Rapidly Changing Times

Ecclesiastics says that "For everything there is a season". But the everything's seem to change much faster now than they did in former times. It's true that the world is losing the familiar at a more rapid rate as, technology, communication and transportation bring obsolescence to us in an instant. I can remember my childhood as a time in which things were constant. Change was an event, not an everyday happening. I think we were more grounded then as a result.

How can people form a sense of community, even a sense of self if change becomes the routine rather than the exception? In my opinion, too many changes brings on estrangement from the norms society sets. If one looks at the 20 years of time, for instance, he or she sees a different world from the beginning to the end. Uh, I know that whatever begins must end and be replaced. The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next. That is the story of humanity. But why so fast? Is it healthy for us or is it good to be forced to adapt so often in order to improve our lives?

Well, we have no choice in the matter of the rapidity of change. It is with us and will remain, the old times of the familiar are gone. The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order. It appears to be a lost art at the moment.In the past twenty years we have seen the beginning of the death or the death of the following and replacement by.... black and white tv replaced with color tv, land line phones replaced by mobile ones, manners replaced with "me" first", reading replaced by video, maps replaced by the GPS, typewriters replaced by word processors, face to face communication replaced by communication by computers, personal letters replaced by chat on line, slow food (home cooked meals) replaced by fast food, moral absolutes to political correctness, "dressing up" to "dressing down", "our" community to the world community, males sports heroes to male and female sports heroes (oh, those women athletes are so muscled today), global cooling hysteria to global warming hysteria, glass soda pop bottle to aluminum cans, am radio to the ipod...

Those are just a few off the top of my head. In isolation they are insignificant, but in totality they do impact us and in some cause dislocation and isolation from others and the world at large. But in the end, an old traditionalist if ever one, Henry Thoreau had it right when he wrote that "Things do not change, we change."

Do you think the changes we have had are are having are good , bad, or a combination? Is the world amore pleasant place today or as it was 20 years ago? Oh...feel free to CHANGE your answers anytime you wish. It's what we do these days.