My current thinking way is that people under stress need to do more to change, but there should be a balance between stress and people under stress; the balance will be worth exploring for me.

So I try to find more critical theory to support my project, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society and The Consumer Society exposed the psychological changes brought about by many social developments and the era of less thinking, I’ve learned some about these theories before and this time could explore more with clear aims.

The two books mentioned a common point that I want to raise first. It is the unfairness caused by the consumer society and one-dimensionality. This kind of unfairness is implicit compared to the previous one, and people cannot clearly feel it. This leads to more anxiety. This situation is mainly due to technological development and consumption. For example, successful capitalists and I have massive wealth and social status gaps. Still, we are all using IPHONE; we have many same things and lifestyles. We all created this for ourselves through consumption, but the pressure on me and the richer one is different. I spend more time on consumption and bearing the stress it brings instead of thinking about the unfairness of other aspects that are more or less unreasonable.

I am not against consumption; even the temporary numbness and satisfaction during consumption can positively affect certain extreme exhaustion situations. Still, it makes people avoid the problem itself. As I emphasized in my project, people have ways of coping with work stress, but very few people think and reflect about it. From a long-term perspective, this is a kind of internal friction; people need to think.

So for me, there are two very intuitive follow-ups. One is to interview users whether they have thought about the pressure they are under. More specific questions need to be developed here，The other is to present the dangerous consequences of internal friction caused by paralysis.

Regarding interviews, I found that many people are very stubborn about the concepts they have accepted. Some people think they can bear the stress; they cannot change the stress brought by society, they don’t want to think like dreaming. It’s tough for me to cope with such a negative response, may be I need to show more clear guidance and patience to them?

I have another project that tried to persuade people to overcome the fear of electromagnetic radiation in life(2019). At that time, I found it difficult for people to accept preaching, but I can try to relax people while thinking in a joking way. So my before work maybe could be this one’s reference, it’s a good thing. https://www.j24design.com/r-p-c