On the nature of our existence

Where do you live? I mean where do you exist? The natural world, right? When we refer to the most fundamental of fundamentals, we inevitably hark back to the "Nature" of things. In one of my other blogs I have pointed out how the word supernatural is a word that has, as it's root, the word nature, super having been added as a prefix to it. Whenever someone makes a comment about another person's behaviour, they always say it's their nature to do such a thing, or it's in their nature. Isn't it interesting that no one ever refers to the supernature of our existence? I mean, think about it, the few times you've heard the phrase " It's our nature, it's human nature, etc..." you never hear anyone say " well, it's our supernature" or " it's just supernature..." Doesn't it seem a bit silly to say such a thing? It certainly sounds silly to my "ear". So, let's try something, if we can. Imagine yourself without a body, better yet imagine no one with a body, even better still, imagine nothing (trees, sharks, bacteria, etc...) with a body. Imagine bodies never having come into existence at all. All we are is floating, noncorporeal thought-producing (in some cases) non-entities. Now, having no physicality, but still being, we are, at this point, the manifestation of the word "spirit" as most of us define it. I realize manifestation may not be the most accurate word to use, but you get my point. How else could we describe ourselves, but being spirits, essentially spiritual, if we were extant but non-corporeal?

In this state it would be difficult to find something to point to as being our generative source, for 1. how does one bring into existence something that is non-existent in every observable way and 2. since in such a state of reality, for all beings there really couldn't be the idea of "someTHING" to even take into account, things being physical, not aphysical. Furthermore, I think it would be hard to even have a way of finding such a generation point (or process) if there were one to find at all, which I don't think there would be. In such a state, the scientific method, which is what we use to describe the physicality of our surroundings now, would be a near impossibility, for there would be no physicality to describe. And remember it's not just us that have no bodies, but everything we know: trees, dogs, corals, everything is without a body. Again in such a state, a method of discovery like the scientific method just wouldn't be possible. There would have to be some other way of learning of ourselves. Perhaps some sort of extrasensory perception or something like it. This state of supernaturality, of being above, out of the realm of, nature, is what everyone is denying when they say " It's human nature". For sure, such statements are speaking exactly to what each of us truly understands over all else, namely the physical of us all, the nature, of us.

I don't know of anyone who thinks that we exist only as non-corporeal beings such as I described above, the operative word being ONLY. We all live as corporeal beings, replete with bodies, subject to the physical, natural forces of the universe. So again, where the rubber meets the road, we all agree that the natural is the medium in which we observe our states of being. That is because we actually do have bodies. We can see them, touch them, sometimes smell them (even if we'd rather not at times :-) ). We don't exclusively live in the misty, free-floating world of ghosts. Because of this we indeed have our method of decription of our physically-existing world, and consequently us; the scientific method. The method is what is valuable. The method is what provides answers and yes, even questions. The answers given sometimes may not be stable enough to survive for very long before being overturned by new information garnered by the same scientific method that gave us the initial "answer", but the method itself is what provides continuously updated information, with which outdated and incomplete understandings are rightfully discarded. The method of discovery, which is based wholly within the natural world is faultless, although it may sometimes give incomplete information. Really though, that is not the fault of the method, but the fault of the interpreters of the method's gathered information. If a conclusion is overturned by new information, it is not because the scientific method was wrong and should be discarded, it is because the scientists were to hasty in halting the information gathering process. They should've kept going with their experiments, but as the saying goes, hindsight is always 20-20.


