Fuzzy Signals

Paul Ricoeur

Paul Ricoeur, a French philosopher and one of the most lucid thinkers of the 20th century, died on Friday at 92. Ricoeur taught on both sides of the Atlantic: at the University of Chicago, Yale and Columbia in the late 60s and 70s. He also taught at the Sorbonne, University of Nanterre, Belgium's Louvain University, and in Geneva and Montreal. His cross-cultural career reaped many bounties, including "The Rule of Metaphor", the three volume "Time and Narrative," and "Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary."

On the surface, thinkers like Ricoeur seem so remote from our lives, so far from relevance. Our prejudices, narrow perspectives, and predilections for easy answers (witness the ubiquitous "10 solutions to everything" genre) compound this problem. Being both French and in the field of philosophy, Riceour is doubly disadvantaged and easily dismissed. Fortunately, the accessibility of Riceour's work makes it easy for us to overcome these stereotypes. Indeed, looking at his work in retrospect -- just glance at his titles -- and with the gravitas of death focusing our attention, it becomes obvious just how many of his ideas have percolated into our thinking, work lives, and practices. (I can't tell you just how many times this kind of epiphany has happened to me since moving to Paris, so ignorant was I of these thinkers and their contributions.)

As the UK's Telegraph puts it, "he was chiefly preoccupied with what is arguably the greatest philosophical theme - the meaning of life." I can't think of anything else more "relevant" than that! Indeed, at a time when so many people are focusing their attention on this very question -- especially aspiring worldchangers trying to make the next step in an uncertain world -- his work is a timely resource.

Putting Ricoeur aside, more generally, I'd wager that philosophy, stripped down to its basics and perhaps rebranded in different terms, may be making a comeback after years of being lost in esoterica because our shifting context is demanding these tools at all kinds of levels. For philosophy is simply a framework and thinking discipline for surfacing assumptions and exploring important questions for the world. Unfortunately, many educational institutions and organizations have been under-investing in these skills and capabilities because they seem "too abstract" and "not practical". (These are usually code words for "too difficult" or "not going to achieve my short term agenda.") Staunch anti-secular movements also are suspicious of other ways for seeking truth and enlightenment, although religion and philosophy can be complimentary. Yet for those who feel the weight dogma (regardless of source) is the chief problem in life, philosophical inquiry can yield powerful practical results, since the most important value creation is happening at the abstract level. Brands, biotech, business models, intellectual property are all abstractions.

The price to paid for this under-investment is starting to manifest. Countries like the US, for instance, are falling behind emerging markets like China and India which have consistently higher math scores in high school graduates. (These are not everything, but still an important indicator.) One recent explanation for this growing divergence is the widespread use of the abacus to teach math. Because it's a physical thing, this helps teach abstract reasoning but within a concrete context. This works because all humans suffer from what's called a "concrete bias." Prototyping new ideas with physical models is another way designers try to resolve this dilemma by delivering "both/and". But at a societal level, we'll also need to create the equivalent of the abacus for helping decision-makers and the public at large conceptualize in concrete terms time and space issues which globalization is driving into our daily lives -- that is, seeing the global in the local both now and in the future. With the inspiration of the abacus, what kind of tool, technique, models or simulations would you invent to achieve this? Be specific or general. I'd love to see this brainstorm.

At the personal level, many people are struggling with the question of what to do with their lives. All of the freedom in the world is not that useful if one doesn't know what to do with it. This widespread gestalt possibly explains the viral success of the Socrates Cafes and Clubs around the world, which I've written about here. We also hope Worldchanging is helping to surface more options and ideas in this respect; we aim to inspire and show people just how many things they could do outside the usual social "scripts" we have internalized about what a "career" or "job" is or should be. If we chose to, we can live "integrated lives" where what we do for a living is also meaningful, important, creative and fun. There is has never been a better time for doing this, given the proliferation of worlchanging activity going on!

Whether we call it "philosophy" or not, our current moment of systemic change is challenging many of our core assumptions in just about every category one can think of: governance and how we should organize ourselves; how we want to live and be individually and within groups; the problem of knowledge, information and sense-making; and the role of personal freedom and choice. These, not coincidentally, are the key questions framing philosophical thought for millenia. These ideas and techniques have a long heritage and are already here, and fortunately many people like Ricoeur have made these more accessible than ever. Let's honour this tireless thinker and teacher for his good work, even if we've never heard of him.

