Power in Polarity?

Alastair reached out to Andrea because he has spent years studying polarities and wanted to discuss this with her, and what a conversation! Alastair is an award-winning designer and in this conversation, he and Andrea investigate the influential role of polarity and paradox in our lives and creations. They discuss how engaging with seemingly contradictory elements—from religious texts to marketing campaigns like Michael Jordan's Nike ad and the original VW Beetle—can enhance our understanding and spark creativity. The dialogue covers a spectrum of topics, including design strategies of companies like Airbnb, the impact of extreme sports, and the importance of provocative methods to inspire deep thought and meaningful change. Discover how embracing the tension of opposites can lead to a richer human experience and innovative design solutions. #paradox #power #polarity #loveandphilosophy #andreahiott #alastairduckworth 00:00 Introduction to Paradox and Design 01:05 Exploring Polarities in Life and Design 01:57 Welcome to Love and Philosophy 02:44 Introducing Alastair and the Topic of Polarity 03:53 Understanding Polarity in Emotional and Mental Landscapes 07:02 The Concept of Dichotomy and Paradox 10:30 Alastair's Journey into Polarity and Design 15:56 The Role of Paradox in Advertising and Design 25:13 Defining Polarity and Its Importance 33:42 The Creative Process and the Golden Mean 36:15 Balancing Extremes: Transforming Virtues 37:31 Philosophical Reflections: Stoicism and Buddhism 39:47 Freedom and Constraint: A Dynamic Process 44:47 Belonging Anywhere: The Airbnb Example 54:39 Designing with Polarities: Practical Applications 59:16 The Role of Authenticity and Intention in Branding 01:00:17 Embracing Extremes: Positive Polarization 01:09:05 The Practice of Holding Opposites 01:15:10 Meaning First: A New Approach to Design Alastair Duckworth is an award-winning designer based in London, UK. He has spent the last two decades exploring the ancient idea of the coincidence of opposites, finding practical ways for people to apply it to their life and work. Find out more at TheGoldenExtremes.com. Watch the video introduction: https://youtu.be/oHlBZLAzplo Building a brand and need help? Visit TheGoldenExtremes.com/branding. Video introduction: https://youtu.be/z7H8kClqVls

TRANSCRIPT

Power in Polarity

Alastair Duckworth: [00:00:00] I found that the sort of things that didn't make sense in religious writing and experience were the ones that really appealed to me. And I couldn't work out why that was. And then at the same time, I was finding the same thing in design, that the pieces of work that really resonated with me were the ones that seemed to not make sense on some level, seemed to contradict themselves.

if something's seemingly contradictory or paradoxical, it gets your attention.

And so you'll look at it if it doesn't, if it, if it seems to not resolve itself, that will get your attention.

if you can get to that point where you've found the paradox, you've actually got the point of where something is meaningful and valuable.

 when you find out how the opposites relate, it's kind of like a a small little moment of enlightenment.

And it's just an inherently pleasurable experience of that. Being a little bit more alive.

All the energy and all the, the, the, the life is, is at the extremes.

the extremes actually sort of cross fertilize each other and, and lift each other up into something [00:01:00] else.

You can expand what it means to be a human being.

I do think polarities are real.

As in, I do think they're a

part of,

of life, the universe and everything.

we want to have as much polarization as possible, because if you have genuine polarization, you partake of both values of either end of the spectrum. And what keeps them healthy is that they have that underlying unity

there is a good way of being polarized.

There is a good way of being extreme. Uh, it's just not the way that we've come to think about it.

Andrea Hiott: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to love and philosophy.

Sometimes people. reach out to me after they hear a show and I love it when they do. Sometimes they just want to tell me a quote or a book or an idea. That it brought up for them. Which is really very much appreciated. I have to say. Uh, in this case, I think Alastair heard another interview I'd given for someone else.

And then he found my show and he heard, saw this word dichotomy. Beyond academy. [00:02:00] Paradox. Those are words I. Work through a lot with the idea of navigability and the philosophy I'm working on. So they come up a lot in the show. And he's working on something similar, although he focuses on the idea of polarity more, which is very connected to all dichotomy in. Paradox.

And it's interesting to explore the differences there. So we had this great conversation together. About that in exploration of that. And

I wanted to share it with you.

It's not like an interview. Really. It's more just a conversation of two people who care about a particular subject and are trying to understand how each other sees that subject. So in that spirit today, we have this controversial idea about polarity being a good thing. Now that doesn't strike me in a positive way. And to say, polarity is good. When we live in a world where everything is so polarized. And that's the kind of language we use to talk about these. Difficult challenges where people seem just to embody irreconcilable. [00:03:00] Differences. But that's kind of the point that it doesn't strike me in a positive way. There's some discomfort there that opens up a possibility to learn something. And what we might learn. Is that polarity within itself might not be the bad thing, so this conversation is a bit about that, that we seem to think of polarity as meaning opposition or dichotomy.

And actually there's another way of thinking about it, which is just to think of it as too or three or four, it doesn't even have to be two, but just different positions. Which are far away relative to where you stand so. From your position from wherever you are right now, for example, in your central wonderful embodiedness. And I mean that in a physical way, but also of course, in your mental and emotional landscape, your relational landscape. We can measure poles from there.

You can probably, you're the only one who can, but for example, you could sort of look. Physically what's the farther [00:04:00] side of the world from where you are right now in two different directions or four different directions. And those would be poles, right? That would be sort of the farthest point.

And two of those could be said to be, The farthest from one another relative to where you're standing right now. And we can also do that in emotional and mental landscapes because we could measure where we are right now, relative to the parameters of our individual emotional and mental experiences over time. Each of us over our lifetime have had different emotional mental, relational, physical experiences. And. We can all think of extremes of those and maybe where we are right now, relative to that. So it can be useful. But it's only useful, at least as far as I see it. If we are really careful. And we understand when we're doing that, we're only doing a kind of measurement. When I'm looking at my life that way, I'm just trying to understand it. I'm not. Actually able to kind of take in all of my [00:05:00] life. And all of the amazing expansive complicated stuff like just by using these kinds of poles, however, it can be helpful and it could also be helpful. If I want to try to connect with someone and understand what they've been going through.

Of course, I can't take my life. And map it onto theirs because we've all had really different paths. But maybe I can try to share certain polarities. That I experienced and see you how those fit with theirs. Something like that, taking in the expansiveness, realizing

the real self of me and anyone else you, anyone that we come into contact could, can never be measured in this way. At least not measured fully. Of course we take these little measurements, but that doesn't mean we've measured a life. So it's a big difference between taking measurements to try to understand ourselves and. One another versus thinking we've got the measurement or a measurement. of an entire life. Um, and also that like, I can't assume everyone else has had the same kind of [00:06:00] extremes and polarities when I'm discussing all of this with them. Which I think is really hard not to do, not to just assume everyone we're talking to has had a kind of similar experience as us. But instead, we could think of those as bridges or ways to maybe understand another person's life and see where their paths and polarities are different from ours or what, what we share in common. And that could be a really enriching process if it's done with. Care and realization and understanding that it's a thought experiment. Which is also a bodily experiment, of course, but any case it's not the same thing as dichotomy.

Dichotomy is a word that literally means to cut in half. To cut something into two parts to sever it. It's a violence in a way. So separating. Two parts of a whole, which. I'm not, we could argue about whether that's even possible, but of course it's understandable as possible. You could cut something in half, literally in this conversation.

I think if we talk about trying to cut a magnet in half. So you sorta lose the magnet, but at any case to notice polarity [00:07:00] is to hold the paradox, not to cut something in half. It's not to take two things out of one. Instead it's to kind of hold those together. And what seemed like opposites, let them be and a kind of feel the wholeness, so to speak.

So that's what Alistair and I talk about here. From his unique perspective. On design.

alastair is an award-winning designer and he actually sees polarity as a key. To creating a valuable brand campaign or a valuable advertising campaign. He's developed a way of thinking through it.

He's in the middle of developing it even more. I'll let you listen to us and look at some of the links to his work to understand it more, but it's very fascinating. He's really thought through this idea of design and. How polarity becomes almost the valuable thing. Within that practice, if it's looked at from a certain way.

So we had a really delightful conversation about it. And we talk about the potency of paradox, [00:08:00] which again, isn't dichotomy necessarily. Going beyond dichotomy is holding the paradox. I like to say. And here we talk about how paradox. Draws us in, you know, it sort of alerts us to focus on what matters. And sit with it, not try to resolve it, but understand it. See it. Notice it.

