Let's Get Radical?
Friday February 19, 2010
I don’t often listen to the news at the moment, nor do I spend a great deal of time reading the newspapers. There are, after all, other things to read – and if I want to make any headway with the wonderful Dream of the Red Chamber, I need to focus my attention a bit more.
Nevertheless, on occasion I do catch a bit of the evening news reports if I happen to be in the kitchen cooking at the right time, and when I do – partly because I listen to it less, and therefore I’m not so habituated to it – what often strikes me is the sheer oddness of the language used not only by those in the media, but also by those who speak to them. One particular oddness that crops up again and again, and that seems to me to raise some interesting questions, is the recurrent idea of “radical” change. No new initiative, it seems, can be introduced without it promising such change, no media pundit can resit saying that we live in rapidly changing times and thus we need to find radical responses to the radically different circumstances in which we find ourselves.
What strikes me about this language is that we are, perhaps, not very good at thinking about change. Western thought, in particular, seems to be very wedded to an idea of stasis as the fundamental condition of things. OK, we think to ourselves, so things change and they move: but only if they are pushed. And in this picture, what needs to be accounted for is not why things stay the same (for a while), but why things change. This is not the case across the board in Western thought – for example, Lucretius’s physics is predicated on a model that sees stability as a kind of local and temporary condition, and that sees motion as a more general picture – but it does seem to be the general picture.
One of the things that has always attracted me to Buddhist thought is the recognition of impermanence, which turns this pretty much on its head. This recognition is much more than a recognition of the fact that the span of our life is limited, that the cake we have in the morning may well be gobbled up by the evening, and so on (what the Tibetans call “coarse” impermanence); it is also a recognition that things are in constant moment-by-moment transformation (what the Tibetans talk about as “subtle” impermanence). It has to be said that if we respond to impermanence only on the first level, then it seems a fairly bleak idea; but if we take into account subtle impermanence, the moment-by-moment arising and passing-away, then the world comes alive again, it begins to buzz and hum with a kind of liveliness. And there is something that I find wonderfully quickening and enlivening in the thought of subtle impermanence. The fact that things are subtly impermanent requires a kind of subtleness of response, a nuanced approach to the things of this world.
If change is seen as the background against which we must make sense of temporary stability, rather than stasis the background against which we must make sense of change, then the world begins to look rather different. The question becomes not how can we change things?, as if things themselves needed a bit of a shove for them to change at all, but how can we respond to and participate in the changeability of things?
When I listen to political rhetoric about radical change, I can’t help thinking that there is an odd – and mistaken – idea of what change actually involves. It seems to me that this rhetoric is rooted in a view that for anything to change in the world needs a kind of dramatic intervention, a deus ex machina, that breaks with how things currently are; and this seems a view that is profoundly uncomfortable with both stability and change. I am uneasy with the dramatic register of this rhetoric. It isn’t just that I’m unconvinced that “radical” change is what the world needs or that I’m unconvinced that seeing the world as “radically” different from before is particularly useful; it’s more that I can’t help thinking that this language may obscure the deeper and broader conditions that underlie the changeability of things, and may therefore cloud our judgement so that we are no longer able to see – insofar as we are capable of directing the multitudinous changing things of which we are a part – how it might be possible to direct change more to the benefit of ourselves and of others.
#2 · Laurent
23 February 2010
I’m impressed by anyone moving through the Dream of the Red Chamber, but as for your discussion of change in Western thought, it seems to veer toward the whole “Eastern Thought Good, Western Thought Bad” motif. Is there really that much difference?
Take this change thing. Western thought seems completely dominated by the idea of change. Heraclitus thought change was central to the universe (you can’t dip your foot in the same river twice). Plato was obsessed with change and wrote about how we had degenerated from the platonic ideals. In fact, it seems that throughout Western civilization there has always been this idea that we have changed (often for the worse) from some romantic ideal in the past. Or take Hegel and Marx, who argued that society is constantly evolving through thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. In fact, I think Karl Popper said that the entirety of Western thought, or at least as it relates to politics (the subject of your post), is based upon Heraclitus’ view that everything is always changing. Or Darwin, who said life is always changing and evolving. Or Newton, who premised his entire physics on change (dx/dy), and who also made clear that the natural state of things is to move (at constant velocity). Who is more Western than Newton?
But these are just counter-examples. I really don’t believe you can simply characterize Western thought as premised on change or not on change. I’m sure you could go through Western thought and find lots of examples of stasis too. And I’m guessing Buddhist thought has lots to say that seems based upon stasis as well as upon change. These discussions of how an entire civilization (western or eastern) is essentially some way strike me as extreme, and, perhaps, contrary to the basic teaching of Buddhism.
Laurent
#3 · Will
23 February 2010
You are right, of course Laurent, that one cannot make such distinctions too starkly. And “Eastern thought” and “Western thought” are themselves rather crude (and themselves problematic when you think about them). Your additional counter-examples are interesting, I think – intriguingly, both Newton and Marx were heavily influenced by the ancient atomism of Democritus and Epicurus. But, having issued such caveats, I do think that there is something in the claim that Western thought has generally seen stasis as fundamental. This may have something to do with the long authority of Aristotle’s physics throughout the Middle Ages and beyond.
Thanks for the tip about Abwesen, Hyperkulturalität and Die Philosophie des Zen-Buddhismus, Jon. My German is poor, but it might be good to give it a workout!
#4 · Robert Ellis
26 February 2010
I think there is a contradiction between any kind of claim about the universe (even the phenomenal universe) being either static or changing and the insights behind the Buddha’s rejection of metaphysics. To claim that change is somehow ontologically more valid is just as dogmatic as claiming priority for permanence, since our experience is of both things changing and of things remaining the same. Both Parmenides and Heraclitus were just as much dogmatic metaphysicians as each other. Problems can arise from attachment to change as well as from attachment to stasis.
I think you must be trying to get at something, here, though, Will, that you’ve identified in political rhetoric – perhaps a kind of impatience or restlessness? Restlessness can be easily identified as an unhelpful aspect of our experience, which is particularly thrown into relief by meditation. But this observation has nothing whatsoever to do with metaphysical ideas about change!
#5 · Will
28 February 2010
Hello again, Robert. You are right of course that we experience things remaining the same, and we experience them changing. But what is curious is that when we look more closely at what stays the same, we see there is a kind of continual process that maintains this relative stability, and when we look at things that are changing, we also see a kind of continuity. In terms of experience, there is relative stability and relative instability. The idea of radical change seems to me to be the necessary antithesis of the idea of absolute stasis, but things are never of course absolutely changeable, and never absolutely static. These seem to me to be the extreme metaphysical positions to avoid, and this is what I’m getting at in the post.
#6 · diane
15 March 2010
The root for radical is radix and means -of or going to the root or origin; fundamental. and in botany means -from the root or base of the stem.
Now I realize that is not what most people mean when they use the word radical but perhaps they are ‘right’ in spite of themselves. Perhaps getting radicalizing our lives is exactly the right thing to do.
#1 · jon
20 February 2010
Word up!
Nicely found words to describe a fundamental ontological struggle most of our neighbours suffer from.
Let’s hope we can promote these ideas for a more unstable world.
Also, you should check some Basel / Switzerland based guy out: Byung-Chul Han , esp. Abwesen, Hyperkulturalität and Die Philosophie des Zen-Buddhismus.
Clear and direct language, even if using too many premises whilst certain times. Don’t know yet, if there are any english translations.
Btw., will there be any German version of your book?
Kind regards from Berlin,
jon