Conflict in our society
It's been a very long time since I’ve blogged, for a variety of reasons. One simple one is that just producing the videos for unPlanned consumes an inordinate amount of time and the prospect of sitting down and writing about my episodes is often a bridge too far. That’s too bad, because it’s good to reflect in the written word about what one has produced, or had a hand in producing, for the spoken word.
I also think that as Covid released its vise-like grip over the past 18 or so months, getting out more became more possible and the joy of seeing actual humans again was again available.
Nonetheless, I’m blogging now. And I’m choosing to blog on this topic (see Subject Line above) because I’ve written two emails — well, an email and then an online post — recently that dealt directly with this issue of conflict in our society, and that was my indication that these thoughts are clearly on my mind right now. I know that they’ve been on my mind for a while (say since 2016 at least), but we are again in a national election year, and the frightening prospect of losing our liberty to a bunch of thugs is very scary. The American experiment is better than that.
Here are the two exchanges, which I will quote verbatim instead of trying to rehash in some kind of digest.
Exchange #1 — An email exchange with Sarah Whiting, dean of the Harvard Graudate School of Design, upon the resignation of Claudine Gay as president of the university.
In a public blast email dated January 8, 2024, Whiting wrote the following:
Dear GSD Community,
I echo many of the points in Alan Garber’s message from this afternoon, which I encourage everyone to read [full text is below]. I share his admiration for Claudine Gay’s leadership and service, and his confidence in the Harvard community persevering through these unsettling times. While this is an unprecedented and difficult moment for all of us, Alan’s note is a good reminder as to why we are all part of the GSD. We have a shared commitment to moving forward design, planning, policy, and knowledge more broadly.
Here on campus, I have long implored all of us to slow down, listen, and take care not to be swept up in the temporal roller coaster that today’s social media–dominated culture tries to impose on our world. Resisting the flurry and fury of immediacy will be ever more challenging throughout this election year, but I am committed to finding ways for everyone at the School to maintain our focus, our attention, our values, and our collective ambitions for a better world.
In community,
Sarah
Sarah M. Whiting
Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
To her blanket email, I responded to no one in particular (and not even expecting my email to be read by anyone but a chatbot somewhere):
I agree with Sarah Whiting’s sentiments wholeheartedly and I wish her luck in fostering an environment that supports her reasoned approach and understanding of these very difficult times we find ourselves in.
To this rather banal statement of my support for her, she — or her assistant — took the time to say this fairly anodyne thank you:
Dear Sam,
It’s so thoughtful of you to take the time to write to me! I appreciate your thoughts and am grateful for the support. The GSD is fortunate to have such a thoughtful and engaged alumni community.
I wish you all the best for the year ahead.
Kind regards,
Sarah
Needless to say, I was rather thrilled to receive any response, and found myself standing at a bus stop on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge typing intensely on my phone:
Dear Sarah,
Thank you for taking time to reply.
These are mad times.
As I reflect on our current insanity, I am painfully aware that sometimes the moderate approach is really also a culprit - the status quo approach supporting those systems in power that got us into this mess in the first place.
Instead, it’s really our profound incapacity to be civil or civilized to one another that I find so shocking and depressing. What role design and planning (my background) play in all this, I know not.
That we are always quoting Shakespeare, I know for certain. At every offense or slight we “‘Cry havoc!’ And let slip the dogs of war!”
I’m personally more in the John Lennon camp. Give Peace a Chance.
Good luck with your work and help lead us through these challenging times.
Sam
Exchange #2 — a brief dialog with Craig Kelley in response to a video post I put up on unPlanned marking the new year, and noting that I need to make some changes to the video format, to up its game a little bit.
Craig, an old friend and a long-time Cambridge City Councillor, wrote this:
Add some conflict. There is no way that Cities are about people always being pleasant and agreeable to each other. Bike lanes are horribly dangerous for bikers. The people who promote them live in a fantasy land where, somehow, using rare earth minerals and fossil fuels to move a machine with pedals somehow makes them cyclists. Lots of crazies out there. Bring a few different varieties to your show and see the sparks fly.
To which I responded this:
Agreed, there's plenty of conflict in cities. The phrase "Good fences make good neighbors" wasn't coined from zero human experience. In that sense cities are our best examples of how we can find ways of working through our problems with each other. One of the reasons I don't focus on the conflicts is that there are already plenty of forums where that's the main meal, and there are plenty of people in the public eye who stoke conflict to exploit it for their own cynical ends. I'm not interested in producing more of that. Our public discourse is already strained to the breaking point with that stuff. That said, I need to do a better job of exploring and explaining the trade-offs (and the conflicts) inherent in the urban issues that confront us all. "To explore and inform." There, a goal for 2024.
I’m not sure what any or all of this says about the issue of conflict in our society or about me as a person, but I clearly have it on the brain, and so this blog seemed like a good place to share it.