On Our 2025 Theme: Change and Continuity ?

When we thought about this year’s theme for TEDx St Albans we invited feedback from our audience at last year’s event, we thought about the world around us and we discussed ideas amongst the group of organisers.

Change was a theme that one of our audience suggested and it resonated with us. Change is constant, it is such a feature of modern life and is happening at an exponential pace.

We are all supposed to love change, but is it all good? Virtually all business cultures insist that change is great, and we must all, “get with the programme,” embrace it (until the next change initiative comes down the turnpike, and then we must embrace that instead!!)

Clearly many of the changes we are experiencing are great, they save lives, they make things easier, quicker and better. They can make life feel dynamic and exciting, with new and shiny things constantly emerging.

Yet there is complexity and contradiction here. Fundamentally, deep down in the human psyche, we don’t like change. To the primitive core of our brains, our limbic system, (which is our survival instinct) recognises:

Change = Threat.

If we know and are in control of our surroundings then we are safe, when everything changes, we are into the unknown and therefore at risk. The thing to remember about the human brain, is that it hasn’t actually evolved that much in the last 50,000 years. What was threatening back then, was a sabre tooth tiger or a rival tribe and it was a threat to our very survival. The latest corporate restructure or a new piece of software to master is not actually life threatening but just feels that way to a part of our brain!

And some change is just genuinely threatening. The flip side of the shiny and new is?cyber bullying, online fraud, surveillance, the underside of the dark?web and the spectre of AI and automation wiping out swathes of jobs and livelihoods, to name a few.

Author and New York Times Journalist Thomas Friedman suggests humans’ ability to adapt to change is a gradual upward line, whereas the pace of change has hit the vertical curve, the hockey stick part of exponential growth. In short, humanity’s ability to cope and adapt is being outstripped by the pace of change. The feeling of being overwhelmed by constant and significant change merely adds to people’s sense of threat.

How do we cope with the duality of the vast weight of opportunities and threats that all this change creates? How can we not feel overwhelmed?

Can continuity provide some form of counterbalance??

Some things are core to human nature. The desire for connection, to belong, to feel secure and part of the “tribe” is built into our DNA. It’s also driven by survival instinct. The importance of friends, family, relationships and long-term connection is key. Some sense of history, a throughline from past to present, a sense of where you fit in the world can help people feel anchored and less thrown about on the turbulent tides of change. Yet many people, particularly in urban environments, report feeling disconnected, lost and lonely in the crowd.

Some seek a sense of connection to spirituality to provide a sense of identity and purpose beyond functional roles. Some find comfort in the continuity of traditional religions and for others they find it in the growing interest in meditation and mindfulness (which is also a millennia old tradition!)

Many people turn to their cultural and national identities to find continuity. Familiar and loved traditions, language, and shared values, can act as stabilising forces when external changes threaten to upend norms. This can however have negative manifestations, leading people, driven by threat and fear, to regress into negative identity politics, far right nationalism and xenophobia.

Strong traditional institutions—like governments, schools, and religious organisations—can offer continuity in a rapidly changing world. These systems can help people navigate uncertainty by providing known and predictable rules, support systems, and moral frameworks.

Humans are inherently curious, creative and innovative, which has historically enabled them to adapt to significant shifts in the global economy and technology. Traditionally education did help people learn and adapt and that remains a constant. However, education needs to facilitate adaptability at a much faster pace than ever before. The nature of much of our education systems are still driven by anachronistic paradigms from the industrial revolution and need to adapt rapidly to the digital revolution.

Bizarrely perhaps the pandemic gave us some source of hope. The pandemic forced the whole world to change and adapt rapidly. It was a challenge to our way of life and indeed life itself. It was something we certainly never expected or asked for, bringing heartache and loss of life. It also brought lasting change in how we consume, how we are entertained, and how we work.

How did the world navigate such seismic change? ?Some places adapted and coped better than others, but adaptation and agility happened everywhere. Perhaps it showed we can become more comfortable transforming the unknown to the known—our fear to hope. One constant of humanity has been a tremendous ability to be flexible and adapt over time. Perhaps a lesson here is that rather than trying to be visionaries predicting and controlling tomorrow, we put our energy into accurately perceiving the reality of today, staying flexible and trusting that we can course-correct in real time.

TEDx is all about sharing ideas to make the world a better place. The pace of change presents us with dualistic challenges, both opportunity and threat. Change is inevitable, and our ability to cope and adapt often hinges on our ability to balance change and continuity, to balance the new with the more enduring aspects of our lives.

We seek ideas and speakers for this year’s TEDx St Albans that can help our audience avoid the sometimes-overwhelming sense of disorientation that rapid change can bring, and instead, to bring creative and hopeful ideas of how we can thrive in this era of exponential change.

Written by Head Curator, Patricia Seabright