Changing the world is fairly easy -- all one has to do is change oneself, and then the world is changed. But as much as people talk about wanting the world to change, they insist that everybody else must change first -- before they do. And that's why the world doesn't change, and things stay the same. Because everything and everybody is related (interacting), the change of any one, changes everything else. The problem of the world is that nobody feels that they should change; they want everybody else to change -- to suit them. The problem is always the other person and never themselves. It doesn't matter who or what the problem is -- the solution is always the same, one (and only one) must change. That is the power of the individual in this world. The president, the governor, the director can't change because there are too many people who want him to change -- to their tastes, while the individual, because he has no conflicting pressures, can change any way he wants to, even if he is the president, when acting as an individual. Groups cannot change the world no matter how large the conspiracy (constituency) -- only the individual can. That is the great secret in the world -- because we have been taught and conditioned otherwise.
Organizations, ideologies, professional associations, bureaucracies all want to convince us that the individual acting alone has no power. Nobody but the individual will convince himself that he has the power to change -- because it is not in the perceived best interest of others to contend with such an individual who is beyond their power to control, who is in control of himself. That is what we are conditioned to believe is the essential human relationship, which is the root of all social problems -- the manipulation and exploitation of every other. It's all very heavy-handed but because it is so pervasive, it is condoned and encouraged. That is the way to be -- if one is to get ahead in this world, which of course implies, this struggle with everybody else for primacy. It is usually not put into such terms. It is usually better to say, "I want to be President so I can help all the others in the world get ahead." Which of course is nonsense, the hypocrisy that is expected. If one were to say anything else, everyone would think he is crazy and so he wouldn't get elected in the first place.
The problem in placing greater importance on another is that it undermines the confidence in our own significance and power to act -- as we are, in our present circumstances. Direct, immediate action is never allowed. In order to do anything important (change), all manner of obstacles are created to delay that impulse. Before one can relax, he should first be retired. In order to do anything important, one has to first become rich and famous. In order to make a lot of money, one has to first get a Ph.D. And usually, the people who give this advice haven't done these things themselves -- which is their excuse for never having done anything but to tell others what they have to do. Newspaper editors give the impression that the only way to get things done is to write a letter to the editor and build wide sentiment to pressure (embarrass) the politician to act in the manner they wish. Writing directly to that politician is never suggested as a logical first step because one seldom has the courage to stand alone on any matter. No, we have to shame the leader into action, or embarrass, or threaten. One tried the direct approach once and it was ignored. So the advisors encourage us to use more force, build a public outcry -- and not again, to refine the presentation for a better reception The problem is them -- and there's nothing one can do, convinced as we are, that we have done everything we can do -- except create a better understanding and communication of that understanding. They must understand because if they don't, they're not trying; I've done all I can (or am willing to do -- usually nothing but try to change somebody else). Thus one has convinced himself again that there is nothing I can do, I am powerless, I am ineffective, I don't even know what is going on. The President, the Boss, the agency, the insurance -- will take care of me; they have to because I have demanded that they do. I have the power to force them to do these things for me -- but I do not have the power to do these things for myself. Such a person thinks it is far easier to change everything and everybody else in the world than it is to change just themselves for even one moment this time. With such a misapplication of understanding and effort, no wonder things don't improve; how could they?
Don't try to follow the logic in all this because there is none. In fact, if one were to be logical, he'd run into contradictions upon contradictions that would ensure he not get very far. Yet there is no great cover-up, no well-thought-out conspiracy in all this -- which presupposes a mastermind, some wizard behind a curtain pulling all the strings, all-knowing gurus. That doesn't mean that there will be a shortage of experts to come forward and explain what has happened -- and even more to volunteer a prophecy of dire consequences for the future. This great disaster, they promise, is just a harbinger of worst to come. Unless their words are heeded and their orders followed strictly (they recommend), there is no hope for the future.
