Change is all around. Fortune 500 company starts to flounder? Bring in a new CEO. Old plastic polymer too toxic? Make a new, safer one. We’re so accustomed to change in the 21st century that we now accept it blindly and without criticism. We know anything new we buy is only going to remain that way for somewhere around a year before we’re going to “need” to upgrade.
My friend Nick, an eccentric writer friend of mine (there’s a few of us out there), recently decided he wanted to start a magazine. A super local magazine that would profile all the exciting and little-known grassroots things from his city. Here’s the catch: there will be zero digital media presence. Now Nick is hardly alone in this nostalgic quest for “real” physical presence of things. People have flocked to return to canning, analog recording, and doing-it-yourself just about anything. What struck me about Nick’s idea was that he felt that digital presence alters our reality, how we perceive the thing and that we are so inundated with “change” that we actually miss the opportunity to slow down and look – really look – at something.
When we talk about change now, so often we mean the kind of change where a new face comes in, or a colour of a product is now blue, or maybe a slightly different approach to an age-old problem. But here’s what’s been chewing away at me a bit: are we actually willing to change? Deep down, broadly, systemically spiritually… or are we just repackaging the same old thing and indeed, ourselves?
I was reading a book on higher education reform and the author made a critical point regarding espoused values over actual, living values. Espoused values are what an institution or person will say (“We believe in our people!”) and a living value might be that employees are required to work long hours and don’t receive adequate compensation. Just saying you have values or that you have changed, does not equal change. Maybe it’s time we do away with the status updates (dare I say… the blog posts?) about change and turn off the devices (if only for a while), sit down, look inward at that scared little animal, and really, honestly change.
Nick Thornton 