that alienates people and objects, it now needs to be put in context of the Design Industry.

Katy Perry Lashes

The celebrity singer Katy Perry is someone who you wouldn’t normally associate with the Design Industry but, unfortunately, she has decided to make a foray into it. Her ‘Katy Perry Lashes’ are a brilliant example of a superfluous product that is devoid of all harmony, they are the pinnacle of  what a ‘good’ object is not.  According to the packaging “All Katy Perry lashes by Eylure are handmade, 100% natural and each style is reusable.”

 Questions start to arise when they sell these ‘handmade’ lashes for £5.95, and thankfully people are answering them. The journalist Gethin Chamberlain was the one asking the questions and found out that that these lashes were being made “by workers who are paid minimal, albeit legal, wages that anti-poverty campaigners say are significantly lower than a living wage would be in their countries of residence.”

 These products are completely alienating to the consumer as there is no transparency when buying. It does not tell the story of Kuswati who makes 20 pairs a day and makes 1p for each one.

 It shouldn't have to be down to journalists to find this out. If these people were paid a fair wage and we knew in what conditions they were made then, we could start to accept this object. Kieron Long, a senior V&A curator, summed it up when he said “the story of these objects and their making is a sleight of hand, a trick that consumerism plays on us. So remote are we from manufacturing today that a company can celebrate the making of these objects as a positive marketing story ("handmade, 100% natural")”

. These are the sort of products that need to be eradicated from our world, not only because they represent something so alienating and out of sync with Taoism. But because they pander the fashion industry. This fickle jelly that changes whats ‘fashionable’ with each undulation. Constantly creating desire for things we don’t need.

When there is no desire

All things are at peace.

Its brilliant to see that Kieron Long is taking these problems seriously and is talking about them not only at the world renowned V&A but also on the popular design website Dezeen. There needs to be a popular design movement that addresses these problems, but when we look at the Industry today we can see an extreme lack of movements and a ruling elite full of celebrity designers. But to understand why there are no movements we must first define what exactly a design movement is and how they come about.

William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement

In this case William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement will provide the back drop and enable us to explain what a movement is. Fred Baier the prominent furniture designer maker describes a movement as “ working to set of rules...”

 and “ the nature of an on going thing is that it is a sort of weird spherical thing where issues continually come over the horizon and refold themselves into the zeitgeist”.

 This chimes beautifully with Morris and his views and how there are huge parallels with today. Morris dedicated himself to  “..a Crusade and Holy War against the age”

, this passion derived from his love of Medieval culture and his realisation that the Victorian age of ‘progress’ may not be best thing to happen to humanity. Ian Bradley argues this in his book William Morris and his world: 

“Carlyle and Ruskin used the newly discovered evidence of conditions in the Middle Ages to cast serious doubts on Victorian gospel of progress and to suggest that people might not, in fact, be better off in all respects in the nineteenth century than in all other periods.”

This shows that Morris was rebelling against the perception that Capitalism is the great savior. Morris’s reaction against society allowed him to create ‘rules’ which he and others worked to. These rules are what united everyone and allowed the movement to begin. The parallels between Victorian Society and todays are astonishing, “When Morris became a communist and read Marx’s Capital, he found, in its historical chapters, describing the way in which the division of labour converted the worker into an appendage of the machine, a confirmation and scientific deepening of the views he already broadly held. Capitalism, exploits the workers economically by the extraction of surplus value, and it also robs them of their humanity”.

The V&A describe the Arts and Crafts movement as one that was “born of ideals, it grew out of a concern for the effects of industrialisation: on design, on traditional skills and on the lives of ordinary people....it established a new set of principles for living and working. This was a movement unlike any that had gone before. Its pioneering spirit of reform, and the value it placed on the quality of materials and design, as well as life, shaped the world we live in today”.

These ‘principles’ are what define a movement, so if thats all it is, then why do we not see movements anymore? What has happened to the Design Industry to allow this stagnation and celebrity worship? Bertrand Russell, although not writing directly about design, provides some insight into the matter when talking about cynicism.