And we have to talk about. Different kinds of design. And as we talk about Michael Jordan, we talk about Airbnb ads. What they're trying to do. We talk about the original beetle. And lots more. So it's a wonderful conversation. I hope you enjoy this journey and I hope wherever you are out there making your way. You're feeling good today. Keep on keeping on. As my dad likes to say. You'll find a couple of videos that Alastair made. And some other links to his work in the show notes. And if you want to help. Love and philosophy or support it in any way. There's many opportunities. And it really helps. So thanks for being here. Lots of love to you and hope you enjoy this. [00:09:00] Okay, so we're just meeting for the first time. I just hit record. We had a few little sentences to each other, but I'm not even sure if I say your name right. Is it Alistair? That

Alastair Duckworth: is correct. Um, And your surname, Andrea. Hyatt. Hyatt. So I came across your video with Ian McGilchrist recently, that was the first time I'd come across you.

And then I went to your your YouTube page and saw that you had a whole, your YouTube channel was Beyond Dichotomies, and I was just curious how you got onto that subject.

Andrea Hiott: Oh, how I got onto it?

Alastair Duckworth: Yeah. Yeah. Or how, how that became a subject that was of such interest to you. Speak to loads and loads of people about it.

Andrea Hiott: I mean, there's a lot of different reasons, but [00:10:00] two that come to mind. I moved a lot as a kid, so I saw a lot of things that seemed opposite, but weren't really opposite. And so I was always trying to understand it in different, at different ways. in my family, but also in the schools I went to and, and things like that.

For example, you might go to one school and something is cool. And at the next school, the opposite is cool. And but these similar patterns of the way things changed. I mean, I remember thinking about it back then. And then maybe because of that in part and other things, I studied Hegel in my first philosophy degree in this dialectic off Haven Miltmore, this, uh, it really struck me the, I don't know if you've read Hegel in your.

Alastair Duckworth: And not, I've read sort of sections of him, and pieces and quotes in various places. But you don't have to read him. I

Andrea Hiott: mean, of course not. But there's something in there. I mean, it's usually called something like a dialectic or, or talked about as opposites that reconcile. But I think when you read it, it's, [00:11:00] uh, an illustration of something maybe closer to what you're talking about.

Although I only watched your two videos that you sent me, but I think we'll get into it. But that it's not It's more a pattern and a process than it is that there's one thing and another that are opposites that then do something like, you know, there's not this dualistic conception. And so that, that's probably what started it.

And then, I mean, from there, there's been tons of stuff that I've studied. Just, it intrigues me that there is this pattern that I've sensed of something kind of presenting itself to itself. Only to realize it's not itself. It's something like this kind of, it's very hard to talk about in words, but I've, that's what I've been trying to do.

So this is, this is beyond dichotomy. Like, how do we discuss that? So what about you? How did you get on polarity? And is that the same thing?

Alastair Duckworth: Uh,

Audio Only - All Participants: I think,

Alastair Duckworth: I mean, it's whether it's exactly the same, it's certainly in the same ballpark. I was, when I was at university, so I studied design, uh, graph [00:12:00] design. And the thing I was trying to get to the bottom of at the time was, What makes a good piece of design?

Is there something consistent across all, all, all pieces of design that we say is good? So that was one thing I was trying to do. And then the other thing I was trying to, trying to understand spiritual or religious experience. So what makes, what makes a, uh, a deep or authentic religious experience?

Why were

Andrea Hiott: you trying to understand these two things? Were they connected at all or? It's,

Alastair Duckworth: So I, I come from a reli, a religious background. Uh, I guess at the age of 18 you are at the beginning of adulthood and you're beginning to think, how does everything that I grew up with. fit into the person I want to be.

Andrea Hiott: Was it kind of imposed on you or it was just like you just grew up in it and didn't know any difference? And,

Alastair Duckworth: I, so I have a, I have a, I come from a Christian family. And so that was the world I knew I'd known in, I had enough experience of life that the, that my community wasn't exactly the same as necessarily the [00:13:00] world outside of it.

So just going to school, you have that experience that. There's quite a jar there, but as a kid, you're not necessarily sure exactly why that's going on. But then as you become an adult, you become conscious enough of your past experiences to begin to think, Okay, how do I reconcile these things?

Audio Only - All Participants: Yeah.

Alastair Duckworth: And then I, I've been quite good at art at school.

Design seemed an obvious direction to go in. And so I have this sort of very commercial form of art in the sense, in the sense of design. And then this sort of trying to reconcile sort of spiritual experience. And so I had these sort of, I had these disparate parts of myself that I was trying to put together, uh, and I was trying to find some way.

There were kind of two problems I was trying to solve at the same time. And I had this strange realization at some point that, They have the sort of, the answer, if not the same, was very similar to both of them, that involved some form of paradox. So I was reading Pascal, and a lot of his language is very paradoxical.

And I was, I was really drawn to it. And I was, I found that the sort of things that [00:14:00] didn't make sense in religious writing and experience were the ones that really appealed to me. And I couldn't work out why that was. And then at the same time, I was finding the same thing in design, that the pieces of work that really resonated with me were the ones that seemed to not make sense on some level, seemed to contradict themselves.

Can you

Andrea Hiott: give me an example? Because that's, uh, paradox two is another word that's been Something I come back to again and again, and that it expresses something, but it also expresses something beyond itself. So I wonder about the, like, I don't really understand the art. I guess, are you thinking more in design or cause I know you're doing branding and stuff now, are you already thinking about that?

Like what, what people, what gets the response, That maybe you want or that a customer wants or something. And that's kind of the thing that was paradoxical or was it that something is said to be beautiful, but it's actually the opposite or I don't know. Like,

Alastair Duckworth: I think there's certainly, if something's seemingly [00:15:00] contradictory or paradoxical, it gets your attention.

And so you'll look at it if it doesn't, if it, if it seems to not resolve itself, that will get your attention. But then I was finding that even in things that, Even beyond that, if a piece of work was a, was particularly good, it would, it would still retain that paradoxical feel even beyond the moment that you'd interact with it.

Andrea Hiott: I

Alastair Duckworth: mean, there's, there's one advert. So

Andrea Hiott: you mean it like wouldn't resolve itself.

Alastair Duckworth: It wouldn't resolve itself. It

Andrea Hiott: keeps drawing you back in kind of.

Alastair Duckworth: Yes, you get kind of get stuck with it, but it wouldn't be a bad sort of stuck, it would be a pleasing kind of stuff.

Andrea Hiott: I mean,

Alastair Duckworth: one that. One that's an advert that you'll resonate with is the old VW Beetle ads.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, I saw that in your video. Of course, I read a whole book about it, so, for similar reasons. I

Alastair Duckworth: mean, they're masterful at how they take something that's a negative and turn it into a positive.

Andrea Hiott: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Alastair Duckworth: But there was an old uh, Nike advert with Michael Jordan, where he's taught, he's walking down a corridor and he's, [00:16:00] he's saying again and again how he's failed in his career.

Audio Only - All Participants: Mm. He's

Alastair Duckworth: saying, I've missed all these shots. I've failed or lost all these games, et cetera, et cetera. And he says, I fail over and over and over and again, over and over again. And that's why I succeed. And so that gets your attention, but then it leaves you with that sort of strange problem of failing and succeeding.

They kind of are, they do go together and yet they don't, and, and so just this recognition that not only is it really great, it's a great way of getting someone's attention, but beyond that, it's actually a really good way, if you can find a paradox in something, it's actually a really good way of, of finding the value in the thing.

And so. It also becomes kind of an authentic way of doing advertising or brand communication. But if you can find, if you can get to that point where you've found the paradox, you've actually got the point of where something is meaningful and valuable. And so if you can then, if you can, if that's what you're selling, then it's, it seems to me to be the most authentic way of doing it.

Andrea Hiott: That's really interesting that that's where the value is. I [00:17:00] agree with you, but I also feel like I need to dig into it a little bit more from your point of view or, I mean, in a way it's, you've said attention a lot, it gets your attention. And of course this is something that we try to do in our, in our branding or even now.

I mean, I think of technology and how all technology is sort of built or social media kind of apps to get your attention. And it's almost become. Thank you. It's a different kind of get your attention maybe than I think what you're talking about. So,

Alastair Duckworth: yeah,

Andrea Hiott: go ahead.

Alastair Duckworth: There's often this disingenuous way of getting your attention.

I mean, I think that that's a loser's game.

Andrea Hiott: But what's the difference there? Because I think it's an important one. Because I think what draws me to Paradox and what it draws me to thinking about all these themes is that it, It's extended, it's like, that's why the beyond dichotomy, it's extending me or what I think of as myself beyond what I thought of as myself, and that's the weird paradox of it.

Whereas the other kind of attention that I was just talking about where something takes [00:18:00] your attention but you're not There's not an extension. There's a, there's a narrowing aura. Yes. It almost, it's almost kind of know there's this feeling of collapsing or something, or press pressurization or something like that.

