You want change?

My sense is that change is hard. Perhaps I'm just lazy and pessimistic. But that's actually an improvement! I used to believe that change was impossible. I used to be fatalistic, and my girlfriend told me that--Oh God! You're Mr Fatalist!--several times, just before she dumped me. 

So from the personal to the global, here's one partial, small, really cramped view of Obama and the recent Integral Life piece The State (and Stages) of the Union. First I'm really glad Integral Life is covering this. Also, this post is before I listen to the audio. 

I was struck by some of the depth of enthusiasm and almost downright bliss people had in their eyes as they watched Obama on inauguration day. I'm like, what are you people expecting? But that comment wasn't real helpful. Sorry, was I interrupting your bliss there? Oh, please don't mind me, pray continue. I think it sort of came to a head when I read a comment that Obama deserved the Nobel just for bringing Hope. That's an achievement in itself. To me that's almost like damming with faint praise. But then I'm a half-empty kinda guy.

I'll say this though regarding change and why I transitioned up from being a fatalist to a pessimist. And it even has something to do with Integral, albeit partially. Why is change hard? Well, there's like this big mountain see and... no wait. That's not it. That can't be it. Once in a while, radical mind-boggling change does happen. And it seems to happen even without people trying. Just like that. Boom! Then once the shock has worn off, people do a little cognitive reorienting and start to see in retrospect all the stuff that made it happen. But it is often only apparent after the fact.

So what happened when change really happend? I guess the answer, in a twisty side view kind of way, is that lots of things happened and they all happened to happen at the same time, or in just the right little balanced dance, as if divinely choreographed, to make the preparation, latent build up, birth, shock, transition, broadcast, dissemination, and final settling into a new pattern or system. It could be finding a new job. It could be discovering a new diet. Sometimes all I'm left with is a feeling of being in the zone, or just a little surprised by all the coincidences that seemed to work out just right. Was it luck or what? Makes no difference really.

Integrally, we're talking about effecting change in all the levels, quadrants, states, lines, and types that are mostly related to the problem or condition at hand. And Integrally--this is just me talking now--a better outcome might simply be a more stable arrangement of the existing pattern into something that is horizontally better balanced. 

I'm sorry guys, I've done it myself and I've heard a few notable people make teachings out of this--you know, the big waffle about some noble impulse that requires urgent activation through deep change, but when you ask, so do you have any examples? it all gets a bit evasive. Gee we don't like to say, because, you know, we wouldn't want to pigeonhole it into anything real. 

But that's the funny thing about the manifest world. Sooner or later, it has to manifest as something. I'm all in with the creative tension, the night-before-the-deadline-staring-at-a-blank-page feeling, but sooner or later, you'll have to commit. Or flunk. But I digress.

Change is hard because it requires multiple changes in multiple ways, and like a dancer tripping over themselves, it has little guarantee. It can just as well turn into a worse mess, if it even gets going in the first place. Reality has to be, and it's gotta be something, and it can't, well, just keep changing its mind every five minutes about what it is. Now I'm a human, oops, my molecules rearranged themselves, now I'm a pig. 

I say I'm a pessimist but I also happen to believe that reality is extremely efficient. Moreso than perhaps we can imagine. Excuse the "Royal We" there, I mean me. It has created this vast intricate flowing dance, a captivating song, and then we come along and decide we don't like some of the notes. 

Perhaps one of the ingredients for change is acceptance, but perhaps that's another post. Integral Theory has slowly been opening me up to more acceptance, at least in what people say and do. The world seems less disagreeable to me now, at least as I peer through my little squinty eyeballs. 

The world also seems more flexible, more open and more unpredictable. Lost of small changes by lots of people can, through chaos, have a far greater effect, some would say--but then we're all at the effect of everyone else's butterfly wings flapping wildly, so the net effect becomes wildly unpredictable. It is remarkable that most days are boring.

I think Obama's problem--purely in the context of his stated vision for change--is that he is one man. He is the most powerful man. But one man does not an army make. And I'm slowly but dimly, as my thoughts return to the image of the quadrants and altitudes, and as I subdivide that image into the multitude egos in the American political system, business marketplace, and population at large, as I subdivide the diagram into living entities pursuing their own drives and dreams through the material conditions at hand of their own lives, I'm dimly starting to see just a murky shimmer of what might be going on out there. And boy, I feel myself reverting to an old feeling.