Embrace The Change

For many people managing change is a challenge.   I would be the first to admit to it. Nevertheless, there is no way on earth to dodge the challenge.  It is inevitable.  We are living at a point in time and space where change is evolving exponentially. 

Take for instance the impact of new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI). Imagine the impact that AI will have on businesses such as healthcare, financial services, accounting, education and law.  Media and propaganda. Security.  And politics.

My world has been warming for about 10,000 years. That covers roughly 400 generations, give or take. Did the patriarch or matriarch of each generation give thought to the impact of climate change on their world?  We’re here because someone since our Neolithic prehistory did. 

Over millennia pandemics have ebbed and flowed. If you are reading this you are here as a consequence of somebody in your historical genome managing the changes wrought by plagues and epidemics.

Which takes us to this.  In only a handful of generations medicine has advanced by means of understanding germ theory and the spread of deadly stuff like cholera. Which led to modern sanitation practices and clean water. The birth of vaccines and antibiotics led to a reduction of infections and improved public health and life expectancy.  

Antiseptic practices, blood transfusions and anesthesia improved surgical outcomes. There were x-rays, clinical trials and much more.  In just my lifetime there was the pill, joint replacements, advances in cardiac medicine and organ transplants. 

In only a couple of generations there was modern refrigeration, changes in transportation, communication, agriculture and energy efficiencies.  Canned food and white sliced bread. Even warfare. 

Change. 

If we have any hope of survival, much less flourishing, we need to suck it up and embrace it. 

If you want to grouse and gripe about incandescent light bulbs going the way of the buggy whip and bitch about electric vehicles on social media, or deny the efficacy of vaccines, I have to wonder if you’ll survive hydrogen as an energy source.  Oh, the humanity!

We need to transform our relationship with change by actively participating in it and knowing that we can shape change as much as it can shape us.