Short Change

Timothy Birdnow

He's right. Change for change's sake is stupidity but most people think it is a good, indeed a necessity. But is it?

We live in a world governed by entropy. Entropy is the tendency of things to wind down, to break, to stop working. To reverse entropy requires great effort. To keep a system functioning requires less effort but still requires we work at it. (It's much like the Newtonian law of motion; a body in motion remains in motion. But it's a bit different since entropy naturally invades any system eventually.)

So to create is quite difficult, but to destroy is easy, and change is often for the worse as it allows entropy to sneak into the machine.

There is a reason why we do things the way we do. often that reason was learned in a very painful lesson, a lesson forgotten by those seeking "change".

Change is indeed inevitable and may be beneficial, but it must be weighed carefully and deliberately. Change for change sake is stupidity.

He's also right about the reasons the public supports it. "New and Improved!" is a common marketing phrase. People get bored. They want a new thing. Do not make the mistake of dismissing boredom; it is one of the cornerstones of the rise and fall of civilizations. People get bored, get dissatisfied, and then they seek "new and improved" which is very often old and degenerate. Most things in our culture have been done before. We like to boast to ourselves of our progress but we don't really change from the past much. Technology improves, yes (although not always; there were things the ancients could do we cannot) but the core of Man and his proud civilization remains pretty much the same, and the same mistakes are made over and over.

(I've often chided the GOP for their obliviousness to the importance of entertaining the public; they do not understand that boredom is a powerful drive in people's voting. You have to be fresh and exciting and "new" even if you are pitching an eternal truth.)

This from Morgan K. Freeburg:

"The Left holds a certain appeal for a broad cross-section of the country, that it shouldn't hold, because it stands for "change" and people misunderstand what that is.

People have a tendency to presume change is due, or overdue. They think any resistance to change must entail a commitment to the status quo that surpasses all reason, in terms of risibility of the situation and also in terms of longevity. "Change" represents, to the public at large, something like flopping over on your left side in the middle of the night when you've been sleeping on your right side for too long. It doesn't matter if you did more flipping and flopping a few hours ago or will be doing it again a few hours from now. Your hip hurts.

Because they see it this way, they're overly receptive to the implied proposal: "We are here, and we need to be over there. Let's pick up and re-locate. Solve the problem."

This doesn't reflect truth. The truth is that The Left is committed to change for change's sake. When they complain about gays not being able to marry, you can give them every little thing they demand and they'll be back with a whole new list of demands for transvestites. We just lived through that. When they complain someone isn't paying "his or her fair share" they don't have a share in mind. You can't up that person's taxes to make them happy. They'll always want something different. Always.

The truth is that their side is the one with an unreasonable commitment. Their commitment is to instability.

Returning to the metaphor of the sleeping man flopping over onto his other side, their plan is for him to spend the night flopping, flopping, and flopping some more, never stopping, like a rotisserie chicken. Constant change, so we can never gain a foothold, never get any rest and never get anything done.

It's exactly what our country's enemies would want, if they could run things on our behalf.”

But, as with the ad campaign for reruns on a network a few years ago, if you haven't seen it, it's new to you. So we repeat the cycle which leads to our woe.

And yes, the Left is heterodox; they want to tear down and don't really care what they replace it with. Any alternative will do.

But some do more than others. The goal of the deeper thinkers on the Left is to tear down so they can rebuild in their own image. They ultimately believe in Socialism because Socialism gives absolute power to them to mold humanity as they see fit. But they know Socialism won't work as long as there are any vestiges of the old ways around. They have to systematically dismantle every good thing to bring a "better" thing, as they see it.

That's why anarchists are leftists. One would think an anarchist would be an extreme Libertarian, but in fact he only seeks to destroy so he may impose a far stricter authoritarianism. Nobody in their right mind wants anarchy as it inevitably leads to tyranny, as Plato so aptly pointed out.

This is a good commentary!

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:02 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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