Change:

Change is inevitable, it is always increasing, the speed of new technology is amazing, (when I was in my final year of primary school our year 6 class had just had the internet hooked up, we had a class on how to use it. By the time I was half way through high school most of the people in my classes had MSN.) We are heading for a section of existence in which we find ourselves unable to keep up with the change we have started running. It’s not just a change in technology but a change in almost everything. In the past few hundred years the natural environment has been increasingly sick (we have recently tried to fix this), rights for women and minorities have increased incredibly slowly at first but at an increasing rate(good news) taboo’s have been decreasing and decreasing, and our awareness of mental health has been increasing. Medicine has increased in quantity and availability, people are living longer and less healthily, we are becoming more globally connected than ever, children are physically developing earlier, but moving out of home or getting married later. Much of this is good and much is not. None of this alone will cause the end of the world. It is the increase in information, the change we find ourselves unable to keep up with but demand none the less. Much of the blame for this goes to television (yes I know its cliché ‘everybody blames television, for everything.’) but television has shortened our attention spans. With detailed and somewhat complicated issues often being dealt with within half an hour, (less on current affairs shows.) with constant breaks that contain bright colours and loud noises to get our attention so we buy their stuff. Television has made us so very fast passed. Every time we get on a train we see everyone and often find ourselves rushing to get to the platform in time, to get to work on time, to get to the party on time, the world is working on a filled schedule with the people rushing from one thing to the next. Demanding that we have the latest, newest, most fashionable, best, ‘whatever’ so that we may have, style, flair, popularity, and all those other imaginary things we wish to obtain. We find ourselves needing a cell phone with inbuilt GPS when fifteen years ago we could do without either. This high demand for change, this ADHD society, we have created is creating smaller and smaller generation gaps, we have young people who don’t understand other young people. (There were no emo’s when I was at school, and people under fifteen were not slutty, just the fact that I capable of talking about “My Day” when I am only twenty is incredible.) We are creating a world in which empathy and compassion is increasingly difficult, where we have trouble keeping up with our surroundings, where we don’t slow down, or take our time. We expect turbulence in our lives to be smoothed out in record time, which they are no more capable than ever of doing. In some basic form of humanity we are still resistant to change. We still fear the unknown, two of our basic human drives, popularity, which is a basic form of companionship from which we hope to gain some understanding and emotional support not to mention relationships and mating, and fear of the unknown, which keeps us alive and well, and feeling safe weather we are or not, are battling each other. We find ourselves in possession of an increasing inner battle, that we can not deal with in a time span that suits us, which we distract ourselves from, and which is slowly bringing about the end of the world. (Perhaps it is only me who believes that the end of the world will be brought about when humanity looses its compassion and its ability for empathy.)


P.S. Australia has a grant tradition of resisting change (perhaps the next saviour will come from this grand land.) We have an old saying “if it aint broke, don’t fix it.” This with the proof that john Howard had to go to almost extreme lengths to get himself voted out of government is proof that we hold the most resistance to change in the developed world.