Sub Terra Vita #45 Questing for Normalcy: Allowing the Change: Why? What Type?

Sub Terra Vita #45

By Tim Krenz

April 24, 2016

Rev. November 23, 2016

Questing for Normalcy: Allowing the Change: Why? What Type?

We need to engage in the discussion of change, because of the inevitability of change can assert its own means beyond human ability to control. Many cliche's about change in civilization nonetheless will sometimes hold true: “Nothing ever changes;” or “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Yet, these cliches usually speak power to apathy among people who feel powerlessness to change anything. Voice to this reason: Everyone has it in their power to make change in themselves, in their immediate surroundings, and somewhat beyond themselves—at any time in their lives if they choose to do it.

The ability to change anything takes what most people would only reluctantly give up, things like effort, work, ideas, energy and the irreplaceable quality of time. As a great industrialist once reportedly said, “If you think you can't, you're right!” The power of believing that change can happen, and that good can result from that personal action, demands the informed decision and hard work in the individual. Positive change requires willingness and effort to make it a reality.

If people want nothing to change, change will still happen without them, but it might not turn out well. If not done broadly, someone else or a motivated few will benefit from any change to the status quo, seizing the opportunity to profit from a mass reluctance to participate. Time does make everyone outdated in the end. In certain moments in history, those who failed to evolve with the new conditions ceased to keep their status, their prestige, their security, or their very lives in some instances. If a consenting majority does not involve itself in the process of change, then the few will profit. In that case, a small faction thereby obtains too much power in their own hands, which harms the good of the whole.

What level of change in our society would work best? In short, change from the bottom up in society, from the homestead and main street, actually has the most advantages for the greater good of all. In the world today, technology and the power relationships vibrate in an odd flux. How the changes we make or allow politically, economically, socially, and culturally to affect us here in the St. Croix Valley have more importance to people here, more impact for the good, here, than any amount of change a person tries to implement in the Madison Capitol or Washington, D.C.

To clarify the argument, a voter in the Valley, or even an activist, has little to absolutely NO IMPACT on state or national policy, unless, of course, they swing massive amounts of wealth. While that statement holds generally sound as a “gold rule” of higher level changes, only truly exceptional and visionary people, those few bright souls in a century, have the ability to affect change beyond their line of sight. But ultimately the simple voter and even the vocal and caring person, can change almost zero things beyond their home town. To use resources better and wiser, the focus put in the Valley or any hometown to make those necessary or desired changes can multiply effects—better and here, rather than wasted and frittered elsewhere.

On the optimistic side, the effort to change things grows naturally, the closer to home a voter, an activist, an entrepreneur, indeed ANYONE, puts her or his effort. And furthermore, those individuals or a community conscience will always find it harder to work alone to create the type of changes necessary. Whatever way the community defines as necessary and good changes for the most people, the entire community or a large portion must work together. Beware the change that the majority consent will not approve or cannot control. That type of force or unleashed spirit to only destroy the old without a consensus for viable, stable, and logical replacements will in the end unleash horrible consequences in which everyone gets victimized. Always seek changes that could unite and solidify a stable order in a community or region.

As implied above, a local change close to home can grow easier in a natural, steady way forward, with less disruption. Like a Frenchman named Talleyrand said about his country's 18^th Century revolution, any upper-level or mass and chaotic disruptions in the name of changes will eventually “eat their children.” Digest those words, and do not gorge on change without thought and effort. Changes happen, with or without us. It remains the responsibility of all to help work for them and to guide them.