So, what about all that stuff that the scientific method has nothing say about? ESP, picking up vibes, premonition, our souls, etc... Well, who says the scientific method has nothing to say about them? Infact, the scientific method has a veritable plethora of opinions about these phenomenon, it's just that those who "believe" in things of this sort may not necessarily like what the method says about them. To date there have been no substantial, credible, experiments demonstrating the existence of these abilities/phenomenon outside of the physical, natural world of our brains. What that translates to is, all of these things can be explained as being things that SEEM to be extrasensory, but in reality are only SEEMINGLY so. They may look and feel like they are outside the realm of nature, but that doesn't mean they are, it means that those who feel them to be as such are simply mistaken, no matter how true their opinions may resound to them. The whole world used to truly believe many things that seemed to be the case, but were found out to be not so, after more information gathering was done. The earth is not flat, there are no four corners of the globe as the bible says. Disease is caused by microbes not by demonic infestation. Again, more information was gathered and thus the faulty opinions were overturned. It was not the method that provided the opinion; no that was arrived at by the impatient scientists. The method was only the messenger, and you know what they say about hating the messenger. This leads me to think that those "unexplained" phenomenon that many are utterly convinced are proof of realms other than the natural, are actually premature, not fully-informed ideas, based on less than complete information. How, indeed can we claim to know what some of us claim to know about these phenomenon, when we don't even have a unified theory for explaining the universe yet? I think with more time, science will have good explanations for even these seemingly non-scientific abstractions. Actually science is beginning to formulate such hypotheses at this moment in the field of cognitive neuroscience. We know our brain is composed of the same elements the rest of the universe is, and with that knowledge, neuroscience is starting to be able to thoroughly map the brain's areas of activity. We can say with some degree of certainty that the amygdala is the area of the brain where anxiety and fear trace their origins. The hippocampus is involved with memory. We know where the sensory-motor cortex is. All of these structures are ensconced within mother nature. Although they may seem to be non-physical, because most of us cannot point o our amygdalas, not unlike our inability to be able to point to an air molecule, they are infact not non-physical. Our idea of them is wholly non-physical, but the structures themselves are completely physical. We are born with them. They grow because we eat food and drink water, physical processes both. We live our lives and they continue to grow, all the while operating so complexly that we are easily lured into thinking we are more than what we are made of. We die, and these die with us, rotting along with the rest of our bodies. Our thoughts cease to exist when our bodies cease to exist. The thoughts we generate during our lifetime are generated by the physicality of our brains, so when our brains die, so do our thoughts.

We exist in the natural world, as we all acknowledge, and rightfully so. There is no reason to invoke a supernatural realm at all. Any such course of action is one taken from a place of incomplete knowledge. Now, I know what many people will say at this point, " science doesn't know everything, there are so many things unexplained by science, etc..." which is is some ways true, but is not at all what these people are really wanting to say. They are really saying that SCIENTISTS, don't know everything, that Science is just another type of belief, that no one can see an atom, but we believe in them anyway. These types of statements betray just how little those who speak such inanities really know about what it is they are saying. Firstly, the outline of atoms has been directly observable since 1981. People have seen them, we don't need to simply believe they are there to know they are there. Secondly, for those who would say I personally have never seen an atom's outline, so I am guilty of utter belief in what the scientists say is the case, I will point out, that unlike the fervent religious folks who cannot substantiate their utter belief with any possible physical reconciliation of those beliefs, all I have to do is ask to see the outline of an atom, and it is there for me to see, provided I have the appropriate amount of economic freedom and intellectual clout. The evidence is available to see an atom, sorry to disappoint the fundies out there. And Finally, as I said before, scientists are the interpretors of the information gathered by the scientific method, which is why I say, the real indictment being made is not, nor could be against the scientific method, but against the scientists themselves for having the "gaul" to simply go against the flow of the commonly accepted practice of incuriosity for the sake of laziness. Non-scientists have little to no appreciation for what scientists are discovering everyday, instead we all happily lap up the benefits provided by scientific discovery, while simultaneously ridiculing those who practice it. It is unecessary to point out the irony of this situation, but I've done it anyway.

A letter of inquiry

" Y "

