There are a couple of books where I love the titles, but don't have a lot of interest in reading the actual content. Such is the case with a book by psychologist and philosopher Paul Watzlawick, The Situation is Hopeless, but Not Serious.
I first heard of this book while I was studying Family Therapy. Back in the 80's the whole idea of looking at a person in the context of their families was all the rage...not so much anymore. But that's a topic for another day.
Family Therapy grew out of an understanding of systems theory, which has its roots in biology. The idea is that all the parts of a system are connected. If you try to tamper with one aspect of a system, the rest of it will fight off the change and work to re-establish homeostasis.
I'll end my discussion about biology there and acknowledge that my understandings are extremely limited, having their roots in a particularly ugly confrontation with my 10th grade science teacher...nuff said.
Back when I was studying Family Therapy, the most common analogy used to talk about homeostasis was a mobile. No, not a phone...more like this:
The idea is that when you pull on one item and then let go - the whole thing swings until it gets itself back in balance. That's how homeostasis works. And its one of the reasons why change is so difficult.
Neither ecosystems nor human beings are comfortable with "imbalance." And any attempt at change creates the need to right the imbalance as quickly as possible. In the political world, some people call that "blowback."
So what this knowledge tells us is that systems are naturally developed to maintain the status quo (homeostasis). Change tends to happen through the slow process of evolution.
The interesting thing is - this tends to be true even when the current situation is bad and a change might lead to something better. That's at least part of where the title of Watzlawick's book comes from...even hopelessness is not serious, at least not compared to change.
When it comes to systems, part of the reason for this is that at least the status quo is predictable. The reality is that change always carries with it the possibility that things might turn out even worse.
How all of this affects individuals involved in politics was summarized beautifully a few years ago by leftvet in a diary titled On Moderates and Radicals.
I still think of myself - proudly so - as a radical: the long-haired, fire-eyed anti-war Vietnam veteran of my youth, fighting for truth and justice, banging my head incessantly - and generally fruitlessly - against the establishment brick wall, questioning authority, espousing revolution, a genuine, uncompromising, romantic idealist. That's who I see in my mind's eye.
The "mirror" tells a different story. Middle-aged, pot-bellied, father of two pre-teens, apartment in the city, house in the country, debt up to my eyeballs, classic middle-class.
The problem is, now I GOT something - somewhat less, perhaps, than some others my age, because I spent a large part of my youth sort of pretending that GETTING things wasn't important to me -- but now I got `em, and damn, like anybody else, I wanna keep `em! And wanting to keep the things you got - however few they might be - tends to make moderates out of radicals.
See, thar's the rub, the problem with moderates. Deep down, they don't want change, because change could threaten the accumulations of their lives, and since their lives are defined by their accumulations, the very essence of their being is threatened by change.
The only things I'd quarrel with leftvet about are that its not just moderates who are threatened by change and its not just our accumulations that we're worried about loosing. Believe me...in my years of doing therapy - I experienced all kinds of radicals who feared change from their particular brand of "status quo" and there are much deeper things that people fear loosing than their possessions.
Individuals have the opportunity to buck this system and create change in/for themselves. But when we're talking politics and change - these are forces we need to recognize and deal with.
Given those circumstances then, how is it possible to make change when we don't have time for the evolutionary process?
Based on my experience in Family Therapy, the way to do that with the least amount of blowback is to get as much of the system as possible to be willing to risk the challenge of change (sometimes that means that things are bad enough that the risk becomes worth it) and then start trying something different...together.
In families as well as political cultures, what doesn't work is to find a scapegoat, blame them, and assume that if they don't change, nothing will happen. Once members of the system are willing to own responsibility for themselves and accept the reality that whatever they've been doing is contributing to the homeostasis (status quo), then the system is ready to change.
So can we, as a country, break out of our homeostasis? I'd suggest that is dependent on whether or not WE'RE willing to see how we're contributing to it and decide if we're willing to risk change.