Alastair Duckworth: Yeah. It kind of hijacks you and then you realize, well, I, I think a lot of the time you can, you can make a contradiction that that just has no good resolution. And so you can, you can, you can present a message to someone that just doesn't gel in any way. So it, it sort of, it, it, uh, it, it sort of upsets your rational mind.

But then there's nothing beyond that. And so it gets, it gets you looking, but then afterwards, well, it, it makes you, it makes you quite frustrated. So it's not, it sort

Andrea Hiott: of disturbs you or something, or

Alastair Duckworth: it irritates you. You think why that company had no right to get my attention like that. They got my attention, but that was all they were trying to do.

There's nothing beyond that. But I think when, when paradox is used really well, it's the, the, the, the paradox is in the subject. And when that, when that [00:19:00] gets your attention, it's not something that's bolted on. It's not just hijacking you. It's actually present within the thing. And so you're just, you're hitting the outer edge of that paradox.

Andrea Hiott: And then it

Alastair Duckworth: draws you in more and more. Yeah,

Andrea Hiott: for me, it's almost like the process itself is, is, is unveiling something or

Alastair Duckworth: Yes.

Andrea Hiott: There's a kind of doubling that then you move beyond doubling. I just wrote something about this, which I'll have to share with you. Yeah, do. But yeah, there's, there's, there's a way in which it's.

It's not that it's in the thing, but it's, it's like, or for me, maybe for you, it's not that there's some kind of thing that's a contradiction that's in the thing, but somehow the way that you were interacting with it in a certain sense of awareness is that. pattern or movement of paradox or, or setting one, setting yourself against yourself or see, you know, even just the interaction with what is outside of you.

You think it's outside of you, but of course, as like, as Merleau Ponty would say, we're always, everything we touch [00:20:00] is touch, touching us, everything we see is see. So there's this, always this kind of, you're already part of the thing. And there's something about that that I think is really tied to this, the way we use the paradox or the contradiction to see that clearly, or like illuminate that, elucidate that.

I don't know if that connects to your

Alastair Duckworth: Well, let me, let me try something. So to go back to the, the, the Nike

Audio Only - All Participants: advert.

Alastair Duckworth: So when the, when you have the punchline essentially to the advert of I failed over and over again, and that is why I win.

Audio Only - All Participants: Is, is,

Alastair Duckworth: do we resonate with that, because that's something we know from our own experience is true, to some extent.

And it's kind of putting its finger, the advert's putting its finger, it's sort of articulating the, the sort of rational absurdity of that, and yet it's true. Is that, does that connect with what you're saying, that you, it's already in you, when you, and so, it tells you what you already know, in a sense. But just clears it, but both, both makes it clearer and shows you how bizarre [00:21:00] that is.

Does that, is that what you're getting at?

Andrea Hiott: Yes, but I, I think, like, just what I, what I, that ad for me would be that you're expecting a particular thing because you've, the regularities are that Michael Jordan is successful. That's what you've encountered up to that moment. And to hear him say that he's failed upsets that.

So that it's that movement against like, so you're moving in one direction, you're kind of have a expectation and then what you're offered is the kind of not the opposite of that. So you have to recalibrate and think about it. And then there's also just What I think you're getting at more too is that we all understand what it is to fail or to want success or this, this process.

So when there's a kind of also a connection with him that, Oh, he's failed too. So you have both of it, right? You have this kind of jolting awakening of attention, and then you also have this at the same time, this kind of, opening of a [00:22:00] connection between the two of you that you've shared something because who hasn't understood failure.

And so now you see that the most successful man by some standard has. And so there's both of those at once, I guess. I think with Think Small, it's a similar kind of turn. It's a, a keto or it's a kind of there's something, uh, about and you know, the energy used there that is really powerful, and that you see in a lot of different parts of life I think.

Alastair Duckworth: Yeah, very much so, I think. I do think there's an honesty about it as well, because when you find out how the opposites relate, it's kind of like a a small little moment of enlightenment. It's

not,

you don't feel, Oh, I've been tricked. You feel, Oh, I've seen something. What is that? What is that

Andrea Hiott: enlightenment?

Cause I think that's what I was trying to get out of, of it takes you out of yourself, but you're more yourself than you were, you know, you're, you're, you're present, but it's, it's done something for you. That's kind of given you a different [00:23:00] perception in a way. Yeah. Or a wider perception. I'm not sure what language to put on that.

Alastair Duckworth: I think you feel in your imagination, the coming together. of the paradox into a polarity. So, you have the, the paradox is, is your, your rational mind being upset by the polarity. So there's some deep truth there. Your rational mind can't deal with it, and so it turns into a paradox, or experiences a paradox.

And so, but it's, it's still at the same time, it does know that there's something true there. So it's like a, it's like an itch you can't scratch enough. And then, but that moment where your imagination joins the two and your rational, like your left brain kind of recognizes that, that it's gone as far as it can go and it has to kind of hand it over to the right brain.

The right brain has this moment where the two unite and then it creates a new whole, new thing. You sound very

Andrea Hiott: Hegelian, by the way, right now. Yeah,

Alastair Duckworth: okay. And then it kind of, you kind of have this moment of being slightly woken up, because everything, there's a sense of that [00:24:00] unity, but also the distinction between the unity, and you're just more, slightly more alive than you were a moment ago.

And it's just an inherently pleasurable experience of that. Being a little bit more alive. Yeah.

Andrea Hiott: Maybe we should talk about what you mean by polarity, because you just kind of said as if it's not paradox. So, and, and polarity is very important to your work. You're, you're, you're working on this new branding and educational platform or something.

Maybe you can tell me a little bit, but it, as I understood it from the intro videos that you sent me, it's very much about. A different idea of this polarity, but maybe you can define what you mean by that too. And

Alastair Duckworth: so I'm borrowing terms that I found elsewhere which I found useful to me. I've got, so polarity being a relationship, a creative relationship between opposites that you'd find in a magnet or positive and negative charge.

So these pairs of opposites that goes throughout the universe in their various different ways. So right

Andrea Hiott: there, you're, you're, you're kind of saying, okay, there are [00:25:00] such things as opposites. Yes, that exists and they're sort of that's so that's a kind of basic thing for you that you think there are Opposites are they the same opposites for everyone?

Do you think there's some kind of objective opposite? Very much so. So I

Alastair Duckworth: think the universe is constructed out of relationships between opposites. So whether that's, you know, whether that's North and South, positive, negative, male, female, masculine, feminine uh, light, dark, day, night, summer, winter, all those different things.

It seems that these are the sort of fundamental principles out of which everything comes.

Andrea Hiott: Okay. I would probably disagree with that, but we can come back to it. Brilliant.

Alastair Duckworth: Tell me. I just

Andrea Hiott: don't, I think we, we. As we develop and we do language, we, we learn language and all of these kinds of ways that we've developed, we need ways of communicating and we do put things from our perspective into this kind of oppositional way of thinking.

We, we do take extremes of a spectrum and [00:26:00] sort of say that they're opposites and it's actually very helpful, this binary kind of way. I mean, even our technologies is built on that. But I don't think this, that like my. Opposites are the same at every scale and nested level of life. And also what's opposites for me aren't really opposites when I look into them.

You can't really get to a point where there's a definite this and a definite that that are against each other. So for me, I'm always trying to unstick it a bit from, it's not that the world is somehow set up in oppositional things. But rather that, As humans in our development through our communication and language, due to this kind of pattern that we're talking about, right, that there is a way in which it feels like we're against something and resolved with something, against something and resolved with something.

That sort of patterning leads us to talk in opposites or arrange our language in opposites or dualisms.

Alastair Duckworth: Yes.

Andrea Hiott: And then we kind of take those as if that's the way it is, but I don't think that's actually the way it is. I think that's what we've [00:27:00] done to be able to understand this ongoing process that actually isn't oppositional.

But that sounds a bit different from what you were saying, but connect it.

Alastair Duckworth: I, I, so I distinguish between something being polarized and it being a dichotomy. So, so for me, a polarity is something that's. As both distinction and union at the same time, and so you couldn't you couldn't separate to the two poles of a magnet and and into two separate North and separate South, you wouldn't have a magnet anymore.

I mean the magnet, if you were to cut it in half, you just end up with two. And so in each of those situations I feel that there's a there's an implicit unity and a more explicit duality. And so I'm not, I'm certainly not separating. I'm not, I certainly don't see the world as made up of dualisms or dualities.

I don't know if that's closer to where you'd be, uh, in that. Yeah,

Andrea Hiott: I think it's more just this, like, I, I guess I'm wondering if you see it as, as, as relational. I mean, even the magnet is an interaction that would, it [00:28:00] would have different interactions depending on what context it was in, in terms of like, if we take it to the moon or something, I don't know.

