Jack Self, Architect

Jack Self is an architect, philosopher and writer from London, where he is the editor-in-chief of Real Review.

APOSSIBLE™ is a non-profit bringing psychologists, technologists, artists and creatives together to explore how technology can better support creativity and human fulfillment. In this ongoing interview series we’re discovering what people value, what makes their lives fulfilling, and what kinds of relationships to technology they already cherish.

1. What is a ritual, practice, or routine in your life that is important for your psychological wellbeing and/or fulfillment? Why?

A long time ago I had a personal crisis. I was living in social housing, had very little money, and I didn't have any good prospects for my career. I decided that the best way to resist my condition was to think about the long term in a different way, and this led me to the conclusion that I needed a 10 year plan.

But then I also felt ashamed at only thinking about myself. I really wanted to understand how I could have more agency, but I wasn't interested in power for its ability to attract money. I was interested in power because I saw it as the key to autonomy. Now, while I was thinking about how I could draw power towards myself, I realised that the mirror of that was missing. How can I redistribute power? What am I doing in service of other people? How can I do more to serve other people?

I knew that I would easily forget these questions because we get so wrapped up in our immediate lives. So I decided that I also wanted to remove time from my aesthetic, which meant that I would shave my face and cut my hair, and choose a fairly arbitrary selection of clothing that I would wear going forward. I don't want to give the sense that this was heavily considered, or that I spent a long time researching what the best shirt or what the best shoes would be. I just decided that I didn't want to be subject to taste and to changing aesthetics.

So I started shaving my head, and I did it myself, and I would do it kneeling on the ground over a towel so that it would catch all the hair, because otherwise it would block my sink. I've been doing that ever since, every two or three days. And every time I shave my head, I ask myself those questions. What have I done recently to serve other people, and what more can I do to help serve other people? Am I living my values? That's the only repetitive ritual that I have.

Now, initially, I chose to shave my head because I thought that a number one [shave] all over was the most default aesthetic that I could choose for myself. I was looking for something which was an aesthetic outside of time. But it invited a lot of people to tell me about the history of people who voluntarily cut their hair this way. And suddenly I was discovering about its history in Monasticism, in Buddhism, in Christian theology. I suddenly became aware that I was in a new aesthetic realm, which brought me into an understanding of why other people have done this in the past. And since I was already looking for an opportunity to continually remind myself to think this way, the two got paired.

2. What is a human-made creation that brings out the best in you? Why?

I find objects generally very overbearing. I get weighed down. I find it very hard to focus if I have too many objects around me. So in terms of meaningful objects that I have purposely purchased myself, I only have two.

The first one is a Sony WM-EX9 cassette player. I had this exact cassette player growing up, and about a year ago I wanted to listen to a cassette. I thought that I would be able to find a digitised version of this particular story, but I quickly realised I would have to listen to the original cassette that was at my mom's house. What I love about this cassette player is the simplicity of the user interface. It’s considered to be the peak of Walkman technology in terms of its robustness and durability. But the reason I mention it is because of the simplicity of its user interface. A single button: one click to play, two clicks to stop, three to fast forward, and so on and so forth. Everything is done purely through auditory beeps in the headphones. I find that very elegant as a way of designing an interface. It's really the peak of simplicity, as far as I'm concerned.

I do believe that humans have a strong desire to understand the world in terms of cause and effect. And one of the problems with a lot of technology today is that there is no evident cause and effect. And so it's not just a question of having something which is analog or retro. For me, it's a question of being able to push a button and then see the effect in terms of what happens when you do that, to see the mechanism activate itself, to see one thing turn from one state to another. And I think that visibility of how technology operates, in terms of cause and effect, is quite a key aspect of our current paradigm.

The second object that I mentioned, which I bought a few weeks ago, is an ingot of pure copper, or 99.9% pure copper. It's a one kilogram bar, it’s slowly aging and oxidising. It's not very valuable, it costs about 60 euros. But the reason why I'm amazed by it, why I'm interested in it, is that we are a species capable of producing a 99.9% pure element. If you think of other organisms on our planet, there are none which through their natural biological processes produce pure elements of that kind, in that way. So for me, it's a testament to humanity as a species. That we would even imagine to create the idea of a pure element which never exists in the “natural” world.

