Change

I have been thinking a great deal about change.

It has been a recurring theme in many of the things I write, but I think it deserves to be faced more directly.

I came back to it recently at my great nephew's high school graduation.

The ceremony took place in a church that carries a long shadow in my life. It was there, many years ago, that my father realized the pastor was stealing money from the church. When he confronted it, those with power created a lie to destroy his credibility. The result was devastating. My father had a nervous breakdown and was never the same.

So sitting there, watching the proceedings, I was not simply attending a graduation. I was sitting inside a place tied to one of the great wounds in my family's history.

What struck me most was not open hatred.

It was sincerity.

The people there seemed genuine in their beliefs. They spoke of kindness and goodness. In some ways, the atmosphere felt softer than other religious environments I have been in.

And yet I know that many people in that world support men and movements that are deeply hateful, immoral, and unethical.

That contradiction should be impossible.

But I do not think it is mysterious.

I think much of it comes from fear of change.

When change happens slowly, people adapt almost without noticing. But when change comes quickly, it produces unease. People begin to feel that the ground beneath them is unstable. They do not know whether the future will still contain a place for them, whether the world they understand will still be recognizable, whether everything will be all right.

Under those conditions, people reach for certainty.

Religion can provide that certainty. So can ideology. So can nationalism. So can strong leaders who speak in simple, absolute terms.

The more uncertain the world feels, the more attractive certainty becomes.

That is one of the great vulnerabilities of human beings.

And it is one of the great tools of demagogues.

Men like Trump do not create all of the fear they use. Much of it is already there, produced by the speed of social, cultural, technological, and economic change. What they do is give that fear a target. They tell people who to blame. They turn unease into anger, and anger into loyalty.

The story becomes simple:
You are afraid because someone has done this to you.
Those people are the cause.
They should be hated.
I will protect you.

It is an old pattern.

But we are entering a time when it may become more dangerous than ever before.

Because we are now moving into a period of change unlike anything human beings have experienced.

There has never been anything like artificial intelligence.

Not simply because it is powerful, but because it increases the rate at which change itself can happen. And if intelligence begins helping to improve intelligence, then change may begin moving faster than human beings are psychologically, culturally, or politically prepared to absorb.

That raises terrifying questions.

Will fear of change drive people further into closed systems, authoritarian leaders, and manufactured enemies?

Will evil use this instability to fracture civilization before we can adapt?

Or can intelligence help regulate the process? Can we use our tools, our ethics, and our best understanding to make change survivable and even beneficial?

I do not think those questions are abstract.

I think they may become the defining questions of this century.

And I do not meet them with only one feeling.

I feel fear.
I feel sadness.
And I also feel hope.

Fear, because the destructive uses of fear are already visible.

Sadness, because I can see sincere people being drawn into systems that betray their own stated values.

And hope, because intelligence may yet become part of the answer rather than only part of the disruption.

Maybe that is one of the great tasks before us:

not to stop change, because that is impossible,

but to help human beings move through it without surrendering their humanity.

Because change itself is not the enemy.

The real danger is what fear of change can make people become.

Civilization may depend not on whether change comes, but on whether wisdom can keep pace with it.

See also: Judging Others by Ourselves -- how the assumptions we make about others reflect and reinforce our own moral world.