Few words about change
It is as permanent a part of life,
As the dancing stars in the sky.
In direct proportion to the increasing speed of technological progress, research and development of Artificial Intelligence and leading a life in the virtual world, there is a growing human longing for the past. Those who miss it see it as longing for a “safe, better world”.
It is understandable that we are looking for solid elements in life on which we can build our lives. A moment ago, only 30 years, for most people in the world having a computer was an unnecessary luxury. Access to the Internet, well, quite a strange idea.
Imagine a group of children who have lived their early lives in Siberia, in a village on the sidelines. For them temperatures of minus 50 degrees Celsius aren’t anything unusual. Imagine that those children studied well and — let’s say — after primary school, they moved to a slightly warmer climate, where their high school was located. Using our imagination, we can even assume that each subsequent stage of their study and work, thanks to their amazing mathematical and natural skills and scholarships (of course they received many), took place in warmer and warmer locations. Finally at the age of about 30, Siberians realized that they had to learn to live — let’s say this time — in Tirat Zvi in Israel. A place where the temperature reaches up to 54 degrees Celsius.
Now adults, they must find themselves in a new reality. They are forced to analyze and change their views on the principles of life. Now they have their own, new families in Israel. Their children must have been brought up completely differently to what they were. They had to do it in a different atmosphere. Sometimes, maybe, one of them slip away: “just dress warmly” or “eat something greasy”, towards a loved one — as a subconscious expression of care and guardianship; but it can only be met with surprise
and incomprehension from people who do not know what it is like to live in a different climate.
It is understandable that people hang on to solid elements in life on which they can build their lives — universal truths which are passed down from generation to generation.
Just like these hypothetical children, we often return more or less subconsciously to patterns that were the norm during our adolescence, but we must realize that some of these patterns are long outdated. The technological climate has changed radically, and the fight against it resembles a fight
against windmills from Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” (which, by the way like most books today, we can read in the form of an e-book).
Recent months have shown how many areas of life we can move to the world of the Internet, just as they’ve proved we are not prepared for it. It is not a lack of technical preparation — we have tools. It is emotional. Our minds and learned patterns raise subconscious objections. What is known always seems
safer because it’s something that we are used to, because this is the knowledge from our parents and grandparents…
When a teacher has to conduct an exam remotely or give students homework via email, something inside disagrees. What about all those lessons where we explained to children that learning should take place in libraries, not the internet? After all, we were studying this way…
Maybe this is the perfect time to analyze and change our views on the principles of life? The teachers and parents, we must realize that the climate has changed. All the times we are telling our children to put away the smartphone or shut down a computer while doing homework, only to be met with surprise and incomprehension. Our children — raised in the world of modern global media, simply do not know what is like to live in a different climate. A world without internet, the biggest library although digital.
In this horror, pandemic situation, let’s try to look at the world around us. Focusing on the weather and not on learned truths. Maybe this is the best moment to start expressing our care to loved ones in an understandable, for them, way.
Looking at the development of humanity, of our civilization — change has always been the most constant in our world and our history.
Today, people are taller than they were in the middle ages. We are generally less hairy than our ancestors … although we seem to know more about the laws that govern our world, hardly anyone of us could handle spinning a thread, making a pot or sewing a corset. It isn’t better or worse — just different.
The most important thing is to understand that change is not bad in itself and that it is natural to feel unsure during the process. In direct proportion to how fast we run ahead, we start to miss what we have left behind, but it shouldn’t stop us. Furthermore, in the case of the history of civilization, a real way back
doesn’t exist.
Let’s be like those imagined brainiacs from Siberia, accepting and adapting new amplitudes. With courage, remembering the past and not clinging to it. Let’s take advantage of technology. Let us allow our children to do things in new ways and let’s be glad that it is easier for them to adapt.
Because change is the most permanent part of life,
As the stars are born and die in the sky.