unity of ideas
“It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment—on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict ‘It is.’ Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say ‘It is,’ you are refusing to say ‘I am.’ By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: ‘Who am I to know?’—he is declaring: ‘Who am I to live?’”
This quote from Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” comes from a section of the speach by John Galt. I owe the inspiration to reading it from Heather, she had been reading the book many months ago and had an away message “Who is John Galt” and left it on my computer. I found a spoken version of it online, just now while I am sitting at Susan’s Coffee and Tea in Kent and decided to give it a listen. I find it rather interesting, that in far lesser words I find an interesting comparison between this and the minds of any designer, creator and visionary.
Logically thinking minds, a rationalist and a person with the right ideological founding can be considered a designer, a creator and a visionary. Is there any real way of saying that we are individuals in a self maintained existence without arriving at the conclusion in which we realize that we are, absolutely, completely out of control? We have a limited scope of understanding and usually function primarily on instinct, but a person who is an advocate of the mind will be able to realize that their goal is simply to create the world, or at least in their own way, in their vision. So in a way we are all visionaries, we just do it radically different than one another. One person my have a family and then condition their children to be like themselves and that ideology will spread very slowly over time and lose it foundations and eventually be a process of repeating and more or less, treading water to stay afloat. Another will consider the larger picture, perhaps becoming an educator, or a politician. But for me, becoming a designer, a creator, a visionary is the only way in which I can achieve the purpose and maintain a personal and socioeconomic appearance of value. Everyone though, is a designer, but in most cases, in the world they create. The more control you have over existence, your existence in particular, comes from how you maintain your existence and integrate it into the lives of others. Especially without them knowing, a craft specifically tailored to designers, politicians and educators alike. The good ones though, do it with the ideally purist of intent.
In the democratic and capitalistic world we are rapidly forcing to become a global standard, design is most likely to succeed in ways that will never be fully understood but by people that are able to maintain their understanding and remain advocates of the mind. The power of design is evident in the posters of World War 2, brand recognition in corporations, and more. It should not be feared, but it should be valued and treated with respect. Everything around you, with the simple exclusion of nature, has been designed. It has been created. Shopping carts, your iPod, cell phone, steering wheel, tables, everything. The world of design that I want to enter isn’t to create new things, but to rather perfect all of those things without flaw and establish its permanent existence from the world that I created it in, into everyone else’s world.
To permeate the existence in which each individual lives and actively effect their opinions on products, political expression, standard of living, will ultimately change their purpose and drive a new form of thinking and logic. We are all given the same sets of abilities, the same minds in which to utilize and form rational thinking and deduce purpose. I want to know that what I am doing is going to change as many people’s lives as possible. I’m not in this to make money, I’m not here to only give you a new version of something someone else made. I am here, and I want, more than anything, to be able to show the world that everything… even the most mundane items can be seen and hold the same perceived beauty and value that I see them with. Everything hosts a beautiful and infinite potential to be perfect, and that is what the goal of all people who design, who create, and who know that they want will see and appreciate.
Our goal though, as designers, as illustrators, as creative visionaries, is to understand the large picture. We need, even if from the shadows, to create our artifacts, our pictures of purpose and to develop them with the intent to change the world. The strongest will survive and this is the goals and ideological foundation that will create a new and beautiful world in which to live. The standard of living can be raised simply through appearance, through meaningful design and through a shared passion of expression. This isn’t art, this is a purpose driven use of skill, function, form and dedication to creation. Without it, we deny its purpose and remove its validation of existence. Without purpose, without a serious attempt to change, we lose value and depreciate what we do. Our minds are for whatever we choose to use them for, creation with purpose, with the simple act of identifying its function and facility, we can make a desired product, a necessity, and change not only the world you live in, but each individual world that we attempt to co-exist in, in a unity of ideas.
