"I Just Want Everything to Stay the Same," Is Not an Option

If one reads the editorials and letters to the editors of any publication (which fewer do these days), the theme that stands out, is the demand by the writer that everything should stay the same -- forevermore, and if they did, all the problems of the world and humanity, would be solved.  "If only everything would stay the same," so people would never grow old, children would never grow up, crimes would never be committed, and accidents would never happen -- if only everything would stay the same.

But the reality of the world and life, is that everything is constantly changing -- and the choice we have, is not whether to change or to stay (remain) the same, but how does that inevitable change manifest.  Do things gets better, or do things get worse -- because we merely hope that they will stay the same, while denying that change is already underway?

Yet by far, the major "work" of many institutions, organizations and individuals (invariably presuming to be acting on everybody else's behalf), is to maintain the status quo against the challenges (of change), and to perpetuate that way as the only way it can be -- and always has been -- they would have everyone believe.  Once they can get others to buy into the legitimacy of their way as the only way, or the only natural way, or the only right-thinking (politically/socially correct)  way, then the battle is already won -- against the challenge of other ways they could be, if one were to rethink life -- wholly and freshly from the beginning, so that the past has no greater claim on the future than the present.

Then we would all live in the present moment, with the defenders (elite) of the status quo past, having no greater claim to the course and development of the future (repeating the past).  Mainly what keeps that past alive, are the thoughts that make it so -- as the official and only way they could/should be thought.  This simply becomes more apparent when there are more alternative  points of view than just the one promulgated by the "politically correct" hierarchy of that time and society -- which at times have varied from the religious, noble, "enlightened," as well as the infamous brutal, ruthless and suppressive -- even at times, calling themselves the "democratic people's republic," and other such euphemisms.

In that manner, they got many to believe that everything they believed, was the truth they discovered for themselves, instead of just being implanted by the "experts" and "professionals," who saw it as their job -- to do the thinking for everybody else, and to learn the latest propaganda techniques for deceiving and manipulating thought -- because it was just a whole lot faster and more convenient than mastering the facts themselves.  It was enough just to get people to repeat the easiest cliche possible -- and whether they could stand any test of truth became immaterial, as long as they could get as many people as possible to do so as their self-evident power -- to control the thinking of every other.  That is what they believed made them "democratic."