Re: Problem, solution, opportunity and design
Thanks Chuck.
I think you’re right, and these are the terms I prefer too. I admire the way you say it so simply. And like most of the people on this list I am aware of “sticky wickeds” so have also preferred resolutions, being happy to leave solutions to chemists, mathematicians and the like.
Use of such language - unresolved situations (issues, needs, desires) - also reflects my view that “problems” aren’t out there and not in us, as David Sless suggests, but are rather situated in the relational structure of our {interests and concerns and the objects of those concerns,} which I think of as a configuration or gestalt. On this view design interests, concerns, desires, needs, wants...are transitive. We have issues about roads, and differing points of view, takes, concerns, expectations. We desire... something, even if it’s fashionable change. We’re lured by the opportunity to do....something...or make...something...better.
The name of this approach is valuing, and valuing means never having to say psychophysical.
About poems: Making poems isn’t purposeless. As symbol makers, we are employing our language expressively and metaphorically to produce artifacts expressive of our felt life. Poets create worlds that provide openings into human experience. Not having a tidy answer to why we might want or need to do this doesn’t make it purposeless.
Regards to all.
Jerry
On 8/19/05 6:23 AM, "Charles Burnette" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On 8/18/05 7:30 PM, "Jerome Diethelm" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> I find that one can easily turn
>> well-stated issues around and restate them as goals and that people feel
>> validated when they see their concerns translated into intentional work. I
>> have been overheard claiming that goals are issues spelled backwards.
>
> I agree. In my view it is an unresolved situation (issues, needs, desires)
> that generate the frame of mind in which an intention is pursued. The words
> opportunity, possibility, potentiality are simply better indicators of the
> complex teleology of intentionality than the more definition seeking word
> "problem".
>
> Thanks for posting the URL for your website.
>
> Best,
> Chuck
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Jerry Diethelm
Architect - Landscape Architect
Planning & Urban Design Consultant
Prof. Emeritus of Landscape Architecture
and Public Service
2652 Agate St., Eugene, OR 97403
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• web: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~diethelm
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