At one time these people were the priests, in other times the politician, then the doctor, the lawyer, the teacher, the publications editor, the garbage collector, the investment advisor, the fitness expert, the airline pilots, the union leader -- all asserting primacy, a greater importance than all the rest, deserving of all the spoils, or at least as much as famous athletes and actors, after all, what they are doing is the most important work in society. So who's right and where does one draw the line on the deserving? And maybe that is why we need to change the world -- that is, ourselves.
It just takes one to see the absurdity of all this wasted energy for everyone else to become a little less sure of what they are doing. It is not a requirement that one convert everyone to this point of view. All that is required to bring an end to all previous action is the realization that there are other options -- some more viable than the accustomed course of action. For those who have never altered their course at any point in their lives, those prospects are intimidating. However, they become easier with practice and the rewards they bring. Eventually, changing at the first sign of need and advantage, becomes the norm instead of reinforcing habit, hoping that this time, stubborn persistence will pay off. Life is change. Change is the measure of success in life. If we really thought it out, those who want others to change but not themselves, are depriving themselves of the richness in living this full life. The right- thinking individual, wants to change himself as his greatest gift to himself. It is the measure of vitality, the fountain of youth. Change is only something that one can give to himself -- and can't be forced on others. So while many may desire change, the misunderstanding of how it works produces no change. One doesn't have to change the world; the world is change.
Then why is it we perceive the world to be unchanging and needful of our intercessions? It is because the mind does not change but senses the world through its fixed ideas of it; that is, while change is obvious and omnipresent, a hardened mind cannot see that. Change in the mind is the ability to see things differently -- and not as it always has, unvaryingly. Once the mind has changed, then it's a whole other world -- it is the world, as we see it. And depending on what we see, the world either works very well, or it doesn't. The mind that is open, sees those things all at work; the mind that is closed, sees only those things of the mind -- which is not the total content of what is in the world, only what he chooses to see. Is the glass half empty or is it half full? And is the water in the glass, all the water in the world? There are those who would complain that it doesn't matter that water is everywhere -- all that matters is that their glass is half full.
For every ill in the world, there is a cure and it may be that we haven't discovered it yet -- including those we think (or they might claim) have all the answers in assisting in our pursuit. That one store does not have the product we desire, does not mean the product doesn't exist. Our expert may not have all the answers -- but the truth may lie beyond his knowledge and expertise. Yet they may claim that their (one) way, is the only way, the only truth -- and the worst lies beyond. Many will live their entire lives never challenging authority and those who claim to know better -- for their own good. Certainly their world, their fate will never change.
But there will be a few who will challenge the known and find out that other realities, other possibilities exist. It's not just the work of scientists but the birthright of all. What one discovers may not end up to be what he thought and hoped to find, and that is the great adventure of life, a life of personal meaning and significance. Without that feeling of importance, significance, one is doomed to inconsequence and incompetence.
Real change is always outside of the pattern of narrow expectations yet most who express or advocate change do so within the narrow range of possibilities -- which usually is to merely be against something or other, and not a wholly new course of action. Most people's sense of injustice extends no farther than that they should be at the top of any reorganization of society -- and not that all inequality and schemes of dominance and acquiescence are unjust. There is no question that some few are more capable because of their insight and experience -- but those who are most proficient at anything are not motivated because they want to be the best at what everybody else is doing. They are the best because they recognize they do what nobody else is capable of doing or even think possible -- because they've never seen anybody do it. And that is the great argument for diversity -- that some quirk of adaptation may actually have greater effectiveness than what is thought to be the culturally-common response, which even those who go along may recognize as futile. "But that's what everybody else is doing," is commonly accepted as a valid excuse, if not a moral imperative. "What will happen to me if just this once, I didn't do what is expected of me? Won't the whole world come crashing down on me because I have violated the great taboos handed down by the gods themselves?" Well generally, one finds out.
