Dandelions are awesome.
Yes, I hate them in my yard and grass, where they tend to be half of the lawn. But from a design perspective, they are amazingly elegant and supremely functional, which is why they have been able to spread globally, except antarctica. Yet, they are commonly considered a weed. Yes, they have some purpose in medicine, tea and salads, but not in the volumes they spread, or we use them.
But there are lessons we could take away from dandelions that can be metaphors for success in life as an individual, community or society. Dandelions are resilient and can grow in almost any conditions, which points to not needing "perfect conditions" in order to thrive - they will make do and still find ways to grow. But more than that, they are useful with the entire plant being edible, which is why thy were carried by humans across the world and planted. And as far as community goes, they grow deep roots and spread so that the group will be closely packed, with deep roots too. They are independent, but keep building the community.
When I was walking the dog this morning I was looking at the millions of dandelions spread along the roads, in the fields and in my grass, and was wondering why we can't replicate this kind of design to spread positive growth for individuals and communities. We seem to be able to do it for negative outcomes, where content goes viral that ends up costing us, but when it comes to betterment, the designs fall flat.
Why is positive change not compelling?
Perhaps it is because the barrier to better is activity, where worse just requires remaining a passive consumer. If you want to improve you have to do something. If you want to get worse, you needn't do anything. And since we are a lazy species by design, now that we have created a world where we are able to purchase what we need and want from others, it is far easier to fall into the trap of passivity, and the road to worse.
Some time ago, if a person couldn't find a way to be useful, they would struggle. Everyone had to do something to pay their way. But now, even those who are doing something to pay their way, are often creating something that makes it increasingly possible for us to remain passive. Everything is about making our lives easier now, even though it is costing us in a thousand other ways. All the timesaving apps in the world, yet the extra time is spent watching a streaming service to be entertained. Easy access to the history of the world to learn anything, and we are playing games, scrolling AI-generated images, and learning nothing applicable.
Dandelions needn't think about their spread, their growth, they have just adapted themselves to the conditions where it is possible for them to do it. There is a thoughtless easiness to it and our own growth unfortunately doesn't have the same opportunity. For us to grow appropriately, we need to understand how we can be useful in this world and then how we need to grow. What skills will we develop?
I was having a conversation with my daughter the other day about how we are always learning, and she took it from the perspective that we can always take a lesson from what we are doing. So I had to clarify. We are always learning, whether we are aware of it or not. Everything we do is teaching us, but our body can't tell the difference between a good lesson, or a bad lesson, it just learns. Our muscles are learning when we walk, and they are also learning when we are sitting on the couch. They can't help it, our activity trains them and they have no choice but to start building habits.
Everything we do and everything we experience teaches lessons to our body, mind, and emotional self. Repetition reinforces it and the more we follow those patterns, drive our evolution. In the past perhaps, the easy road was one of innovation and growth, which opened up new avenues and experiences that we could then grow along, build further. But no, the easy road is a process of contraction, because we aren't using the space to challenge ourselves further in another domain.
Our evolution is devolving.
A dandelion is mindless and has evolved to grow almost everywhere, yet we are not. We are evolved to require narrow environmental conditions for our survival, yet through our advancement and now contraction, we are destroying the very conditions we need for our survival. It is easy to look at it from the environmental perspective with pollution, climate change, and food security. But it is more than that, because we are social animals that are increasingly salting the earth of community, so that we cannot grow, cannot spread, and become increasingly isolated from each other. Our mental and emotional landscape has also narrowed, where we are less resilient in the face of adversity, while simultaneously creating conditions that increase adversity.
If we are going to turn this all around, the changes are going to have to be drastic and move quickly, which requires a complete change in the way we see our world. We don't need more viral TikTok dances or Instagram fashion trends - We need viral movements that improve our health, wellbeing, and our ability to generate social value. We need ideas that truly inspire positive action to spread like the seeds of dandelions on the wind, easily, thoughtlessly, with the ability to grow wherever they land to start new communities, with deep roots and a growth mindset.
The way we operate in the world today, we are spreading weeds that are inedible, but we keep stuffing them down our throat as if they are going to cure us from the inevitable. We need useful, actionable, and compelling content that makes us take the steps for positive change.
So far, we have failed in the design.
Taraz
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