Conscience Design; The Plight of Consuming

In order for design to have a proper influence in the world, there has to be some sort of conscience thought process and consideration of the end impact the design will make. In James Young’s article Destroying Works of Art, there was a strong emphasis on how easily one will discard a “work of art” or design without flinching and states “any destruction of [a] work of art is often regarded as unjustifiable… however, conditions under which the intentional destruction of some artworks is unobjectionable” (Young 1). I believe what Young is trying to convey here is that it is inevitable that designs are subjected to destruction due to the disassociation of a consumable product and viewing it with as much importance as a famous painting. This disassociation may have been a product of what Alan Wolfe discusses in his article The Final Freedom. Wolfe believes that we live in an age of “moral freedom” and that we construct our realities around personal definitions of what it means to “lead a good and virtuous life” and “by considering who we are, what others require and what consequences follow from acting one way rather than another” (Wolfe 1).

Due to the nature of the disposable material world that has been constructed for the 21st Century, there has been a need for self-expression through the display of material possessions. Class and social stratification is what Juilet Schor talks about in her essay What’s Wrong with Consumer Society? Competitive Spending and the “New Consumerism”, and how it is directly connected to, and reinforced by, the very act of consuming goods and services. Schor argues that the reason why there is such a huge gap found in the American social structure is due to the “uncritical and simplistic approach to consumer behavior” taken by economists, which has led to a “hands-off” approach essentially steering the consumer away from the “social and symbolic functions of [their] spending that are so prominent in anthropological, sociological, and literary analyses” (Schor 38). One thing that these articles or writings have in common, they address and discuss consumerism and how it is integrated and affects cultures and societies of all different denominations.

It was extremely interesting to read the contrast of consumer habits and awareness found in the community highlighted by Elizabeth Kolbert’s article The Island In The Wind. It is interesting that a “conservative farming community” were open to the technological advancements of renewable energies and had a goal of reducing the communities overall consumption of fossil fuels by half (Kolbert 1). This awareness and choice is exactly what Wolfe was referring to as the “moral freedom”. Also, the community members in Kolbert’s article, indicated that they weighed the outcomes of their “traditional” choices against the outcomes of the “new” choices and found that it was time to discard the “traditional” ways of using energy to embrace the concepts of consuming less. In a way the community was discarding and destroying the old to make way for more sustainable energy consumption. The community had come to a conclusion that “sometimes preserving something of value requires that something else of value be sacrificed” (Young 252).

I have to agree with Young, Kolbert, Wolfe and Schor. When designing products it is imperative for the designer to think about the long term affects they are having on the global community. American culture is primarily driven by consumerism, and a person’s rate of consumption is how they are measured within the American culture. It would be silly not to connect the Wolf and Schors articles, they really go hand in hand. The way I see it, because there is so much emphasis placed on individualism in America, we are left to figure out what we feel is important to us. Since most Americans are left to figure out their own moral constructs, every individual has a different set of values. A great example is the contrast between the Danish community and an community of similar size and demographical make up in America. The community in Denmark make a group choice to work together to resolve, what they felt was over consumption, where here in the USA, most American suffer from the “Jones Affect”, needing to have the next big consumer good or feel the need to “one-up” the neighbor.

What was pointed out and discussed resonates with me on the deepest level. I feel it is my duty as an aspiring designer to pay attention to consumers and the consumer trends, but most of all, it is most important to think about the overall impact (environmentally, socially, culturally and geographically) and how it can be reduced.

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Works Cited

Kolbert, Elizabeth. "The Island in the Wind." The New Yorker 7 July 2008: n. pag. Print.

Schor, Juliet, and Roger Rosenblatt. "What's Wrong With Consuming Society? Competitive Spending and the "New Consumerism"." Consuming Desires: Consumption, Culture, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Washington, D.C: Island Press, 1999. 37-53. Print.

Wolfe, Alan. "The Final Freedom." The New York Times 18 Mar. 2001: n. pag. Web.

Young, James O. "Destroying Works of Art." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 47.4 (1989): 367-73. Print.