If this is true how would trade, agriculture, transport systems, schools, adult education, hospitals, roles of men and women, our attitude to the elderly and the vulnerable, our attitude to other cultures, leisure, art and all culture, the mass media and most importantly the individuality and freedom to express that individuality of each person. . . . need to change.
The designer William McDonough changed the way we look at design by coming up with the concept of no waste. . . . he learned this from indigenous people who think of what they do in terms of how it will affect every living thing for seven generations. They said of themselves that they see the whole of nature as their relatives and therefore as relevant to them. The artist and writer Suzi Gablik wrote a book called the Re- Enchantment of Art. In it she described an artist who dropped glass onto the land from a plane as part of his work. . . . when the people who had to use the land complained, the artist said it was his freedom. He believed that freedom meant doing what he wished to do. Goethe on the other hand said that very few people actually knew what it meant to be free because freedom meant mastery of oneself. Some time ago an artist made an image of Myra Hyndley who had colluded in the torture and killing of children in the early sixties. One of the mothers of these murdered children asked for the image to be removed. She described on the news how she had listened to tapes of her child begging to be freed and promising to tell no one if they were released. The image appearing in the exhibition in The Royal Academy; it was a failure of empathy for her and those for whom this woman and her image were more than just a horrible story in the press. The work was allowed to remain in the name of our freedom to express ourselves. The artist Craigie Aitchison withdrew his membership of Royal Academy saying that no freedom of self expression is worth a mother’s tears. This was remarkable because Craigie was a person who was renowned for his authenticity and originality and a great champion of freedom of expression. Individuality and responsibility, enlightened individualism; being who you are in relation to the world seems to be the key. The indigenous people feel connected; Craigie felt the feelings of the mother as well as the abstract concept of freedom of expression and out of this made a choice that was based on kindness and common sense.
This question of connection is the core of the change…
