what is middletonism?

Well, that’s a question, isn’t it?

In the world of creation, individual beliefs are often snuffed out for the sake of what we would call smart choices. As a kid, we may have dreamed of becoming an astronaut, a zookeeper, or a pirate. Then, society then brings down the cookie cutter, molding you while you are soft and malleable dough. We send our kids off to school to carve the meanings of authority and obedience into their very flesh and bone, snipping their wings before they are ever able to begin to learn to fly.

In the meanwhile, images of war, money, power, and government flood the history books in our classes from a young age. The single-sided interpretations of the ideas of freedom, righteousness, exceptionalism, and individualism are placed before you and read verbatim as the rule of law. No different from the rule of a God. The divine rights of the government you exist under have carefully crafted these conditions to create the perfect environment for the stripping of autonomy and voice.

To say this sounds like the start of a corny dystopian teen novel is not an exaggeration, and yet the dystopia becomes hauntingly real as we look to the news and media, seeing generations of a well researched and oiled propaganda machines turn out hateful rhetoric repeated day after day.

This is how I viewed the world I grew up in.

I felt as if I was being suffocated.

However, in reality, I was young and incapable of realizing these conditions at the time. The “me” of that time was simply angry and confused with the world, with all the rules, with authority. I didn’t know how to channel anything I was feeling, and I never felt like an artist at the time. 

Nobody around me seemed to share the same level of enthusiasm for media that I did, so I spent the majority of my time on a computer or reading books. I would watch shows, spend time talking to people from across the globe in online communities, read fiction about dystopian futures, and play games that introduced new concepts or ideas to me.

To many in my family, this looked like an addiction to the new digital tools that came with the start of a new millennium. To me, it was classic escapism. I felt as if nothing else could stimulate me, and nobody around me was willing to talk about any art, literature, or concepts the same way I would obsess over them. I could spend hours thinking about some crazy and fun idea such as Simulation Theory, nobody wanted to match that energy. 

Instead, the “adults” at the time just complained; about work, about money, about dreams that never came to fruition. At the time, I remember wondering why it seemed to me that everyone just hated being alive. Nowadays I realize that this was definitely a condition of the area I grew up in, the Appalachians are no stranger to many dying small towns like mine. That area feels like darkness, my heart feels heavy every time I go back. My girlfriend often asks me if I’m happy to be home when we visit, how do I answer that?

Like clockwork in a factory, the schooling system eventually breaks down the hopes and dreams of the children and repackages them into convenient little things called “Jobs.” Somehow the authority manages to re-appropriate these dreams and ambitions into the framework of capital. The starry-eyed children look on in wonder as the man in a gray suit explains that they will wake up at 8am every morning, drive their fancy new car to an office, do something meaningful for 9 hours a day, and then go home to a beautiful nuclear family. They cheer gleefully as he tells them that this is how it will be until the day they get to retire, having done their best to contribute to our wonderful society!

I personally never really had any real passion for work in the capitalist sense. I didn’t even have a plan for what to do after high school. In my head, I just wanted to keep consuming media, I wanted to keep experiencing new things. I wanted to be free. That’s why when my graduation came around, I hurriedly selected a trade school to study computer science. My reasoning for this at the time was “well, I kinda like computers, so sure.”

I just never understood the idea of it, to this day I guess I still can’t understand the reasoning for someone to enjoy doing a job such as marketing or analytics. Other than to simply make a living, it feels wrong to me to be happy spending 60-70% of your life doing what is essentially chores. My own personal ideas of life and freedom simply don’t work like that. I’ll never be happy working 8 hours a day on something that in the end means nothing to me, all for just enough money to pay rent and sometimes feel comfortable enough to “splurge.”

By that vein, I think that any form of me attempting to find work in my early stages was just an attempt at social masking. 

I was actively suppressing my want to be free from this system, I hadn’t had the time or space to develop any thoughts on why I felt that way. I can only guess years of being told that I was lazy, unmotivated, or immature for this way of thinking caused me to want to try to blend in, I had no idea where my future was headed at that moment.

