Not all readaptation, however, is progress, for ideal identity must not be lost. The Latin language did not progress when it passed into Italian. It died. Its amiable heirs may console us for its departure, but do not remove the fact that their parent is extinct. So every individual, nation, and religion has its limit of adaptation; so long as the increment it receives is digestible, so long as the organisation already attained is extended and elaborated without being surrendered, growth goes on; but when the foundation itself shifts, when what is gained at the periphery is lost at the centre, the flux appears again and progress is not real.
George Santayana - The Life of Reason (1905 - 1906)
I often sit here with my laptop, gazing through the window while thinking about the obvious problem of adapting to change. The problem is not what we should do about obviously malign change but the simple observation that a huge number of people adapt to it as opposed to resisting it.
We see the problem with major UK political parties which have clearly slipped into a long process of incompetence and moral decline. Yet voters simply adapt to the decline. They do not switch their vote in favour of individuals or parties who do at least acknowledge the problem and also have something to prove.
We could call it voter apathy which it is, but apathy facilitated by the way we adapt so quickly to changed circumstances. Even drastically changed circumstances easily observed by anyone with some knowledge of recent decades or some desire to acquire that knowledge.
It seems to be a particularly intractable problem when circumstances change more slowly than our ability to adapt. How quickly do we adapt? Very quickly indeed. The coronavirus debacle hammered that one home.
Even after the introduction of a coronavirus police state, if a general election were to be held tomorrow, the vast majority of voters would still vote for one of the major political parties. After that it will be too late to change anything.
Even after the introduction of a coronavirus police state, if a general election were to be held tomorrow, the vast majority of voters would still vote for one of the major political parties. After that it will be too late to change anything.
3 comments:
The "ideal identity" of Britain has, I think, been lost. We have been told by countless do-gooders that incremental changes like the EU, mass immigration, a fervent worship of sexual minorities, trust in experts, and mindless criticism of tradition has led to a new, vibrant, modern Britain.
Except it's not Britain. It's shite.
My sentiments exactly Sam.
I guess the reasons why things do change more abruptly, when they do, is as a result of severe crisis or war.
Sam - yes it is shite and mindless criticism of tradition does seem to lie at the core of it. Hard to say when it began, but it seems to have been building for a very long time and we never did learn how to deal with it.
Tammly - and now we have manufactured severe crises in climate change and the pandemic to move malign change along more quickly.
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