Change is scary. I know this might seem like a weird time to write about change, when the world outside appears to be stuck in amber as we all live in lockdowns and social bubbles, but change has continued nevertheless. Time stops for nobody.
I’ve been thinking about change recently as B and I stand on the cusp of a pretty major one, moving away from the safe poffertjes and canals of the Netherlands after four and a bit years to start a new adventure in Brussels. Change, one could argue, is paradoxically the one true constant in life. But change as a word tends to bring with it a whole host of scary compadres – uncertainty, the unknown, the untested, the novel Coronavirus oh wait no not that one. But still, you get the idea – change is scary, but change is necessary.
The Arrow of Time
Recently I’ve been enjoying the book Cosmological Koans by Anthony Aguirre, a physics professor at the University of California, and I highly urge any other science readers out there to check it out. The book looks at the big questions of physics through the lens of Zen Buddhist koans – short stories and dialogues intended to provoke doubt, which were used to test students in monasteries. It’s a novel and uniquely captivating approach, as Aguirre shares short parables that he then uses to illustrate physics concepts ranging from black holes to the expansion of the universe, quantum mechanics, gravity, spacetime, and more. But there’s one parable in particular near the start of the book that has really stuck with me – that of the arrow of time.
The arrow of time is a commonly used expression, with the obvious meaning that time moves in one direction – forwards. As humans, and not the alien monsters from Arrival, our subjective perception of time is strictly linear, and therefore we need to demarcate it with something. Now seconds, minutes, hours, days and months and seasons, they’re not really what we mean when we refer to the passage of time, what we are really referring to is change. Change is the only metric through which we know that time has passed. In the world of physics this tends to mean entropy, the transition of a system from an orderly to a disorderly state, but even outside of physics disorder and decay are not necessarily bad things.
If we didn’t change over time, if our cells didn’t degenerate and regenerate and adapt, we wouldn’t age and grow up and move out of our awkward hair phase. If the world around us remained static, not moving through the natural cycles of death, decay, and rebirth that are the seasons, the constant flux of the tide and the winds, how would we know any time has passed at all? If the structures that humans have built didn’t crumble, the institutions we’ve built didn’t adapt, if our technology was static and our ideals unmoving and we were all still wearing Fila trackies and light up trainers then how would we know that we were moving towards any kind of future? A change in state is the only thing that we can objectively use as measurement that time has passed, and if time isn’t moving forwards, then what’s the point?
What I’m trying to get at here (and I think I am trying to get at something) is that change is necessary, in that change is inevitable. Now, why am I banging on about change? Here’s why.
New Normal
As we put the trainwreck of 2020 behind us, or to quote Leslie Jones in the recent Death to 2020 “I would call it a trainwreck or a shit-show but that would be unfair to trains and shit,” it’s time to focus on some change as we move into this new year (as a side note, Charlie Brooker if you’re reading this blog please just do a yearly wipe for 2021, Americans don’t deserve you). Change seems to be happening on every level; as the UK officially Brexits finally following the age old saying of “Brexshit or get off the pot,” as Donny T finally slinks off into the vat from whence he emerged after unsuccessfully trying to goad some hillbillies into committing a coup, as vaccines finally start being jabbed into arms across the globe so we might finally begin to see a glimmer of light at the end of the long, dank, smelly Mersey tunnel of lockdowns. Change is in the air, and I think the world is eager for it after a year spent largely stuck in stasis.
But, as the arrow of time dictates, the only way we’re moving is forwards. As irritating as it became, I was glad to see people eventually accept the phrase the “new normal” instead of longing to return to some pre-COVID time. There is no pre-COVID time, its memories only exist in the collective consciousness, everything that happens from now will only take us further into the post-COVID world – and quite frankly that’s a good thing.
Back to the Future
Endlessly looking backwards is what drags humans into half the messes they create. Take the ironically global resurgence of nationalism, with people hankering to return to some halcyon bygone era when their country was full of their own kind and society in each nation fell into some neat, orderly uniformity (spoiler alert: it never existed). Or perhaps those who still think climate change can be undone if we all just recycle our cardboard, stop using straws, and shop local, conveniently ignoring that majority of pollution is caused by corporations not individuals. The arrow of time only moves in one direction, and fighting against it does nothing but waste precious time and energy.
So with all that said, what does any of this have to do with now? Well in a way it has nothing to do with now – it’s to do with what’s next. It’s just a very long winded way for me to say that change is a constant, that vaccines and the lifting of lockdowns won’t take us back to life in 2019, rather they will carry us to whatever life will be in 2022, always forwards and never back. However, whether it’s Tame Impala singing that “he pulled the mirrors off his Cadillac, ’cause he doesn’t like it looking like he looks back,” or 80’s guy on Futurama reminding us that “sharks don’t look back, because they don’t have necks” before sadly succumbing to boneitis, there is a tendency to satirise those who focus wholly on the horizon. I must confess I myself often go on at length to anyone who will listen (sorry B) about the importance of looking to, learning about, and crucially learning from history, but that’s not to say we should get stuck in the past.
While we should draw on what the past has to tell us, lest we be hit with another epidemic of journalists referring to things as “unprecedented,” we should also not strive to return to those days. Yeah we all love an 80s aesthetic, but do you really want to be forced to listen to everything on cassette again? Don’t say yes – they might sell cassettes at Urban Outfitters but they’re a terrible medium. We might like the spirit of the 60s, but do we really want to be living under the constant threat of nuclear war? We might watch Bridgerton and suddenly want to wear tailcoats again, but do those of us without land and titles want to work in sooty, dangerous factories for tuppence a week? The past is a reminder that tomorrow should be different, whether that be for the world or for ourselves.
I know this post has had a more tenuous central thread than most of what I write, which is saying something, but I guess at the end of it all I just want to say this. Change can be scary, but change is good. Change means movement, it means progress, and it means not getting set in our ways with no willingness or reason to adapt. Adaptation is what drives human progress, both personally and societally, and as 2022 stretches out before us I for one am looking forward to the changes it brings for myself and the planet.
I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re goin’ through
― Changes, David Bowie
The Angry Indian
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
The Angry Indian 