This masking is something that I still feel today. My peers exclaim proudly their work-ethic, wearing 60-hour plus work weeks on their sleeves like trophies. (Unfortunately an all too common thing within the field of Design.) Am I supposed to join them in their glee for what is essentially being a slave to capital? Put frankly, I don’t care about your side hustle. I perceive no value in your 3 successful businesses. Instead, I feel sadness, a level of understanding of how much time you are wasting for nothing. Time that could be spent with your family. Time that could be spent for yourself. 

It is a sad thing to wake up one day, older and brittle, and realize how much time you will never get back.

This is of course different from those who are working those many jobs and side hustles as a matter of necessity. Those who are affected by the unfairness and brutality of a system designed for their failure. Power to those affected in that way, for they have no other choice. To live within the comfort and means for freedom and actively sacrifice it is an entirely different problem, one that is unique to a system that convinces you that you are a tool for commodification and capital.

When my trade school decided to close (an entire story in itself and product of late-stage capitalism), I spent a year in limbo wondering where my life was going. This was probably one of the lowest times of my life, mental health was at an all time low. This was not only due to my newly discovered hatred for the computer science and tech world, and specifically programming; but also due to my returning to the “region of darkness” I grew up in. Sadness, Hatred, and Complacency hung in the air like fog. I could feel it bearing down on me. I could feel myself slowly turning into it.

I’ve always been somebody who was creative in many ways, but that skillset never really showed itself in any form of “real work”. Instead, I would be that person in my friend group who was really good at building intricate things in games like Minecraft, decorating rooms in The Sims, making dumb memes in pirated versions of the Adobe Software’s, making short videos, or writing essays on random topics or ideas. Truthfully, and hopefully not in a braggadocious sense, I think all of these things came so naturally to me without even trying that I never gave it much thought. Creativity was so normal to me that I was confused by people who had lived without it. 

Maybe I still am somehow.

Having performed terribly in high school, and never finishing my trade school, I felt maybe my path with education was over. I contemplated a lot of things, I went over ideas that would have most likely led my life on a completely different path. I considered being part of the Peace Corps, Traveling and building houses in countries across the world. I considered teaching English in Japan through the JET program. I considered couch surfing and working for food and keep in random countries. In reality, I just wanted out of my current situation. I wanted to see the world, of course, but again I just wanted to be free.

I decided to randomly look around at colleges one day, and I slightly remember the name of Edinboro being mentioned from a guidance counselor trying to lead me towards Game Design. Although I have always been creative, I was deathly afraid of actually doing anything creative as work. I chose to do programming because I was worried about whether I could ever even succeed at anything like game design with no skills. 

I had many feelings related to imposter syndrome. How could I become an artist when I can’t even draw? Many nights I would lie awake, trying to fall asleep. My head repeated over and over “What are you afraid of?”, “Do you want to continue working at a gas station all your life?” and many more questions like that. I remembered my Graphic Design classes in high school, how I loved working with softwares to create cool effects. Maybe that could be an option. Designers need to know how to draw too. I could never do that. 

After weeks of this torment, time was ticking. I needed to apply. The acceptance letter came in the mail in july. One month before the semester starts. I had never stepped foot on campus. I had no idea what the classes were like. I felt a knot of dread inside me. Heading into an art school without ever even owning a sketchbook, I started back onto the path of education.

My first experience with college, going to that trade school, went terribly wrong. It felt like prison, we were forced to wear business clothes, had seven classes a day, a short 30 minute lunch break with no built in school food option, and a complete mountain of homework each day. It felt as if that school experience was no different than that of my high school.

This time, it was way more liberating. Classes respected your time and autonomy (to a degree), I felt as if I had some sort of freedom in this system. I could choose to learn what I wanted rather than being forced into boxes, and the class structures allowed for thought and ideas to fester inside of me. In those four years, I started to develop a true sense of personal beliefs and self for the first time.