But, so I guess it's just like, how, how do you see the context? It's actually to your first question that you asked when you were 18 or whatever, is there some kind of good art, or I'm not sure how you phased phrased it, like one kind of art that's right or good, you could correct me as to what you were really thinking for me, the answer to that question is yes, from each position at each kind of spatial temporal moment, but it's only a measurement and that's worthy of something, but you know, Yeah.

It's not like we can say, okay, here's good art and it's going to be good art for like ever. And it's good art from every position and all of this.

Alastair Duckworth: No, I completely agree that it's relational. And I, I suppose what I'm applying is it's just a model of reality. And so that model is never going to be how reality is.

And it's always going to be infinitely more complex than I can possibly imagine. And so it's just me trying to get a handle on some sort of principle that [00:29:00] seems to be operating there. And so it's more that when I'd approach a piece of art or a piece of design and Ah, that's good. I then think, okay, well, why is it good?

And then I'd find, whether I'd always find, but seemingly invariably, I'd find that there'd be some sort of tension between two different subject matters, which were, which were both distinct, in some, that appeared to be distinct from each other, that had some sort of union. And so that would be an A.

That'd be something that just seemed to work, and more definitely so in design and advertising, where things have to be a bit more simple and explicit, whereas art, it's, it's, by nature is more mysterious, and has to be, or ought to be, perhaps, but what about something like

Andrea Hiott: Bauhaus, or Rietveld, or

Alastair Duckworth: What

Andrea Hiott: about something like a Bauhaus kind of style or Rietveld or where, I mean, do you see a tension in something like that's so meant to be so designed so simplistically that [00:30:00] for me, it's almost like the, it's, it's meant to not so that you don't feel any of that polarity.

It's almost like trying to, to be a vacuum to polarity. So maybe it's a very

Alastair Duckworth: left brain thing. I don't know the Bauhaus creativity. But, but even something like, would it be comparable sort of Apple, Apple style of design? Yeah,

Andrea Hiott: it's coming from that same tradition, I guess. Yeah.

Alastair Duckworth: You've got something, you've got simplicity and complexity working together always.

And so you don't, you don't want a computer just to be simple. You want it to, you don't want it to be complicated. You want it to sort of mediate between or hold those two together. And so that it can do very complex things, but do it in a simpler way as possible. And that's how I feel that the value of say, uh, uh, a piece of Apple technology is that it's doing that particularly well, I mean, it's doing other things as well, it's.

It's managing to be both tech and human. So sort of mechanical and organic at the same time through the sort of particular [00:31:00] design features and. Uh, sensibility that's gone into it, but I didn't, I, Something like

Andrea Hiott: a chair, maybe like a, an Eames chair or something. Is that, would you say that's also doing that simple complex?

Alastair Duckworth: Maybe not simple complex. Understood something

Andrea Hiott: so well that it, you can make it look simple or something like that? Is it?

Alastair Duckworth: Well, you certainly want to use, you want it to do as, be as good as possible and what it's, it's, it, the thing it's trying to achieve, but with the minimum amount of effort. There's a, there's a saying from one of the uh, who's Abram Gaines, who did a lot of the World War II posters or World War I uh, post, uh, sort of propaganda war posters.

Oh, yeah, I

Andrea Hiott: don't know. I don't know those.

Alastair Duckworth: You probably, you probably recognize them if you saw them. Okay. He has this, uh, expression of maximum meaning, minimum means. And so you're trying to get across as much as possible with the least amount of elements. And I feel that you're trying to make as comfortable a chair as possible.

So comfort would be one [00:32:00] thing, but then the minimum amount of materials or the simplest use of materials. And so I think that that tension would be there for the designer thinking, because you could, you could just make a square box, but that wouldn't be nice to sit on. If you could have one piece of wood, but shape it in a particular way, like the Eames chair then you're, you're achieving that human comfort, comfortable, uh, side of the clarity, but also the, the, the material, minimum materials side.

And if I was to say, how could you make a better chair? My, my approach to doing that would be, well, how could I reduce the amount of materials I've got here, but still make it, but make it an even nicer chair to sit in. So achieve that, that human need even better.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. I think it's the same thing of it not being in the thing itself, but the process that of polarity that like the, if you're going to create the Eames chair, it's helpful to think in the polarities that you just described.

But, but I wouldn't say the chair itself is. [00:33:00] embodying that polarity so much? I mean, if any, but, but, but it doesn't actually matter because what you're talking about is the creative process, right? And, uh, and how, how we learn and education. And so that process is what you're, uh, talking about the polarity being, you're kind of rethinking it, right?

I think you, you mentioned Aristotle and this like golden mean. And so we have this, conception of there being opposites, right? Or there being these two extremes and then we go in the middle and that's like the right way. And there's many others, not just Aristotle, this kind of idea that you do the, you go in the middle and that's the safe zone.

And you're kind of saying, no, actually that's not how creativity happens. Well, I

Alastair Duckworth: don't think that's how anything happens. I think that's where things go to die. It's

Andrea Hiott: like stasis or something. Yeah, absolutely. Or the pendulum stops swinging.

Alastair Duckworth: Precisely. And that's safe in one sense, because it's not moving, but it's also dead.

No, I, I was sure, so I read [00:34:00] Aristotle's sort of section in his Nicomachean Ethics, I should never say where he talks about the golden mean. Or, no, I mean, he talks about the mean, later becomes the golden mean. And he's always, he's always talking about it. He's always talking about how to, how a virtuous act is always found through avoiding the either, either of the extremes, the, the too much or the too little.

And I was thinking, surely, surely he's not really saying that. But the more I looked into, into his writings, the more it seems that he is saying that you, you want to avoid extremes. And so you end up in a situation where, uh, I guess a tightrope is quite a good analogy, because on a tightrope you don't want to fall off one side, you don't want to fall off the other.

But the trouble is that, that is, with that, is that all the energy and all the, the, the, the life is, is at the extremes. And so, uh, and it's, one of, one of the things I found interesting was that, say, courage, He says that you don't want to be reckless, you don't want to be cowardly, you want to aim between the two.

But actually, if you, if [00:35:00] you put the two together, then taking necessary risk, if, as long as you do that, then if you're also safe, that won't be cowardly, it would just be sensible. And if you're safe and then you take risk, do what would otherwise be reckless. Then actually that becomes, that becomes a good risk to take.

So you're saying you

Andrea Hiott: don't have to choose between these or try to stay in the middle but you can have both at once? It's just how you're

Alastair Duckworth: You can have both at once and they also, they raise each other up. And so they transform each other into, into, into, into virtues in themselves. And so cowardice becomes actually, no, just self preservation and that's a really good thing.

And recklessness becomes, well, no, doing, doing something dangerous, but in a sensible way. And that's a really good thing. And so the extremes actually sort of cross fertilize each other and, and lift each other up into something else.

Andrea Hiott: That sounds like this Aafheb and, again, I mean, we started with Hegel, so of course, I'm now reading it through it.

Audio Only - All Participants: But I,

Andrea Hiott: I just like, just to push at it a little [00:36:00] bit, because I agree with this and I, I mean, this is, this is, This process is completely fascinating for me. And I haven't thought of it in design since I wrote the book, but when I was writing the book about Bill Bernbeck and DDB, I was thinking of it a lot because of course I was coming, I mean, that whole book is about this because you have this Volkswagen Beetle, which starts, you know, to me, it was a sign of two opposites.

You know, because I knew it as a summer of love and then suddenly I learned, oh, it had started in Hitler's Germany. And to me, it was like, how did this happen? So it was this whole process that motivated that book, let me just say but bracketing that, like, I do want to think about it a bit because as you're talking, I'm thinking about the Stoics, for example, or, or different, even some, uh, like Buddhist, Things are coming to mind and doubt and when we are in life and things are so can be such a struggle for us, like with these things when we're not just talking about them philosophically, but for example, we are feeling some [00:37:00] extreme sadness or extreme jealousy or anger, all these things that really frustrate us and hurt us or just someone's hurt us, right?

Then this balancing or this, this kind of what you call kind of deadening isn't actually deadening so much as getting, getting some poise away from all of that intensity, recalibrating, finding your poise. Yeah. How do you, how do you, is there a space where that's also good? You know, do you always want to be holding both at the same time and in this creative space that you're of polarity?

Alastair Duckworth: I mean, you, you could present that as another polarity in terms of being in the intensity and not being in the intensity. And that's what I mean

Andrea Hiott: by this as a kind of method, right? You could kind of apply it to anything if,

Alastair Duckworth: if,

Andrea Hiott: yeah,

Alastair Duckworth: that's what I found anyway.

