That’s my proverbial t-shirt slogan for the new year. It’s a prediction for what 2009 will represent in historical terms, as well as a personal mantra. As a prediction it’s by no means original, but I think most people don’t appreciate either the tremendous volume of changes we’re about to experience or how the changes will become manifest. We might say something like “the notion of change itself is changing.”
To demonstrate, economists still aren’t able to say anything clear about the economy, and this isn’t so much a poor reflection on them, nor simply an indication that these are strange times (though both of those claims are valid to some degree), as much as it is a reminder that what we take for knowledge is never perfect or complete, and we must always refine, adapt, and develop our thinking in order for it to continue being justified and applicable.
The lesson of 2008 isn’t just that specific economic models were flawed or that particular individuals are corrupt but that we should have always remained intellectually vigilant and aggressively skeptical even (or perhaps especially) during the period of immense prosperity that seemed to justify all of the ideas and actions involved in it — ideas and actions which are now so obviously wrong.
So what I mean by “changing the notion of change” is that change will no longer be something distinct and remarkable, but rather something that to be taken for granted – something we understand as continuously occurring – and ought to be absolutely integral to everything we think and do. It isn’t change we should worry about but an absence of change. The really exceptional times are the apparent states of non-change that cannot possibly last, and will eventually disintegrate (and the longer something stays the same, the more violently it will fall apart and the more incomprehensible the future will be).
Events in 2000 and 2001 made me ask questions and search deeply for answers that are still the most relevant questions and answers today. It took me until 2006 — through years of thinking and research — to even start being confident a few inchoate answers to the most essential, underlying questions posed by the challenges of the new millennium. By then I was so deeply immersed in abstract, general thinking that I had become unfamiliar with real, specific events. But as I brought myself back up to speed with the world I found that the basics hadn’t changed very much — e.g. the beginning of the economic crisis in 2007 (or just the latest iteration of problems that began with Long Term Capital Management and the Dotcom Crash?) and the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq assured me that I hadn’t missed the boat and my answers were as relevant as ever. But it took a while to get back up to speed — to become conversant in real, ongoing news and current affairs — and that is mostly what I’ve trying to do via this blog, especially in the past few months.
Now I’m back in the conversation (at least in one of the outer rings, as an informed spectator – but informed at least) and enough of my predictions and claims have been prescient enough to justify taking this even more seriously and moving to the next level.
So my intention is to work harder, to become more disciplined and productive (always my shortcoming), and to learn to make ”achievement” a more prominent aim in my mindset.
All of this might sound very pompous and self-absorbed — and quite honestly, it probably is — but I’m equipped with a finicky personality that demands this kind of articulateness or else I won’t commit or follow through with action. Every life-change I can think of has been marked by an articulate insight-turned-theory-turned-rule. I tend not to ”just grow out of things” (nor into them), I actually have to decide when and how to make changes by clearly observing a problem or opportunity and then rationalizing and defining a response. One could argue that this tendency to “think too much” is a problem — and I’m as aware of this as anyone — but then it becomes yet another problem to be rationalized.
Blogging this and making it public is a bit of an experiment. I don’t assume that many people will care, but I expect there are at least a few people around in roughly the same position (or maybe they’ve already gone through this and have something to teach me, or maybe they’re younger and might find some of this helpful) and at the very least I don’t think there’s any reason to keep this a secret. I’m going to write like this one way or another, I might as well hit the ‘Publish’ button.
Which brings me to relationships and social interactions: don’t expect much from me in 2009. For the past year my efforts to get out have been modest to say the least. This year I don’t intend to make any effort whatsoever. Instead I’ll be focusing my efforts here — on thinking, reading, writing (which is not necessarily unsocial: it’s only unsocial if other people don’t do it too, then their being unsocial in a way as well). I’m not just being prickly here. For years I made considerable effort to be more outgoing. The result of channeling nearly all of my energy this way was to be miserable, and a failure at everything. I still managed to be barely passable in social settings while my natural strengths were totally undeveloped. You can’t say I didn’t try – even when I started to pull back in 2002, trying to find ways to compromise – making an effort to change that was largely unreciprocated.
