The Power of Change from a weird perspective

With some patience, and by the time you finish this piece, you will realize that it is very informative, interesting and will even "change" the way you see things. Trust me on it!!

I always am concerned about definitions and facts. This is how I will start: defining change and transform as abstract words...

Change is defined as (a. To cause to be different; b. To give a completely different form or appearance to; transform, etc...)

Transform is (a. to change markedly the appearance or form of something, someone; b. To change the nature, function, or condition of; convert)

Hence, the definitions here stress the part about causing the form or appearence to be different, not the content; although with "transform", the emphasis is on the possibility of changing the nature of something, or for the purposes of this piece, someone.

I have a point to make, I promise.

Many people believe (at least at a certain point in their lives) in the power of Change, and how they can BE the change, etc...

But what people overlook, most of the time, is that any change process of oneself or of others is five fold: psychologically, socially, culturally, economically, and religiously. Yes, it is that complicated. I will break it down for you..

Let's take a very simple, superficial and common example: Breast Augmentation: Seriously, just changing an aspect in the overall appearence of someone's body. Very small detail that should not involve all these wider aspects, including the involvement of society and history.

Let's see:

Psychologically: a person has to WANT to change this feature of her body, because she feels ugly, or it lowers her self-esteem, or she want to look like someone else. So there is a deep psychological rejection of the first phase and a deep desire to change or transform into this new condition

Socially: The society has to be one that accepts this kind of change, even potentially. A family, the nucleus of society, may prohibit a girl from undergoing such an operation, because they feel she is more concerned with shape rather than content and that she has to accept the way she looks. Family support/disencouragement is this issue is a societal factor that determines whether this change is likely to happen, and if it does, if it will be accepted.

Culturally: Cultures tend to encourage conformity. They fail to see the growth of society and population health is attained through diversity of mind and body. That is why, breast augmentation is felt by younger girls as a necessity. They yearn for acceptance.

Economically: That is easy. She has to afford this kind of change. Breast Augmentation operations cost thousands of dollars.

Religiously: To give you an example, in Islam, changing God's way of creating you is Haram (which literally means unlawful and prohibited in Islamic terms). Religion can be a very important factor that outweighs societal and cultural aspects.

As you saw in the last example, change is not an easy thing to make, even if it is superficial, and more physical than psychological.

Now let's take my preferred example, the one I wanted to make, but had to simplify first.

I used to think that it was easy to bring about societal change about certain ideologies that are deeply embeded in people's minds and souls without having to wait for centuries. All it takes, I used to think, was a strong will from one person (preferably a societal leader), and certain outlets for him/her to disperse their ideas and finally and foremost, the idea itself had to be universal and practical, etc...

For example, to convince Westerners that Arabs do not ride camels to work in the time of BMW, or that Africa is not a country, but rather a continent (that is news for many Westerners by the way) or that trouble in Palestine does not have to mean that tourists would stop visitng Tunisia (miles apart) because the Middle East is not a small region... To convince Westerners that these ideas are not genuine and that they are the result of impartial, directed media that aims at stereotyping Arabs is not as easy a task as it might seem. It needs the five elements I referred to earlier:

Psychologically: Society/Media/Polticians/audience has to WANT to change his ideas. They have to be MOTIVATED. Rather, there has to be a deep psychological rejection of the first set of ideas as a result of the Descartes method of experimenting ideas and realizing their faultiness.

So, bottom line, there has to be a deep desire to change or transform into a new set of ideas.

Socially: The society has to be one that accepts this kind of change, even potentially. This can be measured through reading history books and realizing how long it takes for societies to change their set minds on any issue. It can take centuries, or a miracle. And some times it never happens. No matter how hard we try. History can show us the resilience of certain societies as opposed to others with regards to change.

Culturally: Cultures tend to encourage conformity. They fail to see the growth of society and population health is attained through diversity of mind and body. That is why, it is easier for those feeding the cultures of people (yes there are people who feed us culture by spoon) to leave us all wrong but the same, rather than right but different. It is easier for dominance and soverignty purposes. They are the ones who decides what gets accepted into certain cultures and what does not. They are men of religion. They are the ones that hire men of religion.

Economically: That is easy too. Poor nations are less willing to learn anything original or different as they are concerned about their bread and butter.

However, even within richer communities, like that of the US, people are kept all the time worried about their mortgage installments (as was obvious during this financial crisis) that they could not care less about Gaza or Iraq or anything other than finding a place to sleep in at night after their homes were taken away.

Religiously: Religion has always been a tool in the hands of men of power and politics. This category of people has always, one way or another, included men of religion. They sometimes are the puppeteers, other times they are the puppets, but in all cases, religions have often been used as tools for shaping societal and cultural aspects. If they wanted a certain idea embedded in people's minds, they simply call it "The Word of God" especially in places where God is everything.

Tough relaization for me. Quite bleak and Kafkan in nature. No way out. In order to change an idea or ideology, you have to have access to outlets that can affect the mass pschology of nations, to have access to people of religion, to have access to politicians, to have an abundance of money that would allow you the luxury of seeking the truth, etc..

As hard as this sounds, this is the abstract, non-negotiable truth. You cannot change the hearts and minds of people without reaching out to their puppeteers first and take over. But ouch, you will be a puppeteer too, do u really want that kind of change then?