Andrea Hiott: Right. But it's not, that's different than saying there's some kind of ontological like we can look at, we can, we can just kind of point to this in the world.

It's more [00:38:00] like this is a good way to understand this ongoing, ongoing world. Maybe not. I guess

Alastair Duckworth: I feel, I feel there is some objectivity to it.

Andrea Hiott: Okay.

Alastair Duckworth: But it's just a subject. I'd like to

Andrea Hiott: hear about that because I think I'm trying to get a bit to the other second question you had too about, about these, you know, God and these bigger, Questions, because that's a big question when you are talking about this, you know, it is because you have that that's built on a kind of a polarity that it's hard for me to see how you resolve it in this way that you're describing of go into the polarities.

Like, so I would like to, yeah, maybe we can move up into that a bit. But But you see it as in the world, it's really objective, this. I,

Alastair Duckworth: I do, I don't, I haven't looked at it. So, so a, a clarity that often comes up is the relationship between freedom and constraint, and how you need to have a certain amount of order, but also you need to be able to break that order, or [00:39:00] have something other than the order in order for things to be, Alive or healthy or good or whatever.

And you could say well, this is freedom something that's real Is it or is it just something that's in your mind? And to me freedom seems to be something that's kind of more real than the physical world In the sense that you might say love is more real than, than physical objects uh, and it, but then it seems that many of the things, what you just, what someone might think of objects in the physical world, in some sense, they have a reality to them that's beyond what's physical and so if you take an object, like, I don't know, a table, you can think of a table in a very sort of left brained way of sort of get a rational concept of a table.

As this, uh, but you can also go into it and think, actually, a table is a process of doing something. It's a dynamic idea. And the table is always, at one point, it's providing, it's lifting up off the ground. It's also, uh, stabilizing and providing a surface for things to be on, and that is an ongoing thing that it's doing.

And so there's a sense in which [00:40:00] there's the physical table. I'm probably using all the wrong terms. I'm probably making a mess of this as I try and explore it. But

Audio Only - All Participants: It's

Alastair Duckworth: very abstract, and there's a physical reality that you can go to with your senses, but then there's something that's beyond that that's more real than the actual table, which is the sort of dynamic process of the table.

And so I suppose I feel that polarities get into that realm where you're going. And very often, polarities, they don't have that sort of physical object level of reality to them. But they don't, they certainly don't have a, a paradox would be the sort of concept version of them, where it just seems like that doesn't make sense.

That's illogical. They don't have a physical object in the world that you can attach them to sometimes, but they do exist at that level of living dynamic idea. And so like freedom and constraints seem to be a living principle that goes through everything. And so it has an objectivity to it. It's present in everything but you couldn't say there it is, that's an object, that's a thing that [00:41:00] you can look at Is that getting any way towards tackling your question about Well,

Andrea Hiott: so this freedom constraint thing is also something I've thought a lot about, especially in that same book, because You know, even just looking at the politics of the time and it's all about this different balance between being constrained or being told what to do or yeah, we won't go into the politics or, or, or freedom.

And Yeah. I guess what I would say now, just after hearing what you said is, I would say that the freedom or the constraint is a measurement of this ongoing process. So you, you, you've brought up the brain in this left right way of thinking again. So if I try to put it in that sense, like the ongoing process would be maybe more what you mean by the right brains kind of, or that, that, that.

that way in which it is just this ongoing process. But then we do impose some kind of order on that in order to communicate about it and understand like the table, right? So we call it a table and there's [00:42:00] all this stuff, but that stuff is real, but it's not, it's not, it's not more real or less real or any of that, but it's, it's a form of communication that Is meaningful in the moment that it's being used for the people that are using it.

But it doesn't like necessarily, it can change and, uh, it's not it's, it's not like a part of the table in the sense of that you can go look at it with a microscope. But it is part of our. Interaction with each other and the table, just in the sense that it's, it's this kind of, it's this patterning, you know, that's what language is to this patterning that we've developed in order to have the space where we can communicate about it.

So we create the space of something like constraints with language or regularities.

Audio Only - All Participants: Yeah, this

Andrea Hiott: is what a table is so that we can talk about it. But of course, when you look in time and space, it's all one ongoing, uh, process that can be looked at from many different scales and so on. So I [00:43:00] guess to try to think about this like polarity, I think, I feel like you're using it in a practical way.

Like for you, it's about Or, or maybe I'm wrong. Is it about, that's why I brought up the religion thing too. Is it about, is it a, is it a portal for you to experience that world without the names and without the constraints? Or is it a way for you to start to put some order on it and notice the patterns and, Create something maybe in that kind of space or both.

I mean, probably both if we're talking about Paradox here. But,

Alastair Duckworth: An example I like from, from branding, which might help. Me to communicate what's what I think goes on. So the company Airbnb they're from, from one, from one angle. Uh, they're producing, they, they, they're a tech platform that connects lots of different hosts from around the world so that [00:44:00] people can go and travel to physical properties and state them.

But what they, that they've sort of drilled down to what they're all about. And they describe that as helping people to belong anywhere. And actually everything that they do is trying to reach in one direction to anywhere so that they'll take you anywhere in the world. So that, and so they're always going about the exciting and, and, uh, varies different properties that you can go and stay in, but they're also trying to have build, they're trying to work with hosts in order to.

Uh, in order that travelers, tourists can feel that when they go to these places, they, they have some sense of belonging. And so these are two ideas which, what there's a, there's some sort of objectivity to them. And that happens to also be the value of what they're, what the, the core of the value of their company.

Is is is is bringing is is pushing and also pulling these opposites together and making those manifest in every [00:45:00] possible place that they they operate. And so whether that could be in a at a particular, uh, destination, they're thinking, okay, how do how do we how do we pull these ideas together? It could be on the website that they're building.

How do we pull these ideas together? So that we're showing a range of different things, but also making feel like that people feel like they would belong there if they went there. And so they've kind of hit upon this thing that's beyond words, although they're summing it up with words because the paradox that comes out of that is very good for sort of creating that sort of jarring, attention grabbing quality.

They're, they're hitting upon something that's subjective, that's beyond words that happens to also be the, the source of the value of everything that they do. So I dunno if that's getting

Andrea Hiott: Mm-Hmm. , I mean, these words are tricky for philosopher objective, for example. But instead of having some kind of philosophical debate about it, I think I know what you, what you're saying.

It's not

Alastair Duckworth: polycystic. It's not, it's not. Yeah. So the ideas of belong, it's

Andrea Hiott: shared. It's a, it's connected and shared or something. [00:46:00]

Alastair Duckworth: It's real. Yeah. Yeah, no, I don't know. There's something real about it. There's something that's real that they are manifesting. Something real that happens to be that relationship between these opposite forces.

Andrea Hiott: I think you're, it's, yeah, I agree with you. I'm just Pulling it out a bit because I'm not like belonging and belonging and being anywhere. Those to me, it don't seem like the polarities or the opposites. It's more that we've our development up to this point. We've, we think of home as one static place.

So what I see happening is that. And again, this is different according to different cultures. I lived in Mongolia for a long time and there's a lot, where a lot of nomadic people still there and this is, would be different for them. But from my perspective, right, I grew up sort of thinking home is one place.

It's, it's static. And of course we moved a lot. So that was disruptive. in that way. It was unusual and disruptive to that. In the same way that I think you're [00:47:00] talking about home anywhere, belonging anywhere, sounds disruptive, but it's only, it's not that home and belonging anywhere, or belonging and being anywhere are disruptive, it's that the orientation with which we've, Developed in the world is opposing to what they're presenting to us.

So they're presenting to us, you can be, belong anywhere. Whereas we've thought, we only, we have one home and you, you, you belong there. And it feels, yeah, it's so that for me is more that process that of, Doubling or dialectic or polarity or paradox, all those mean different things, but do you see what I mean?

So I'm agreeing with you, but it just, I think I'm putting it in a different, yeah, maybe.

Alastair Duckworth: I suppose that they're in their situation, they're trying, they're not, they can't provide you a home. And so they're trying to find the most appropriate words to capture as quickly as possible. Something that they can own and market and all that sort of thing.

I suppose due to the nature of being a [00:48:00] human. You are constrained by physical space and location, all these different things, and wherever, and if you want to belong, you can't be, you can't build, you can't spread yourself out in all kinds of different directions. And so if you're always traveling around, it's very hard to belong anywhere.

Well, it is, sorry, it's very hard to belong. And so they, they, they're finding a, they found a, uh, a tension in human experience that we all experience to some degree. But it seems to be, it's an, it's just, there's an objectivity to that subjective, subjective experience that we all participate in. that you can't, the more spread out you are as a person, the less, the harder it's going to be to have that sense of really having a home or really belonging somewhere.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, I, I, I, I think of meditative practices [00:49:00] or what's that?