Ethical Fashion, Rising

Attention fashionistas! There are now even more opportunities to be smartly dressed in every sense of the word. The Financial Times Weekend ("Forget Black: Fashion's Going Gree by Dimi Gaidatzi, May 14/15, 2005) features a story about the proliferation of ethical fashion labels. These are designers and catalogue retailers who are producing socially and ecologically sustainable clothing lines without compromising high design and style, thus blowing away (yet again) the old tradeoffs between performance, principles and in some cases price -- the exception being the burgeoning eco-lux brands, of course, which are priced beyond most mortals' means, but influencing the "influencers" is a clever tactic as celebrities, for better or worse, set standards.

The article mentions: Edun, the new range designed by U2's Bono and his wife Ali Hewson which is available at Selfridges in the UK, People Tree, veteran designer Katharine Hamnett, Romp Fashion, shoemaker Terraplana, United Nude, Sari, Nathalie Hambro, and Buba London, to name a few in Europe. (Also check out past WC posts mentioning fashion bags with green integrity and eco-designer Jenny McPherson.)

So long gone are the days when sporting eco-friendly threads just meant wearing a ugly itchy hemp pants or recycled tire jackets! (Not that there is anything wrong with these per se just not to my taste.) More seriously, this is a great example of how we can make sustainability work through better design across all parameters. Make something beautiful, make something unique, make something with a story and feel-good values behind it, and make it more accessible and user-friendly -- and you have the catalytic recipe for shifting a niche category into a mainstream phenomenon. (Whadda say shoppers we help this along!)

And sure enough "momentum is building" writes the FT, citing the first ethical fashion show last year in Paris and the socio-environmental Anti-Apathy campaign in London. New research and materials in fibers is producing dividends as well. This is a "long term change rather than some kind of trend."

What these offer are not just ways of curbing child labour or environmental damage, but ways of tackling sustainable development, ethical commerce, environmental performance and aesthetic innovation; all of these factors are a crucial part of their brand and design manifesto.

In other words, this is a veritable win-win that harnesses market and social forces. As David Bowie said, "the more we commodify things, the more we'll want hand-made things out of wood." Something deep is shifting in terms of what people really want, need and desire. We're getting a glimpse of it here. Now, time to apply ingenious superior design not just to the quality of consumption but the quantity too. More stuff is still more stuff

Musings on VE Day

As news followers know, it was VE Day on Sunday, the day the Allies defeated Nazi German over 50 years ago. It's hard to wrap our heads around what it was like in May of 1945. Winston Churchill described the collective mood the best: "a vast quivering mass of tormented, hungry, care-worn and bewildered human beings agape at the ruins of their cities and homes." Until I moved to Paris, however, this day was an abstract and ironically bloodless event for me. Living so far away from these distant happenings -- both in time and space -- the task of trying to make tangible the cause and consequences of a war that killed 50 million people was barely possible, and quite frankly, not a top priority. The future, not yet blemished by any mistakes and mayhem, seemed a more interesting place to focus on versus the unchangeable, pockmarked past.

But the past has caught up to me now that I live in Europe. Indeed, it's hard to avoid, since history is well integrated within daily life; the artifacts of the past densely visible in the physical and emotional architecture of places like Paris. Even basic routines, like my walks to the Seine, can get co-opted by the Past exerting herself, which is exactly what happened on Sunday as a wide perimeter around the the Etoile was closed off for the VE parade from the Arc de Triomphe. So with no intention nor strong desire to see a parade, let alone a military one, I found myself drawn to the hum of the Champs-Elysées to find a viewing spot.

As I waited for something to happen, I noticed the concentrated symbolism around me, wedged as I was just off of George V Avenue in front of the Mercedes sign and a movie theatre showing, "The Kingdom of Heaven", Ridley Scott's bloody epic about the Crusades. And while the day was for the military to show off their might, the conquests of the commercial world dominated the scene. At least a dozen brands drowned my sight, the megabank HKSB and the luxury goods maker Louis Vuitton being the first in range. Propping me up, though, was something much older, a 19th century lamp post with faces of a king etched into the beautiful iron-work motif. Some change yes, but lots of continuity as well, which I found vaguely comforting. That's Paris for you.