I started to feel like I was developing real passion for a field of study. Design was working wonderfully for me, for the first time I felt I enjoyed the idea of working on something. To be honest though, looking back, maybe that was the mask trying to take me over. Eventually, I started to realize the difference between myself and the other designers too.

I was passionate about the field of design similar to how I am passionate about a game, or about keyboards. What I mean by that is that I love talking about design. Design concepts, design theory, design history, etc. When it comes down to the act of making, especially in the sense of the designer as a tool to be utilized by a company, a commodity, I didn’t even remotely care. 
There is a fundamental difference between those who make for the sake of making and those who make out of necessity.

I viewed the role of the commodified “Graphic Designer” as a necessity. I had no passion or care for annual reports, logos, and brand identities. 

I was masking by making those projects and pretending I cared, even if I do feel that I made great work. I did so simply because that was the environment around me, and everyone was attempting to convince me to mold to that system. In this field, there is a falsified meritocratic hierarchy present within the fabric of our work. The “highly competitive” notion that we must view each other as lesser or greater than one another. By the time I graduated, I felt a very conflicted wave of emotions.

I tried experimenting with how to be a graphic designer and retain my own freedom. No matter the test, I arrived at the conclusion that I simply couldn’t. No matter what, I needed to paint myself with advertisements, give myself catchy and trendy labels to fit in, and worry about useless things like social media presence and analytics that consumed my personal time. I needed to scratch commodification into my being, and become a tool to be used by another. I hated the feeling. I hated clients. Freelance wasn’t going to work either.

When I brought up these qualms with the industry, I was met with the same usual resistance that others spouted with preconceived notions about the field. Nobody seemed to understand what a Graphic Designer could be without commodity, without capital, let alone believe that we can exist without that. It seemed that I was completely isolated from them in how I viewed the field.

This also was reinforced by watching those who didn’t fit the mold of what a “meritocratically good modern designer” is get pushed away or criticized. If you didn’t follow rules exactly according to the needs and wants of the professors, teaching within the confines of a postmodern and bauhaus europeanized style of education, then you were not a good designer. Discussions about concepts, ideologies, beliefs, etc. were thrown out in favor of arguments about color, kerning, line weight, and other subjective elements that contributed only to a controlled and limited aesthetic. Then you wonder why we leave undergrad with carbon copy portfolios.

It’s so frustrating to see unnecessary limitations bear their teeth against the young and naive. Without even having a say, students are swept up into a world of rights and wrongs, told that this is the correct way to use a grid, this is the correct way to format type, this is the correct… etc. Autonomy is taken away in a flash as the student becomes a machine capable of regurgitating these beliefs, playing tug-o-war, the student sends in work they believe the professor will like, in hopes of receiving a juicy letter grade reward. If the grade comes back low, they simply dump their current aesthetic out the window and adopt a new, shinier, polished approach according to the teacher's personal subjective arguments.

It felt different at first, but I realized then that the undergrad experience was still no different than that of the high school classroom.

We are teaching design propaganda, and nobody is immune to it.

I’ve heard countless arguments on when a student is capable of taking on “higher levels” of education. Many a professor will argue that you need to teach foundational skills and ideas to be able to have students break that mold. To that end I agree. Yet in the modern academic world of design, I find that we never stop teaching these “foundational skills” and instead focus our entire undergraduate degrees dedicated to it. 

There's no time for theory, for critical thinking, for conceptual understanding on why a decision is made. Just the rights and wrongs that allow a student to go out into the world of design and make for a corporation for the rest of their lives. What about other careers in design, what about the writers, the critics, the educators, and those who design for themselves? Why do we not mention these are even options available to our students?

I’m not trying to blame the current professors of modern academia, by many metrics they are working within their means and could easily even agree with my positions. What I’m aiming my barrel at is not the people operating within the system itself, as the late thinker Michael Jamal Brooks says “Be kind to individuals, be ruthless to systems.” I also don’t believe that I’m above anybody here in any way, there is no “better”, only beautiful differences in ourselves.