Alastair Duckworth: Am I missing, uh, am I just, uh, missing your point?

Andrea Hiott: No, no, no, no. We're just discussing it. It's just interesting to, to look at it from different levels. But I, I think, as you were talking, I was thinking about, well, now, and we move so much. And I told you I moved a lot as a kid.

 And you, you learn how to belong. Belonging becomes, uh, an orientation that doesn't depend on the external circumstances because that's your reality. And more and more people, I think, are having to figure that out these days or even if we look at something like belonging to groups online which you could kind of be anywhere.

So there's a lot of different ways we could look at all that. And I think that's true about any of these, of these subjects, but that doesn't take away from. The same thing you brought up with the ad with Michael Jordan. I mean, these, this pattern I see in all the stuff that you brought up, that something is being presented against itself in a way.

And [00:50:00] that's that's where this creative tension is, or that's where, that's where the, the success is, I guess. And then the values. So you think it's actual.

Alastair Duckworth: It's, it's, there seems to be, it's where it's most alive, it's most real. It's most valuable. Well, and those things all seem to be different ways of looking at the same, or that it has the most it seems to be just all different facets of the same thing.

It's most true. Well, I guess,

Andrea Hiott: what do you think about authenticity, for example, or because again, I brought up that social, that. social media thing of trying to take our attention. And you can do the same thing then, right? You, you present someone with something that's completely like, that, that stops them in the way of the examples that you've given in the sense of feeling like a polarity.

And then you have them, and then, you know, something like haptics on the iPhone, right? I mean, in a way that was a kind of polar, a moment of, of polarity that then, then you just sort of, you can become to where your attention is just taken in a more like addictive [00:51:00] sense or that you're just fascinated. And I'm not sure that's kind of the same exact.

Alastair Duckworth: I think

Andrea Hiott: process, but

Alastair Duckworth: well, in terms of authenticity, I don't know if this is quite where you were thinking, but you can certainly get someone's attention in an inauthentic way and, and just use this idea to do that in a way that's, that's, that's disingenuous that has no care or concern for your audience.

Andrea Hiott: I guess when you were talking about how it's valuable, that's why I was like how this is where life is. This is where what matters is that you said something like that about, so that's where I was thinking about the authenticity because I, I agree, right? That's what we've been talking about. That's why I'm fascinated by the subject.

This, this is where this is life in a way. And this is where all the things we remember when we die happen in this space in a way. That's why, but, but. As you're saying, and I'll, I'll let you continue now, but you, you know, there is a way in which you can use polarities and paradox and all the stuff that we're talking about that isn't [00:52:00] alive and in that space and so on and so forth.

So that's why I was, I guess it's kind of like intention maybe then instead of authenticity, when you're a brand, when you're a creator, when you're making something, how much does it matter that you're aware of what effect you're trying to get? I guess.

Alastair Duckworth: I guess there's a major problem with how we do business and branding these days, which is that we just see people as consumers.

And so we're not trying to build, we're not trying to do what's good for them most of the time. We're trying to do what, what gets the highest return and watch, keep what keeps them coming back because there's some level of addiction, et cetera, et cetera. And so we don't, we don't do what is good. That's, that's not even considered part of the process.

It's simply a means to commercial end. And this is what's frightening about big tech companies offering amazing opportunities and services. We all know deep down that they don't have our good in mind. They don't care about us. And so I'm very idealistically trying to think, well, what if a business or brand were to do [00:53:00] real good?

What would it be doing? And so what it what it would be doing would be to find. The appropriate polarities within what it's what it's offering and find the best way to communicate that and serve that in a way that will connect with their customer rather than consumer. And build something of lasting value that continues to be of use and meaning for that person, makes them feel a little bit more alive in its small way, provides value for them in its small way, doesn't overreach and therefore try and turn them into an addict that just keeps returning.

Andrea Hiott: This is part of what your polarity branding or the, what you're trying to create.

Alastair Duckworth: Yes. I'm trying

Andrea Hiott: to get at that. You're coming at it from, what's your motivation there?

Alastair Duckworth: Well, my motivation is that I'm just, I would like to use design to do good in as much as that's possible. And so then [00:54:00] you have the question of what, what, what does it mean to do good?

What is good in that context? Uh, and so just drilling down into those things brought me to the point where I thought, well, behind a product or service or an organization, there are always these, these pairs of opposites and that that's what really people are wanting to participate in. And so in the Airbnb situation, a person wants to participate in the experience of belonging in an unusual place.

And if you bring together those, those, that uh, that recipe of ideas, then you make them that little bit more alive. And that's, that, you can do, you can do a genuine good to them in that sense. You can expand what it means to be a human being. And so that's, that's certainly a side of it. Another side of it is that one of the major problems working in design is that you have a clash of subjective, uh, Interests.

And so, for example, if I was to, uh, create a logo and it was red and I bring, present it to you and I say, I like red and you say, well, I like [00:55:00] blue. And then we can't agree because it's just your preference versus mine. And a lot of talk about a lot of talk about certainly art, but also design and sort of degraded into this just personal preference, we don't really believe there's anything.

There's any sort of objective principle to the rules of design or art. We just think it's whatever I happen to like. Yeah. And that creates a major problem. I mean, it completely devalues the process of design. So because if it's just what I happen to like, well, why is my preference any better than yours?

There's no, I can't be an expert in anything. And so that's, that's a problem. And so how do you, how do you get, how, how do you find the objective thing? And if the polarity is actually the, the, what lies behind the value of what you do. Well, then we can have a conversation about it because if we explore everything you're doing, what you're producing, what you're making, and we can find these pairs of offices, well then, and we can, and then we can sort of together work out which ones are the really important ones, then we can stop having subjective conversations so much.

We can say, but we can work together and [00:56:00] say, okay, what we're doing is we're trying to help people belong anywhere. So what would that look like? If we're building a web platform, what would that look like if we're helping a host to prepare their home in such a way that it would achieve that goal?

And so then together we can creatively solve the problem and we can have our different skills and our different objectives. But we can work together rather than against each other. And that's, this is so often what happens is that designers end up fighting their clients because, because they're playing the subjectivity game.

Which is everybody is extremely frustrating for everybody. And prevents you doing good work. And then I guess another, a final thing about it is that when you, when you, when you bring opposites together, it creates really interesting work. It creates the possibility of the sort of Nike Michael Jordan advert or the Think Small adverts, because you're thinking, okay, we have these, this polarity.

Of course, there is a unity with these things, but actually in order to have that unity, we have to [00:57:00] have the, also the distinction between the parts. You have to be able to say, uh, we're not just, if you want to talk about success. Then actually maybe talking about failure is a really good way of doing that.

And maybe we could really lean into failure in order to talk about success. Or if you really want to belong somewhere, you could talk about how to, how to make that very seemingly really unlikely or really difficult. And so, It just becomes a much more interesting process when you're dealing with the clarity rather than what you like and what I like, or even just a more sort of rational brief of we're trying to, uh, I don't know get as much attention as possible for this particular brand on this particular platform.

You, it feels like you're really getting down to the. The, the, the, the essence of things, the sort of first principles of things. I've rambled a great deal there. It

Andrea Hiott: was wonderful. I think that's what I was trying to ask about authenticity that you just explained that and I like, I like trying to imagine what it's like [00:58:00] being in the design studio or whatever, because I can completely see what you're saying of how it could just get about trying to please each other or trying to do what the client is going to think is cool.

Cool. And that's a completely different thing than, yeah, that the values and what's going to come out of it. So it's almost like, as you're describing, it sounds to me like a, it's a practice or a way to learn how to think about design. It's a, it's a cognitive practice that you're, you're building here and we should go into it a little more first.

I should say, cause we've been mentioning think small by DDB and the thing in case anyone who doesn't know, there was this kind of time when everyone was using giant big cars and it was like. you know, keep up with the Joneses and all the ads were these beautiful, huge cars, the bigger, the better. And then you had this ad I'm generalizing in an incredible way, but.

in terms of the patterns we've been talking about. Then you had this ad that was pretty much just white, like nothing and a little small car. And it said, think small. So not only did it go completely against what [00:59:00] everyone else was doing in advertising, it also spoke to the themes like what you were just describing.

It was much deeper. It was connecting to society. This was counter cultural era and stuff. So it had all that, what you were talking about. It was, you know, looking at the polarity and then making the most of it towards what people wanted at that time. Yeah. So I'll just, Like I just wanted to say that, but I want to get into the polarity a bit from your point of view, because I know we were talking about how it's not about temperance, it's not about the middle path and this side of it I'm not sure I understand yet from our conversation, because in the videos you kind of say, you know, there's, there's no, we worry about post truth, but really it's half truth, or we worry about like polarization, but what we need to do, you kind of just mentioned it a little bit, we need to really lean into it and go deep into the polarization, which can sound very dangerous, you know, if you're not coming at it from this place that we've been talking about.

