Thinking About Change
Things change by default, change is eternal, it is perhaps the only constant. But we often forget this fact and hope that tomorrow would be similar to the past or even today. A flower that blooms also becomes stale by the evening, that the sun rises but also sets; that a newborn baby often grows into an aged person; the social status and with that our lifestyle changes. We all know that both weather and climate change through ages; that our attitudes change as does the pollution level of air, water and soil. But, still we often try to fight against these changes!
Perhaps such observations led the well known spiritual Guru, Jiddu Krishnamuti to write:
The river is flowing steadily, deep and wide, but the pool is heavy with scum because it is not connected with the life of the river, and there are no fish in it. It is a stagnant pool, and the deep river, full of life and vitality, flows swiftly along.
Dont you think human beings are like that? They dig a little pool for themselves away from the swift current of life, and in that little pool they stagnate, die; and this stagnation, this decay we call existence. That is, we all want a state of permanency; we want certain desires to last forever, we want pleasures to have no end. We dig a little hole and barricade ourselves in it with our families, with our ambitions, our cultures, our fears, our gods, our various forms of worship, and there we die, letting life go by.
To seek permanency means wanting that which is pleasurable to continue indefinitely, and wanting that which is not pleasurable to end as quickly as possible. We want the name that we bear to be known and to continue through family, through property. We want a sense of permanency in our relationships, in our activities, which means that we are seeking a lasting, continuous life in the stagnant pool; we dont want any real changes there, so we have built a society which guarantees us the permanency of property, of name, of fame...
Why, do we then always want to fight against a possible change that would affect our future lifestyle?
I like the thought of Buckminister Fuller:
"In order to change an existing paradigm do not struggle to try and change the problematic model.Create a new model and make the old one obsolete."
I think that is a tall order, too difficult!!
May be it is because of our education. We are taught that a certain set of elements make up our universe; that the atomic and molecular structure of a particular substance remains constant, as does the structure of genes that dictate our development and growth. We learn that there are some eternal physical laws of nature, such as: the Laws of motion; Law of Conservation of Energy; the Law of constant proportion etc. We all know that solar system has remained unchanged for time immemorial, that the Earth has always revolved around the Sun, just as the Moon revolves around the Earth!
Are there exceptions to the rule that change alone is constant? That indeed calls for some critical thought!
What is the theory behind the belief every thing changes after some time? I think the earliest philosophers known as natural philosophers, the Greeks, started the thought process.
One of the key elements for the natural philosophers was the idea that something had to come from something. In this, there was the acknowledgement that things changed and transformations took place in nature, but all things, however transformed, had to come from something. For the natural philosophers, questions such as how live fish came from water, or huge trees could come from apparently dead ground, were questions of marvel.
The natural philosophers were, for all intents and purposes, the first of a long line of what became known as "rationalists".
Two of the natural philosophers were Promenades and Heraclitus and both had very different ideas about how things were. For Promenades (540-BC), the idea that something came from nothing was wrong. He said that nothing can come from nothing and nothing that exists can become nothing. He took this even farther and said there is no such thing as actual change. Nothing could become anything other than what it already was. Promenades could see with his senses that things changed, but he could not reconcile this with what his reason told him. He concluded that the our senses gave an illussory perception of the world that was not in accordance with reason. He chose reason over his senses. His project as a philospher was to expose all these forms of perceptual illusion with the use of reason.
In comparison, a contemporary Heraculitus said the world was in a constant state of flux. We could say that he trusted his senses much more than Pamenides. He saw that the world was made up of opposites that were interdependent. If we never became ill, then we would not know what being well was. If there was never a war, then we would never appreciate what it was to be at peace. Without a winter, we would never see the spring. Although limited.
Both Paramenides and Heraculitus believed in a "one element" theory to the world. The only difference was that one said that, although things appear to change, they cannot because nothing can come from nothing, while the other said things are always in flux and the sensory perceptions can be relied upon.
It took the next natural philosophers to solve this obvious contradiction in their predecessors' ideas. Empedocles (490-430BC) said that both were right in one of their assertions, but wrong in the other. The problem he addressed was the "one element". Empedocles said that this premise was wrong; that there were four elements to everything, namely, earth, air, fire and water. Everything is made up of these things. Nothing did not come from nothing, but things did change because it was the coming together of the four elements that did it.
I think, therefore, that there is no Universal Theory of Change! Are you aware of one? Think!!
Rakesh Mohan Hallen