04.09 // Module III: Faith and Belief Lecture & Discussion

Due to limitations on time, this class session was condensed, so that we had a 20 minute lecture, 25 minute breakout discussion session, and then 20 minutes to discuss everyone’s insights. Because time was so tight, we were not able to reflect on the insights as much as we would have liked.

Lecture

This lecture was led by me (Hajira). I wanted to offer some historical context to principles underlying secularism in order to contrast those principles with those of faith and belief. I showed my redrawing of Clive Dilnot’s diagram illustrating the historical experience of the artificial, from before the industrial revolution to present day.

Redrawing of Clive Dilnot’s diagram. Citation: Dilnot, Clive. “Reasons to Be Cheerful, 1, 2, 3…” In Design as Future-Making, edited by Susan Yelavich and Barbara Adams, 185–97. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.

I explained that the principles that put forth and enabled the scientific revolution and industrial revolution also led to a prevalent secular culture. Those principles are:

• Empiricism
• Rationalism
• Materialism
• Quantity
• Utility
• Industry, innovation, and progress
• Individualism

The point of going through this history was to show that secularism is one particular way of making sense of the world through all these (in some ways quite narrow) lenses. And this is where design is mostly rooted. But when we contrast that with faith and systems of belief, we see another way of interpreting and making sense of the world and another way to approach design. Some of the insights that faith provides are:

• Different interpretations of meaning and ‘the good life’
• A strong commitment to principles
• Use-lessness
• Sacredness and value sets
• Other-than-human centeredness

I pointed out that whichever of the above principles here they choose will shape how they live in the world, interpret the world, and design for the world. It is useful for them to be clear on their value set, and then to be sensitive to the fact that not everyone would be committed to the same principles.

We highlighted that faith and ideology are different in that faith is a commitment that comes from within, and ideology is enforced from without.

I then showed them a couple examples of when faith and ideology are conflated, and asked them to identify the implicit or explicit values displayed. My intention was for them to be able to recognize the difference between ideology and faith, and how faith is exploited to serve ideological ends and vice versa.

Examples

Church sign during the Obama-Romney presidential race

Controversy over Starbucks’ “war on Christmas.” Link to video

Discussion

The Starbucks video (link in above caption) sparked an interesting discussion about design and what is “neutral” and how design decisions can have unintended consequences.

Because the class was condensed, I sent the provocateurs for the week a prompt to help guide their discussion. The insights from the group discussion were run through very quickly, but some highlights were:

• Drawing parallels from extrinsic and intrinsic values to nature and nurture
• Design as a tool for facilitating conflicting values