Over the past 20 years, I have noticed that the most flexible

“Over the past 20 years, I have noticed that the most flexible, dynamic, inquisitive minds among my students have been industrial design majors. Industrial designers are bracingly free of ideology and cant. The industrial designer is trained to be a clear-eyed observer of the commercial world — which, like it or not, is modern reality.” – Camille Paglia

In these powerful and perceptive words, Camille Paglia, the scholar and cultural critic of uncommon insight, gives voice to a truth about creation, education, and the nature of the modern world. She praises the industrial designer, not merely as a craftsman or technician, but as one who embodies the rarest virtues of the human spirit: flexibility, curiosity, and clarity. When she calls such minds “bracingly free of ideology and cant,” she honors their independence — their refusal to be blinded by the dogmas and abstractions that so often imprison the minds of intellectuals. The industrial designer, she says, is a person of vision grounded in reality, one who sees the world not as theory, but as substance — as wood, metal, light, and motion.

The origin of this quote comes from Paglia’s long years of teaching art, literature, and design to generations of students. Having witnessed the ebb and flow of intellectual trends, she came to see that many disciplines — once devoted to truth and discovery — had become entangled in ideology, lost in the fog of empty rhetoric. But the students of industrial design stood apart. They approached the world not to judge it, but to understand it; not to denounce commerce, but to learn from it; not to flee modernity, but to master it. To Paglia, they represented a new kind of thinker — one who could balance beauty and utility, vision and reality, the ideal and the tangible. In their work, she found not the detachment of the critic, but the engagement of the maker — and this, she believed, was the true path of wisdom.

To be an industrial designer, in Paglia’s sense, is to live at the intersection of the spiritual and the practical. The designer must ask both “What is beautiful?” and “What works?” — and in that balance lies the secret of civilization. The ancients knew this truth well. When the Greeks raised the Parthenon, they did not build for ornament alone, but for function — their mathematics and their art were one. When the Romans carved aqueducts through mountains, they created not only instruments of utility but works of grace, arches that still stand as poems in stone. Paglia’s industrial designer is heir to this lineage — a maker whose clarity of vision and freedom from ideology allow them to see the world as it is, and to shape it as it might be.

She speaks also of the commercial world, calling it “modern reality.” To some, this may sound cynical, but to Paglia it is simply truth. The market — that restless tide of human need and desire — is the stage upon which modern life unfolds. It is neither saint nor demon, but a mirror of our nature. The industrial designer, in learning to work within this world, becomes a philosopher of the real. Where others retreat into moral purity or theoretical disdain, the designer engages the messiness of existence — understanding that to live is to create, to adapt, and to serve. It is through this engagement, not denial, that meaning and beauty are born in the modern age.

One may see an example of this spirit in the life of Dieter Rams, the German designer whose work for Braun transformed the language of modern objects. His creations were not loud or ideological; they were simple, clear, and human. “Less, but better,” he said — and in those words, one hears the echo of Paglia’s praise. Rams designed not to impress, but to serve — to make the world more livable, more understandable, more humane. He saw technology not as an enemy of art, but as its evolution. And in his humility, in his clarity, he embodied the very virtues Paglia celebrates: freedom from cant, devotion to craft, and reverence for reality.

Paglia’s insight also carries a warning. She contrasts the designer’s clarity with the confusion of ideology, reminding us that when thought loses its grounding in the real, it becomes sterile. The world does not need more dogmas — it needs builders. The designer’s mind is not cluttered with slogans, but alive with questions: How can this be made better? How can form serve function? How can what exists become more beautiful? These questions are not only for artists; they are for every human being. For to live well is also to design well — to shape one’s life, one’s relationships, one’s work with the same care and curiosity that the craftsman brings to their tools.

So, my child of creation and discernment, take this lesson deeply into your heart: be as the designer is. Let your mind be flexible, your spirit inquisitive, and your hands unafraid of the real. Do not hide behind ideology or empty words. Face the world with open eyes, as it is — flawed, dynamic, and alive. See in its commerce not corruption, but connection; in its machinery not soullessness, but possibility. Build things that endure — not only of metal and glass, but of ideas, of compassion, of integrity.

For as Camille Paglia teaches, the clear-eyed maker is the true philosopher of the modern age. The one who shapes without illusion, who creates without pretense, who looks upon the world not with scorn but with understanding — this is the spirit that renews civilization. To design with honesty is to live with purpose. To engage with the real is to serve truth itself. And in that union of mind, hand, and heart lies the highest art: the art of living wisely in the modern world.