Why we need a Design Revolution
Science's Role in Defending the Status Quo
Those who dominate the social reality of the present are successful players in high or elite society. One reason that scientific objectivity has become increasingly weak is that it is convoluted to suit the needs of the power elite. While scientific materialism is the basis for many of our modern societies values, it is that this objective reality of the Center or the mainstream is defined by primarily by the power elite. The notion of the objective is tainted by the imperative to maintain power at any cost.
The justification for a scientific revolution is based on the notion that there are inherent flaws within the scientific method. However the problem is not science itself, but rather the embedded and very subtle way inwhich emotional intelligence is used to manipulate the information that we use to make political and economic decisions that define the mainstream social framework. Therefore it is not enough to putforward a revolution in science, but rather reconstitute the socially functions and interactions within the society--a massive social transformation becomes necessary.
While science is that " vital energy" that sustains much of modern civilization's progress, what is misconstrued as "objective reality" becomes defined by the need of the powerful in society to maintain appearancesin the process of maintaining power. The monolith of the economic machine that sustains the notion of modern progress, is based on expansion through economic growth and technology. In the contemporaryrealm, growth and technology are central to progress, because the modern industrialized monolith relies on economic growth to sustain itself. We have been so conditioned on the imperative of growth that mosttraditionally thinking people can hardly imagine life without out economic and population growth, since we perceive growth as so necessary to the continued viability and vibrancy of our modern societies. Therefore allthings that are seen by this society as helping to advance economic growth are seen as the pinnacles of wisdom and good governance. Professional and corporate people have been Portrayed as models ofefficiency that ensure continued progression in the state of our world (Paul Hawken The Ecology of Commerce 112).
The problems of our world are gradually growing out of control. It is that we have to take actions as individuals on a collective and local level to develop alternative methods that both work and can compete in the public realm against those ideas that defend the status quo. Design is still based on industrial modes of perception. A fundamental rethink of how we view life ourselves within life, and our interactions within other living creatures, means that may not ensure our continued survival. Indeed a new perception of how we need to live, mean that we have to think more carefully, in terms of not only how our actions but our thoughts affect others.
David Wann says that environmental protection is not just about, emissions or nature preservation, or even science and engineering and jobs, it is about human perceptions and habits (Deep Design P10). As long aswe continue to seek to master nature, and use the heavy-handed approach to finding solutions, we are continue to create more problems than we solve. Serious environmentalists understand that it is the wholestructure that underlies how we do things in the everyday marketplace driven reality that needs to fundamentally change in order to bring about a society that can coexist with nature.
The responsible use of technology entails us to establish a science " that is intrinsically holistic and that addresses the needs of the people and the planet (A Gaia Atlas of Future Worlds P174)." A "systems approachto science..." would be interdisciplinary using whatever tools are needed to connect the reductionistic specialization of a complex modern reality into a sets of diverse systems that are working together to sustain lifeas we know it. The world says Myers is not "run in discrete departments." Traditional science has not sought to understand the world holistically because what was required of them was to specialize and refine aparticular understanding of how one phenomena worked, so as to help assist in the modern process of development.