Denying This Prevents Individual and Societal Growth
Forgive me for being a strong proponent of evolution. But, do what you know, right?
In all my studies. All the naval gazing. The psychedelic experimentation. The ‘college’.
All the Knowledge I’ve gained.
The Experiences I’ve had.
And whatever Wisdom resulted from all that.
The only thing I know to be true is that things change.
All the rest of the stuff has some probability of not being real.
But this isn’t about truth, that’s another post.
If you accept that our ‘humanness’. Our LIMITATIONS. Imply that we can’t know everything.
That we can be wrong.
That we can lack the capacity to know things. The truth, whatever.
Then you will experience a new level of freedom of understanding.
And that’s when you will see that the only thing we can guarantee in life is that things will change.
Because they always do.
Matter might not be created nor destroyed (any longer, post big bang).
But it changes form.
Change.
Time also moves.
Change.
The earth spins.
Change.
Anyway, that’s a long way to go to demonstrate my thesis.
Since at least the industrial revolution, maybe the last 200 years or so, humans have launched a campaign to deny, avoid, reduce, and prevent change.
We try to manipulate what changes and what doesn’t.
We light our homes even after sunset.
We regulate indoor temperatures.
We created a food economy by slowing the rate of decomposition.
We (insert thousands of other behaviors and technological advances) . . . .
All leading up to manipulating (indirectly) the way water and air circulate around the planet on which we live.
Oops. In changing some things, we changed how the others change.
At least the central tenet still holds. The one thing we can depend on is that things change.
We spend a lot of time pondering metaphysical changes, too. Like how to change our moods. Our feelings. Our happiness.
But mostly we spend our time RESISTING change.
Here’s where we screw up royally. But it’s also another line of evidence supporting my hypothesis.
By resting change, we create a set of entirely new problems. Problems that, guess what, we try to change.
So humans, so it seems, simultaneously desire and resist change.
The problem appears to be in the details. We want some things to change, but we want other things to remain the same.
And not being able to control those things creates suffering.
And/or, we can’t agree on which things should and should not change.
It’s like the power to manipulate what changes and what does not has created novel problems we can’t handle.
Perhaps what needs to not change is our desire to change things.
Go with the flow, right?
Accept the things we cannot change and all that.
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference
Yeah, that. I didn’t plan on going there but the ‘serenity prayer’ pretty much sums it up.
We don’t know the difference. We don’t believe there is a difference.
We don’t believe there are things we cannot change.
We don’t understand why anyone would believe that.
We have become arrogant in our abilities.
Yes, we have reached a point in human evolution where we have the unnatural ability to change many things.
But we probably shouldn’t.
And during our evolution we have forgotten why we wouldn’t want to grant ourselves license to change anything we want to change.
As a result, we changed a bunch of stuff that is making our lives more difficult.
And we incorporated a bunch of beliefs that exacerbate these difficulties.
The desire to manipulate, and not coexist with, the natural landscape has created new factors that dramatically increase the rate of increased discomfort on Earth.
- We (falsely) believe we control everything including what changes and what does not
- We resist the natural changes inherent to the universe
- We resist the natural changes inherent to our daily life experiences
- We can’t (won’t) coexist within the constraints of natural change
- We are afraid of relinquishing (the illusion of) control
- We have forgotten that the universe is in control of many things
So. What can we do about this?
The answer is simple but not easy.
We have to change our limiting beliefs and rethink our fears.
We have to learn to live with change. And loss.
We have to make room for better things to come.
We do this using all of the tools you see advertised every day.
Meditation.
Mindfulness.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Journaling.
Communication.
I will expand on these in future articles, and there are nearly 100 podcast Episodes related to these things here: https://chrisburcher.com/direct-links-to-individual-episodes/