Supernatural vs Natural, part 2

This is going to be a short one, because I have already written a post similar to this. This one comes at it from a different direction though, so here goes. It occurred to me this morning in the shower (again) that the term supernatural is self-contradictory, or at least the word contradicts the definition. Consider that the root word of supernatural is natural, to which the prefix super is attached. Super alters the existing condition of natural. Natural becomes supernatural, supernatural stemming originally from simply natural. Now, the commonly accepted understanding of the word supernatural is something that is "above" the natural world, somehow beyond the reaches of the laws of nature, transcendent, if you will. But this definition implies that the supernatural is more advanced than the natural, that the supernatural is what the natural stemmed from. The accepted definition contradicts what the words actually mean. It's funny that so many religions claim this secondary, newly-adopted and morphed definition, the natural world is the intentional product of those inhabitants of the supernatural realm. If this were the case, then the word natural should apply to what we actually refer to today as the supernatural, while the natural world as we call it today should actually be referred to as Subnatural, since it is the natural world which, according to many religious doctrines, is the altered state, and consequently is less-perfect than the supernatural world. Looking at things this way, it is easy to see how sub-standard religions regard their very proponents. It is deceptively masochistic to base a doctrine, or series of doctrines on the idea that those who are to accept and believe the doctrine are somehow less than what they truly are. Religions should celebrate the wonder of humanity, the inherent worthiness of our existing at all. Instead, many relegate us to a station merely one step beyond that of rocks (and some even put us below them, as even the rocks and mountains will sing his praises, while we will not, aptly attests :-)). While this is partly a semantic issue, semantics are how we communicate. Through commonly accepted ideas, not just words, but the very ideas, we became civilized. Through the words, we now allow ourselves to either continue in a civilized manner, or degenerate into our previous more primitive selves, only this time knowingly. Choose your words carefully, make sure you are really saying what you mean, or you might find yourself in the middle of a Brainwashing session, a Jihad or even a cave in the middle of the french countryside making drawings of buffalo with slightly differently colored clays you happen to find while foraging for berries, or perhaps hunting stags. Progress happens from the less sophisticated to the more, the supernatural stemmed from the natural. Unfortunately, imagination has become so complex, it has hijacked our sense of existence, and has made us believe in our own fairytales. Perhaps, this is only a rogue branch on the tree of evolution, and the trunk remains intact. Infact, I'm sure it does, but wouldn't it be nice for humanity to be around for the remainder of the evolutionary road, instead of our getting lost down this dead-end branch, too ignorant, delusional or blindly egotistic to see that we should turn around?

On Creativity, Part 1.

A few months ago I started writing something, an essay, a blog, something, about creativity. I was holed up in a hotel sick as a dog and by myself for an entire saturday. So I spent half the day watching the discovery channel (Deadliest Catch was running a marathon that day) and the other half thinking about and then writing, preliminarily, this thing about creativity. The previous week had witnessed a conversation between a teacher friend of mine and myself, about creativity, one evening as we drove home from orchestra rehearsal. I don't really remember the initial discussion or it's origins, but the issue that everyone is creative came up at some point. My friends stance was that indeed everyone is creative, they only need outlets with which they can express it; whereas, my position was that perhaps not everyone is creative, but only some are. More than anything else, I was playing the devil's advocate that night, but after dropping my friend off and driving home alone, late at night, for 2 more hours, I found myself thinking about what I had posited. When I got home, I had started to feel my oncoming sickness and additionally, the conversation that had started nearly three hours earlier was still running in my mind with no signs of stopping or even quieting down.
I thought about it for the remainder of the week and on that saturday, I found myself in the hotel with a notepad, a phone and a lot of time. So I started writing. What I came up with represents the ewmbryonic stage of what has become a monstrosity of thought, opinion and conclusions about what we mean when we speak the word creativity, when we opine that something or someone is creative, and what possibly comprises the field of inquiry.
One of the first thoughts I had about creativity that saturday was actually a question, or more precisely, a series of related questions, the first of which was, Is creativity something that exists outside of ourselves and if so, what comprises it, such that we can (presumably) recognize its existence? So I started thinking, and I came up with four components: Imagination, Resources, Motivation and Skill. After coming up with these catagories, I then started asking myself, how much of each catagory was required for creativity to exist as we know it. At this point, I decided to ask around to see what other folks might think. Luckily, I was to be at the last concert of the orchestra cycle the next day, and so I knew I would have at my disposal, at least a few willing survey-takers within the confines of my orchestra colleagues (at least I assumed I would, and it turned out I did). So I started an informal, fairly non-scientific survey. I ended up getting about 60 or 70 participants, mostly orchestra folks, but there were a few laypeople (not involved in the arts) who also participated. The results were interesting in that the opinions varied much more than I would have guessed. Here is what I garnered:

