This is where design begins to lose steam. We cannot fill the gap with objects of temporal value. We tried that in the fifties, at the height of consumerist culture. While happiness is a universal desire, it is far more complex than we would admit it to be. We think a certain action or objective will bring about happiness, but this is not always the case. Furthermore, happiness strikes us from the oddest places, from what we expect to produce pain.
David Pye, in his essay The Nature of Aesthetics and Design says that it is only through the aesthetic nature of an object that we can fill this void in some way. I believe this to be true in some sense; beauty brings a certain wonder out of humans that allows us, in some sense, to transcend our day to day lives. However, there is one question I would like to pose: when we beautify an object for the purpose of bringing happiness, from where, according to the human mind, does the happiness come from? Do we look at the object and say, "This object is beautiful, and because it is beautiful, I will continue to search for the source of beauty and thus in hopes to find purpose for myself," or do we say "This object is beautiful, which makes me happy, and thus I will find more objects to make myself even more happy."?
In one sense, a person could say that this distinction is inconsequential; in each case a person is made happy, so what does it matter where they see their happiness originating from? This would be true if happiness was static in nature; however, happiness is fleeting. It is not added, but disappears almost as soon as we have found it. Would it not then be better to send people searching for the source of happiness than to have them continually attempting to fill a metaphorical bottomless bucket, all the while consuming more objects?
Maybe this is just far too deep for design thinking, but it seems important to me.
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