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Text of the page (random words):
tablished that the character of the times has changed the viridian design movement was founded in distant 1999 after the years transpiring various disasters wars financial collapses and a major change in political tone the world has become a different place it remains only to close the viridian episode gracefully and to conclude with a few meditative suggestions as i explained in the first viridian speech any design movement social movements of any kind really should be designed with an explicit expiration date the year 2012 would have been the extreme to which viridian could have persisted since the course of history has grown quite jittery this longer term was spared us some viridian principles can be lightly re phrased buffed up and likely made of practical use in days to come others are period notions to be gently tossed into the cultural compost i could try to describe which are which but that s a proper job for someone younger i m following current events with keen interest there s never been a better time for major political and financial interventions in the green space however viridian list is about design interventions it was not about politics or finance so a decent reticence is in order at this juncture i would like to cordially thank viridian readers and contributors and advisors for their patience and their generous help over nine years i hope you feel you derived some benefit from it i did my best with the effort i learned a lot by it and i m pleased with how it turned out i can t say what viridian may have done for you that s up to you to judge since this is last viridian note however i d like to describe what viridian did for me since the halcyon days of 1999 my life has changed radically rather than thinking globally and acting locally as in the old futurist theme i now live and think glocally i once had a stable settled life within a single city state and nation nowadays i divide my time between three different polities the united states the european union and the balkans with various junkets elsewhere the 400 year old westphalian system doesn t approve of my lifestyle although it s increasingly common especially among people half my age it s stressful to live glocally not that i myself feel stressed by this as long as i ve got broadband i m perfectly at ease with the fact that my position on the planet s surface is arbitrary it s the nation state system that is visibly stressed by these changes it s freaking out over currency flows migration through airports offshoring and similar phenomena i know that by the cultural standards of the 20th century my newfangled glocal lifestyle ought to bother me i ought to feel deracinated and i should suffer from culture shock and i should stoically endure the mournful silence and exile of a writer torn from the kindly matrix of his national culture a traditional story however i ve been at this life for years now i really tried the traditional regret is just not happening clearly the existence of the net has obliterated many former operational difficulties furthermore my sensibility no longer operates in that 20th century framework that s become an archaic way to feel and i just can t get there from here living on the entire planet at once is no longer a major challenge it s got its practical drawbacks but i m much more perturbed about contemporary indignities such as airport terrorspaces atm surchanges and the open banditry of cellphone roaming this is what s troublesome the rest of it i m rather at ease about unless i m physically restrained by some bureaucracy i don t think i m going to stop this glocally nomadic life i live on the earth the earth is a planet this fact is okay i am living in truth another major change came through my consumption habits it pains me to see certain people still trying to live in hairshirt green fashion purportedly mindful and thrifty and modest i used to tolerate this eccentricity but now that panicked bankers and venture capitalists are also trying to cling like leeches to every last shred of their wealth i can finally see it as actively pernicious hairshirt green is the simple minded inverse of 20th century consumerism like the new age mystic echo of judaeo christianity hairshirt green simply changes the polarity of the dominant culture without truly challenging it in any effective way it doesn t do or say anything conceptually novel nor is it practical or a working path to a better life my personal relations to goods and services especially goods have been revolutionized since 1999 let me try your patience by describing this change in some detail because it really is a different mode of being in the world my design book shaping things which is very viridian without coughing up that fact in a hairball talks a lot about material objects as frozen social relationships within space and time this conceptual approach may sound peculiar and alien but it can be re phrased in a simpler way what is sustainability sustainable practices navigate successfully through time and space while others crack up and vanish so basically the sustainable is about time time and space you need to re think your relationship to material possessions in terms of things that occupy your time the things that are physically closest to you time and space in earlier less technically advanced eras this approach would have been far fetched material goods were inherently difficult to produce find and ship they were rare and precious they were closely associated with social prestige without important material signifiers such as wedding china family silver portraits a coach house a trousseau and so forth you were advertising your lack of substance to your neighbors if you failed to surround yourself with a thick material barrier you were inviting social abuse and possible police suspicion so it made pragmatic sense to cling to heirlooms renew all major purchases promptly and visibly keep up with the joneses that era is dying it s not only dying but the assumptions behind that form of material culture are very dangerous these objects can no longer protect you from want from humiliation in fact they are causes of humiliation as anyone with a mcmansion crammed with chinese made goods and an unsellable suv has now learned at great cost furthermore many of these objects can damage you personally the hours you waste stumbling over your piled debris picking washing storing re storing those are hours and spaces that you will never get back in a mortal lifetime basically you have to curate these goods heat them cool them protect them from humidity and vermin every moment you devote to them is lost to your children your friends your society yourself it s not bad to own fine things that you like what you need are things that you genuinely like things that you cherish that enhance your existence in the world the rest is dross do not economize please that is not the point the economy is clearly insane even its champions are terrified by it now it s melting the north pole so economization is not your friend cheapness can be value less voluntary simplicity is furthermore boring less can become too much work the items that you use incessantly the items you employ every day the normal boring goods that don t seem luxurious or romantic these are the critical ones they are truly central the everyday object is the monarch of all objects it s in your time most it s in your space most it