So maybe you can talk about that a little bit, like, what, what's, what's that part of it?

Alastair Duckworth: Well, firstly, I'm trying to get someone's attention with that.

Andrea Hiott: Okay, so you're [01:00:00] doing your own method with that. I'm doing my own

Alastair Duckworth: method.

Andrea Hiott: I'm trying to get off people. That's very

Alastair Duckworth: smart. But in terms of polarization. So I do think polarities are real.

As in, I do think they're a

part of,

of life, the universe and everything. I, the way we use the term polarization, I don't think is actually quite right. Or at least it's come to mean something that it's, That's not technically right to the original term. And so if something is polarized, it means that it's, it's just like the north and south poles and magnets.

It's, it, it hasn't explicit duality, but an implicit unity. Whereas we've, what we've come to, what it means now is that. Things are just separated. Uh, so there's a, a, a duality there. And so I'm trying to, on one level, recapture that language. I'm also, I'm also making the most of the fact that it's got that new meaning or developed meaning, which is just pretty much wholly a negative thing.

So I'm [01:01:00] trying, I'm trying to break that sort of little bit of paradigm shift and saying, actually, no, we want to have as much polarization as possible, because if you have genuine polarization, Then you, then you, you partake of both values of either end of the spectrum. And what keeps them healthy is that they have that underlying unity and therefore they, they are not as, they're not trying to simply destroy, they're not trying to destroy each other, they constructively create each other.

And so, yeah, there's those two things going on of me, me getting attention using the perceived negative connotation. And then, but then also trying to redeem that, that, that expression. And I guess the same with extremism. I'm trying to say, need a positive form of extremism, because again, a

Andrea Hiott: statement.

Alastair Duckworth: I think, I mean, I think it's, I do think it's the only solution to the sort of negative forms of extremism we have, is that we can't, we've got to a situation where in so many ways, We, uh, society has, has, has, has separated into its extremes without having any [01:02:00] relationship. And the solution is not to find that moderate middle ground, because that has no life and energy.

There's nothing to aspire to in the middle apart. Again, you've got this problem of avoidance. You're trying to say, well, I'm not extreme left. I'm not extreme right. I, and so you, you, you build a, a, you create a position for yourself where you're just avoiding things. And so that's, that's very uninspiring.

Whereas if you could say, well, no, there's something right about that extreme direction. There's something right about the other extreme direction. It's just that they need to communicate with each other. And obviously that, of course, that's very idealistic, but I think the principle does work. I think that you can, if you can, there will be something right at either end.

As long, and again, you're back to the situation where it's either reckless or cowardice. Well, actually, no, if they talk to each other, one becomes necessarily risk taking and the other one becomes self preservation. And so they raise each other's game by being related. What was the other thing I was going to say?

I was just escaping my mind. Probably come back to me in a bit. [01:03:00] Well,

Andrea Hiott: when it comes back, I like it better when you talk about holding them both at once in the same space, rather than going into the extremes. Because to me, that sounds like we just become more in our silo or we just, whatever we were, we don't try to have.

Yeah. any middle ground in any way or use of that term, which can often just mean conversation or like sharing. I think of course, coming from the States of politics, right? And if you, there, this has been incredibly polarized in a sense of if you support one person or the other, it becomes very hard to even sit at the dinner table together as a family.

And so in that case, it's very hard for me to understand that. Going further into those extremes would be helpful unless everyone at that table had this understanding of what we're talking about now, and that most people don't, let's be honest.

Audio Only - All Participants: So,

Andrea Hiott: if everyone had this understanding that actually opposites aren't opposites and they all meet together and that we could [01:04:00] sort of explore We could go deep, lean in to what we're feeling and explore that and probably end up connecting with what we think is our opposite.

If we understood that sort of movement and that meditation, yeah, I would agree with you, but I don't think most people think through that. And not that they couldn't, but, and if you're not thinking through that, and you're just going to do what you said, which is golden extremism or go, you know, this going deeper into the polarization.

I don't see how that's actually what you're going to do anything positive in the way that you're describing. Does that make sense to you that it depends how you are thinking about how much you've understood this process?

Alastair Duckworth: Definitely. I guess there's two things there for me. One is is it a good thing to do objectively?

And I think, yes, it is. I think if you, to, to take the extremes and. So even if you can hold the relationship together to make them more extreme, uh, I think that's a good thing. If

Andrea Hiott: you're holding them in the same [01:05:00] space.

Alastair Duckworth: Absolutely. So, so.

Andrea Hiott: Which isn't what most people, that's, it's almost, that's almost goes the opposite of what we think of as, right?

Alastair Duckworth: So whether people can do it, I think that's another question. And so should people go to the extremes if they're not holding them together? No, because that would just be destructive. But I think because it is because, well, I believe it is the case that embracing both the extremes and pushing them more to the extremes at the same time is a good thing and is a true thing.

It is true that if you do that, I think things will get better. It's worth knowing that. And so if someone wants to, to, uh, be an extreme sports enthusiast, they're going to want to be pushing the risk as much as they possibly can. But in order to do that, they have to drive for safety, drive towards safety as much as they possibly can.

And knowing that's a really useful thing, because knowing that frees them up to be better at what they want to do. I think the, in terms of the, the, the, the, the conversation at table at the dinner table, if [01:06:00] people, I think a, a useful paradigm shift is that opposite things can both be true at the same time.

And so you could, you could kind of agree with each other that, well, my opinion, we completely disagree, but what I think is, but what I believe is true and what you believe is true, it's just that they're in conflict with each other. Of course, there's going to be degree of truth between the two of us but just to know that actually two opposite things can be true at the same time is a very, uh, helpful thing to know because then you can begin to think, okay, well, how can, how can this and this work together at once?

On the half truth thing, which was the thing that escaped my mind, that was something I got from uh, Whitehead, where he's often saying that he says a number of, a number of places that Uh, if half truths are treated as whole truths, it plays the devil in society. And so, when we take one side of the spectrum and say that is the thing then that, that, that is just a half truth.

Now it's very valuable because it is, it is true, but it's only half of the total truth. And so as long as you have both of those things, then you've got the whole, you've got the [01:07:00] full picture. And I do feel that a lot of the time, our, our problem with truth is that we've devolved into just lots of half truths.

And we don't, we've lost the ability to see two things to be true at the same time and therefore hold them together. And the solution, and, and the way to move beyond that is to firstly see that two things that are opposed can both be true. And then to think and to work out, well, how can, how can that happen?

And how can we put them back together? Without going straight to the middle and just being in the safe, moderate place. Where, which is where nothing, nothing is alive, nothing is exciting, uh, nothing's productive. Uh, and so it's me trying, it's, so I'm trying to do a number of things. I'm trying to, firstly I'm trying, I'm trying to work through that process, but also I'm trying to slightly upset people by presenting it in terms which are going to be a bit shocking.

in order to get attention because I'm a designer. And so therefore that's what I do.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. No, it's a, it's a, as, as we said, it's kind of an illustration of some of what we've been talking about. It's just, I do think we're talking about it [01:08:00] in wider terms than just design. And that's why I really think it's.

It needs, we need some nuance about using the word like extremism or polarity in that way of going deeper into it because yeah, I think it is about this practice, like through design for example, through what you're creating in terms of this practice of training, of Thought in a different way or that is a practice of, of learning how to hold the paradox or learning that the space already contains both halves, but there's never really only one half.

There's not one or not two. They're always co creating each other. That is like in a, in a way that's what I've been trying to do in my philosophy too. I'll, I'll send you this text. Like I, I think about it a lot and it's what I wrote my first thesis on with Hegel. And yeah. Because I really feel like that practice that, and it's why I think complex systems is so interesting, because we get past the linear and we, we learn how to hold what seem like opposites in the same space without them losing their potency.

Audio Only - All Participants: Yes, [01:09:00] precisely.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. But that is a practice that is, is really important to learn. And also to learn that That these opposing things are always changing and they're not static things. That's why I was pushing you about this objectivity because something can be shared and objective in the sense that you mean it without it being like it's not going to change, right?

