Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

The world is changing too fast for some, but not fast enough for others.

(Chart ©2024 Civic Science)

Let’s think for a minute about the nature of change, and how humans resist the inevitable. One of the first things we learn in the realm of critical thinking is that nothing is as constant as change. From a pop culture perspective, whether it’s Mike Myers’ brilliant assessment in the SNL spinoff, Wayne’s World, of “We fear change,” or George Harrison’s sublime message of transition that “All Things Must Pass” as he moved on from the Beatles in the 1970’s, to Joni Mitchell’s indispensable observation that “Everything comes and goes, marked by lovers and styles of clothes.” Transformation is a common theme in art, a thought that is at the heart of David Bowie’s “Changes,” where he writes that when we turn to face ourselves, we may be confronted by an unrecognizable stranger who has been altered by immutable time. But it’s a one-way bargain: “Time may change me,” he sang, “but I can’t trace time.”

For some years now, I’ve been focused on the rapidly changing culture, and how it is perceived so differently by various people and institutions. For women, LGBTQ+, racial, and religious minorities, change feels like running underwater, where every advance requires supreme effort, and still little progress is made.

Even as slow as change seems to those minority groups fighting for the right to be treated as equals, and as society has become more inclusive of women and some minority groups, it has alienated others, generally, but not always, the older, more conservative religious set, for whom the pace of change is dizzyingly rapid. Perspective is everything. Either it’s you’re ox that is getting gored, or you’re wielding the implement.

Our pillars of commonality that have reliably held the sky up since the Civil War, are crumbling. They say demography is destiny, and for a while, it looked like change, driven by the realities of demographic shifts, would succeed without being significantly interrupted by backlash or violence, which in retrospect was naive.

Change on a societal scale never happens smoothly or in a predictable, linear fashion. Even before the election of a Black president, or his ultimate endorsement of gay marriage, cultural change was evident in smaller, slower ways. Gays were mainstreaming, women were finding seats in corporate boardrooms and military leadership, and medicinal and recreational marijuana use was coming out of the closet. There was backlash by those who were determined not to go, in the words of Dylan Thomas, “gently into that good night.”

There were scrapes, and a lot of yelling, due to widespread attention from the evolving form of cable television news, the internet, and social media. New places where dissent could be displayed profitably and proudly. So-called “influencers” appeared on the scene, and through the newly harnessed algorithmic energy of the digital world, spread their messages farther and wider than any time in the past.

My expectation was that the kvetching of the Rush Limbaughs and the Bill O’Reillys would mark the passing of the torch; that the death rattle of an older generation’s values giving way to the sensibilities of a younger, more accepting generation would spell the end, but it was not to be.

This moment of generational change is different. The willingness and ability to fight against change has been fortified by a fragmented and weaponized media. Where the KKK and the John Birchers were shunted to the back recesses of polite society, they now have their own hosts on their own cable channels and websites. What appeared to be their death rattle was actually their rallying cry. The fight against societal change has never been better armed.

Now, residents of the Global South are seeking the stability of the United States and the European Union as their worlds get more uncomfortable due to political repression, lack of economic opportunity, and gang violence,  smaking unchecked immigration a crisis across both continents. Rising temperatures and sea level will boost this migration as people of the south try to move to the middle latitudes in increasing numbers, meaning the migration we’re seeing now is just a harbinger of things to come.

To be sure, change is inevitable, and demography truly is destiny. The fighting will die out, but not before we’re reeling from the casualties. If only there were a peaceful way to embrace the inevitable.

I’ll close with Stevie Wonder from “Heaven is Ten Zillion Light Years Away.”

“Why can't they say that hate is ten zillion light years away?

Why can't the light of good shine God's love in every soul?

Why must my color black make me a lesser man?

I thought this world was made for every man

He loves us all, that's what my God tells me

And I say it's taken Him so long

'Cause we've got so far to come.”

©2024 Jon Sinton