Imagination: roughly 40.6 %
Motivation: roughly 26%

Skill: roughly 19.4%

Resources: roughly 14%

As you can see, imagination was far and away the largest required component, in the opinions of my survey audience, involved in the creative process, while the actual resources were considered to be the least important. After gathering this information, I continued thinking about my catagories,a nd at some point along the way, I altered the catagories in a fundamental way. This happened during the course of gathering the survey results, and so in the interest of congruence, I maintained the original catagories throughout the entire survey process. The original groups (all 4) remained in my mind as catagories, after I morphed the divisions, what I did was simply reorder the existing catagories into a new registration. The new configuration became not 4 catagories but 2: Intention and Resources. You're probably asking yourself, where the heck is Imagination in the new configuration. Seeing as how it garnered the most votes of confidence in the original survey, can I live with eliminating it from the results altogether? This is why I reorderd things. Imagination now fell under the catagory of Resources, along with Skill and the original resources (notice the lowercase r), leaving only Motivation to be accounted for (from the original fantastic four). In the process of reordering the catagories, I realized that motivation was not the ultimate factor I had once thought it was. Motivation revealed itself as a precursory step to Intention. This new step became the fourth catagory, having been based upon the earlier motivation. So, as I now had it, it went:

Resources:
Imagination:
Skill:
Resources (also renamed as materials):

Intention:
motivation:

The numbers I had gathered remained the same, at least I think they did (and do), so thank you to all of those who participated in my thought experiment.
As to the writing of the essay about creativity, it is continuing, but I will admit, I have taken a brief hiatus from it, as I was becoming a bit overwhelmed with the scope. But I will be posting portions of it on this blog as I finish them. In the meantime, those of you (few though you are) who were wondering when that danged fool Dan was going to actually post what he said he was going to, here it is, thanks for your patience.

To be Continued.......

