Published by The Royal Bank of Canada

The Pressure of Change

Change is ever with us, whether welike it or not- and people todayare showing increasing signs of notliking it. In coping with change, ithelps to see it in perspective. Wecan either resent and resist it, oranticipate it for our own good...

[] Changes, changes, changes! Will they neverstop? Is there nothing constant, nothing we cancount on, in this world?

To the many who are currently asking suchplaintive questions, the answer is no: change is theonly thing that is permanent. This law was decreedby an astute observer of the universe after years ofstudy and consideration. His name was Heraclitus,and he lived in the 6th century B.C.

There is a tendency these days to assume thatconstant change is a phenomenon peculiar to mod-ern western society. In fact, all recorded history isa story of change flowing in a never-ending streamwhich surges to flood proportions from time totime.

Similarly, present-day people seem to believethat the change-induced problems that surroundthem are unique to this era. But according to AdamSmith, writing in the 1770s, "there is always a dealof ruin in the nation." Generations in the past havebeen far more beset by disorder and confusion thanwe are now.

When it comes to change, the difference betweenus and our ancestors is that we know more about it,and are thus more sensitive to it. In 1805 it tooksix weeks for word of Nelson’s victory at Trafalgarto reach Montreal. Now the news of an armedskirmish somewhere in the Middle East is flashedaround the world in a matter of seconds.

Fifty years after the invention of the storagebattery in 1798, only a handful of scientists hadany idea of what a storage battery was. Today a

ten-year-old can tell you all about laser beams ormicro-circuitry.

The news media scramble over one another to bethe first to tell us what is happening, and to informus -- sometimes inaccurately and prematurely --of every new development in science and technol-ogy. The news is a record of how the world ischanging, which perhaps explains why the changeswe hear about are seldom changes for the better. Itis a maxim of journalism that good news is nonews. Good news- which means that events areunfolding as planned, with no surprises or ac-cidents -- is basically dull.

Even when the changes reported by the mediaare purported to be for the better, the public is aptto be sceptical. Too often politicians and expertshave told us that what they propose will bringabout an improvement in our lives, only to havesubsequent reality prove the reverse. Too often,too, some attractive new technological venture hasbackfired on the society with unanticipated ill-effects.

In any case, the changes that bring about animprovement in our lives soon come to be taken forgranted. If progress in medical science has erad-icated diseases which once would have killed us, ifthe average wage-earner can now take vacationsthat were affordable only by rich men years ago, itis regarded as no more than normal. Beneficialchange is easy to take- so easy that we barelynotice it. We have difficulty, however, in acceptingchanges that inconvenience us in any way.

The great cosmic changes on the world politicalor economic scene bother us less than the nigglinglittle changes immediately around us. We can takein stride a change in government or a crisis on theinternational monetary market, but a revision in abus schedule or the imposition of a new system atwork will upset us no end.

Our exasperation over these minor changes maybe a manifestation of a subconscious irritation withchange in general. It is the way of human nature tofocus generalized resentment on a familiar personor thing.

By the same token, we may magnify changes inour daily, lives into a distorted image of thechanges in the great world over which we have noinfluence. Thus we will see the decline of westerndemocracy in a by-law requiring us to leash ourdogs. A rise in property taxes may lead us tobelieve that the world economic order is collapsing.The feeling that everything is falling apart beginsat home.

This fear that change is plunging us headlong toruin is fairly common nowadays. Some experts as-cribe it to an overdose of change. They say that inattempting to cope with all the changes, big andsmall, that bear on their lives, people have crackedunder the pressure. Increasing rates of familybreak-ups, drug and alcohol abuse, serious mentaldisorders and suicide are said to be among theresults.

Anxiety over change has ledto a condemnation of progress

At the same time, the experts add, the pressureof change is taking its toll on the physical health ofat least some individuals. Dr. Hans Selye, who hasdemonstrated that stress leads to disease, definesstress as "essentially the rate of all the wear andtear caused by life." Change is obviously a source ofwear and tear on the human psyche. It may there-fore be said that change is capable of literallymaking people sick.

