Change and Better Alternatives
Human Development
Change! We all desire it at times and hate and/or resist it at other times. However, change is a part of the dynamism of life. The very universe is made up of energy, ever moving and ever changing. In that same way our solar system is constantly changing in large and small ways, as is the earth, the web of life and each and every one of us. We experience it watching our children and others, while noticing how, even our own bodies change with age.
So, change is not something we can significantly control. It is simply a part of being a human being in this universe, in this solar system, on this planet, within this web of life, and within all of the changing realities of life.
We can try to resist change, or deny it, but it will still occur with or without us. The reality is that it probably makes more sense to find ways to adapt to it and adjust our perceptions of reality rather than anything else.
Everyday Change
When we do make changes in how we deal with life, we almost always try to incorporate them into our lives and normalize those changes to become part of our new conception of reality. The problem, of course, is that life and our world continue to change, sometimes making our new normal outdated very quickly.
The challenge becomes, how to retain some sense of stability in our lives while remaining open to change. That is the difficult part. How do we remain open and flexible and still be effective in life? However, many people do this well. Part of the secret is not to make our changes become fixed and rigid, but instead to allow them to be tentative, knowing that a changing reality might well require us to adjust and adapt to deal with each new reality, ad infinitum.
We have all experienced change in our everyday life. Driving a car is an example. You have a plan for how to get to wherever you are going, but you stay flexible along the way to deal with the unpredictability of other drivers, or the weather, or mechanical problems, or the road conditions, or even some event which may make you call off the entire trip. We all deal with such realities almost daily. Much of our lives are like that. We may have a plan or a goal but are ready to improvise along the way.
Difficult Change
Change takes on an entirely different complexion when we are dealing with our deep beliefs, ideologies, or the beliefs of groups or systems to which we belong. All of these systems are based on a particular view of the world and the place human beings have in it. That, by itself, is merely an attempt to make some sense of a complex world. The catch is that they are often premised on a static world and our world is anything but static. Because life is dynamic, it often takes constant reinterpretation of those beliefs and ideologies to keep up with those changes. Going back to the driving example, driving would not work well if one of your ideological tenets was that you should never have to back down or yield. It is scary to think of the consequences.
If your responses to life are constricted by a belief system, an ideology or by the foundational beliefs of a group or system to which you adhere, change is a constant battle to make reality fit the needs of those explanations of reality. It makes responding in the moment an incredibly difficult series of calculations. It also leads to wildly differing interpretations of what reality really is.
It is like trying to make the world and life fit into a specific template set up to define what reality really means.
All of that makes the relatively straightforward process of responding to a constantly changing world through adaptation and adjustment into an almost impossibly complex process.
How to Make Change
The basic task is to find solutions that allow us to make our way through life, accepting the reality that life is dynamic, in constant flux. A large part of that solution is understanding that we are part of that dynamism and that we have certain strengths, talents and gifts which can be used to navigate our way through the journey. Another part of the solution is that we must find our own way, not to please someone else’s perception of what should be done, nor some belief or ideology that seems to limit our options.
Learning how to remain open to change and flexible enough to respond to changes is really the process of growth, or development, or maturity. It is, in its most basic form, the process of living, of being alive in a dynamic environment. In such a world the only way to sustain our balance is to continue our movement. It is like a top that must continue to spin in order to stay upright. At the center of that spin is a quiet place. All of this has a gyroscopic effect on us. It is us as our most fulfilled selves being alive but without the franticness, instead operating from our still center. We have become comfortable with the dynamism of life.
Finding Better Alternatives
Once we understand the reality of change in the world, we are in a position to look at existing systems through the lens of how effective they are in dealing with the current changes.
Systems are developed to help deal with the realities of the moment. They are then normalized and can become entrenched and self-sustaining. Systems do not deal with change very well, in fact they often strongly resist change, seeing change as a threat to their existence. Only from the outside does it become apparent when a system stops serving its purpose and becomes more hinderance than help in dealing with the new realities of the world.
Economic systems are often defined to serve the realities of a certain period and are reluctant to change with changing realities. The same is true of systems of governance. Both of these can easily come under the control of some ruling elite who use them to enhance their lust for power and control.
Change, therefore, must often come from outside those systems, from popular and grassroots movements.
Such change does not need to be competitive or even confrontational. It can simply grow from a realization that the current systems and solutions do not meet the needs of a populace trying to respond to current realities. This can begin with what might be called ‘a coalition of the willing”, which means that some person or group presents a better alternative to solving popular problems and then allows others to join as those others see the viability of that better alternative. Eventually this grows and attains critical mass to be the way people deal with current realities.
An example might be how the change from analog to digital devices occurred relatively quickly. All the analog devices did not need to be destroyed is some great purge, nor did the analog users. Everyone simply saw that digital was a better alternative for our changing realities. The same was true of the automobile replacing the horse and buggy and countless others.
Once we accept that change itself is the dominant reality of our lives and our world, we can then look at existing solutions and systems with some objectivity and discover better alternatives.
Sustainable Change
Accepting the dynamism of the world and life allows us to learn from life, learning how to live and, with clear eyes, discover and create better alternatives to current realities. This allows us to not just survive but to thrive as an integrated part of the web of life on this planet. In the process we can add our energy to the energy of the world and the planet and become a human and sustainable part of better alternatives.