Ironically, the more successful I was socially, the more difficult it became. More friendships and interactions require more energy, and that energy has to be replenished somehow. For people who are energized by circulating around a party, talking about the last party they went to and making plans for the next, it’s a equitable experience: they get back what they put into it (or more). But I’m energized by ideas and discoveries and intellectual challenges and creations: I get my energy from the newspaper and the library and from conversations about what I read and thought there.
As with other reflections like this that I make, I’m not suggesting even for a moment that I’m special. I’m not writing this for special attention, but because there must be many other people who think and feel the same way — and I’m almost certain there’s just a small minority of people who are truly energized by “working a room” and other modes of constant social intersection — and we should be talking about what what to do about these social conventions: What are the costs and benefits – both personal and public? What are the best alternatives — or what can we do to develop a set of alternative social strategies?
I’ve heard arguments like, “Well, we do these things because that’s the way things are done.” That’s unacceptable. It has always been unacceptable to me on a theoretical level, though I was open to being proven wrong, and everything has proven me right. The years of concessions I made to popular conventions as an adolescent and young adult was a result of not trusting my own thinking — or being such a well-rounded skeptic that I knew I should postpone judgement either way — giving the benefit of the doubt to elders and the popular majority. My eventual misery was an indication — and the events of 2008 have been indisputable proof – that the popular advice was dangerously misleading.
We do things merely because that’s the way things are done — it’s all about habit – but that isn’t a reason why we ought to do conventional things in established ways, nor an explanation, nor a trustworthy guide. Doing things “the way things are done,” without thinking about them, is the road to ruin.
The hazard is that while people continue doing things “the way they are done,” there is always something on which those assumptions and conventions are based that is in a process of changing, or some new factor is in the process of emerging, which makes the assumptions and conventions inevitably insufficient and wrong. Try finding a top executive in any industry willing to argue that their company ought to keep doing things exactly as they’ve always done them. Even if you could find such a person, they probably won’t be doing that job for much longer — indeed, their job might not even exist very soon if that attitude is acceptable where they work.
It isn’t just hype. It isn’t just a campaign slogan, a motivational device, or a marketing gimmick. Change is really happening — it always has been — but people haven’t been very good at noticing or managing it. Like it or not, the world changes. You think GM and Citigroup wants these changes? You think newspapers and music companies want these changes? You think established academics in economics want these changes?
Only a few of us actually want to deal with change all the time – just as only a few people actually want to go out partying and meeting people all the time. The new year is our year; we’ll be busy.
So apologies in advance to all of the friends and former friends who haven’t taken an interest in my interests: I won’t be making an effort to interact on conventional terms this year. This is a moment to actually make something of myself and contribute to something much larger. Of course, everyone is more than welcome — encouraged, in fact — to get involved in this big conversation about what kind of future we can and should create.
And keep in mind, like throwing a party, by inviting you into this — no matter how much of an effort you need to make merely to attend and interact a little (like when I went to parties, when it took all of my energy to merely be there and not seem obviously uncomfortable) – I’m doing most of the work, taking most of the risk, arranging the furniture, and providing enough substance and doing enough connecting that you don’t need to worry about doing much more than bringing yourself and loosening up a little.
Of course you don’t have to get involved — and I certainly don’t expect you to if you’re not inclined (just as I’m finally comfortable not going out as I’m not inclined) — but then you can’t complain if you miss out on anything. Looking at the quality of my thinking in 2008 and the way 2009 is shaping up, I don’t know how anyone would want to miss out. I guess maybe it’s not my loss. Either way, I’m not slowing down and I don’t care what anyone thinks or says. It’s clearly time for change — it isn’t even an option — so I’ve decided to go ahead and do it.
