Guest Commentary: Our Foolish Infatuation with Change

By Bruce Walker

Barack Obama won the presidency based upon the theme of change.  We already live in a world of constant change, and we assume too easily that change is good. Politicians, professors, pundits, self-proclaimed champions of the oppressed - those with vested interests in change - repeat the lie that change makes things better. But these cheerleaders of constant change are unhappy people, by and large. Certainly there are some areas of human life in which change is good - who would want to go back to the medicine or dentistry of fifty years ago? – but, surely, if there is one idea which should have been debunked in the last century it would be the idea of beneficent progress. The First World War was dramatic and catastrophic progress. The Bolshevik junta in 1917 was progress in the direct of omnipresent police state and slave labor camps. The Second World War was progress along the road to genocidal madness and global war.  Ghastly diseases and debilitating physical conditions are “progressive,” and that means change which is bad.

AIDS, pornography, broken homes, prostitution and increasingly vile violent crimes are changing America by progressively making life worse. Television, what Ray Bradbury once called the Medusa that turns 100 million Americans into stone for six hours each day, is progression toward puerile images supplanting serious reflection. The oceans of frantic, frivolous and foolish news and entertainment stories that drown out all real sentiment and cognition are constructed around our foolish infatuation with change and our pathetic trust in progress.

The overthrow of the Shah of Iran was not benign progress. The degradation of Islamic rage into homicide bombers is not progress. The construction of the largest death camp in the world in North Korea is progress into the Inferno. The expansion of government in America to the point that it increasingly swallows up all other resources is progress toward bankrupty. The very notion of progress as essentially good is false.

Does this mean that the human condition cannot be improved? In once sense, yes: We all are born and we all die. We have precious little control over how we die or when we die, unless we murder ourselves. Our children and parents and spouses will all die. All our work and all of our mortal dreams will die too.  More than a lust for change, we ought – in this season of Thanksgiving – to be grateful for what we already possess.

The human condition can be improved. Medical advances which remove pain and increase our mobility are real blessings. The expansion of available honest information is a blessing. The cornucopia of agriculture and the engine of technology make living easier. But even wholesome change may be made bad. Medical advances lead to actresses with endless vanity surgeries to prolong youth in desperation or lead to human cloning. And wealth can hurt as well as help:  The poor of America are not hungry but fat; they are not overworked but bored to anger.

The notion of the perfectibility of the human race by material changes or scientific discoveries is an affront to the Blessed Creator of the Universe. If wealth, good looks, brilliance and comfort were all we needed, then He would have given those to us in a nanosecond. What God seeks instead is the perfectibility of our love, our interest in truth, our faith in His existence, our thankfulness for our creation and for his Creation.

Our hypnotic fixation on flux, on change, on action to transform this in the world or that in the world is bound to lead not to the feeding of our real needs but rather to temporary fix of a heroin addict. That is why despots, even despots with some good intentions initially, degrade so quickly into monstrosities: self-made gods.  Every monster of the last century which gave birth to an ugly new state – Mussolini, Lenin, Mao, Hitler, Castro – promised above all action, change, progress.  As we watch Obama seek to change America, we would do well to remember that change, like biological mutation, is most often hideous and harmful.

What can we change that is always good?  We can change only our hearts and souls. We can embrace what Benjamin Franklin called the Powerful Goodness or we can run around in circles, creating work (how much of the work we do today is simply make-work?) and making each other miserable. Embracing that Powerful Goodness requires forgotten virtues: wisdom, trust and faith.

Modernity lacks wisdom and wisdom does not come from flux; wisdom comes from patience and respect for the lessons of the past. Flux demands that whatever theory has the most immediate cachet is truth de jour. Wisdom knows that truth does not change, although over time it may become clearer or more refined. Flux for the sake of flux is a variation of recreational war, that most awful of human activities. Flux, for the sake of flux is destruction of value, which is why Marxist regimes were so enamored with permanent revolution, because the goal of Marxism and other variations of the same disease change society by making new miseries to justify an addiction to the narcotic of power.

What is old is often very good.  What is tried is also often true.  How much social change in the last forty years has been good change?  How many new government programs and policies have done what they were intended to do?  We moderns would do well to be more humble towards our ancestors.  We have a lot to be humble about.           

                © 2008 Bruce Walker -- All Rights Reserved

Comments

[fixation on flux]

I'll tell you what. How about we all just go back to the Middle Ages, you stay in Canada and get some free mental health treatment.

[Kster]

I like Selwyn! Fantastic. It so true! Although I see your first resonse to it as sort of a verbal drive by shooting. Completely devoid of substance and equally as sad and pathetic. What can you do but cringe at such mental midgets that post dribble that lack of any creativity, empathy or wisdom? That is exactly where the internet hasn't been a good change!

[fixation on flux]

Kster,
I suppose you know, "what [you] can do but cringe." I'm sure people have been telling you for a long time.

[Dale]

Yea know, writing a blog and opening it up for comments is a lot like trolling for fish, you accept that a certain portion of the bites are gooing to be garbage fish; to bad you can’t just hit them over the head and throw them back. Oh well…

[fixation on flux]

DALE WRITES: "a certain portion of the bites are gooing to be garbage fish;"

I'm certainly gooing to keep that comment in mind, if I post something here again. I'm just gooing to have to be careful about what I say. I know Dale is gooing to be watching.

Thanks Dale...

[democrat]

puke says: "change is most often hidious and harmful."

