Design View / Andy Rutledge – Plato’s Cave:
Too often… what passes for professionalism in the experience of designers, even company CEOs, is but a shadow of what is possible and what is right. When that ignorance is reinforced by what is deemed to be success, it forms an armor that is difficult or impossible to penetrate with any sort of challenge.
To use the analogy from the Plato’s cave allegory, after years of seeming success with compromise and false professionalism, actual professionalism becomes unrecognizable. Having spent a career among those with a similarly stunted perception, stunted rules seem logical and compromise becomes not just common practice, but the coin of the realm…
The difference between professionals and those who understand only the echoes and shadows of professionalism is that the latter evaluate things according to an external, transient standard — to the point that only subjective, situational evaluation becomes useful. When compromise brings what passes for success, compromise becomes indistinguishable from virtue. At that point, shadow becomes reality. Professionals, by contrast, evaluate things according to consistent, uncompromising, internal standards based on individual and professional responsibility; standards that can stand the bright light of day.
Each of us could likely stand to do some periodic, brutal evaluations of our practice to ensure we’ve not wandered into Plato’s cave. Self evaluations, however, are difficult to perform accurately. Sometimes we need an objective view to give us the appropriate kick in the pants. If our first reaction to that kick in the pants is an indignant and defensive position, chances are something has hit pretty close to the mark.
(Via @dburka.)