Overly Rapid Change leads to unnecessary Chaos
- "Be aware of the power of the river, but do not fear it. Fear of the river's power will tempt you to try and stamp it out. In failing you waste effort that otherwise could have been turned to good purposes. . . . Instead of attempting to thwart the river's inclination, use your Empathy and Wisdom to guide and redirect it. When properly directed, the river that would have flooded and destroyed instead powers and irrigates."
-Brandon CS Sanders, SolSeed SelfLove page
Change is also like a river. Indeed, its connection to SelfLove is very close nowadays.
We live in a time of rapid and accelerating Change, Change directed mostly by economic forces rather than by people. These economic forces, as described by Adam Smith, depend only on SelfLove and assume that the properties of Empathy and Wisdom will arise naturally from the interactions of self-interested actors. In fact, while economic growth can sometimes benefit whole societies, it often enriches only a few at the expense of many others. Growth without limit is also an impossibility on a finite planet, and the blind pursuit of this goal is leading our civilization toward an ecological crash of massive proportions.
The environmental movement is trying, with some apparent success, to divert the fast-flowing river of Change onto a better path even as it begins to flood (quite literally, as we've seen with Hurricane Katrina and the possibility of substantial increases in sea levels). In the short term, we may be able to raise awareness of the most pressing crisis, global warming, to the point where world leaders are forced to wrest control of Change away from the "Invisible Hand" of capitalism for long enough to prevent the worst of the predicted catastrophes.
But in the long run, other such crises will arise more and more frequently unless we find a way to slow down our headlong rush into the future. If Change is allowed to accelerate much further, we will lose all hope of directing the river and the flood will wash our civilization away.
In his novel A Grey Moon Over China, Thomas A. Day imagines a future in which we have lost control and triggered a biosphere-wide crash, but an unlikely technological advance allows refugees to escape to a new solar system. But because the breakneck pace of Change left them no time to properly prepare, and because they carry with them the Chaos of the resource wars on Earth, the new colonies experience a painful collapse to a relatively low level of technology.
--Scifiben 23:55, 3 August 2007 (PDT)
Comments
This is actually a problem that wiki communities often encounter. Someone new and eager comes in and introduces rapid change. The community that already exists in stable pattern is disrupted and reacts allergically. Neither newcomer nor community are well served by the interaction and often a kindred is driven away. The community builds more antigens and reacts even more strongly to the next perceived disruption. We need a way to break out of this cycle. Mark has some thoughts about this as InexperiencedInteractingWithExperienced.
I'm deliberately not signing this contribution because I think SemiAnonymous edits are preferrable and my name is in the history if anyone cares to find out who wrote this.