“Measurable progress is necessarily in unimportant things, such as the number of motor-cars made, or the number of peanuts consumed. The really important things are not measurable and are therefore not suitable for the methods of the booster.....Shakespeare measured the excellence of age by its style in poetry, but this mode of measurement is out of date.”

The word progress is one that keeps rearing its glittering head, but as we know, all that glitters is not gold. ‘Progress’ has allowed us to become subservient, supine creatures that wallow in comfort. We apparently have nothing to react against, but this is of course, not true. Russell again argues that “The main cause always is comfort and power. The holders of power are not cynical, since they are able to enforce their ideas. Victims of oppression are not cynical, since they are filled with hate, and hate, like any other strong passion, brings with it a train of attendant beliefs....The effect of mass production and elementary education is that stupidity is more firmly entrenched than at any other time since the rise of civilisation. When the Czarist Government killed Lenin’s brother, it did not turn Lenin into a cynic, since hatred inspired a lifelong activity.....in more solid countries of the West there is seldom such potent cause for hatred, or such opportunity of spectacular revenge.”

When reading these powerful words an idea begins to form, who should we ‘hate’ and what should we believe in?

The Lord of the Flies........Philippe Starck

There needs to be a move away from the individual to that of the collective, a sharing of resources, idea and labour. This collective future is one that gets rid of the individual in the Capitalist sense and allows people to work together and not marginalise each other. But to tackle the issue that is the cultural phenomena of celebrity, one man can be used, the indomitable Philippe Starck. 

Starck uses the dark powers of advertisement to his advantage, he employes the statement “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”

 to great effect. Starck has created an image of himself that he sells to people, through this he has created a sycophantic following that swallows whatever he pours down their throats. This pre-mediated decision is explained well by Ben Zackheim:

“By the late 1970s Starck felt his career was not moving as fast as he wanted it to. Andy Warhol, the Manhattan–based artist, had essentially made himself a brand in the art world. Starck believed that the design industry could use a good hit of the same irony. The young designer was getting a sense of how to market himself”

Judith Carmel Arthur argues that with this in mind Starck also used a trick from the fashion industry to create his cult, “In the International mass marketing of ‘designer’ goods, the label, often carrying the designer’s signature, is worth its weight in gold…Starck takes this form labeling one step further, literally naming the product in his own image. As a marketing strategy, he thus exploits the cult of object labeling to deplete goods of their primary functional significance, translating them into artefacts of private worship and public envy”

 All of the decisions he has made as a designer are so completely out of sync with Taoism. He has employed the tactics of the fashion industry, one of industrial designs biggest enemies. One of Starck’s many campaigns and the most revealing is his ‘Good Goods range by Starck’. A range of products that he deems to be life essentials.

“The Good Goods catalogue is the culmination of years of thought and ideas. It will take several years to see everything to fruition. The full title is ‘Good Goods by Starck’: The catalogue of non-products for the non-consumer for the next moral market…It is a global proposal, my last work and it is about the equipment of life…These are the basics of life made to fulfill a function with respect, fantasy, creativity, tenderness, humour and love.” (Unfortunately it wasn’t his last work.)

The front page of this catalogue is of a women with her third eye open, this insinuates that the consumer would reach enlightenment if the products are bought (see picture). This of course, is the antithesis of human enlightenment. It is the bogging down of the soul with objects that represent a conceited egomaniac, whose origins are completely unknown and have no spiritual worth what so ever. One final damning of Starck will be his comparison to Stalin (but only in his use of propaganda to sell himself, not the murder of millions of innocent people). 

Judith Carmel-Arthur explains this when she wrote “Good goods is not at all the ‘revolutionary manifesto’ Starck claims. It is an essay in design in the mass media, the more so when taken in conjunction with its marketing website: ’www.Good Goods.tm.fr”. The site is a means of disseminating and popularising Starck images and propaganda….The site is a profitable form of mediation between a ‘mass audience’ and Starck, but because communication remains one-directional its democratic value is necessarily limited”.