A life philosophy

I was wondering earlier today (in the shower, which is where I usually come up with these blog topics) about how different folks arrive at their philosophy of life. Some grow up in a religious household (actually,most do, at least in America), and retain those same beliefs when they leave home and start their own life. Some grow up in secular households (a sad minority) and retain their secularity into adulthood. And of course there are those who grow up in one or the other types of home environments, who turn away from their inherited beliefs by looking to the opposite, atheist turns religious, religious turns atheist. I will concede the varying degrees of either system as being considered autonomous, but will also point out that an equal claim can be made that all variations (Pantheist, Deist, Agnostic, etc...) are simply that, variations on one of two themes. Isn't it interesting that there is no neutral ground in which a child, living in America (or anywhere in the world for that matter) can grow up. Either a child is reared as someone without religious beliefs, or they are raised with some form of religious belief. It is not possible for someone to come to either side of the table from a neutral place. Isn't it also interesting that to come to atheism or religiosity from a place of complete neutrality, would be the most valid route, not being polluted by any particular view, towards possession of a belief (whatever it may be). There is either belief or unbelief, there is no middle ground. Again, I willingly concede that agnosticism, buddhism, taosim, skepticism and all the other unmentioned forms could lay claim to the phantom middle ground; but, if you get down to brass tacks, they are only "types" of one or the other. Skepticism is a degree of atheism, so is agnotiscism. Buddhism is a form of religiosity, so are the milieu of native american belief systems. Either you believe in a higher power, or you do not.
But isn't there a different way of looking at this? Knowing there is only belief or unbelief, perhaps unbelief is a more neutral satnce than belief. Atheism means unbelief. Religiosity means belief in something bigger than us, that is not us, but has or has had a measure of control over us. So unbelief in such a thing would, semantically, satisfy the criteria of "in opposition". Are atheism and religiosity diamteric opposites? Maybe not. Maybe atheism is the neutral ground we are looking for. If so, then what would be the opposite of religiosity? Perhaps anti-religiosity? Christianity vs Satanism? No that can't be, because satanism is a form of religion. We are all born as atheists, aren't we? I, for one have never heard tell of, nor witnessed a newborn infant proselytising about the evils of unbelief and/or the wonders of religious belief. As infants, our lack of language capability is an understandable impediment to our being immediate prophets. From this argument, we can see that from birth until some unknown age, which differs for each child born, we are atheists. It is the natural state of birth. We aren't born into sin, we are born into atheism. God is small potatoes compared to the mammary glands of a hungry, newborn's mother (or the other assorted methods of nourishment available to mothers today). How could an infant give a rip about an invisible god, when Mom (or Dad) is around to comfort them, to make them feel safe and happy? Ironically, these attributes are exactly what god is supposed to be the (non-physical) embodiment of. He is a father-figure, there to comfort us when we need it. Funny how, as parents, we provide these services to our children through our physical presence, but god supposedly provides these services to us , while being conspicuously, physically absent. How does he do this? Atheistic belief is what we all begin life with. Religious belief is a choice we all are confronted with in our later lives. For sure, many parents, teachers, or preachers, hijack that choice from us at our most impressionable ages, stealing, what can be a valuable lesson in choice and consequence to our young selves, but regardless, the decision to live a religious life is a voluntary one. Afterall, god "gave" us freewill, with which he expected we would "choose" the life he wanted us to, didn't he? So, assuming the mantle of atheist for a moment, how would the choice made by someone to live unreligiously, be a change from the life already being lived by the chooser? Answer, it would be no different. People come to religion, for many varying reasons, but they always come to it from atheism, whether they realize it or not and regardless of whether they would like it.
What about those, who walk away from religion? Aren't they "coming" to atheism just as those who receive religion do? Perhaps secondarily, but at the beginning of our lives, we all (including those who eventually walk away from religion) approach religion from atheism. Whatever happens subsequent to the initial drawing of religion, is just that, subsequent action on our parts.
Atheism, as it turns out, is more neutral than we initially thought.
It's interesting, that the decision to be religious, is made by those from a religious home, most often prior to the time that they become conscious of themselves, others, and how their actions effect everything and everyone around them. It seems cognitive maturity is not all that important to the process of coming to religion. If left alone, the atheistically-born child, will grow into cognitive maturity, and at that point, having been left alone, they will be able to decide on a path for their spiritual lives, one way or the other. The key point is the decision can be made after cognitive maturity is reached, not before.
Sometimes, people will be allowed to come to their own decision regarding religiosity, after they have reached a level of cognitive maturity, but other factors, sentimentality, familial ties, tradition, etc... will interject a strong influence over the "decision" and the individual may not come to the chosen path with complete intellectual honesty. This decision usually comes back to haunt those who make it, either by instigating severe guilt, shame and regret, or by pulling the individual away from the false path. Those who never choose to be religious, having examined the tenets from a cognitively mature vantage and having purposely rejected those tenets, are perhaps the most fortunate of all of us. For everyone else, we must decide on our own at the correct time, overcoming or succumbing to the intellectually dishonest advice and direction offered by those we have been surrounded with our entire lives, i.e. family and friends. To return to our atheistic roots is, from my view, the best course to take, but only if we supplant religiosity with concern for humanity and our place in the sphere of earth life. If this doesn't take place, and atheism allows us to contribute nothing to the betterment of anyone (even if it is only ourselves), but religion does allow us to contribute positively to human life, then it might seem religion would be an accepatable platform to standupon, but that platform is built on ground which covers more problems than we might know. Religious belief may help some, but it does not help all. It cannot, for there are many differing beliefs, and only one can be right. They can not all be correct, many are contradictory by their very natures. Similarly, atheism may not help everyone, but unlike the world's religions, there is really only one type of unbelief, UNBELIEF. Therefore, since it is the natural state we are all born in, and there are no contradictorial variations of it, atheism offers humanity the best option for bettering our lives while we are here. And remember, we are only here for 100 years, give or take. Is it really worth it to sacrifice those years, for something no one on the earth has any concrete reason to believe in? Wouldn't it be better to live life as we were born to live it? Giving credit only where it is due, and not relegating our worth to something other than ourselves? We are atheists, let us celebrate that and live that life.

Update to Atheist 13 meme again

I've changed my mind again. It's really Cosmology, Philosophy, Cognitive neurophilosophy, paleontology, astrophysics and elementary particle physics. There, I think that about covers it. Til next time.

update to Atheist 13 meme

I've changed my mind. I'm more excited about the field of Cognitive neurophilosophy, not cognitive neuroscience, although there is a large amount of bleedover between the two fields.

Atheist 13 meme

This is a response to another blog I read earlier this evening. Billy the Atheist. He's the questioner, I'm the responder.

