Design Altruism Project

February 11th, 2021

David Stairs

Deep fake of the Queen’s Christmas address; courtesy Channel 4

A man walks into a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C. armed with an automatic rifle determined to free children he believes are victims of a peadophilic sex trafficking “deep state.” People interviewed at a Stop the Steal rally in Atlanta tell interviewers a commission is needed to investigate the Democrat’s efforts to corrupt a widely certified election. A man in Nashville (not Robert Altman’s version) destroys a city block blowing himself up at the same time in protest of AT&T’s roll out of 5G wifi service. In another era one might be tempted to agree that “the time is out of joint,” except this bizarro world is our everyday reality.

In his 1831 jaunt through America, officially to examine its prison system, Alexis de Tocqueville traveled widely, from the eastern seabord, through the South, and on to the then northwestern frontier of Michigan. In most places he found a literate, informed, politically aware populace that led him to publish his reflections about the new republic in Democracy in America. Needless to say, he would have been astonished that in less than two centuries America has devolved into the conspiracy capital of the universe.

It used to be that one could view a program about alien abduction, or read an article about anti-fluroidation and understand that you were encountering the wack-job fringe. But not any more. Political dystopia has reached such a fever pitch that one can’t decide who will strike first: 2nd Amendment zealots, egged on by a deranged lame-duck president, interfering with the Biden certification (check that one off), or anti-vaxxers overturning efforts to stem Covid-19 and thereby extend the American pandemic.

In my lifetime I’ve lived through Jonestown, Rajneeshpuram, and the Branch Davidians. Timothy McVey has been imprisoned for life, as has the Unibomber. Many books, movies, and television programs have been devoted to shilling theories about John Kennedy’s assassination, and Neil Armstrong went to his grave disgusted at having to contradict theories that the event he risked his life to achieve was a hoax. In a free enterprise society a certain amount of hornswoggling is to be expected. I mean, is anyone over the age of eight taken in by the spectacle of WWE? But there should be limits to what rational credibility needs to prove.

There are so many articles on the strange state of truth these days that Wikipedia, itself a cloud-based repository of questionable pop culture facts, has created a category for Post Truth Politics. “Truth Decay” is now a recognized meme, like fake news and alternative facts. And still, the conspiracy theories expand, but with profound consequences.

Holocaust denial resides with the White Nationalists who wear swastikas and burn Black Lives Matter signs. Climate change deniers troll Al Gore and Greta Thunberg, eternally hitched to a criminal fossil fuel cartel determined to ride the extraction industry right through to the last winter. Meanwhile, deep fakes ranging from Barack Obama to QE2 populate the social media channels, hoping to recruit against or, at best, embarrass their ostensible subjects.

Relativism, combined with an unflinching belief in free enterprise capitalism, contaminates many professions, including the design professions. The dangerous untruth that technology will save humanity, with design, that domain of creative people, best able to steer this technophilic mythworld, is the sum and substance of most design conferences, lectures, and academic programs.

As we enter deeper into the third decade of this dystopic century it behooves us to remember that our Republic was founded upon “universal truths,” not specific, personal, and relativistic fantasies. And that, while one might accept a conspiracy narrative in the name of satire, or humor, or just to be plain contrary, one should never grant it the distinction of accepted fact. As my Father was fond of saying, that’d be like “trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

David Stairs is the founding editor of the Design-Altruism-Project.

Posted in Popular Culture | Comments Off on Fluoride for Truth Decay

Death’s Trombone

January 9th, 2021

David Stairs

Steve Zdep is dead, that much is certain. He passed away on November 6th, 2020 from causes not revealed in his obituary.

I hadn’t seen or heard about Steve Zdep for over 50 years. My high school best friend Bernie Flanagan told me Steve had died in a 2020 holiday greeting. Last year was supposed to have been our 50th high school reunion but, like everything else, it was postponed due to Covid-19. I remember my Father attending his 50th reunion in 1985. I thought at the time, “This is crazy.” It seemed even crazier when mine rolled around. “No way I’m going out on the links with a bunch of old duffers,” I thought, mostly because I don’t play golf, but also because high school was not exactly the highlight of my life.