Are the problems in the world (our problems) in spite of our good intentions and efforts, or might they be the cause that only manifests itself more clearly in time? Many forget that only a generation ago -- smoking tobacco was promoted as a cure for society's greatest ills and doctors advised most patients to avoid strenuous exercise -- and going beyond one's limits, and before even considering changing one's "normal" activities and behaviors, one should consult one's minister or doctor -- probably as a first-ditch effort to dissuade and discourage him, as though his current practices could never be the problem, the cause of the symptoms. Today, hopefully, most of us realize better -- that our own lives could be improved virtually endlessly. That is the world we now live in -- this world of greater consciousness -- as well as of the many other things. In fact, many will complain that there just is too much to "know" now -- as though anybody needed to know it all, or make that claim. That would be totally absurd. However, everybody seems to have a channel of experience that he is intimately involved with -- which is his total world. That's his only responsibility, changing his immediate world, which can be the actuality -- or simply how one alters his perception of that actuality, which is the integrated result of that interaction. Under "laboratory" conditions, everything is expected to remain the same except the one thing we are examining and measuring. In the real world, everything is the end result. We'd be better off if nobody tried to change the world overnight but everybody sought to make a 1% improvement in their immediate environment and conditions each day of their lives. Of course in this manner, everybody's world becomes a bigger place and so one's actions compound over time, building in the directions in which they seem to bring about improvement in one's conditions. That's the momentum of change. Everything changes everything else.
Nevertheless, there will be self-appointed guardians of the public good who declare that change is an arduous task that first requires a government-funded study before any initiatives can be undertaken, after all, we wouldn't want the masses to get the wrong impression -- that change was to be embraced rather than resisted. "We must preserve our cultural traditions and heritage lest we be lost" -- in a world in which those who don't change, don't adapt already are hopelessly lost. What's to be lost in such a legacy of inadequate responses? They may have been the best one could come up with in another time, under different conditions -- but is the past to be the blueprint for the future, or will those responses be totally uncontaminated by those restrictions and reservations? -- and one is free to re-create oneself to the demands of today's urgencies. That means letting go of the good ol' times (real or imagined) one hopes to resurrect.
So what are the options? Obviously before intelligent decision-making can take place, one begins an inquiry into the options rather than beginning with conclusions that preclude the various alternatives. It's meaningless to argue a point if that is the only point of view one has -- with no recognition of the possibility of any others. People generally don't differ in opinions; the disagreement lies in what we consider to be the facts. Given the same facts, we all generally arrive at the same opinion. So the question should not be how does one arrive at his conclusions but rather, how does he arrive at his facts? For many people, other people's opinions are their facts -- and not that the facts are self-evident to any observer.
So what are the facts? In the Old World Order, certain institutions might claim to reveal what the facts are and then allow that everyone else might form their own opinions from those facts -- in specially-designated forums for that meaningless exercise. In the New World Order, it is more clearly seen that opinions are often presented as facts -- and so it is the task of everyone else to determine what the facts truly are. The attentive reader distinguishes all that is known from all the speaker knows -- or wants him to think he knows. Unfortunately, many have been rewarded for persuasiveness and rhetoric rather than rigor at researching the facts -- and think that is the way to get ahead in this world because that was what they were rewarded for most of their academic lives. Because most of the teachers are bored, they just want to hear a good story too. Their primary concern is to get more pay and so the impressionable come away from that exposure with the impression that to get more in life, one has to merely demand more -- unrelentingly, and that is the only solution, whatever the problem. Such people may go through their entire lives not having "enough," their fair share of the outrageous salaries everybody but them are receiving. Why is it they think as they do? Because they don't have the facts -- but offer opinions as facts.