Q1. How would you define “atheism”?
"The natural course one would adopt after a period of philosophical social and self-examination, scientific and religious exploration and reflection."
Q2.Was your upbringing religious? If so, what tradition?
"Yes. Christian, protestant, pentecostal (fundamentalist)"
Q3. How would you describe “Intelligent Design”, using only one word?
"oxymoronic"
Q4. What scientific endeavour really excites you?
"cognitive neuroscience"
Q5. If you could change one thing about the “atheist community”, what would it be and why?
"Not sure, perhaps more vocal, but with the normal congeniality."
Q6. If your child came up to you and said “I’m joining the clergy”, what would be your first response?
"How have you arrived at this decision?"
Q7. What’s your favourite theistic argument, and how do you usually refute it?
"First Cause. my response is usually to direct to the writings of Dr. Brian Green and Dr. Stephen Hawking, and what their particular theories have to say about the "necessity" of a first cause ie. "Creator". Secondary to that, I sometimes will take the Sam Harris route of pointing out that even if there were a first cause, who says the particular god they happen to believe in is the causative agent, or that we might be part of an alien simulation, etc..."
Q8. What’s your most “controversial” (as far as general attitudes amongst other atheists goes) viewpoint?
"Not sure, perhaps that spiritualism is wholly a natural phenomenon, contained within our brains,not without?"
Q9. Of the “Four Horsemen” (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris) who is your favourite, and why?
" Daniel Dennett. I'd like to study cognitive neuroscience and he is ensconced in that field of expertise, not to mention, his books are really fun to read."
Q10. If you could convince just one theistic person to abandon their beliefs, who would it be?
"I'd rather convinve the droves and droves of apathetic "believers" that what they say they believe is something they don't even understand. I would like have them come to realize how juvenile and naive the tenets of their faith really are; and, I would have them learn as much as possible about my "side" of things in order for them to see just how convincing an atheistic view of life doesn't even need to be, yet still is!"

On being religious

Religious people like the idea, not the act, of being religious. Saying they believe a particular religious faith's themes and proclamations is what really matters to them, when you get down to the real stuff. The word religion is fraught with connotations of "rightness", "how we should behave and think" and "morality". These connotations also exist outside of religion, but the religious don't make the connection. To say " I am a christian" is to be proud. But of what? I distinctly remember at a Christopher Hitchens debate with his brother Peter, Christopher calling out anyone in the audience to stand up and willingly admit they are a sheep for their christian faith, and sure enough, one middle-aged woman stood up defiantly, and with a fervency usually reserved for AA meetings, spoke up for her sheepishness. She was absolutely proud to say she was a sheep for christ, blind to anything that might run counter to the teachings of her faith (whatever it may be). It is this pride that the religious are happily infected with, and it is this pride that will ensure a divided world for as long as we are here. Can you imagine a moderate muslim being happily accepting of a belief that the prophet muhammud was a sufferer of temporal lobe epilepsy, and that is why he recorded the fantastic imagery he did within the koran and the hadith? It is an issue of pride in what we've chosen to believe, but it is also an issue of selfish pride, in that what we've chosen to follow cannot be wrong, else we might look the fool. Which brings us back to the appearance of religiosity. Those who truly believe in the tenets of religions, are those who have thought about those tenets at great length, and have had to come to some level of acceptance regarding the discrepancies, unpleasantries and negative connotations the examined religions harbor. There is no existent religion that answers all questions, without discrepancy and mystery. This being the case, one of them might be right, all of them might be right, some of them might be right, or all of them might be wrong, the claim each of them hold on Truth, is equally valid to their counterparts. This is why it is much easier for the general populus to skate the surfaces of religion, by posturing themselves about as devout and pious. Because, to do otherwise would require an immense amount of problem-solving, data-padding, and outright contradiction, and they know this. They would rather say they are religious, because on the surface that type of proclamation sounds good. However, in life, the behaviours espoused by religions the world over are the same behaviours espoused by those who hold to no religion whatsoever, humanist ones. We have no way of evaluating the effectiveness of religious adherence on the after-living. We can only judge ourselves, our living selves. So it is human behaviour which governs the validity of religious dogmas. I would urge all religious folks, to take a good look at your average, everyday atheist and find something they do that you are incapable of doing that is also morally reprehensible. But I am not the author of such an idea, that title goes to Christopher Hitchens. But a good challenge it is. To the religious folks out there, I wish you good luck.

