All Things Change . . .

In this life there is an eternal struggle between establishment and progress. On one side you have establishment, conservatism, a clinging to the way things are or were, a tendency to resist change and movement, and to see the tendency of nature to move towards more emergent levels of complexity as something to be resisted. On the other hand you have progress, which, in general terms, is the tendency of the universe to constantly adjust itself, renew itself, change itself from what was into what will be. These two forces are at constant odds and can be seen everywhere: Change versus Non-Change.

So in light of these two opposing forces let us look backwards to (as far as we can tell) the root of our mystery. The Big Bang is, in general, the most agreed upon scientific explanation of the "beginning" of reality as we know it. The idea goes something like this, around 13.7 billion years ago all matter that now exists was compressed into a tiny ball about the size of a pea. Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, with no warning, BOOM! Physical reality bursts into existence with greater power than could truly be fathomed by the human imagination. With matter flying at break neck speed in every direction, what we now know as the universe came into being. Now as our good friend Terrence McKenna so thoughtfully pointed out, even science requires one miracle. They say "give us the big bang, give us one freebie, and we will explain everything else". So I say sure, lets start with your miracle.

So with that as a starting point, let us look at the timeline that has unfolded since the big bang, from not so much a scientific perspective, but a more general perspective of an observer who was just watching it all go down. What do we see . . . we see initial simplicity, we see gases, which, over time cool to form denser matter, which then begins to condense into larger pockets of matter which over time form everything we see today in existence. Now, obviously this is a gross oversimplification, but that is okay because I am not a scientist and my point should not be impeded by the lack of specific science, lets just say the science is there for whoever wishes to devote the time necessary, but I digress. From that initial explosion 14 billion years ago to today what we see is a general trend toward the increasing complexity and diversity of reality. The only thing that has remained constant throughout the known history of history is this constant movement and constant emergence of more complex forms of manifestation, continually building off of itself, continually surpassing and including what came before. Terrence McKenna called it novelty and he believed that it was all leading to a singularity, a tipping point at which everything would once again . . change, but in a much more profound and huge leap than we are used to seeing in our everyday lives. Terrence's theories are definitely worth a very close examination and they have much to say about where we come from and where we are headed, but for right now I would like to go back to our two opposing forces in life, change and non-change. When we look at the current political, environmental, spiritual, commercial, and all around planetary crisis we see the fight between these two forces. The examples are endless: from religious conservatism vs. individual spirituality to constitutionalists vs. reformists it is basically the same story. It is what is older and established that resists being usurped by that which is newer and more novel.

So lets see what we have here so far. We have an universe that seems, by its basic nature, to continually push towards the more novel and complex and then we have humanity, which constantly battles between preserving the status quo and changing in an attempt for further "improvement". Now I am not gonna say that every new idea is better than every previous idea, but what I will say is that if we take the nature of reality as a whole as any type of indicator as to the way our little chunk of reality should operate, then it seems fairly straightforward to me that change is the inevitable way to go and that resistance toward change is in a sense futile. Now, that being said, obviously change is a broad term and change can either be positive or negative. So the blanket statement, "change is good", to me is ridiculous, but what I do feel comfortable saying is "change is inevitable". The question then becomes, not should we change or keep the same structures (political, economic, religious, social, etc.), but to what new structures should we change. It seems to me that in this modern age of collapsing economic and political policies, everyone seems to be scrambling to figure out how to preserve the system that has led us to the edge of the cliff as opposed to truly putting our heads and hearts together to devise a new system, an open ended system, a system who's basic structure includes room for change. All things change . . . it is our only constant. I don't claim to know how we should change but it seems to me that resistance only breeds trouble and that by going with the flow of change and maybe just doing what we can to point that change in the direction that would bring the most benefit to all creation, we can truly ride the with the current of reality as opposed to fighting it. We are small and reality is quite large, a stick in a stream attempting to impede the flow will be toppled, but one that uses the natural flow of that stream as energy will go much further.

Anyway, that's how I see it right now.