Evoking Humanness: 4 stories of humanity
This article is a welcoming speech note given to the new students of Archtiecture, Universit Putra Malaysia. the speech were deliverd online on the 26th of
September 2020. The video of the speech (slides presentation can be found here):
26/10/2020
Dear Students, welcome to the department. You are here with
dreams. And dreams are made of stories. It is nowhere to be found amongst the
current available atoms in the whole universe. The COVID 19 pushes everone to
find new perspectives on life, on economy, on society, on selves, on values. My
Name is Zaky Jaafar, the head of Department. I am welcoming you to the
department with this message. That you are here for a reason. You are here for
more than just getting information, more than just getting a certificate, more
than just getting the skills to be a future successsful architect. You are here
because you want to elevate your inner being to the highest achievable level
you can attain.
For this I need to tell you, you are more than who you think
you are. We have acepted your applications based on your grades, your cgpas,
your previous certificates. But we know you are more than that. You are a human
born with all the neceesary capacities to achieve the highest level you can be.
And that is to be the best ‘HUMAN’. Apart form your grades and certificates, each
of you are a human being, you have stoies, memories, sentiments, passions,
pains, fear, love, and a lot more. Dont forget that getting this far, you
have proven you have ALL the necessary tools to achieve the highest level you
can get.
We are in VUCA Times – VOLATILITY, UNCERTAINTY, COMPLEXITY
AND AMBIGUITY. People realise no single approach in education can solve our future
needs. We have advanced so much in technology as a species, that we have
arrived at IR4.0. Now people are looking at what is next. And lately, people
have identified, the next agenda in education is to focus on humanity. To focus
on the development of the human self.
This brings me to the first
story – alternative to humanity.
Cameron
Sinclair and Kate Stohr launched Architecture for Humanity (AFH) in April of
1999, seeing what haappened in post war Bosnia, they embarked on an effort to
prvde for the need of the displaced people. They managed to garner
helps from all over the world to help design schools and community facilites to
help the poor, the displaced people. But
then you have to ask, the other side of the coin. Is there an
architecture not for humanity? What was that all about? All this while
archtiecture are not for human? If you notice lately, the words humanity or
specifically humanitarian have really negative connotation to it. I mean when
we hear people talk about humanity, it is often a rallying cry for adressing
many crisis in humanity. When we hear Humanitarian effort, We often think of
all the helps you provide for people suffering from war, hunger, poverty, all
the crisis. Now you have to ask this question, why the term humanity is used
here. This is because I believe, the default systems lack the essence of
humanness. I want to conclude this first story with the proposition that the current
global civilisation is based on systems which are devoid of humanness. Otherwise the reactions would not
have the word humanity or humanitarian in it. Our Economy, our politics, our
law, our archtiecture, our engineerings, our medicine are based on systems
which have no essence of humanity in it. Now this is rather a radical
proposition, but i urge you to read on this. So I am tellling you that the approach
in UPM dept of architecture is to focus on humaneness in humanity. Remember
this keyword – “INSAN”.
So What is an INSAN? Our
third story. Consists of two stories. Listen to these two stories, side by side
Insan is the Malay (Derived from arabic) word on the essence
of human. We need to be particular of this term since the word humanity has
slightl different meaning these days. We all know what it means to be human,
but really, do we? Bicentennial man is the story of a robot with artificial
intelligence, who through 200 years, learned what does a human do, and in the
story, desires to be human. In the photo in the right is the Matrix, the story
of how a human CAN live, but with a artificial life story fed into his brain to
make him think he is a fully functioning human in a real world. Both stories
are unsetlling. Would you accept the robot as human? Or would you accept the
false story fed into Neo’s brain as a valid life? It brings us to the question
of what we meant by the word human.
We are of course physical, we have a biological suit, a body.
And we are also metaphysical, as being told by almost all religions and
spiritual systems in the world. Even people who don’t believe in god, believe
in a creative essence that push the universe forward. We all agree that we have
passions, we have dreams we know love, we hate pain, we run from fear. However
modern science have managed to separate these two aspects of human existence succesfully
for 500 hundred years. It was Renee Descartes who did the separation in 1600s.
It was so successful, that the modern world strive technologically, materially.
We created machines that led to industrial revolutions, we even managed to
reach the moon. Such a magnificent story for technology.
Another aspect of Descartes philosophy is called
reductionism. It is a worldview is that
it pushes you to think humanity as a mechanical clock, that you can take it
aparts and put it back togheter and it will work just find.
But this is not true for human. Frankenstein try to create a
human from different bioloigcal parts, he crerated a monster instead, for the created
being was struggling to find his place as a human being. Sad story really.
The consequences are dire. Another facet of reductionism is
that you can view any problem in isolations of ist parts. This isolations
pushes us away from our ability to think holistically. We judge a phenomenon by
its small visible and measureable parts. We think prosperity can be measured by
GDP, we think intelligence can be measured by CGPA, or the number of As we get
in our exams. We produce technology that are amoral, that means the morality
comes from whoever have the access to the technology.
