Designers’ Unspoken God Complex

Designers very well know of their own importance in society by the sheer influence they have on people and over culture. In a way, anyone who is merely engaged with design is magically bestowed with great responsibility and power. These are viewed as God-like qualities (at least from the perspective of the ‘creators’ themselves).

This unique and niche position in society leads designers to harbor feelings of being much superior than the rest. Thereby, to assert this position they attempt to secure themselves with a self-coping mechanism to prove and exude their self-proclaimed uniqueness and stay away from all things utterly ordinary. Thus they naturally develop a desire to stand out and to look and feel special. Self-validation of this through peers and friends invariably gives rise to an inflated ego. Many a times, this can further distill down to qualities such as arrogance and narcissism. Adorned on the surface, these might seem like strong and assertive qualities, but they actually arise from simple but deeper insecurities about the self. Eventually, if a designer starts feeling comfortable within this thick membrane of insecurity, it breeds ignorance. So, there’s a progressive build-up here — power & responsibility to feeling special to arrogance to ignorance. This can easily become a cycle, as by its own virtue the process can be self-correcting, yet self-deviating.

From power & responsibility to feeling special to arrogance to ignorance.

It’s interesting to note that designers are often inherently sensitive and empathetic. In fact, the sensitivity towards their environment is what makes them empathetic and possibly drives them to design in the first place. After all, design strongly relies on empathy and in a user-centric approach to understanding a problem. Interestingly, it’s this cornerstone of design that actually helps designers keep away from a potentially self-absorbed state of existence; by being able to understand and share the feelings of others.

This sensitivity among designers also projects their lives to seem way harsher than reality. Judgement and criticism towards them become things worth waging wars against, for much lies at stake due to the pairing of a designer’s sensitivity, along with his or her critical-self-evaluation system (another designer-ly quality). Self-worth literally rests on it and that is one of the key reasons that drives them to cling on to their egos like tigers dangling off the canopy (here, the tiger tries to appear strong but is actually weak from insecurities). After all, in psychology, the desire for self-approval is closely linked to insecurity. Hmm, now which God needs self-approval for insecurities again?