CONSIDER CHANGE, PART I. . .

It requires no great discernment on our part to recognize that our age is rooted in rapid and extraordinary changes and that we have but little insight into the effect these changes will have upon us, our relationships, our communities, our societies and our world. Thus, it takes intense disciplined discernment if we are going to evaluate the changes and their impact on how we humans live and in how we choose to live.

Now we know that any age involves change and we know that a particular age will involve changes that powerfully impact (think, shift, change or transformation) the human community and thus significantly impact the non-human community. These significant changes become the milestones that mark our journey through time.

What characterizes our present age (whose name is yet to be given – we have moved beyond the industrial age, the post-modern age, the information age and the technological age) is that it is emerging as a ‘milestone age’ and that because the rate of change continues to accelerate we will move to a ‘new age’ more quickly than ever before in history (perhaps we will move so quickly that we won’t even be able to ‘name’ an ‘age’ any longer).

Prior to forty or fifty years ago each age had the time to ‘adjust’ to the ‘new age.’ Today, because change washes over us as does a great tsunami, we barely begin to adjust and then another change washes over us – our coping ability and our adaptability are more severely challenged in ways that push us (to the edge if not to our limit) as we have never been pushed before. It is this intense and constant ‘coping’ and ‘adjustability’ that reminds us of the gaps that are present between generations.

Historically, it has been easier for previous generations to adjust to change simply because change was more incremental and subtle – this, as we know, is no longer the case (and it appears as if it will never be the case again). For example, in China these past ten years a number of farming communities have been replaced by large modern urban centers and the emergence of large urban centers replacing farming communities continues unabated (all of this urban growth has occurred in just ten years). “It’s a new world for us in the city,” said Tian Wei, 43, a former wheat farmer in the northern province of Hebei, who now works as a night watchman at a factory. “All my life I’ve worked with my hands in the fields; do I have the educational level to keep up with the city people?” His story is a common one in China and India.

The American author, Hugh Prather, reminds us of our dilemma: ‘Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes.’ Today, this is dramatically true for all of us human beings.