Responsibility and its Pitfalls
I think it’s genetic. My grandmother worried a lot. I’m convinced that my overdeveloped sense of responsibility is a response to some innate anxiety, as if the world would collapse should my attention waver. Which is perhaps why I enjoy the holidays, the way our well-decorated consumerist abundance broadcasts well-being; so many sweaters, everything must be okay! Sustainability issues, including the impacts of our mass consumption, provide significant evidence to the contrary. This is one of the reasons I’m drawn to the field. Like a magnet, these challenges attract my desire to insure and restore. “Why don’t you try being responsible to yourself first?” one friend recently suggested to help me curb my addiction. Disruptive innovation is a myth. Change, especially on the personal level, takes time. I fear the repercussions of relinquishing this compulsion. I’m good at it. How will things fall apart? The biggest barrier to innovation is often our inability to envision and embrace how it will make things better, to believe that it will. The present is known, safe, more worthy of our wagers. We need more powerful and informed imaginations, not to escape our current predicaments, but to envision and realize more compelling and vital alternatives, starting, of course, with our own lives.
Peter Nicholson, Innovationist
FORESIGHT DESIGN INITIATIVE
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