Why should those doing the same job receive different pay so that those receiving the least are used as an example that the wages are low and unfair when there is this greater injustice between the highest paid person for that same job and those receiving the lowest. Doesn't experience make the job easier for those who are more suited for that job and very stressful for those who aren't. And those too ill-suited get stressed to the point that they leave to discover a more suitable calling -- having learned that pay is not the only or even most important consideration in determining what is meaningful for one's life. No harm in that. What is probably more important than the general employment rate is the degree to which workers feel confident to leave what they have been doing for an even greater fulfillment. In a low-actualization society, people hang on to their jobs, eyeing every stranger suspiciously, fearing that they might be replaced. In high-actualization societies, people groom their successors in anticipation of moving on. They might not even have any idea what that might be but they have the confidence that something will manifest. Meanwhile, the one living in tremendous anxiety, fear, terror, can't be very focused or good at what he is doing. People who are good at a job, can't think of anything easier to do -- even if all jobs were paid the same. That's a feeling that one who isn't good at anything, will never know -- and so more years and more salary are the only measures of progress and distinction. Is the bar too low? The trouble with setting the bar too low is that people are still going to want to jump under it. But the really funny thing is that when one agrees that conditions are terrible and couldn't get worse, the critical start defending the status quo as the best of all possible worlds. Everything ought to stay the same except one thing -- we demand more money. What else is new?
Ailing economies are symptomatic of ailing societies; the former is just easier to measure. In fact, the economics are the measure of societies, but they don't tell the whole stories. "$500 a month" is not enough information -- and certainly is never the whole story. Is $500 a month one's pay, rent or phone bill? How outrageous it can get is exhibited by a study claiming to be "a statistically meaningful sample" that included all of three people living in the same house. Two volunteered and one resisted, and the reported improvement was 17%. The article was titled, "Exercise shown to be helpful in mental illness." No editor blinked enough to keep it from the health headlines for that day. Unfortunately, that is the quality of research being done by physical fitness experts, which gets further embellished by word-of-mouth retellings. "But that's what the experts say," say the experts. And that's why things don't work very well, obviously.
That's not to say that there is not technical expertise but that expertise must question their own premises and assumptions constantly to remain viable or it is nothing more than hearsay parading as professional expertise. Experts who don't challenge the foundations of their expertise are not worthy of that designation. Experts worth listening to are those who have reached the point at which they recognize the known as the unknown and are up to that challenge. The rest may have credentials but not the right to consider themselves experts because they've not reached the point at which they say, "I say this because..." And not "that the experts say ... and that is what I'm saying, and that makes me the expert. " Yet much of that we "know," we've learned in this way -- what we were taught, and not what we learned from our own studies, from our own experiments and experience. When the barriers to obtaining information are eliminated, there is a chance that we may hear more than one opinion, and with the different perspectives, might go on to a higher understanding that integrates, distills, and incorporates all the different perspectives into a greater one. That's how knowledge -- and the world, changes.
And that is why so many people have difficulty in living in a world of changes. The education and conditioning makes absolute truths of relative ones and doesn't admit of any uncertainty -- which comes as a rude awakening for the many upon the completion of their formal education. One can see the quick graduation of how a partial truth becomes a complete one just in knowing that something widely believed because there may have been a high correlation is in turn presented as the absolute truth -- which even the original findings may not have claimed. Modern media persons are inclined to believe that every story is no story unless it is embellished and sensationalized. What may have begun as an anecdote now becomes a generalization, and the succeeding generation adds its own spin -- until every person who could have a say on the matter has had their say, and then we collectively move on to the next object of endless speculation. That is the news of the day -- that's what it has come down to. Unfortunately, that's how many of the most disadvantaged get their information and ideas -- shaped by the marketing strategies of the various industry associations. How else could they? Yes, the fact is, information is marketed, shaped, manipulated -- and not dispensed by Public Good Gods.
