Abstract
This paper aims to contribute to the debate around the cultural dimension of the transitions by shedding a light on myths at the core of the modern civilizational project. The term myths is used to talk about stories that embody the values of the modern project, which became a certainty in people’s minds. Transitioning to a sustainable civilization entails that we create and adopt new storylines. In order to do so, designers must be story-listeners and recognize the myths that are hindering the transformation of our ways of life. The modern world is, arguably, a world with only one storyline that separates the world in two (e.g., developed and developing). I argue that designing new societal projects demands the collaboration between multiple cultures. In the modern world, however, we do not have an epistemology that enables such collaborations. Therefore, several myths of modernity need to be recognized and dispelled to allow for new epistemologies to emerge, so that we can purposefully create new stories for a new civilization.
Keywords
design for transitions; sustainability; modernity; southern epistemologies
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.468
Citation
Leitao, R. (2018) Recognizing and Overcoming the Myths of Modernity, in Storni, C., Leahy, K., McMahon, M., Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Design as a catalyst for change - DRS International Conference 2018, 25-28 June, Limerick, Ireland. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.468
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recognizing and Overcoming the Myths of Modernity
This paper aims to contribute to the debate around the cultural dimension of the transitions by shedding a light on myths at the core of the modern civilizational project. The term myths is used to talk about stories that embody the values of the modern project, which became a certainty in people’s minds. Transitioning to a sustainable civilization entails that we create and adopt new storylines. In order to do so, designers must be story-listeners and recognize the myths that are hindering the transformation of our ways of life. The modern world is, arguably, a world with only one storyline that separates the world in two (e.g., developed and developing). I argue that designing new societal projects demands the collaboration between multiple cultures. In the modern world, however, we do not have an epistemology that enables such collaborations. Therefore, several myths of modernity need to be recognized and dispelled to allow for new epistemologies to emerge, so that we can purposefully create new stories for a new civilization.