Change Essentials

From the talk at the University of Toronto "Connections & Conversations: An affinity group for racialized staff at UTM".

Before anything, please read this article as something written by a human being. Fallible and subject to my own interpretation of what I've read and heard. Hostage of what I've studied saw and lived. So please take the ideas that resonate with you and discard the others.

Wealth is now, more than ever, concentrated in the hands of a few. The wealthiest 1% own 44% of the world's wealth. (https://inequality.org/facts/global-inequality/ )

Dictatorships fall, and populists rise, democracies are in menace, while the people scream for social changes: freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of choice, their right to vote, to marry, to adopt, to die.

So, we all agree that changes are there. We can see it, we can feel it. But as proposed by Leo Roberts in 1937, words like "eternal" and "absolute" possess dignity and weight; whereas "transitory" and "relative have only an emotional power or a morally doubtful flavor. So entrenched is the idea that permanence is superior to change.

So, the fact that most of us understand change - mostly because it is rubbed on our faces daily - does not mean we accept it, or care about it. The nostalgia will always be that little voice in our heads saying "back in the day, things were better".

So, within these assumptions, I've decided to put together a few "change essentials", which are more like personal meditations more than anything else.

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Epictetus was a Stoic philosopher, born a slave at Hierapolis, illiterate, but remarkably bright. He used to say that half of the things from life are constituted by things that first were conceived in your mind.

Situations that were first lived in your soul, and because they were desired and imagined, you did something to make that happen in the world, you enacted.

Gandhi, Malcolm X, Marie Curie, Martin Luther King Jr, Malala Yousafzai, Nelson Mandela, Maya Angelou. None of them had the ambition to change the world, but they did. They didn't do it out of ambition or seeking fame. They simply did because they were pursuing what was right. 

Change essential #1 - Change has to be lived in the soul first.

Those ideas turned into purpose, purposed flourished and became expectations, expectations matured into demands, demands evolved to rights. This is how meaningful change happens. Once those rights are institutionalized, they are defended.

Ideas are powerful, however, ideas without action are worthless, as said by Robert Mackay. The very notion of transformation requires a transitional state - action.

In other words, to transform or become something that is not yet (change), human agency is fundamental. 

Why the agency is a pillar of real change?

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Think about a woman with a broken heart who decides to lose 80 pounds and change her life around. A man suffers a heart attack at the age of 40 and decides to become an athlete. A young couple suddenly matures after giving birth to their first child.

Have you ever heard of Dan Schneider? Neither had I until I watch the Netflix series "The Pharmacist." Mr. Schneider lost his young son to opioids and decided to start his own investigation. He articulated the police department, the FBI, the community around him around one mission: to prevent that more people would die as a consequence of opioid abuse. That was in 1999. In October 2020, Purdue Pharma pled guilty to three Federal criminal charges and paid an estimated 8 billion dollars due to that. 

Change essential #2 - There is no neutrality in change. 

It happens via positive or negative. Pleasure or pain – ironically, they are intimately intertwined these two. Change usually comes from avoiding pain or seeking pleasure. The first one is far more powerful than the latter. 

Regardless of the route you chose, changing will change you. The upside is pushing the boundaries of possibility, even (or especially) when you fail. Suddenly, what you thought was possible is moved one yard further - and that is one powerful feeling.

Again, there is nothing neutral or casual about change, either you are excited about it, or you hate it . In any case, change is a passionate affair. 

That's why those directly involved with change often are the recipients of negative feelings.

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I remember the first time I saw politicians viciously attacking Greta Thunberg. She was 15 years old. They made fun of her looks, they mocked the way she talked, accused her of being sponsored by some capitalists, and millions attacked her. She was 15 years old. Fifteen! that is a good sign - it means she touched THE nerve.

Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years. Malala was shot in the head for speaking against the Taliban regime. Lincoln was also shot for his stance on slavery. Those are well-known visible examples, but far from the spotlight, you can find millions of people right now who are trying to change something. They face mockery, lack of resources, threats, cold shoulders, eyes rolling, sighs, and all sorts of discouragement you can think about. Some keep going, some fall along the way. 

Change essential #3 - change makers have a target on their back.

