Will You Jump? … Lives on “Autopilot”

If I ask you to open the window on a fourth floor, go out, and jump – will you jump?

Mid term review in my architectural design studio. With 17 students presenting, similar patterns soon were becoming obvious: every single one of my students proposed their designs in the form of (mostly color-coded) boxes. Even now that I have to go over the images for grading purposes, I start to get confused which models belong to which student: they look that much alike (no offense to my students).

Yulia Lukito, a friend and a lecturer at Universitas Indonesia who came to be our guest critic for the day, wondered why students who had 17 different clients, 17 different studies and data could end up with very similar methods to represent their proposals. At some point she actually asked permission from one of the students to take the boxes apart, and crumpled them to make a point that the shape of these boxes are very confining as study models.

I started wondering how could this happenned. Then I remembered making a passing comment to one of my students about the way he represented his study which incorporated color-coded boxes. I told him that to be consistent, he should be using the same color-code in his future models so he could easily remember what that color represents. As it turned out, sixteen other students did exactly the same, when my point was about being consistent, not to specifically use color-coded boxes.

Upon reflection of the review, I asked my students: “If I ask you to open the window, go out, and jump, will you jump?” They all looked at me as if I had gone mad. But within a few seconds, some started to smile, and said “Of course not!” I asked them again “Why not?” Then one responded, “But we’ll die!” So now they’re thinking …

Here’s a quote:

“Most people, most of the time, do not think of themselves as reflexively responding to complex signals and cues …, they mostly operate on ‘autopilot’. This socially skilled but unreflective reproduction of practices, norms, and values [are what Pierre] Bourdieu [a sociologist] refers to as the Doxa or ‘doxic experience’.
Simon Parker, “Urban Theory and the Urban Experience”, Routledge, 2004: 143.

Think! … Even when your life is not threatened by death.