You can feel it. Everyone can. It is similar to flying through the Universe faster than the speed of light. It feels like a tennis match using a dozen balls instead of one. It whirls you about like a carnival ride. It feels like you are crawling under barbed wire in the mud while bullets fly around you.
It is change. Change in religion; change in life style; change in deep-rooted national values; change in economic dependability; change in the Earth’s environment; change in self-confidence; change in the workplace. It is change. Change happening faster than ever before. Change so pervasive as to leave the entire world in disarray.
War is changing. Fresh water is disappearing. Work is changing. Seas are rising. Vital food chains are disappearing. Human life lives too long to be supported. Changing weather drives millions out of their habitat into starvation. The mammalian age is fragmenting. Sea life is dying.
If you are older than the Millennials, it feels like passing out in a spinning centrifuge. If you are a Millennial, reality is a hodge podge of artificial experiences that lead nowhere.
Change is so disruptive it begs the question, “How can we change change?” We can’t. Change is not arbitrary; change has no speed control; change cannot be reversed. And, to identify the cause of change, as Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Broadcast news services cannot bring us all the changes. There are too many changes from too many diverse sources. News agencies are busy chasing down nothing more than political frivolity and gossip. Most viewers aren’t interested in change; viewers are interested in viewing frivolity and gossip which require little thought and action. Yet change rumbles the ground beneath us. Rock solid virtuosity is changing to flowing currents of ineptitude. Human life is in the midst of the largest quake in human history.
Ancient Mariner
Those who are now over 30 whose anthem was “The times they are a changin” may rue the day they thought change was the harbinger of a brave new world. Who knew it would lead to this? Probably lots of people–but nothing anyone can do to stem the tide of a rising sea. Change will not be held back, but the hope is that it can be diverted by divers means.
(If mariner still holds on to the archaic ‘divers’ which has not been used in more than a century, it is no wonder he is dismayed by the pace of change! For that matter, does anyone have time to ‘rue the day’ any more?)
This is an eloquent depiction of the way change feels. Are there seatbelts on carnival rides? And what does it matter if the carny at the controls is a narcissist with a short attention span?