This sentence in itself is ridiculous, as in, if you look at what the U.S. was like before Bush stole the first election to his lame duck administration currently, you would be correct. But if you miss the fact that this country is in need of a different course, you would be totally wrong, as you usually are. The Bush doctrine of change is what's hidious at best, but bringing in someone who would offer some other way to look at things besides using military might and running our economy in the ground is a breath of fresh air. For you guy's (conservative nutcases like the ones who freqent this pathetic site) sakes, I hope you are right, because you look more and more pathetic with the lame accusations that you keep hurling at Obama that doesn't stick. What pathetic losers you idiots are. And if things were up to puke here, who says that "what's old is tried and true," then we'd still have horses and carriages instead of the advanced technology of cars and planes. Maybe, since he appreciates the lack of technological advances, he should consider not utilizing his computer to spread his demonic diatribe. That would be the ultimate hommage to our ancestors puke.

[Shaun]

Another insightful and meaningful commentary by the delightful Democrat..thanks for blessing us with your presence.

Shaun

[Walt]

Dem,

Good to see you have been working on the Capitalization:)

I see you have quite the overdeveloped stereotype of conservatives. You are sure lucky that we do not all have the same skin color or you would be a racist.

I love this quote- "And if things were up to puke here, who says that "what's old is tried and true," then we'd still have horses and carriages instead of the advanced technology of cars and planes."

Another wild swing for the fence! Don't you see? You are what you hate. Who are you to judge if cars and planes are better than horses and carriages (even though that has nothing to do with Selwyn’s point). Would greenhouse gas emissions (lol) not be far lessened in your fantasy backwards world of your stereotypical conservative? Are you sure you do not want to take that one back? Oh well I am done with this one you probably did not even read the article. Life is too short to troll Dem.

I think I will jump in my Diesel SUV that has the big off road tires and go and club some baby seals on my way to prayer meeting, were we pray for horses and buggies. You know, like all conservatives do on Tuesdays.

"puke says: "change is most often hidious and harmful.""

"Puke" didn't write that. It's Bruce Walker. Idiot.

"Kster,
I suppose you know, "what [you] can do but cringe." I'm sure people have been telling you for a long time.
"

Wrong use of brackets there buddy.

[fixation on flux]

The man with no name says: "Wrong use of brackets there buddy."

Really, tell me why...

[Shaun]

Brackets generally indicate material has been added by someone else besides the author. Sometimes it is to point out explanatory material or missing material to add to understanding of a particular statement. FoF is reordering the sentence to make a sentence of his own...I guess its used properly...not sure why I responded though!

Shaun

[democrat]

no name, your mother's the idiot for giving birth to you. and besides, I don't usually give validation to pathetic idiots who refuse to identify themselves, but there's a first time for everything.

and to walt, who lacks the intelligence to think outside the box. even though puke said nothing about cars, it supposed to be in comparison of his longing for the past. so please, according to you conservatives, you don't believe in greenhouse gasses nor the global warming arguement. so don't waste my time by attempting to sound like something you're not: intelligent.

[Walt]

Dem,

So which greenhouse gas do you fear the most? water vapor or co2?

[no name]

no name, your mother's the idiot for giving birth to you. and besides, I don't usually give validation to pathetic idiots who refuse to identify themselves, but there's a first time for everything.

and to walt, who lacks the intelligence to think outside the box. even though puke said nothing about cars, it supposed to be in comparison of his longing for the past. so please, according to you conservatives, you don't believe in greenhouse gasses nor the global warming arguement. so don't waste my time by attempting to sound like something you're not: intelligent.

I'm "no name". And why should I "identify" myself. In what way? What does my identity matter. You haven't "identified" yourself either, you just refer to yourself, generically, as "democrat", a pseudonym. Anybody can create a pseudonym for themself.

By the way,fixation, the sentence with the bracket should have been "what [can you] do but cringe." because you relocated both the "can" and the "you".

[democrat]

walt, I prefer the one that will make you physically ill:)

[democrat]

After a sleepless night last night and re-reading this article, I decided to tell my friends here at this board why I am so unhappy.

When I was only 13, my cat Foo Foo died, after a proper burial (my dad was home only on weekends, so cat sat in a box for two days) I was looking out the window facing the "burial plot" when I noticed a neighbors dog digging up Foo Foo. We lived in the suburbs of Chicago (go Blago), so when my dad ran out with the shotgun, loaded with rocksalt meant to keep marauding crows out of the garden, he was able to get off a load up that dog's arse. The visual left in my mind was of a yelping dog running down the road. I was not able to sleep that night.

Ten years later following a hurried education, finishing with my teachers certificate, I was in class teaching Home Economics when a teenage girl spit in my face. Her father was a Republican, at least that is the way I remember it. No matter the fact her mother was a Democrat, I figured she probably had issues at home with rules and all, so I let that slide, later wishing I had not. Ever since I don't like woman. Sitting out the day home yesterday reminded me of all the injustices in life, things are really unfair, especially because my position with the government is taking a COLA cut, which will probably force me to sell my second car, a 2008 Volvo.

[polysci]

to "democrat" who posted on dec. 11, you're a pathetic loser.

[W. Tieff]

That's not the 'Democrat' we all know and love.. ..
Someone's being an even BIGGER jackass!

[Jiminy Cricket]

When you get in trouble and you don't know right from wrong,
give a little whistle!
Give a little whistle!
When you meet temptation and the urge is very strong,
give a little whistle!
Give a little whistle!
Not just a little squeak,
pucker up and blow.
And if your whistle's weak, yell "Juminy Cricket!"

Take the straight and narrow path
and if you start to slide,
give a little whistle!
Give a little whistle!
And always let your conscience be your guide

[In your face]

To "democrat" or "polyp" or whatever you are who continues to post stupid shiite, no, you're the pathetic loser. Just cut and paste next time. Either that or get an education, learn to write worth a tinkers damn and contribute something to Sierra's monthly publication "Saving the Planet, one idiot at a time"