Information that is not profitable is not likely to be promoted heavily despite that it may be what everybody is looking for. The solution that is the most profitable is the idea that will be promoted the most aggressively. Organizations and institutions that fail and get more money because of their failures will continue to fail even more spectacularly -- until even the most faithful will finally ask, "Is there another way?" Of course there is likely to be another way, but is one going to be able to rely on these failing institutions to provide that other way when the old ways have been so profitable? -- though admittedly, ineffective. Yet once having established a dominance in that field, they may claim that only their associates are qualified to speak on their turf of expertise. They want a free market to demand higher compensation but they don't want a free market so that anybody is allowed to compete in that free market if they're merely capable; these capable people have to pay their dues just like everybody else -- because "it's not going to be a world in which those who can do, but our world in which only those we say can do, can do." So when the best and the brightest drop out or don't go into those fields, what little work that was being done disappears and something much more vital has begun to take hold somewhere else, where there still is a market for talent uncontrolled by the bureaucracies. Anywhere there are a lot of control issues, the truly creative are not likely to be. They will be off creating the new realities -- and not hoping for the good ol' days to return. The old leadership is not the vanguard but the rearguard of the direction society is moving.
The New Economy many will talk about ignores its basic constituents -- the fact that new personalities with different values and responses are emerging. While their numbers are small but increasing at a dramatic pace, what is most notable is their freedom from the known and comfort in dealing with uncertainty. This is a new breed of people that transcends most of the traditional dividing lines -- age, gender, intelligence quotients. They are people with open minds; they are capable of anything, new responses to our age-old problems until those no longer work, and then they're off to address the next urgency of the times. These people are motivated by failure -- to change, and not to continue as they have been doing with decreasing or no success. The conditioning of the past was predominated by the notion that if at first one fails, try and try again. The new mentality, in encountering failure, will try something different -- even if he has to create an entirely new way himself. This latter version of persistence is what pays off -- and not conditioned, disciplined, obsessive behaviors.
Perhaps the greatest example of this kind of pay-off is what a lot of people must realize tangentially but not directly and powerfully. Most people by now have been aware of the tremendous rise in the stock markets of this country yet few may be aware that the least successful participants have been into the traditional manner of investing while the most successful have broken all the rules of conventional investing -- including the most sacred, the need for diversification. That advice might have come in the form of "Take your profits from your winners and hold your losers waiting for them to turn around." It's been noted before by "disreputable" speculators that it is far more profitable to "take your losses quickly and let your winners run." It sounds so simple and easy that it can't be right. But think about it -- doesn't the same rule apply to just about everything we do. Those things that work we should continue to do and move further in that direction, and those things that don't work, we must find another way that does. That seems to be the governing principle of all successful adaptations -- which is what life in the Big Picture is all about. LIFE must be successful -- regardless of whether we individually choose to participate successfully or not. When life is not getting better, maybe the first question to ask is, "Maybe I'm not doing something right, or well." People who simply ask that question, go on to live better lives. Those who think such questions don't matter, will never know the difference.
This may all seem deep and spiritual but it need not be extraordinary. Almost everybody will agree that we understand these things but project that everybody else doesn't understand these things but us -- whomever we may be. That is the division in the world: the US who understands these things and the THEM that don't -- and that is constantly changing depending on who we talk to. Then one day, we realize it's all us -- and that's why the world changes.
The surprising thing about the rise in the stock market and therefore the wealth of the individuals who participate in it is that expenses don't rise commensurately with the increase in capacity to do so but rise much more moderately, which makes these gains sustainable, whereas income earned from employment is usually matched by expenditures at a nearly equal pace. But in no case is there much evidence of the kind of conspicuous consumption particularly rampant in the '60s and '70s. Things are not nearly so valued as the intangibles. To own property was for a previous generation the culmination and validation of their place in the world, the dividing line between the haves and the have -nots. Now, many of the richest people in the world rent rather than buy when it makes more financial sense to do so, and gold chains are adornments most would not want to be identified by. Things have value to the extent one can delight in using them, and are a liability otherwise so the simple accumulation of more things is acknowledged by most now as not a guarantee of greater fulfillment. The numbers have checked in overwhelmingly on this trend. So if money is no longer the measure, what is?
