Future | Hope
We Can(’t) Resist Change
We know we need to change — so why aren’t we?
The day was bright and promising Until I found a hair in my tea.
Eli Snow sums up the changeability of human existence in two lines. You wake up, feeling ready to start a new day, you’ve turned a new leaf, started a new life, you look down and… there’s a hair in your tea.
Your whole life experience has changed in one moment. What do you do? Crawl back to bed and resolve to start again tomorrow? Or accept the current situation and adapt?
If my first example of change seemed trivial to you — in my eyes, tea is never trivial — then applying the same logic to a different context might give it more importance.
Climate emergency is not an event. It is an era. — Alex Ates Haywood
Alex Ates Haywood lays down the startling truth: we are only ten years away from disaster because we have ignored the need to change. We haven’t recognised the severity of the situation, we haven’t modified our harmful lifestyles and we haven’t developed a sustainable, global approach to face up to the climate emergency.
Human beings are naturally risk averse and resistant to change. Maintaining the status quo is usually the easiest option and human nature tends to encourage us to seek what is easy. Fear is a major factor used by conservatives and is also a highly effective tool to halt change.
The tortuous nature of perspective — we live unavoidably through an individual frame of existence that is shaped by events we often have no control over — means that we cannot accurately know the thought process of another living being, nor the way the world looks through their eyes.
Hence, something that seems an indisputable certainty to one person can be perceived as an outright falsehood to someone else. It’s not hard to find examples of this in our heavily polarised political landscapes.
I find it distressing that people either cannot see or choose to ignore the harmful impact humans continue to have on the planet. But I know this view passes through my own sensitive filter prone to excessive compassion.
If my views on change seem pessimistic that’s because they are. It is saddening to watch what is happening in the UK and the US under the control of two leaders who are actively seeking to dismantle the concepts of truth and trust. Positive change requires transparency and collaboration, not propaganda and coercion.
But I’m going to end with a glimmer of hope. To do this it is necessary to hone in on the individual level. In these post-truth times, we need to retain a stoic outlook. To adapt to our surroundings and defend ourselves against the lies of those who’ll do anything to hold back change, we need to filter out negativity. Contrary to the claims of “cancel-culture” scaremongers, that doesn’t mean ignoring or shutting down conflicting views, but donning an impenetrable armour to avoid being dragged down by the desperation of it all.
In a similar vein, it’s not a good idea to silence our own doubt entirely; like every emotion, caution has its role to play in regulating our lives. Doug Fraley shows how achieving individual happiness is about accepting our limitations and living with our insecurities.
Getting out of bed with the belief that you can finish that assignment or run that half-marathon is the first step to actually doing it.
Collectively, we should all place saving the planet pretty high up our list of goals. The powerlessness of the individual — that feeling of, What difference would it make for just one person to change? — makes me despair, especially at a time when basic decency and kindness have fallen so far out of fashion.
But, as Terry Mansfield’s poem highlights, even the smallest change can make a significant difference. Can’t can become can by removing a ‘t’ and a cuppa can be salvaged by removing a hair. Stop naval gazing and look over there — there’s a big, wide world that needs saving.
Daniel Clark is a reader, writer, linguist and poet.