On the goodness of change

Do you think change is good? I mean do you really think change in and of itself is qualifiably "good"? I get incenced whenever I hear the phrase change is good from someone who obviously has not thought it out as a concept, and is only saying it because they heard someone else say it and watched as everyone around that person applauded the veracity and foresight of such a statement. I guess it's not really the word that incenses me, bu the ignorance with which it is utilized in everyday conversation. So, is change good? Certainly the results brought about by the process of changing can sometimes be positive. But just as often, the results can be negative. Surely, we shouldn't annoint the idea with a crown of impunity, regardless of the experiential results it produces. Shouldn't we examine whether each instance of it's employment ends with a positively progressive outcome or not, before we categorize the whole as a worthwhile endeavor? Change is going to happen, regardless of whether we want it to or not, at least naturally. But to artificially force the process, where it may not necessarily be required yet, is tantamount to forcefeeding a child a food he/she is repulsed by. The immediate result may seem to be what you want, but the eventuality will be less than what you would have intended, sometimes by an order of magnitude.
As I said, change happens, but that is not all that happens. Successful change is always followed by a period of stasis where the new processes introduced by the change are allowed to set in. This setting in is needed for any environment to flourish, even for a brief while. Without the periodicity of change interspersed with stasis, any environment will decay prematurely. We have all experienced this phenomenon. Stress effects every person that you can think of, including yourself, and it is the times of relief from the stress that we relish and look forward to. Indeed, even those who might say they actually relish the stressful times are not being honest, in that, without the periods of downtime, they would be unable to recognize stress as being periodic, stress would be all that they knew. In such a case, we would be living with the idea that life is what it is, offering no alternative but to live worrisome, fearful, or whatever we would call it on this side.
So, we need staticity for comparison with times of stressful change, but also for the relief and reprieval it offers. Change is a form of stress, to varying degrees, depending on the individual. If we lived in a world without staticity alternating with times of change, we would no doubt have been eaten into extinction long ago. We've evolved to evade the stressful. Our houses, our jobs, our restaurants, our public toilets are all illustrations of our desire to escape the stress of uncivilized life. However, despite our most clever ideas to leave the stressful life behind us, we are haunted by it in the very civilization we have been so careful to construct. Look at the idea of multi-tasking. It is not good enough for us to learn to do something expertly and to then do it, no, we must tack on unnecessary, extra duties that we most likely are not as competent in performing, in order to get more stuff done during the work day. If this is not the definition of stress, I'm an oak tree in the middle of Mordor! Multi-tasking was not always the workplace messiah it is viewed as being now. Something changed in our recent past, regarding the view we took of our capacities for time-management, and that change is now being shown to have been a poor direction for us to have chosen to take. Studies have shown that multi-taskers get less done on the whole than those who concentrate on individual tasks. Our brains aren't interested in doing more than one thing at a time. For sure there are people who are better at multi-tasking than others, but without a doubt, there is not a single person on the face of the planet who is capable of the level of efficiency proponents of multi-tasking believe exists for each of us. This is just an individual example of a particular change that just happened to not work out for the best, but obviously there are oppositional examples as well, things that we adopted as new societal behaviors, which resulted in a better world (the change in acceptance of slavery, for instance). But if you look at the idea of multi-tasking for a second, it orbits within the same system as the phrase " change is good". In fact, multi-tasking-friendly bosses are usually the ones who are spouting that change is good. And so, I think the multi-task example is pertinent on a deeper level than just as an example of something that didn't work as an idea for change.
So, I think change can be good, and I think it can be bad, at least it's results can be evaluated that way. I think our unholy fascination with the idea is more contributory to bad results of change than any of us ever admit. So at best, change can be good, but only because it is the existent alternative to the equally existent stasis. Let's call a spade a spade here folks, and admit that just because people you may or may not know, say one particular thing about a particular topic, like change, does not for one minute mean you should just accept it at face value. They might be right, but they might also be wrong. You owe it to yourself and to the world around you to think your own thoughts through to completion regarding these types of public decrees.