3. When do you cherish the slow or hard way of doing something? Why?

I quit smoking, almost three years ago, and I did it in spite of my better judgment. Nicotine, turns out, is a great drug for people who are on the autistic spectrum. I was diagnosed with Asperger's, although that's no longer a condition that exists, and nicotine has been shown to have great benefits for people who have autistic diagnoses.

I also loved smoking. I loved everything about smoking, and I was very particular about the type of cigarette that I smoked. I smoked American Spirit Blue. American Spirit is considered to be a natural tobacco product because it is just chopped and dried tobacco leaf. It does not contain any artificial additives. Usually lots of things which are added, like arsenic and tar. In the case of rolling tobacco, it's often paraffin. All added for different reasons, some in order to control burn speed, others in order to change the flavour profile, or in the case of the paraffin it’s to make the dry tobacco stick together so that it's easier to roll.

What I liked about Spirits was the absence of all of those things, but the effect was that it took a very long time to smoke. It was normally around three and a half to four minutes for a cigarette, whereas a commercial cigarette is between 90 seconds and two minutes. And the reason why I did that is because I wanted to take a particular length of break in the work that I was doing.

And I think everything about smoking is good, except for the cigarette. It forces you to take regular breaks from your work. It forces you to go outside and look at the sky. It forces you to regulate your breathing and to focus your mind on a single activity. Everything about it is basically a kind of proxy for mindfulness, except obviously the actual delivery mechanism for the nicotine, which is killing you.

So yeah, I chose a harder process when it came to something which was actually killing me, because it wasn't about the object itself. It was an excuse for other types of relationships with the body and with the world. And if I generalise, I’d say that's probably why most people choose slower or less effective forms of anything.

4. What is something you appreciate or long for from the past? Why?

The difficulty for me with that is that I'm incapable of feeling nostalgia. I think the question implies a certain relationship with the past, the present, and the future, which I'm not sure that I share. My relationship with the past is quite functional. I'm interested in understanding aspects of the past only in as much as they can become tools or frameworks for improving my agency in the present. Simultaneously I'm also not someone who's deeply focused on the future.

I would frame it in the following way. We tend to talk about politics as left versus right. I think it's more accurate to describe politics as progressive versus conservative. That doesn't mean liberal versus conservative. Conservative simply means that you either think things are good as they are or were better in the past. You wish to conserve society. Progressive means that you think that things are not good right now and can be better in the future, which means that you want to change society.

You get radical progressives on the right, someone like Reagan or Thatcher. Neoliberalism generally is a highly destructive and radically transformative economic and social paradigm, but it sits on the right. And you also get people who are very conservative that sit on the left. I'm thinking of perhaps in the UK, figures like Jeremy Corbyn, but there are other political examples of people who wish to somehow reinstate the class struggle of the 1970s and earlier, along a traditional working class white collar division, which is no longer really the reality of our society. So you can have conservative and progressive irrespective, but humans naturally tend towards conservatism, in my view, because they are inherently afraid of change. They would prefer to go with something which is suboptimal but which is known, then go for something which is new and unknown.

Therefore, I kind of sit in a weird junction. I'm interested in understanding the past as a resource for the present, but I'm not interested in the present as a kind of pathway to some idealised future. I'm interested in the present for itself. Especially if you meet people who are progressive on the left, they will often say things like, political violence is justified in the pursuit of your ends. They will say things like, destruction or revolution are means to achieve a particular end.

My attitude, while it can be naive in some ways, is that the means are the end. The way that you choose to live your life currently, is the type of society that you want to live in. To me it is not okay to behave in a way which commits violence against others, which denigrates others, or treats others with a lack of respect, because you are trying to construct some imaginary future that is no more acceptable than subjugating people today in an attempt to recreate an imagined past.

So unfortunately, there's nothing from the past which I can think of immediately, which I would love to bring back, but hopefully that gives you an explanation of the framework in which I understand the question.