There is every sign that, in the figurative sense,people are sick of so much change. Or, as an articleprepared by the World Future Society put it morefelicitously, they are sick of the uncertaintyengendered by changing times. "People," it said,

"no longer feel certain of anything--job, spouse,church, moral principles, whatever--becauseeverything is changing. Hence, a pervasive uncer-tainty arising from change casts a pall of appre-hensiveness over everything in the modern world."

Unfortunately, this anxious reaction to changingtimes seems to have translated itself into a blanketcondemnation of change of any kind, particularlychange of a scientific or technological nature. Thatis what is behind "the new Luddism," named afterthe Luddites of the early 19th century who were sofearfully hostile to change that they went aroundsmashing labour-saving machines.

Today, demonstrations and other forms ofprotest erupt whenever anyone proposes a majorconstruction or resource-extraction project. Everytechnological or scientific development is picked topieces in search of deleterious side-effects. In theinterests of "preserving the quality of life," postersand graffiti enlist our support to "stop" one changeor another. The possibility is not admitted that byallowing the change to go forward, the quality oflife might be enhanced.

This is a good thing up to a certain point. Bitterexperience has taught us that we should be verycareful about what we do given the delicate balanceof nature and the adverse impact that certainchanges may have on minority groups. But pastthat point, obstruction of change can becomeobstruction of progress. Here the words of ThomasCarlyle should be kept in mind: "Change, indeed, ispainful but ever needful; and if memory has itsforce and worth, so also has hope."

The current distrust of development is a rel-atively new attitude in western society. In themid-1800s when the Crystal Palace at the GreatLondon Exhibition was erected as a monument tothe ingenuity of the engineer, technologicalprogress was commonly thought of as a liberatingforce which would open up bright new vistas formankind. Alfred Lord Tennyson was a typicalVictorian enthusiast. "Let the great world spinforever down the ringing grooves of change," hewrote in the visionary poem that predicted theairplane, Locksley Hall.

A generally favourable opinion of technologicalchange prevailed through good times and bad formore than a century. And indeed- excepting itsdestructive role in the two world wars -- technologydid bring to the common people of the industrializedworld a degree of material comfort, convenience,prosperity and enlightenment undreamt-of ingenerations past.

Assaults were launched onall the old social structures

The dropping of the atomic bomb, which trans-formed the nature of warfare and put the power todestroy the earth into human hands, showed thatthe march of science could lead only to a mass graveif it took the wrong direction. Even then, however,the public was reassured that nuclear energy wouldbe a boon to humanity once it was put to peacefuluse.

Despite ban-the-bomb movements and criticismof planned obsolescence, there prevailed throughoutthe late 1940s and fifties an "awe-stricken publicreverence for science," as social historian TheodoreRoszak described it. Most of the significant changesat the time were scientific and technological. TheCold War notwithstanding, social, political andeconomic conditions were fairly stable.

Then, almost exactly 20 years ago, a tidal waveof social change swept the western world, threat-ening to smash everything in its path. All the triedand true social structures -- marriage, the family,law and order, established religion, the work ethic,the democratic political system--came underattack by disillusioned young people followingleaders who were not so young.

Suddenly we were surrounded by "revolutions"--the youth revolution, the black revolution, theanti-imperialist revolution, the sexual revolution,and--in Canada--the "quiet revolution" inQuebec. Most of all there was a revolution directedagainst the values and presumptions of the "techno-cratic society." A youth leader explained: "Theyoung- those born after 1940- find themselvesin a society that neither commands nor deservesrespect... For has modern man, in his collectiveexistence, laid claim to any god or ideal but the god

of possession and enjoyment and the limitlesssatisfaction of material needs?"

The dissenters of the sixties and early seventieswere searching for something beyond materialsatisfaction, and they searched for it down somevery strange avenues. Every code ofbehaviour thathad been in force up to that time was smashed topieces, or so it seemed. Faced with the drug cult,flower power, sit-ins, love-ins, campus revolts, andthe burning of city blocks, the chief reaction of theolder generation was one of pained bewilderment.It was as if the world had turned upside-down;white had become black, right had become wrong,and two and two didn’t make four any more. Theunthinkable was thought, the unspeakable wasspoken, the unacceptable was accepted. The out-rageous was practised as a matter of course.

