4/12/2004 07:31:00 AM

emergentkiwi: A toast to opaquacity. Now is the world any different?

"Now is the world any different?" yes, i believe so. every thin fiber of interaction and each tissue of credulity and incredulity brought on by such dalliances as this have part in that from which our futures emerge. these are perhaps some of the more important world-changing activities we undertake throughout the day because they have to do with how we are shaped through the nuance of language and narrative within which we live. The effects of simple interactions are like slight, invisible changes that over time pile up to impact us in substantial, visible ways.

The question, though, seems out of place to one, like me, who views such interaction as a normal part of life not unlike defecation or tucking my children into bed. the world is changed by all of it, but is the world changing the criterion of success we are really to shoot toward in such things? perhaps you do not agree that the world is changed by the mundane? that there is a threshold for an action to be world-changing that is not met by such engagements? though a particularly satisfying moment of solitude on the commode or the laughter of games before bedtime refreshes and reinforces one's resolution and relational security perhaps they are not included under the "World Changing" banner alongside such events as a particularly rousing political speech or stable, job-producing company; a soul-saving revival or disaster-assisting NGO project? perhaps, but such distinctions, i would suggest, have more to do with scale than with effect. It is likely that the politician and the industrialist, the preacher and the aid-worker all have defining bathroom and bedroom moments that contributed to the intentional and unintentional identities and actions that have now come to represent "who they are." Who they are is not a final state that materialized from nowhere. It was the circuitous pathways and false starts of small actions, innocuous engagements and simple decisions that brought about the context that offered opportunities with broader scope and greater risk and enabled them to execute in such a way as to actualize the opportunity in some fashion.

Marx, the modern popularizer of the world-changing-over-world-analyzing maxim, were he contributing to this thread would perhaps point to my nonsense above as indicative of the analytical way that stands as impediment to the world-changing course that we desperately believe ourselves (if we are earnest) to be just one important action away from initiating. for me the world changing is secondary to my part in the things that make life life. i have no control over the world as such. i often question control as a category of approach to anything. what i do have, for all too brief a moment, are the means by which i choose to engage life.

world-changing is focused on ends. life is all about means.
it is by the means that my world and i are changed.
revolution is in the details.