Reinterpretations around us

Of COURSE change is inevitable. Yet we strongly yearn for things to stay roughly the same. Indeed, a great part of our consciousness is based on arguments (some would say facts) such as the law of identity and the Little Orphan Annie Law (the sun will come up tomorrow).

The Bible draws its strength from this concept, as does Capitalism.

But hold on. If all these things we are hanging onto are so fool certain, then how come change seems to be coming at us with increasing speed?

It's time to look at focus and framing. Jack Canfield, the Chicken Soup for the Soul co-author, rightly says that we control our destiny (some might say our very reality) largely by how we choose to respond to the events around us. Respond with resort to stability and logic, and to some degree you can tame the tiger of rapid change. Simply discard those inputs which don't fit into a framework and keep the ones that do. Occasionally you'll be blindsided and even perhaps knocked to your knees or killed, or driven insane. But that has always been a possibility.

This induced blindness is what we call rationality, and in terms of efficacy, it is rational indeed. The easiest way to stay on course is not to look at what's happening in the other lanes or on the side of the road.

Of course, we need to be aware that we are living in a culture of voluntary mass distraction. That simply means that it is trendish to be distracted as much as possible while still performing at a passable level. Never mind that the real work getting done is accomplished by decidedly old-fashioned drive and initiative. You can't tell me that the recent discoveries in technology and psychology were the result of whistling over beers in the parking lot while listening to the latest device. Focus is very much alive.

Why then, the emphasis on the distraction? Might we not argue that mass distraction very nicely serves the engineers who are driving society? Are we not easier to predict, influence, herd, control, when we are barely able to function, all because of a voluntary movement to conformity masked as relevance?

We can even see this phenomenon in past times, if we frame it properly. What was World War II, but a conveniently botched result of world economic stagnation, which was used to focus and drive conformance for the next 50 years?