All these strategies of manipulation can found to describe Stalin and his ways as Adam B. Ulam explains in his book ‘Stalin: The Man And His Era’  “Like every great teacher, he had a gift for simplicity and a passion for detail. He not only remade his people, he reeducated his people, and it has been Russia’s tragedy that in the twenty years since his death the impact of his teachings has not worn off.”

Lets hope that Starck’s attempt to re-educate Humanity fails and that his teachings do wear off and are promptly forgotten.

Natural Selection or The Conclusion

Industrial Design isn’t going anywhere unless there is a major global catastrophe. So the logical step is that of evolution. Let the failing political systems die and allow new ones to grow. Capitalism has been proven to take advantage of people and shows a way of thinking that is destroying Our Earth. Design is key to the shift in mentality and it should be a case of ‘Industrial Revolution to Industrial Evolution’, an attitude of natural selection, where the defected systems are left to die instead of keeping them on life support and going against nature. What we have is a Political version of Mary Shelley’s Monster:

“Frankenstein’s going against nature also ends in disaster. He is going against disaster by giving life back to the dead and thus breaking the circle of life.”

What we do as designers has ramifications through the whole of society, this is as especially true today as it was when William Morris was fighting his Crusade against Victorian Society. What this essay hoped to achieve was a change in mindset, a change that shifted towards a Communist ideal. Its a shame that these days the word ‘Communism’ is perceived as a dirty word, one that is impossible, and a form of Politics that has been proved to fail. Slavoj Zizeck best summed it up when he wrote “One should therefore reject any sense of continuity with what the Left meant over the last two centuries....the general framework has to be surpassed, and everything should be re-thought, beginning from the zero-point.”

If we started to de-alienate the object using the beliefs of Taoism we would see the immediate affects. There would be vast environmental improvement from the fact that labour would be localised and material choice would be treated with respect. If we accept the belief that everything should be in harmony with everything else then how could could a product like the Iphone exist? An object that is so far removed from our consciousness is feels like a nightmare. Metals that are mined in war torn countries and factories where the workers commit suicide because of their working conditions, cannot amount to an object that has Tao. Our current mind set is best summoned up as ‘Masochist Fetishism’, this phrase explains our tacit agreement that we enjoy the suffering that is caused by the products we buy. Now, in the Twenty First Century there is no excuse not to buy ethically as all the information we need is available at the click of a button. We can know the conditions our clothes are manufactured in and we can find out that Nestle are draining the water from Pakistan, so the poor don’t have access to clean drinking water.

 But we don’t, We are in implicit in the suffering and justifying that it is ok to do these things buy buying the products. This must stop.

The beautiful aspect of our action is that if we de-alienate the object or create objects based around Taoism we go through the same steps. Everything goes full circle no matter where you start. So how are we to implement the introduction of Lao Tzu’s teaching to Industrial design? We have seen above that a movement is a reaction, and that any movement boils down to a set of rules. What rules should be followed so to allow for an object to have Wu?

The environment should always be respected

Labour should be localised

There should be complete transparency within the object

There should be no ego involved in the design process

Design for Humans and not consumers

The war cry of this movement if it were turn into one should be “All streams flow to the sea because it is lower that they are. Humility gives it its power.”

But, don’t get me wrong. I do not live religiously by the Tao. It’s just a perfect reference point and one, that when understand and taught, makes what needs to be done a lot clearer. 

So who and where are these people that want change? They’re everywhere, from the berlin based designer Michael Bernard

 and his components that mean you can make your own furniture to Kieron Long at the V&A. The conversations and actions are happening, they just need to happen under one banner and shout at the same time so they can be heard. 

Giovanni Battista Columbu, the wine producer sums it up beautifully:

“So why shouldn’t we also live in dignity today? But we mustn’t get distracted by the phantoms of progress which can destroy us and destroy nature, and bring suffering to others. We ought to live in tranquility on this land. And there’s room for others.”