People create value in what they are doing. A job is meaningful and rewarding if one sees it that way. If one thinks he is sacrificing his life and time in a job, he needs to move on and do that which he rewards himself by doing. And if he can't afford to, he has to first find a way to be able to afford that luxury because that is the ultimate value for each. My suspicion is that many of those who delighted in playing computer games when they first came out have graduated to become online traders -- in the ultimate game. It began so innocently. Struggling writers and artists realized there was a demand for WebMasters. Meanwhile, those who convinced themselves that they only had thirty more years to retire may have seen their occupations rage and disappear within a decade (key-punch operator, anyone?) Companies were at first apologetic that they could no longer guarantee lifetime (permanent) employment and then quickly became masters at downsizing. Yet many are still convinced that the world has not changed, is going through a temporary slowdown and shortly the good ol' times will rock and roll again, and so they must not forget the past but commemorate it so that like fallen gods, they will return one day and one can claim he did not lose in the faith in the meantime but always knew they would.
On hearing of the need for change, some will offer, "Tell me what I need to change and I will do it," indicating that they have missed the point entirely because adaptation to change is not fixed, a non-moving target but always changing. So a willingness to change one thing only is an unwillingness to confront total change. It's much like the child chided for doing one annoying behavior who promptly takes up another annoying behavior and may not understand that it is annoying behaviors that are disliked and not just one particular action arbitrarily, and simply acceding to that request means everything is all right now. Some cultures, at certain times in their development, may extol those caught in a hopeless situation to struggle unrelentingly and tirelessly in their hopeless cause. What is overlooked in those success stories was that persistence was not in doing the same thing over and over until they got a different result but the persistence was in doing different things until there was a success -- often quite removed from the original intent and objective. Great scientists did not set out to prove that they were right. They persisted because something did not seem right -- and they wanted to find out what that was. Some practices improve one's performance and some other practices diminish one's performance so to say anything is better than nothing is not even mostly true. A few practices may improve one's performance, but many more other practices probably won't. There are efforts that are counter-productive, maybe meaning well but misunderstanding the process. From time to time, they may even be the law. That can change too.
The law is the law but there are many more practices that people think are the law (and they are led on to think so) that are merely on people's wish list. A very common one is that nobody should be allowed to teach anyone anything else unless they are certified to do so. That presupposes that all students are fools and can't tell when a teacher is effective or not. At all ages, people like good teachers and despise those who have nothing to offer but their credentials. It is quite likely that the author can't quote it from anywhere because he made it up himself. "Look Mr. Thomas A. Edison, where did you get such a preposterous idea; lightbulb indeed." "Sure Einstein, we're all just vibrating light waves waiting to go up in a mushroom cloud of smoke." "The time to buy stocks is when nobody else wants them." "The time to sell Pet Rocks is when nobody wants to buy them." "Only comedians are allowed to tell jokes." "Only high priests can divine entrails -- under punishment of death."
So it seems as though times really have changed -- but what are you going to do about it? Stay the same and defend the status quo? Or be a pioneer leading the parade, defining a new adaptation, living a 21st-Century life?
Life is what we make of it. So what will we make of it? Lots of people advise on a specific change they would like, or how others should go about it. But no matter how good an idea, if there is no mindset, no culture, no will that embraces change, sees the urgency and importance of it -- not just in this one thing or time but deeply, fundamentally, passionately, then such ideas will merely be entertainment quickly to be forgotten like the new toy at Christmas. One may develop a taste for the new, novel, bizarre -- in his choice of entertainment but let it go no farther than that. The advantage in that is being able to say, "I've heard of an idea nobody else has," as though that conveyed great distinction, a worldly sophistication lacking in the rest. In these superficial things there may be slight differences but fundamentally, we are all human -- with the need for change to recharge our vitality, to give life a greater meaning, a sense of progress. But before it is productive to talk about any specific changes it is necessary to understand the role of change so that is not seen as the exception but the rule -- and not changing, maintaining the status quo is the aberration that requires increasing resources to maintain -- in a world of change.