This is a big truth, that leisure, amateur's activity outside the profession, is indispensable for mental and physical health. And here, a special, vast field of meticulous, researched, and optimised design comes to my mind: outdoor equipment. Evolutionary improvements in design, materials and manufacturing technology serve not only for enjoyment, but to keep us comfortable and safe in adverse environment. It may be a piece of garment, or an inflatable kayak, or a bicycle. Designers are passionate to design them, and amateurs entrust them, often, with their lives.
***
My second thought is on the sideline: look at this vintage Land Rover. How bright, well lit, the interior is, thanks to big glass panes! They were designed to let the light in, not to conceal. Compare it to modern high metal sides, where what small spots of glass remained, are darkened to be only partly transparent (perhaps the Cybertruck is the most ugly epitome of this trend.)
What does this shift in transparency, and in acceptance of light, tells about our social condition?
You are right to emphasise the incredible specialisation of leisure equipment today. These products are testament to a very particular kind of fulfilment that modern life has made possible. As for your comment about the sense of secrecy in today's luxury cars, I entirely agree!
You are aware of Johan Huizinga right? To talk about those matters without mentioning him is quite off haha.
Below is Lewis Mumford talking about him on his book The Myth of the Machine: Techniques and Human Development:
«Only a little while ago the Dutch historian, J. Huizinga, in 'Homo Ludens' brought forth a mass of evidence to suggest that play, rather than work, was the formative element in human culture: that man's most serious activity belonged to the realm of make-believe. On this showing, ritual and mimesis, sports and games and dramas, released man from his insistent animal attachments; and nothing could demonstrate this better, I would add, than those primitive ceremonies in which he played at being another kind of animal. Long before he had achieved the power to transform the natural environment, man had created a miniature environment, the symbolic field of play, in which every function of life might be re-fashioned in a strictly human style, as in a game.»
I shall add that with this technological drive we are fashioning reality like a VIDEO-game. Not free playfulness, but a competitive struggle for existence in a scripted universe. A corruption of the above.
Yes I've been meaning to do a post about Huizinga, along with others like Clifford Geertz and Erik Erikson who think in terms of play. To be honest it's one of those cases where an idea or theory is so much part of how I look at the world that I almost forget it's there. And I very much agree with your comment about contemporary culture as a perverse kind of gamefication!
I understand the urge to get beyond the tiresome moralism of so much professional discourse, or meta-discourse, in design and elsewhere. And I agree, and think you have much more to say, about the significance of tools. But I don't think leisure is a predicate, in principle, for the making of meaningful tools or other objects, and so good design. Consider the significance of weapons in epics, or ships, so meaningful that they were routinely eroticized. Perhaps your mother made her living as an artist, maybe not, but she might have felt much the same for her tools in either case. What about professional musicians and their instruments? Professional woodworker Christopher Schwarz, substack "The American Peasant," rhapsodizes about his tools every few days. He's also engaged in a sort of ethnographic inquiry into pre-modern northern European peasant or at least rural furniture and design. Everything has meaning, but not because these objects were made at leisure, whatever that might mean ca. 1500 in the Baltics. One could go on . . .
Not that leisure does not matter. "Leisure" exists vis-a-vis work that isn't very meaningful, or at least doesn't provide the worker with much meaningful experience, even if the work is important. Consider hospital administration. But many, perhaps most, modern middle class jobs are like that. So the contemporary worker often seeks meaning in the material world when not working, i.e., at leisure. But that does not mean that the meaning of an activity, or its tools, or other associated designs, in principle depends on leisure. Instead, the relationship is a function of middle class lives, and design for such lives. As always, thanks for an intriguing post, and keep up the good work.
Yes, it's certainly true that tools have a sacred role in the professional practice as they do in the amateur one. In some ways more sacred. I focus on leisure because I believe this is where design and the joys of skilled activity can make the biggest difference. Few people can be professionals in a given craft, but many can be amateurs, and I think we need more amateurs because we need more meaningful leisure in our lives. In more general terms (and in agreement with Aristotle, or my reading of him at least), I think there is an important distinction between the fulfilment of doing something professionally and doing it as leisure. Even if you profession is something you love (as mine is), happiness still requires that we seek fulfilment in things which are not our jobs. Thanks as always for the insightful comment!
Wessie, this is important, the social critic in me thinks: "I focus on leisure because I believe this is where design and the joys of skilled activity can make the biggest difference. Few people can be professionals in a given craft, but many can be amateurs, and I think we need more amateurs because we need more meaningful leisure in our lives." Yes. More on that . . .