I attended Christian Brothers Academy, CBA to those who know it. A Catholic preparatory school in Syracuse, New York, CBA was opened in 1900 by the teaching Brothers of Saint Jean-Baptiste de la Salle. These days it’s co-ed, but when I attended it was all male. We were the 70th graduating class. On graduation night at the Onondaga County War Memorial 175 of us were onstage in white dinner jackets with red carnation boutonnières. We looked pretty smart. CBA was a competitive place, athletically and academically. My classmates went to Ivy League schools: John Wu to Yale, Mike Tyo to MIT, Charlie Burzalow to Columbia. I had a different trajectory. From attending a school with no art curriculum, I intended to go to art school, and, after a couple years at SUNY Oneonta I transferred to RISD, the closest I ever got to the Ivy League.

My CBA classmates went into the professions. They became lawyers, doctors, and university lecturers. Steve Zdep became a dentist after attending Georgetown. I assume he was a good dentist, since he also taught dentistry. But as I said, that was after my time. I knew Steve in a different capacity. You see, Steve Zdep played trombone, and so did I. We played together in high school for a year, before I tired of marching in the cold and being yelled at by our dictatorial band director. But Steve and I went back even further, to grammar school. We also played in the Saint Margaret’s grammar and middle school band. In fact, that’s where my horn ended up, after my Mom pestered me about donating it to the parish for years. I remember Steve as a mediocre trombone player. I don’t mean this as a criticism; I was no better. We both blatted our way through Pomp and Circumstance each year at graduation. But Steve was such a laid back, easy going kid, it wasn’t possible to be mad at him when he flubbed.

The author in more innocent times

For me the most salient event regarding Steve at Saint Margaret’s School was not the band. Years earlier Steve and I had been in the same kindergarten class, Helen Maloney’s downstairs half-day afternoon session. I was a big cry baby. At first I cried every day, wouldn’t let go of my Mother. We all recognized our seats by the little gummed label animal stickers on the backs of our chairs. Mine was a deer. I don’t know what Steve’s was.

The social event of the 1957 school year in kindergarten was Steve Zdep’s fifth birthday party. Steve’s Mother Edy made sure of that. I remember it mainly because he was the only kid who celebrated his birthday in school that year. There was a big chocolate sheet cake. I don’t remember any presents, in fact, I don’t remember much else about the event other than the cake. After kindergarten Steve and I were still classmates, but never in the same home room again. That’s how it went— separated at cake.

Now that Steve Zdep is dead, the world will never be quite the same. Of course, this is true for every human life. With each passing year the obituaries roll in as more and more of the people I grew up with slide down death’s trombone, like in a funeral march from Tremé, to join Steve in the Great Hereafter. It’s not that I object to death, railing against the inequities of human mortality. I know what’s coming and I assume it ain’t gonna be fun. But I do recognize that there is some sort of balance in the universe. I know this because of Steve Zdep. He may have been a middling trombonist, but he was a good dentist, proven by the fact that his son, Steven R. Zdep, is also a dentist. Just as my kids, Maya, Chris, and Luco, are all in Art and Design. What goes around.

So, I’ve survived my trombone-playing kindergarten-birthday-party-celebrating former-grammar-and-high-school-non-home-room-classmate. One can only hope for a legacy half as good.

David Stairs is the founding editor of the Design-Altruism-Project.

Posted in Popular Culture | Comments Off on Death’s Trombone

Have Yourself a Merry Little Covid

December 9th, 2020

David Stairs

With states reporting record numbers of infections, there is no doubt that this Christmas season will be one many will find hard to forget. The malls and retail centers we so precipitously abandoned way back in March do not have the same attraction of earlier years. Since Covid is THE story of 2020, even overshadowing the presidential election, we’ve scrounged up a few holiday suggestions for that extra special Christmas 2020 memento of the years’ most familiar meme.

A “Clovid” orange

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