Understanding Change

Not surprisingly, defenders of the status quo will try to convince us that humans, human nature, and nothing can ever change -- rather than that change is the first order of business for all life and living things, what life is all about -- and to try to deny that, resist that, is the deteriorating force of life, in trying to maintain an unvarying permanence in the swiftly flowing river of life.

The basic unit of change is not even slow, steady, linear change along a continuum of predictability -- but rather, the quantum leap. That is the instantaneous moment of change that releases tremendous energy, power and momentum -- which is the language of change, movement, dynamism. Change is movement -- which the metaphors of sports, conditioning and exercise, lend themselves so readily to -- with the central organizing purpose of success and improvement being the easily understood objectives and measurement.

Those ends have to change in order for there to be significant talk of “change,” and not the rationalization that the more things change, the more they stay the same, which is the mantra of the defeatism of the status quo. They’ll agree to any change -- as long as everything stays the same, which is of course, no change. This kind of self-delusion makes one vulnerable to all manner of deceptions -- because if one buys into the notion that change means no change, or should take much time before it can be detected, then it is quite possible and easy, to convince them that something that does no good, is very good indeed, and maybe the best that ever has been and is possible!

In such a culture of deception, it’s always been that way and always will be that way -- and that is why we have to do it that way, with the predictable no change, and no success or improvement. That is the language and culture of the dead, dying and despair -- and not the living, and so “culture” are the rituals of the past reaffirmed by the present -- rather than a living culture of successful, evolving adaptations being created and shared momentarily as the living.

One sees these cultures in every organization and activity in human society. These people just mindlessly go through the motions hoping for a different result -- and not realizing that the results, are in some way connected to what they are doing, or not doing. This is the prescientific consciousness of the world -- that exists in pockets of subcultures alongside prevailing cultures and actions that actually make a difference, are vital, evolving, really progressing.

Most people experience dead culture as the popular culture of common notions, myths and fallacies -- propagated by the rearguard institutions of the media, schools and universities.. Meanwhile, on the leading edge of these deceptions, common notions and ignorance, individuals are discovering and testing what actually works, not simply satisfied with more elaborate and convoluted explanations of why things aren’t working -- as though that was some kind of knowledge worth knowing.