This is a big truth, that leisure, amateur's activity outside the profession, is indispensable for mental and physical health. And here, a special, vast field of meticulous, researched, and optimised design comes to my mind: outdoor equipment. Evolutionary improvements in design, materials and manufacturing technology serve not only for enjoyment, but to keep us comfortable and safe in adverse environment. It may be a piece of garment, or an inflatable kayak, or a bicycle. Designers are passionate to design them, and amateurs entrust them, often, with their lives.
***
My second thought is on the sideline: look at this vintage Land Rover. How bright, well lit, the interior is, thanks to big glass panes! They were designed to let the light in, not to conceal. Compare it to modern high metal sides, where what small spots of glass remained, are darkened to be only partly transparent (perhaps the Cybertruck is the most ugly epitome of this trend.)
What does this shift in transparency, and in acceptance of light, tells about our social condition?
You are right to emphasise the incredible specialisation of leisure equipment today. These products are testament to a very particular kind of fulfilment that modern life has made possible. As for your comment about the sense of secrecy in today's luxury cars, I entirely agree!
You are aware of Johan Huizinga right? To talk about those matters without mentioning him is quite off haha.
Below is Lewis Mumford talking about him on his book The Myth of the Machine: Techniques and Human Development:
«Only a little while ago the Dutch historian, J. Huizinga, in 'Homo Ludens' brought forth a mass of evidence to suggest that play, rather than work, was the formative element in human culture: that man's most serious activity belonged to the realm of make-believe. On this showing, ritual and mimesis, sports and games and dramas, released man from his insistent animal attachments; and nothing could demonstrate this better, I would add, than those primitive ceremonies in which he played at being another kind of animal. Long before he had achieved the power to transform the natural environment, man had created a miniature environment, the symbolic field of play, in which every function of life might be re-fashioned in a strictly human style, as in a game.»
I shall add that with this technological drive we are fashioning reality like a VIDEO-game. Not free playfulness, but a competitive struggle for existence in a scripted universe. A corruption of the above.
Yes I've been meaning to do a post about Huizinga, along with others like Clifford Geertz and Erik Erikson who think in terms of play. To be honest it's one of those cases where an idea or theory is so much part of how I look at the world that I almost forget it's there. And I very much agree with your comment about contemporary culture as a perverse kind of gamefication!
I understand the urge to get beyond the tiresome moralism of so much professional discourse, or meta-discourse, in design and elsewhere. And I agree, and think you have much more to say, about the significance of tools. But I don't think leisure is a predicate, in principle, for the making of meaningful tools or other objects, and so good design. Consider the significance of weapons in epics, or ships, so meaningful that they were routinely eroticized. Perhaps your mother made her living as an artist, maybe not, but she might have felt much the same for her tools in either case. What about professional musicians and their instruments? Professional woodworker Christopher Schwarz, substack "The American Peasant," rhapsodizes about his tools every few days. He's also engaged in a sort of ethnographic inquiry into pre-modern northern European peasant or at least rural furniture and design. Everything has meaning, but not because these objects were made at leisure, whatever that might mean ca. 1500 in the Baltics. One could go on . . .
Not that leisure does not matter. "Leisure" exists vis-a-vis work that isn't very meaningful, or at least doesn't provide the worker with much meaningful experience, even if the work is important. Consider hospital administration. But many, perhaps most, modern middle class jobs are like that. So the contemporary worker often seeks meaning in the material world when not working, i.e., at leisure. But that does not mean that the meaning of an activity, or its tools, or other associated designs, in principle depends on leisure. Instead, the relationship is a function of middle class lives, and design for such lives. As always, thanks for an intriguing post, and keep up the good work.
Yes, it's certainly true that tools have a sacred role in the professional practice as they do in the amateur one. In some ways more sacred. I focus on leisure because I believe this is where design and the joys of skilled activity can make the biggest difference. Few people can be professionals in a given craft, but many can be amateurs, and I think we need more amateurs because we need more meaningful leisure in our lives. In more general terms (and in agreement with Aristotle, or my reading of him at least), I think there is an important distinction between the fulfilment of doing something professionally and doing it as leisure. Even if you profession is something you love (as mine is), happiness still requires that we seek fulfilment in things which are not our jobs. Thanks as always for the insightful comment!
Wessie, this is important, the social critic in me thinks: "I focus on leisure because I believe this is where design and the joys of skilled activity can make the biggest difference. Few people can be professionals in a given craft, but many can be amateurs, and I think we need more amateurs because we need more meaningful leisure in our lives." Yes. More on that . . .