People will turn their mindsback to a less troublesome time

In addition to this staggering social and politicalchange there was an ongoing advance in scienceand technology -- especially in computers -- whichspelled the end of many of the old methods of doingthings. It was this pile-up of change that led AlvinToffler to conclude that the society, or a sizeableproportion thereof, was in the grip of "futureshock." His book of that title published in 1970 sold6 million copies in 20 languages. In it he definedfuture shock as "the shattering stress and disorient-ation that we induce in individuals by subjectingthem to too much change in too short a time."

Victims of future shock, wrote Toffler, attempt tohide away from change in different ways. Theymay "block out" unwelcome reality and refuse totake in new information; they may look for asimple solution of all the world’s ills in a singledoctrine; they may withdraw into a cocoon ofspecialization; or they may turn their minds backto an earlier and less troublesome time, and try toapply the solutions of the past to the problemsof today.

This last course, he implies, is the most self-defeating, of all, not only because old solutionswon’t work, but because they will only compoundthe agony of adjusting to any entirely new phase ofhistory. For, he declared, "We are creating a newsociety. Not an extended, larger-than-life version

of our present society. But a new society. Unless weunderstand this, we shall destroy ourselves intrying to cope with tomorrow."

With these apocalyptic words, Toffler challengedthe traditional wisdom about change, which ismore or less summed up in the old saying that"history repeats itself." He served notice that therecould be no looking back for the guidance andcomfort of precedents. By the time he was ready topublish The Third Wave in 1980, he was convincedthat we have entered into not only a new society,but a whole new civilization -- one that "blind meneverywhere are trying to suppress."

The changes of the past 20 yearsare by no means unparalleled

Have we really come that far? At the risk ofappearing reactionary, it is worth pointing out thatthe deep and rapid change of the past 20 years is byno means unparalleled. The two decades leadingup to World War I, for instance, brought a surge ofchange which was more fundamental and far-reaching than anything we have experienced inour time.

Automobiles, airplanes, phonographs, movies,wireless communication and synthetic fabrics wereonly some of the things that emerged then whichwere to exert a profound influence on humanhabits. X-rays and blood transfusions revolution-ized medicine. Freud pioneered psychiatry, Einsteinframed his theory of relativity, and Rutherforddiscovered the structure of the atom. A stunningburst of creativity occurred in all the arts, and abold new look emerged in design and architecture.Explorers reached both of the earth’s poles.

It was also an age of tremendous social andpolitical upheavel. Anarchism, militant feminism,anti-clericism, bohemianism, "free love" and out-landish fads scandalized those who had drawntheir values from the Victorian era. Internationalfinancial crises, limited wars, revolutions, strikes,riots and political assassinations sent shuddersthrough the newly-literate general public, which

was exposed for the first time to mass media in theform of cheap and ubiquitous daily newspaperslinked by cable to all parts of the world.

The so-called "belle époque" ended in the holo-caust of "the war to end all wars"--a phrasewhich in itself illustrates how misguided peoplecan be when they read decisive historical signif-icance into current circumstances. The point is thatthere is sufficient historical evidence that changemoves in cycles to justify scepticism towards declar-ations that the world is changing for good and all.As for future shock, while it may indeed be acommon condition these days, it does no harm toremember that "the human mind has alwaysstruggled like a frightened bird to escape the chaoswhich caged it." Henry Adams wrote that some 80years ago.

Must unforeseen changesnecessarily be unforeseen?

But whether Toffler is right or wrong that a newcivilization is rising from the dust of the industrialage, he is certainly right when he says that bothindividuals and the society should be better-prepared for change than they have been up to thepresent. We are constantly jolted by unforeseenchanges. Must they necessarily be unforeseen?

In our personal lives we must recognize thatwhile change is inevitable (we ourselves changephysically and psychologically, after all), it is alsoto some extent predictable. We can ease the pres-sure on ourselves by assessing the probability ofvarious changes and trying to be ready for them ifand when they come.

The best hope for society lies along the samelines, in the systematic study of future probabil-ities and the development of contingency strategiesin advance to deal with them. Change itself hasprovided the tools for this in the form of newtechnology, techniques, and academic skills. "Bymaking imaginative use of change to channelchange, we can not only spare ourselves thetrauma of future shock, we can reach out andhumanize future tomorrows," wrote Toffler. Wenow have it in our power to anticipate change, or toresist it. Which shall we choose?