ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of some of the main obstacles to change; various extrinsic and intrinsic avenues for effecting change are then considered. Systemic conventions that characterize our current, evidently unsustainable ways of living include: high levels of consumption; activities that hinder reflection; and forms of knowledge that intensify ideas of technological progress and encourage consumption. The chapter examines some of the more prominent extrinsic avenues before exploring in more detail the less discussed intrinsic avenues for change. In philosophy, silence can be regarded as the antithesis to logic and in aesthetics it frees us from the limitations imposed by interpretation, which places critical judgement between us and the work. The designer must also offer new kinds of post-materialist, post-consumerist propositional objects, which are not only aligned with and supportive of such a life, but also fitting for increasingly globalized, multicultural times.
