Change

The only facts in life are death, taxes and change.

Changes range from small ones to large ones, and all changes have some positive and negative qualities (see The Ying Yang).

To be human is to be a part of an on-going cycle of change, moving from birth, to conscious life, to death, and back to dust. 

We have our needs, and change can be a counter to our need for “safety” (see Human Needs). As we grow up, we spend a good deal of time and effort trying to fulfill our “affiliation, self-esteem, and cognitive” needs. Once we become comfortable, having met those needs, we may become resistant to any changes, not seeing any need for change (see Seeing). We may like things just the way they are. We become accustomed to the familiar, and are creatures of habit that are hard to change.

But this desire for a safe, unchanging world is an illusion. Time is always marching on and we are constantly getting older. We are living in a world that is changing almost as quickly. We are depleting the world’s natural resources. The world’s population is increasing beyond its capacity. What we need to know about the world is increasing at an alarming rate, so learning has become a lifelong endeavor. 

To resist change is like trying to hold back the wind; it cannot be done. Just as we try to harness the power of the wind, it makes more sense to try to utilize the power of change to our benefit. We must learn to accept change, and work towards making it as successful as possible. Change is usually not easy, but change can have many positive results. We cannot grow without change.

Knowing what to expect (the positive and negative) often makes change a little easier to accept. Accurate information is needed in order to calculate the need for change. All too often, people’s self-interests cause them to lie, and the expected results often go haywire. These kinds of events make people very skeptical of change. Of course, we can never predict all the ramifications of any change. The interconnectedness of life is far too complex to completely predict. Consequently, there is always some risk involved. The benefits just need to outweigh the risks. After all, having a child is one of the biggest risks that we take, but we continue to keep doing it (see Ecology and Population Control).

When a car is on a road, and the road just keeps getting rougher, you need to make a decision. Do you go straight, even though it looks bad for as far as you can see? Or, do you decide to do something else? This is not meant as a hypothetical question. This question is real because we are really on a very rough road and, as far as I can see, the road just looks like it’s going to get worse. If the purpose in life is “To have children and raise them intelligently,” we need to decide what to do, based on what is best for our children.