Why A Focus On Civilization IS Inefficient…

Since my blood isn’t green, this may appear entirely out of character for this venue. Yet, when requests were made for articles, I just couldn’t keep quiet. Essentially, a continued rhetoric about improving civilization is politically correct, but ineffective. Studies have shown that 90% of people have a time perspective of less than 1 year. 99% have a time perspective less than 5 years.

Why do I bring this up?

Civilization occurs over relatively infinite time perspective compared to the people who constitute the complexity of civilized time. Now, some think that the way to approach “change” is to move people through developmental stages through everything from spiritual to mechanical means, you can pick from a complex well-thought out variety of change technologies. Again; an unsustainable prospect in my view.

Then you ask, what say you?

Until we get to the “acceptance” that people will change only when they have to in the best case, and not at all in the worst case, will we begin to devise strategies that are designed as actionable. The rest is just rhetoric and the fuel for change engines.

If people couldn’t, wouldn’t or didn’t change, what would?

How would the world be different?

What would happen to civilization if we just surrendered to the notion that people don’t change? Can you even hold the reality of this axiom?

Would our assumptions about the world be different?

Would we develop different designs that were consistent with these “new” assumptions and beliefs about reality?

To me, it’s more than an intellectual exercise, and in practice, trying to change people is a whole lot easier on many fronts. I suspect that knowing that people won’t change at the fundamental levels except over time, when conditions force them to is a pretty good place to begin to unravel the current ideas about civilization.

If you’re new to this game and you really want to make a difference? Accept yourself as you are. Accept others as they are. In the domain of acceptance lies what may be the new questions that inquiry would produce. I know where it’s not and that’s in the continuous “striving” to change yourself and others.

I’m out of words.

About the Author

Mike is the author of six books, his latest CPR For The SOUL: Creating Personal Resilience By Design. Mike stopped counting at 10,000 hours of coaching session and has developed more than 200 models during his speaking, coaching and consulting career that span entrepreneurial business to organizational leadership and beyond; developing an innovative model for governance called Intocracy and an interdevelopmental form of leadership called Generati. Mike continues to create, adapt and innovate around coaching, leadership and development.