is where it is at and it is what is going on it takes a while to get this through your head because it s the opposite of the legendry of shopping however the things that you use every day should be the best designed things you can get for instance you cannot possibly spend too much money on a bed assuming you have a regular bed which in point of fact i do not you re spending a third of your lifetime in a bed your bed might be sagging ugly groaning and infested with dust mites because you are used to that situation and cannot see it that calamity might escape your conscious notice see it replace it sell even give away anything you never use fancy ball gowns tuxedos beautiful shoes wrapped in bubblepak that you never wear useless christmas gifts from well meaning relatives junk that you inherited sell that stuff take the money get a real bed get radically improved everyday things the same goes for a working chair notice it take action bad chairs can seriously injure you from repetitive stresses get a decent ergonomic chair someone may accuse you of indulging yourself because you possess a chair that functions properly this guy is a reactionary he is useless to futurity listen carefully to whatever else he says and do the opposite you will benefit greatly expensive clothing is generally designed to make you look like an aristocrat who can afford couture unless you are a celebrity on professional display forget this consumer theatricality you should buy relatively expensive clothing that is ergonomic high performance and sturdy anything placed next to your skin for long periods is of high priority shoes are notorious sources of pain and stress and subjected to great mechanical wear you really need to work on selecting these yes on shopping for shoes you should spend more time on shoes than you do on cars unless you re in a car during pretty much every waking moment in which case god help you i strongly recommend that you carry a multitool there are dozens of species of these remarkable devices now and for good reason do not show them off in a beltpack because this marks you as a poorly socialized geek keep your multitool hidden in the same discreet way that you would any other set of keys that s because a multitool is a set of keys it s a set of possible creative interventions in your immediate material environment that is why you want a multitool they are empowering a multitool changes your perceptions of the world since you lack your previous untooled learned helplessness you will slowly find yourself becoming more capable and more observant if you have pocket scissors you will notice loose threads if you have a small knife you will notice bad packaging if you have a file you will notice flashing metallic burrs and bad joinery if you have tweezers you can help injured children while if you have a pen you will take notes tools in your space saving your time a multitool is a design education as a further important development you will become known to your friends and colleagues as someone who is capable useful and resourceful rather than someone who is helpless frustrated and visibly lacking in options you should aspire to this better condition do not lug around an enormous toolchest or a full set of post earthquake gear unless you are stewart brand furthermore unless you are a professional emergency worker you can abstain from post apocalyptic bug out bags and omnicompetent heaps of survivalist rations do not stock the fort with tiresome life consuming freeze dried everything unless you can clearly sense the visible approach of some massive non theoretical civil disorder the clearest way to know that one of these is coming is that the rich people have left your area if that s the case then sure go befriend the police and prepare to knuckle down now to confront the possessions you already have this will require serious design work and this will be painful it is a good idea to get a friend or several friends to help you you will need to divide your current possessions into four major categories beautiful things emotionally important things tools devices and appliances that efficiently perform a useful function everything else everything else will be by far the largest category anything you have not touched or seen or thought about in a year this very likely belongs in everything else you should document these things take their pictures their identifying makers marks barcodes whatever so that you can get them off ebay or amazon if for some weird reason you ever need them again store those digital pictures somewhere safe along with all your other increasingly valuable life central digital data back them up both onsite and offsite then remove them from your time and space everything else should not be in your immediate environment sucking up your energy and reducing your opportunities it should become a fond memory or become reduced to data it may belong to you but it does not belong with you you weren t born with it you won t be buried with it it needs to be out of the space time vicinity you are not its archivist or quartermaster stop serving that unpaid role beautiful things are important if they re truly beautiful they should be so beautiful that you are showing them to people they should be on display you should be sharing their beauty with others your pride in these things should enhance your life your sense of taste and perhaps your social standing they re not really that beautiful then they re not really beautiful take a picture of them tag them remove them elsewhere emotionally important things all of us have sentimental keepsakes that we can t bear to part with we also have many other objects which simply provoke a panicky sense of potential loss they don t help us to establish who we are or to become the person we want to be they subject us to emotional blackmail is this keepsake so very important that you would want to share its story with your friends your children your grandchildren or are you just using this clutter as emotional insulation so as to protect yourself from knowing yourself better think about that take a picture you might want to write the story down then yes away with it you are not losing things by these acts of material hygiene you are gaining time health light and space also the basic quality of your daily life will certainly soar because the benefits of good design will accrue to you where they matter in the everyday not in oz or in some museum vitrine in the every day for sustainability it is every day that matters not green manhattan projects green moon shots green new years resolutions or wild scifi speculations those are for dabblers and amateurs the sustainable is about the every day now for category three tools and appliances they re not beautiful and you are not emotionally attached to them so they should be held to keen technical standards is your home a museum do you have curatorial skills if not then entropy is attacking everything in there stuff breaks ages rusts wears out decays entropy is an inherent property of time and space understand this fact expect this the laws of physics are all right they should not provoke anguished spasms of denial you will be told that you should make do with broken or semi broken tools devices and appliances unless you are in prison or genuinely crushed by poverty do not do this this advice is wicked this material culture of today is not sustainable most of the things you own are almost certainly made to 20th century standards whic...