To be honest, it wasn't the most impressive parade I've seen. For starters, it lacked critical mass. There were relatively few people attending, partly because it's a holiday week here in France, and partly because many of the veterans -- our last living human ties to these events -- are dying off. Disinterest will surely follow, although I was encouraged to see in a multi-generational party of British tourists that the younger men proudly wearing the medals of their deceased relatives. Apart from that, I saw very few veterans. There were, however, officials galore. I briefly saw President Chirac's craggy face whip past me in his smallish motorcade, followed by throngs of military representatives (air force, navy, army) from various countries, marching down that famous avenue in strangely varied styles, everything from the awkward German goose-step to a hypnotic figure-of-eight side-to-side swing to the usual gun-slinging and sword pointing displays. Some military practices, I suppose, predate nations in their traditions. I felt a little sorry for the first bunch of marchers who had to stoically plod through a great deal of horse crap that somehow ended up in the middle of the road, a fitting if accidental metaphor for the life of a solider. I'm also embarrassed to admit that I didn't know all of the national flags represented, but rationalized this away as being the happy sign of my "post nationalistic" identity, only to contradict myself moments later as I spontaneously routed on the Canadian representatives as they past my spot. This, admittedly, was very un-Canadian of me.

Meanwhile the weather was going through temperamental hot and cold flashes as the fast-moving cumulous clouds played hide and seek with the spring sun, mimicking the highs and lows of my feelings, for while it was a lackluster performance in a world accustomed to higher entertainment values, I was unexpectedly moved by the whole experience. It wasn't just the rousing sounds of the snare drum beat, the fine ceremonial uniforms on fresh-faced youths, or the rare display of discipline and solidarity that stirred mr up. I knew the cold truth that the purpose of military parades is to reinforce the seductive mystique of the state's power and its ability to wage war, something I wasn't ready to celebrate. Our organizations and our mindsets are still too imprinted with the metaphors of war to feel safe from these feelings. Rather, the warmth that moved me was very different, for in that moment, I could vividly see in a hologram in my head the dots connect between the past, present and future. No longer abstract, I could feel the physicality of this link coming out of the ground from the historic place, and in the face of the Normandy woman sitting next to me, still remembering her mother's stories of liberation. This wasn't an intellectual reckoning, the tears suddenly welling, as I felt in a new way how the destructive events fifty years ago led directly to the profoundly idealistic and optimistic founding of the EU, which, while much criticized is still one of the most important experiments in governance on this planet -- an improbable yet steadfast dog's breakfast of institutional innovations designed to bind historically warring peoples in peace. As the ghost's of Bosnia remind us and the rise of xenophobia demonstrates in the Netherlands and all across Europe, this peace can't be taken for granted. Yet many sources of hope are already here in many ways. Indeed, regardless of its flawed constitutional process and expanding political configurations, the most important changes are social in nature. The rise of the "e-generation", for instance, is unmistakably real. This is the cohort of 20 and 30 somethings who now easily move between domiciles in London, Berlin and Milan even though they are French, Spanish and Polish by origin. Whether it be through intermarriage or through economic integration, these people are increasingly pan-European in outlook, something that was barely conceivable fifty years ago.

Americans often fault Europeans for being too encumbered by their past, and there is something to this. But what I've learned is that engaging with the past can be a productive process, not permanent state of being, for shaping a better future. As Theodore Zeldin said in his amazing book, An Intimate History of Humanity, "to have a new vision of the future, it has always first been necessary to have a new vision of the past." On a good day, this is what's going on in Europe. But even on a bad day, the EU and the relative peace and prosperity Europe has seen since 1945, is powerful evidence that the world has in fact got better in some parts, an optimistic meme that seems to go against the grain of our highly mediated environment. In just a few short generations, it's amazing just how much has been accomplished and overcome, which is why Europe's story gives hope to other conflicted parts of the world as they also cope with the timeless problem of living with "the other."