OS 10.me

revised 7/3/09

I listened to a talk given by William McDonough to the TED forum called The Wisdom of Designing Cradle to Cradle. McDonough is a designer and his talk focuses on design principles conducive to a sustainable future. But he makes a great point that can be applied to emotional growth and the expansion of consciousness:

“As we look back at the basic state of affairs in which we design, we in a way need to go the primordial condition to understand the operating system and the frame conditions of the planet.”

Each of us has a primordial condition, an operating system, frame conditions. These things hold vital information that can explain why we fail, why we succeed, why we get angry under certain circumstances. Understanding these things can tell me a lot about what makes me feel threatened or secure. They are always there, under the surface, contributing energy to my responses and color to my perceptions. In order to effectively manage the details on the surface of my life, I have to understand the deeps.

Personal computer software provides a very useful metaphor for understanding this. You’ve got your operating system and you’ve got your applications. The applications are how I act, think, and speak in the day-to-day. It’s my relationships, my creative endeavors, my work, etc. The operating system is the underpinning on which the applications are placed. It gives my applications access to the computer’s memory and processors. It enables the applications to function. Or not. Photoshop can’t paint a pretty picture, however desperate I might be for my picture to look prettier, if the operating system is flawed or incompatible.

Here’s another angle: the operating system is universal, the applications are local. You use Word to write a novel; Word is local. You use Excel to track expenses; Excel is local. But the operating system is always there, influencing that local experience. The operating system is universal. It affects how I deal with all local circumstances. A broken operating system can’t fix itself, not even OS 10. It can’t even understand itself. But I can. I can look under the hood and find out what needs to change in my operating system to make my applications function properly.

Ever forward.

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