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Happy New Year! Seeking
Change and Consistency
A New Year! And it’s 2012 too! Something we’ve all heard will be significant. Exactly how no one can be sure, but whether good or bad, it will be “transformative.”
I think it will, but then I think every year is transformative in some way. When we pay attention, how can something not be transformative? We shift perspectives and circumstances all the time—the environment, or the economy changes, relationships begin, end and change form. Realities shift; we adjust.
Some do anyway. Some seem to say “enough of this change” and leave for a “better” place, or at least another place. While we do like exploring and new things, we like consistency too. The older we get the more we like that.
Although young people seem to adjust better to change, those of us who are not so young can offer them the perspective that everyone can count on change during their lives. If they haven’t seen it already, they’ll see changes they can’t predict.
I talked to my grandmother, who lived to be a hundred, about the changes during her lifetime. It’s incredible how much even routine, daily life changes—now more quickly than ever.
In this issue we look beyond New Year’s resolutions at some ways to invite change, ways that science has found to affect our thinking—in case you want your changes to be self-initiated.
Joe Dispenza writes about how we can break the habit of being ourselves and holding fast to our dreams in spite of our circumstances. Joyce Hawkes writes about resonance and awareness, including exercises for the brain to build the capacity to change.
Both offer ways of being more efficient and aware, always important tools during times of change. We humans seem to seek a contradictory mix of exploration, protection, and consistency.
Maybe the classical definitions of liberals and conservatives evolved from these human parts of us that like to try new things, while not going over the cliff unprotected. Today’s liberals and conservatives have obviously redefined the terminology.
Conservatives are our traditional protectors, and today even have some of Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No!” 1980s posters on hand that still work for them. That’s conservative!
The Democrats, you would think, would be today’s explorers, and they are offering some new options. “Boldly going where no man has gone” is not quite the banner they wave though.
The government spending during World War II that ended the depression will not happen with the current makeup of Congress. There is more than one plan out there that could lead us to energy independence, but no energy plan. Democratic leaders mostly wave the “Play it Safe” banner these days.
With Republicans wanting lots of change—even if it is a retro, back-in-time type change that questions everything—and Democrats wanting to hold on, maybe the parties need to swap their conservative and liberal labels.
The only consistency that seems predictable is that those in Congress will get richer. The latest news is that they are getting richer at a rate higher that even the wealthiest in this country. Most of us are losing wealth.
Wanting Consistency and Change
For those who look beyond the rhetoric and one-liners, it’s not that complicated, is it? Getting past the distracting issues, don’t we want predictable? Consistent? We want to know our societal game and how to thrive in it. We want to work toward having a place to live, being healthy and having some form of family and relationships. We want to work where we feel productive. We want to seek enjoyment and our spiritual or intellectual pursuits in ways we choose.
Not that many of us wake up thinking it would be nice to rule the world. Pieces of our own world? Yes, consistency.
I’ve written about what I think the Occupy movement is saying to Wall Street before—and don’t want to beat that drum too much—but basically they are saying stop mucking it up, aren’t they? Wall Street’s actions do have consequences, so please stop the pretense that doing whatever you think is good for you is good for all.
Toward Solutions
Lately I’ve noticed I’m becoming more suspicious of big-powered solutions. Many of today’s political arguments center on this, in one form or another, and I don’t mean programs that affect all of us. I mean question big.
We’ve all heard about ineffective, big government as well as huge heartless international corporations bigger than many countries, and we’ve even heard of “too big to fail.”
Too often, however, we also hear “your form” of big is too big, leaves out humanity and creativity, is bureaucratic and too big to be effective—but “my form” of big is okay.
Maybe the bigness gets in the way of both the government and corporations. How can it not work in one case and work in another? Maybe size if a red-flag characteristic of today’s nonsolutions that we should notice and question. Even big shots.
Purpose
What you want and whom you want it for are the other factors. I don’t want to hear it’s for you, but for my own good. I want to hear something more along the lines of the purpose of government is to govern the common resources, not the common man.
We’ve heard forever that the bigger something is, whatever it is, the more it’s true that power corrupts—and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That works for individuals, corporations and governments where power is consolidated, doesn’t it?
We discuss the hard budget choices we “have to make” while the biggest change and most obvious choice doesn’t seem to be an option. Why? When you have a military budget that is larger than every one else’s budget combined, is it hard to believe that someone with power will find a reason to fight and maintain that structure?
If we stopped making new bullets, new planes, ship, missiles, guns and the wars for a while, however, how much of the $1.1 trillion that we spend on defense could we save? How long before we didn’t have a budget problem? That’s 60% of what we spend.
Another example is SDG&E’s Powerlink that is being built in the middle of fire country to bring us solar power. Doesn’t the sun do a better job of delivery? We’re sold on the idea that the “professionals” are more efficient and cheaper. But it’s less effective and we end up buying the sun and the delivery system.
We like the big solutions. We like the one-stop shopping. Even in world politics we look at the Arab Spring and try to make it predictable, when in every country there are small—and significant—differences.
If you look for it, what appears more consistently is diversity. Remember when we had a number-one song in the country? The top hit? We still do, we just have 50 categories of number one songs.
We have many forms of electric cars and other technologies that come from diverse sources. It’s almost a given that some person will come up with a simple idea that transforms the world—not some corporation or government. It’s not so much that that’s the direction we want to go in—that’s what works.
A very good example that thinking small can be efficient and inexpensive is the military itself. A company of U.S. Marines in Afghanistan have replaced hundreds of pounds of batteries with solar tarps that provide power for their cooking, radios, computers and even charging other batteries.
They can get by on 2.5 gallons of fuel a day per soldier instead of 22 gallons of fuel a day—that fuel can cost between $300–400 per gallon.
It may seem like there are more problems than solutions today. Maybe looking for the small, simple solutions and looking at the way power operates will bring us toward more consistency in our society.
Have a great month,