Many of these thoughts came in the form of revelations upon arriving at VCFA. For the first time in my life it feels like being able to speak without constriction, being able to practice and study what I truly find interesting, without being dragged down by attempting to turn everything into some design project with surface level messaging.

When I first arrived at VCFA I was very much a victim of the machine of undergrad that I have described. I felt as if my wings had been clipped and that flight would never be attainable even after leaving the birdcage. I had no idea what I wanted or how to work for myself. I came into VCFA with the same mask I developed for Edinboro, touting my accomplishments and work like a peacock showing its feathers, attempting to establish a place in a ruthless meritocracy.

To my surprise, that hierarchy vanished in seconds, as the diverse group of people, both those that had accomplished way more than I had and those that hadn’t, embraced me with open arms. For the first time in my life, I no longer felt isolated, I felt as if I could talk about anything and get a thoughtful answer. I felt free.

But that small freedom has given me the ability to start the journey to becoming able to identify and locate freedom in my entire life. I feel as if I am closer and closer to understanding what I want to do with my life. I understand fully that I cannot live a life in this system without any compromises, and that I must navigate this world in an attempt to control what level of freedom I may be able to have.

The reason I have taken you on this journey is because I feel it is so important in establishing an answer to the question “What is Middletonism?” (and also because I seem to be incapable of telling a story or explaining something without 10 pages.) Having had the time and space to really think about this question, and being able to reflect upon my individual beliefs, I think I might have the beginning of an answer.

The lived and learned experiences we have throughout our lives are what give us our sense of self, our beliefs, and our mindsets. I have laid out a short summary of my education intertwined with commentary about why I’ve always been frustrated with these systems.

Clearly, from a young age I’ve hated restriction, life felt as if I was trapped in a birdcage. Authority was not used out of a necessity and instead used to oppress. I’ve spent my life searching for an answer in life, frustrated by the woes of a system that gives so little thought to the people within. As I gained more thought and knowledge through both self and formal education, I became capable of sharpening and pointing my blade towards what I now believe to be the “mechanisms” behind the problems that lie in front of me.

Maybe when I break down all barriers, simplify it to its core, “Middletonism” is the pursuit of freedom. 

And how does that apply to my career and my path? Teaching as a career for me is a want to free the students in academia and allow them to think without societal restraints like capital and hierarchy, allow them to think about what they want.

I was never built to hold a gun and burn down governments, instead, I can create my own small revolutions in the classroom.

On top of that, the want to teach is also a selfish want. Teaching feels to me as if it is the one world in the field of design that I am let free from making only for others. Free from the chains of capital that drag you down to hell. Instead, it is a position of nurturing others, attempting to help them navigate the cruel and unforgiving system they are presented with. Maybe I’m romanticizing the idea of teaching too much in writing. I know that it will be filled with hardships and compromises as well, and I will hopefully be prepared for that.

This same connection appears in my writing, where I feel most comfortable nowadays. I’ve always had a unique trait of being critical of anything I consume, which has been such a blessing but also a terrible curse. I can’t sit down and watch a show without wanting to comment on something I think could have been improved, or harping on what elements of the show were done well. It drives people around me nuts sometimes.

That’s exactly what I do when I begin to write. When I write a piece about freedom, or capital, or design, or work life balance I am really just venting about the weights in the world that I feel are weighing down on me most. That’s why I might as well use my ability to be critical of anything to tell a story of my unique perspective on it.

If I can bring forward an idea to someone who hasn’t gotten exposed to it yet and allow them to think a little differently, even just one person, I’ll be happy with that.

The Middleton Manifesto:

1. We are born free. All of us.

2. Create empathy within each other.

3. Reach for a world without constraints.

4. Break down the barriers of capital.

5. Never stop learning; Nobody does.

6. Respect and use all forms of media.

7. Write to change perspectives.

8. Aim to create personal revolutions.

9. Realize that this is not a selfish act.

10. Be Free