Maybe at the dinner table, the dinner table is a shared space and if I and my parents or whoever are communicating, we're changing those halves, those whitehead half shrewds on all sides. And the space itself is changing. So this is not easy stuff, right? everyday people to kind of understand, but I think the more we talk about it and the more it becomes a natural understanding of this process the more it infuses things like our design or like the objects or the You know if if you're doing this in design from this place Then what you're doing is in a way giving that pattern to people You know, in their daily lives, which is a pattern we need, but not to go into [01:10:00] extremism in the one sense that could be very difficult, but rather to understand you hold the parts in the same way that, like, when you're sad, sometimes you just need to go deeper into that sadness, not push away from it and try to find a middle zone between happy and sad, because then you're going to just get right back into the sadness, so you got to sit with it, you got to look at it, what is it, and then you relax and surrender into it, and somehow it dissolves into its opposite, so to speak, right, or and that, that process is wonderful.

And I think that's what you're saying, hold them, go deeper into them. But I just, I push on it because some people might hear it like, okay, if you hate this person X, then hate them more, you know, and don't talk to them and like, stay away from them. And this is not the same thing.

Alastair Duckworth: No. Well, I'm certainly not saying that, but I'm, I guess I am, I'm willing to upset someone in order to have the conversation.

So just as, just as, uh, a good advert will jar you and make you think, what? I might irritate you. If it's doing that for a good reason, then arguably it's okay to [01:11:00] do that because the outcome is better than the initial feeling. And so that, that's very much, uh, the approach I'm taking. I'm certainly leveraging the negativity attached to these these terms and I'm trying to leverage it for a good reason to say, no, actually there is a good way of being polarized.

There is a good way of being extreme. Uh, it's just not the way that we've come to think about it. So I'm, I'm, I'm being provocative on purpose. Have

Andrea Hiott: you ever heard of this term edge work, where you sort of, it's used in a lot of different contexts, but you know, where you're, you're kind of doing what you're saying, you're, you're moving into the extreme get kind of getting right to the lip of, at the edge of what you've thought was the extreme and, and somehow in doing that, you know, if you're doing it in this conscious way of.

Understanding that you're doing it, not just like going to get completely drunk. Yeah. Because then you don't have to think anymore because that's a different kind of [01:12:00] extreme, right? That's not an awareness kind of extreme. Then somehow you're going to open up it's going to be disruptive in the, I think the way that you are pushing.

That's a good

Audio Only - All Participants: word. Yeah.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. Yeah. Positive

Audio Only - All Participants: disruption.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. Yeah. And I did think of it when I was listening to your, cause it's kind of at the end that you talk about that and I was like, ah, this is good. I think he's kind of trying to upset, you know,

Alastair Duckworth: because then you

Andrea Hiott: have to think about it more. Yeah.

Alastair Duckworth: Yeah, I think that's the aim. And also, I guess also I've got, it's only five minutes long and so therefore I'm sure I've not framed things in the best way and there's things missing and all that sort of thing. Yeah,

Andrea Hiott: you have a good voice by the way. Do you ever, I mean you could almost work as like a voiceover for video.

Alastair Duckworth: Uh, I think I've got a good microphone.

Andrea Hiott: Oh, yeah. No, I think it's your voice too. It sounds like the kind of voice that, you know, would be narrating documentaries or something. I don't know. I

Alastair Duckworth: mean, I'd be like everyone. I'm, I'm so used to hearing my voice recorded and then just squirming at the sound of it, just thinking how terrible it sounds.

[01:13:00] But I think that's a universal experience.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. I guess I want to hear what you want to do with, with this. Is it something you use in your everyday life as a designer now? Has it changed the way you do your work? Absolutely. I think you're writing a book or something or writing something. I'm, I'm,

Alastair Duckworth: I'm, I'm most of the way through a book.

I've been trying to find an agent and found that difficult. I think it's not a great time to be writing a book with all the artificial, uh, intelligence.

Andrea Hiott: Book writers. It's always a good time to be writing a book if you have something that people want to need or a message that's, I mean, it's just a transmission of, of perspective and we always need that.

Alastair Duckworth: I'm, at the moment I'm making a series of, of videos, sort of five minute videos that explore how you can apply that subject to tidying a room or, uh, going on holiday or building a relationship, that sort of thing. So kind of little, what again, uh, masquerading as very shallow life hacks, but actually, hopefully a [01:14:00] little bit deeper.

So just thinking how to apply that subject, the principle to lots of different things. Uh, it's, it's, it is something I use all the time in design. I mean, it's something that's, I just use all the time in life. I just, everything I'm, it's almost unconscious now that just approaching, laying a table in, in the back of my head, I'm thinking, okay, uh, beauty, one definition of beauty is, is unity and diversity.

So how do you, how do you make all the things on the table cohere as a whole? And yet all have their own individuality. And that's just, that's just in the back of my head, just going through. But, uh, all the time, it's just affecting my decisions. And I, it's just really fun to play with as well. Just finding a new sort of pair of opposites in a given situation, thinking, oh, okay, I've not thought of that one before.

How could I, how could I build that into my life? And I do really feel with it in a business context. It's something that's not really done. And I think there's a there's a [01:15:00] prevailing materialism across life in general, so that we don't think that values are real. We don't think meaning is real. And so if you can get get down, get down to the core of a business or service or product.

Uh, to the, to the way of meaning is the primary thing and work outwards from there. I think that's a good thing to do. And so, yeah, it's turning up in my life in a lot of different ways.

Andrea Hiott: Do you just sort of walk down the street and see, do you see the world differently too? Do you, do you, I mean, because these things we really do become our cognitive patterns like our,

Alastair Duckworth: That's it.

I can't remember what it's like not to do this. No,

Andrea Hiott: okay.

Alastair Duckworth: I'm stuck.

Andrea Hiott: I wonder what's going to be the opposite of that for you that's going to,

Alastair Duckworth: you

Andrea Hiott: know, this is very meta, so it's going to, you're going to have to keep compounding

Alastair Duckworth: on itself until I'm completely lost.

Andrea Hiott: No, I mean, I think it's, it's very creative opposition and this, yeah, this, this pattern, this, this way of being in the world can be [01:16:00] so.

people, the more ways we can help each other learn that to hold the space and hold the opposites, the better, I think. Yeah, because

Alastair Duckworth: it's very exciting doing it.

Andrea Hiott: It's exciting doing it. It opens you, you know, your sensuality, your perception, your capability for what you can handle in life. I mean, there's, it really is a practice that extends to help you.

I mean, I was talking about sadness and all this stuff, but you know, it's, it's, it's It helps you creatively in your work, I think, as you're showing with the design, of course in my work too, but you know, just in everyday life, the way that you can deal with things when they come, the, the meaning, which is what really matters for all of us, right, is this meaning, even we, we get lost, but it matters for that, doesn't it?

Alastair Duckworth: No, it turns everything on its head. So the meaning is the thing and everything else comes out of that. And I think that's, I think that's how we ought to approach everything is meaning first. [01:17:00] That's a

Andrea Hiott: good way to say it. It keeps you alert to that. To the meaning, not to the kind of, I'm thinking more about when you're, we're talking about the client where you're just trying to please each other instead of kind of getting focused on something like that, which is so easy to do.

This sort of practice does keep you aware of what actually matters is meaningful in whatever process you're going through, not only design. Yeah. So it's cool that you're doing it. And thanks for reaching out.

Alastair Duckworth: Yeah. Thanks so much for the conversation. It's been such, it's been great fun.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, it has been.

And uh, let me know, you know, what's going on. Keep, stay in touch and send me things other people can look at and find you through.

Alastair Duckworth: Yes, we'll do. And do send me that the paper you've written.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, I will actually it's a kind of like a little sub stack thing that i'm just starting so i'm just gonna Maybe i'll just add your email to it.

Is that okay?

Audio Only - All Participants: Yeah, brilliant

Andrea Hiott: And then you get it get the first one because it's actually about all the stuff we've been talking about in a way From a different perspective, but I would I would really love to hear what you think about

Alastair Duckworth: [01:18:00] it See your take on things.

Andrea Hiott: All right.

Alastair Duckworth: Thanks.

Andrea Hiott: Thanks

www.andreahiott.com

www.loveandphilosophy.com

These are conversations I’ve been having with scientists, artists, & philosophers to understand how our approach to life and cognition might address some of the urgent divides we face today. It started as part of my philosophical (academic) research in phenomenology and neuroscience whereby I elucidate the practice of holding the paradox when it comes to the philosophy and science of mind. By love and philosophy, I mean the people, passions, and ideas that move us, shape the trajectories of our lives, and co-create our wider social landscapes. Partly due to my trajectory in philosophy, embodied cognition, neuroscience & technology, I’m hoping to better observe binary distinctions in our academic & personal lives (science vs. spiritual, mental vs. physical, technological vs. biological). What positive roles have these structures played? How might rethinking these structures & their parameters open new paths & ecological potentials? The Substacks for those who want to go deeper: L & P: https://lovephilosophy.substack.com/