Design-based retreats split humanity into knowing designers and acting executors.

Evidence

This substitution introduces a division between the expert/designer and the layman/executor, or “between those who know and do not act and those who act and do not know.” Such a division is evident in Walden Two: the workings of the Code are hidden from the members, whose only job is to live out Frazier’s dream. It’s also their job not to interfere. Arendt writes that these escapes “always amount to seeking shelter from action’s calamities in an activity where one man, isolated from all others, remains master of his doings from beginning to end.” — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 196

Categorization

• XREF: The expert/executor split parallels the reader’s existing critique of authority and non-participation in the chapter’s earlier authorities.