Surfing the Paradoxes of Everyday Transformation

Industrial age methods have affected all aspects of our lives starting with the balance between family and work and ending with stress related illness and large scale debt financing. Domination-and-psychological-control oriented leadership mechanisms prevalent in the lifetimes of our parents and grandparents are giving way. And our world is making a quantum leap in the broad understanding of humanity in our lifetime. Individuals are operating more and more in keeping with their own councel, from a place of knowing, effectively replacing the old ways epitomised by the words: “don’t think, just do as I say” and “always obey your superiors”. Up to this decade, “order” has been considered more important than the emotional balance and wellbeing of the individual. We got this message when we went to the bank, when we went grocery shopping, when we took driving lessons, attended school, paid our taxes, parked our cars, made a doctor’s appointment (if we could get one), and visited government offices. Order was in place to ensure the greater good was achieved, and each individual was expected to make a sacrifice of time, money, and individuality for this greater purpose. And it worked well. Like any good thing, the practice of “order above all” has had its day and run its course. Order and the practice of following rigidly defined processes has reached its maximum point on the pendulum swing where it is hinders rather than helps. Indeed in some parts of our societal structure it is caving in on itself and taking some of us down with it. Examples of this can be found in North American medical and health systems. One in particular that comes to mind is the negative effect of the flu shot on the immune system’s ability to fight the N1H1 virus. Another is the discounting of stomach ulcers as caused by stress – it turns out they may be a result of a specific virus that can live and breed in the highly acidic environment of the stomach. Another is the trend toward broad spectrum infant immunization being indicated in an increase in autism and other mental disabilities. Women have got a raw deal for decades with slash and burn tactics applied to reproductive disorders. All this might be considered acceptable collateral damage if it weren’t for a nagging feeling that there is more behind the massive and slow-moving medical governance structures than the “above all do no harm” axiom. We are discovering that even in socialized health care, it’s more about earning a dollar than we thought. More examples can be found in our educational systems. Less funding and larger classes combined with top-heavy administration and arguably over engineered programs and methods which cannot accommodate the plethora of learning styles of children. Frustrating, and disenfranchising some youth, and conversely, promoting children with specific learning styles. Successful students proudly proceed to University where they learn more and more theory, only to graduate and find that jobs are hands-on and highly-specialized in today’s world. It’s difficult to know what to wish for where education is concerned, but one thing is certain, it takes more time than the emerging era will accommodate. At a more granular level, the average person cannot succeed and thrive in an electronically enabled world if they have to adhere to processes that are in place for the benefit of the institution and not the benefit of the individual. The sword of technology is beginning to cut the other way as the average person sees what kind of detailed information is possible for their service providers to capture and interpret. They begin to see through the processes and “rules”. They are driven to question and push back in order to ensure their own continued livelihood as pressures in their lives mount. In some cases as people begin to experience the benefits of electronic records and tools, the magnitude of the problem of “due process” becomes evident and a blatant and ugly truth emerges that previously trusted professionals/companies/institutions want to stay in control through their processes and are no longer doing it for the greater good (even if it’s to stay in business) but for the personal gain of a comparatively few. Many people are voicing an expectation that old paradigms will crumble in the not too distant future. Awareness through media reaches even the darkest corners of society, family culture, and ethnic culture. Information offered through multiple channels and in formats to suit every circumstance and personality on a 24 x 7 basis both passively and actively, and on demand has a societal effect that even experts agree they cannot predict. One thing is certain, however. That is that people are absorbing all this information in the expansive storage and processing unit that is their brain. And naturally, the brain does what it does best: it notices patterns and surfaces conclusions that further the success and survival of the individual. The quantum leap in available information begets a quantum leap in self-empowerment (for better and for worse) which is shaking the foundations of our control-oriented systems and institutions. Over the last 20 years computer and technology experts have been celebrating that, for the first time ever, millions of people can access relatively consistent information about almost anything instantly. Hooray! But as those same experts will tell you, making information available and raising the awareness level and expanding the knowledge base of masses of people has little effect unless the information can be interpreted – even if only to discern truth from falsehood. With the emergence of social media, that interpretation can occur en-mass relatively uncontrolled by “the powers that be” putting more power than ever in the hands of the individual to shape the world. This phenomenon is also a quantum leap in human intelligence. Comparing social media to a school of fish, no individual can pinpoint when the decision to change shape or direction of the entire school was made, but all accept and agree that it must have been necessary based on the information the whole school received. It happens silently and immediately – without hesitation and with consensus regardless of the individual opinions present within the school.