They pay a hefty penalty, especially when structural transformations are at stake.

Being a changemaker means standing up for what you believe and accepting the attacks that will inevitably come your way. 

Perhaps the most difficult part of being an agent of change in any capacity is to bet in an uncertain future. The plunge into ambiguity is something not many are ready to commit. Now imagine not only taking this step, but also persuading others to join you. This is a monumental task. To instill the same passion and vision onto others to have them committed to the same cause. 

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When I was 10 years old, I had an exciting assignment in school. The course was social studies, and we had to talk to people that were important to our small community. Growing up in a small town, I interviewed one beloved teacher. During our conversation, he told me something that I remember very vividly to this day: "The most important thing in life is how you touch the lives of people around you." 

Change essential #4 - meaningful, lasting change is collective.

Contrary to what most people think, it's not the hero's journey, it is a collective journey. Change happens because people believed and acted on it. It is much like a wave. Starts almost imperceptively and slowly gains momentum, velocity, and strength. A chain reaction, if you will. But this contagion doesn't happen because you merely desire it.

The dumbest thing I have seen in organizations is the illusion that people will follow a certain path because they were told/sold. This biased certainty extracts all the human cleverness out of the equation.

This collective perception is more visceral than you think, and it is built upon a robust, believable combination of action and narrative, where one without the other just limps. 

Peter Tabichi is a Franciscan friar. He joined the Keriko Mixed Day Secondary School in 2016, where he teaches maths and physics. The school is a semi-arid village in the Rift Valley Province, a region impacted by famine and drought. Tabichi donates 80% of his salary to supporting pupils in the Pwani Village. The school population is made up of seven different tribes, with around 95% of students living in poverty and one third live with only one parent.

Keriko Mixed Day Secondary School only has one computer, intermittent access to the internet and a student-teacher ratio of 58:1. Tabichi launched the Talent Nurturing Club, which has dramatically improved attendance. He also established a peace club, uniting representatives who have been involved with violence. He engages with local communities; teaching residents how to grow crops that can resist famine. Tabichi and his students work on renewable energy and devices which can support people with disabilities. Under Tabichi's influence, his students have reached the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair finals and won an award from the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2019 Tabichi was awarded the $1 million Global Teacher Prize. 

Peter Tabichi did something. What happens when you do nothing?

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What is the opposite of change? do you agree with the phrase: the only constant we have is change? (Heraclitus) The opposite of change is not constancy. It is also not stillness or stagnation because in order to consider something stagnated, we must acknowledge that change is a constant. I challenge you to name something that is changeless right now. Give me an example of something, object, person, entity, concept, matter, or abstraction that does not change. I will give you the only thing that does not change, for it is change itself.

Change essential #5 - When provoking change, your most pervasive enemy is complacency.

Complacency will stretch your space-time fabric.

Even though it won't prevent change, it can most definitely delay it. Imagine if, for example, in March of 1965, instead of marching from Selma to Montgomery, those 3.500 people decided that the best thing to do was waiting. And that things would be better because they had already done enough.

In that sense, change should not be contemplated as a simple skill, but rather a virtue. It requires discipline, perseverance and temperance. 

Perseverance and temperance are absolutely fundamental because change requires particular vision.

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My final reflection on change is perhaps the most controversial one. Please do not understand it literally. 

Change Essential #6 - change is about destruction and creation. 

I'm borrowing this idea from Sigmund Freud's theory on the two fundamental drivers we, humans, have: Eros and Thanatos. 

Eros is the God of love, and Thanatos the God of death. In order to have life, there must be death. It is like that in the animal kingdom - the gazelle dies, so that the cheetah lives—destruction and creation walk side by side. Destruction is not necessarily a bad thing; we must destroy food (Thanatos) in order to create energy! 

Destruction means to leave behind old habits, break a corrupt system, to make unbecome something obsolete, hurtful, inefficient, and replace with the new.

Destruction does not mean violence in this context; it means transforming. Like animals must break their eggshell or burst the placenta to become their own self-living organism, destroying things means conceiving creation opportunities.

I am pretty sure these essentials could be stretched to a larger number, but I don't want to be overly ambitious. so I will stop here so we can start a discussion. What are your thoughts?