Came across a tweet by a respected TV journalist today:
r day should be a celebration of creative genius of india, not of armed forces might. fewer tanks, more music. gnight
I have heard people cribbing and providing their alternatives in the past also. “We should not spend money on games, the same could be used for the poor”, “why do film stars get awards, they should be given to intellectuals” and so on.
Mostly we rant about why we shouldn’t do the things that are happening and why we should shift our attention, money, focus to something else. It seems as though magically by doing that we would solve the seemingly bigger problems. How I wish it was so easy. How I wish that poverty would be eroded by not spending the money on games but by giving money to the poor.
Unfortunately it’s usually never a case of EITHER OR but almost always a case of AND. We must have games AND solve our poverty problems, the Republic Day must be a celebration of Armed forces might AND creative genius of India, awards must be given to intellectuals AND film stars.
Do you see yourself using Or in your workplace or are you using AND? Using AND can give shape to ideas and your suggestions stand a better chance of being accepted.
I agree that comments about spending money, time and resources on one favorite cause rather than another you don't care about are usually not very productive. I think part of the problem is that people don't know how to go about seriously working on the solutions to problems.
We are advocating teaching people how to solve real-world problems by including Design Education in K-12 school programs. People need to learn "Ideation" (how to identify and clarify a design problem); "Visualization" (how to generate many possible solutions); "Prototyping" (how to test ideas by modeling and prototyping possible solutions); and "Implementation" (how to produce, present and implement real-world solutions). http://andDESIGNmagazine.blogspot.com