This trend be seen in knowledge and in education. We are currently focusing on
information, on data. We focus on the brain. We forgot how to use our heart,
our instinct, our emotion, our soul our spirit. We loose the big picture.
Technology is a double
edged sword. The good and the bad of the sword depends on the human who is
holding it. Developing a system, whether, engneering, economy, law,
archtiecture that is void of human essence in it, will result in catastrophe.
When we loose the BIG PICTURE, we will see war, climate change, poverty, hunger
keep plaguing our modern civilisation.
If dwe evelop our civilisation as a mechanical system for
mechanical being, we will have a lot of architects but no affordable houses, we
will have a lot of engineers but lack of infrasructure for the poor, we have a
lot of accountant but corruption and embezzlement still happen, we have a lots
of manufacturing and food productions but many people still hungry and poor.
So what does the word
HUMAN (OR insan) do? And this brings me
to the third story that I want to tell you today.
This story was told by an industrial designer. In the UK
there was a problem of transporting a specific medicine and it required special
jars of certain size and design. The problem was, in transit, in handling there
were a lot of cases where these jars broke, and it cost a lot of money to the
government. Then they developed management procedure and protocol, not unlike
ISO or any quality mangement system, to handle these so that they minimised the
incidents of the broken jars. However, accidents still happened. So the designer was
approached by the govrment, to design an unbreakable jar and at a minimum cost.
During his research, he surveyed the hospitals around the country on the data
of broken jars. He found in all hospitals, despite all the quality control, there
werestill many cases of broken jars, except one. So curiously he went to the particular
hospital started asking around. Upon investigation, he found that all the same
procedures are in place. Eentually he approached the nurses and workers and
asked around. They pointed our that on their first day of having to handle the
jar, they were briefed by an old matron with a peculiar training style. He
interviewed the Matron asked how did she do this. She said to everyone she
trained that, “ when you hold this jar, hold it as if you are holding a baby”. That
was it. What she was doing was, she was invoking the ‘human’ aspect of the
workers. When the humanness of the workers were invoked, , no single jar was
broken. This is the power of the real meaning of human. That you have passion,
you have sentiments, you have love, you have fear and a lot more. This power,
when evoked, will help sivilisation do
many wonderful things, the least is mitigating humanoity crisis. The power of
humannes can do things which othersiwer no ISO or management systems, or
technique or technology could do.
So How do you bring
INSAN ‘humanness’ in modern knowldge, in education. This brings me to my last
story
Anton Ego was the food critic in the movie Ratatoulllie.
Ratatoullie is astoy about a rat who have amaing cooking skill. But the
restaurant keep getting harsh review from Ego, who for some reason has personal
disagreement with the philosophy of the founder of teh restaurant. To the point
that his judgment sometimes were blined by prejudice.eventually whe was invited
to the restaurant and asked to sample a signature dish, ratatoullie. When he
tasted it, the taste evoked the memoery of his living mom during his childhood.
In short, the taste reached his soul. He
changed his perception after that. So much so he became a different person
after that. The point is, the meal is just a simple concoction of ingredients
with specific chemical reactions, but the taste reach his soul beyond his tongue,
it evoked memories, his own life stories. His inner being. His humanness was
touched. This change him, his personality.
Now here, the challenge for us lecturers is how to give
informations that reach the level of knowledge and wisdom, reach beyond your sensory
and cognitive domain. These will inspire, move you all to do great things. How
then do we reach to your heart, your soul?. And on your side, the challenge is
to open up your heart, your soul, your inner being to be receptive. These have
been closed for 500 years since the separation between Mind(metaphysical
aspects) and body (physical aspect) of a human.
I want to conclude with this message. That we have to strive
to evoke the humanness in us. Our inner selves, our heart, our soul, our
spirit. In everything we do. Find out the human parts in us. And we are all
different. Yet if humanness is the common language, then we will start to
relearn. There is a higher possibility for a better world. We would not need to
use the word human only to mitigate civilisational crisis anymor.
So when you received
informations from your lecturer. If it stays in your brain for just later retrieval
in your exam. You are not gaining much from the university. You are only
getting information, which you could do just by googling anyway. If you get an
A in exam for energy subject, which I teach this semester, but you leave the
studio without switching off lights and air conditioning even though no one was
there, then the A you get does not mean much.
So please try to use you whole being, your passion, your heart,
your values, your soul, your spirit to weigh and elevate the information you
received to the level of wisdom, of meaning. Evoke the metaphysical aspect in
you.
So that your remember, in the future, when you draw a line
for your next building, you are not drawing just a line, but you are creating
meaning, you are telling a new story. You are nurturing a human being. You
are drawing a BIG PICTURE.
Look for meaning, not just information.
Revel in arts, in paintings, in poetry, in dance, in
literature. They help you to think the bigger picture, as well as rejuvenating the
channels that reach deep in your heart and soul. In fact this semester I am proposing
a play based on environmentalism. There is no mark for this, but those who want
to volunteer to get involved, you will get invaluable experience.
If the skills and information you get from your lecturer does
not make you ‘feel’ alive, then look for more.
I want to conclude by wishing you the best in your Journey.
Let us know how to help you within the challenging time. All the best and thank
you
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