Change is only constant in world

Change is only constant in world

(My Clovis News Journal column for May 11, 2012)

I have often heard the saying "Be the change you wish to see in the world". This may sound like gratingly "touchy-feely, New Age" pablum, but I grudgingly admit it is true when I consider the alternative.

Because, seriously, should you act in ways you know are wrong just because what you know to be right isn't popular enough to be widespread at this time? I don't think so; at least I hope not! Go ahead and start doing what you know is right and let the rest of the people catch up to you when they are ready. Even if they never join you, at least you will know you have done the right thing.

All change happens in individual hearts and minds, only. Usually in many isolated individuals; each independent, and often unaware of the others. From each individual it spreads to more people until there is a group which has adopted the change around each. Eventually the groups grow to the point where they mix and mingle and distinctions between them get fuzzy, and then the whole society has shifted. Suddenly everything is different and few people even realize a change has happened. Or if they realize it, they don't know how it happened.

This has been going on in societies for thousands of years. Sometimes the change is positive; other times it is negative. I'm attempting to make liberty more popular by simply embracing it in all circumstances, no matter who opposes it for what reasons. And I am far from alone.

The groundwork has already been done. The change has gone beyond a few scattered individuals and is now at the group stage. In fact, many unconnected groups, calling themselves by different names, are embracing this change. If things keep going like this, before long the gaps between the groups may vanish and change will be the reality. It has already begun happening.

The only constant in this world is change. Since change will happen whether you are ready for it or not, why not make sure the change is a good one?

Want to start now? Refuse to use coercion to get your way. Don't steal. Respect the liberty of all others, even those who repulse you, so that others will be able to respect your liberty when you repulse them. Don't wait until you are the oddball to accept a better way to live with your own species.

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History of government

I just started reading Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel". Yeah, I know. I'm late to the party, but I just found the book available in my price range at Goodwill...

The earliest parts of the book gave me a couple of thoughts.

Even if government/the State were "necessary" to get "us" to where "we" as a species are now (which is a common, unproven, objection to anarchy/liberty), they are no longer necessary. That would be like saying that because you had to drink milk when you were a baby, you can't ingest anything else now that you are grown. You must keep nursing, exclusively, until the day you die. Or that since humans once used stone tools, we can't advance beyond that, either. It's silly.

And...

Species evolve under pressure. As long as things are going well, there is no reason to change. Perhaps government/the State was the pressure that made humans evolve. Like a new parasite or disease. Or, if not an effect on biological evolution, perhaps there was a pressure to force cultural evolution, instead. Maybe government didn't "free" humans to develop culture and civilization, as has been claimed- maybe those things developed and evolved as a sort of immune response to the deadly threat posed by government's growth; an evolutionary arms race.

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