The fight for the status quo

Change always finds a way to knock at the door, most often un-welcomed. The hard part is staying neutral long enough to consider the upside and how it might improve the future.

Change always finds a way to knock at the door, most often un-welcomed.

It's easy to quickly take a stance against change and reject it, especially when it's not invited.

The hard part is staying neutral long enough to consider the upside and how it might improve the future.

Instead, we get blinded by the emotional charge we experience and ready ourselves to fight.

The thing about fighting is that it feels rewarding, meaningful and powerful, especially in times when we believe we're fighting against change that we deem threatening.

But fighting never leads to productive conversations. It segregates us, weakens our ability to connect, and come together for the better.

Before choosing a side, a fascinating exercise we can do is to imagine that the change on offer has already been widely adopted and that the status quo was being proposed. What kind of argument would you have then?

For instance, what if electric-powered vehicles were already fully adopted and switching to gas-powered vehicles were being proposed? We could easily highlight that we'd need to pollute the air every time we commute. We’d need to replace all charging stations with pumping stations and have trucks to drive all over the country to deliver gas constantly. It would also be worth highlighting that we could no longer charge our vehicles at home; we’d be forced to drive to stations across the country every time we needed to fill up. It's easy to see the arguments against it.

What if plant-based alternatives were our primary source of nutrition, and we were proposing we start eating animals as a replacement. One might highlight that a heavy meat diet would not be biologically healthy for most of us long term. The amount of food we get from one cow versus the investment of water and grains required to feed them doesn’t scale. Raising a bunch more animals in commercial quantities and confined conditions to kill them not long after so that we can have a piece of meat might be unethical.

Hopefully, you get the idea.

It's okay to choose a stance. What is crucial is basing our decision on facts and effects, not the emotional charge it sparks in us, and always keeping a curious and open mind.

The next time you find yourself defending the status quo, reverse the two and reflect on the alternative. I hope it offers you new perspectives you hadn’t considered before.

H/T to Seth’s post for inspiring this writing.

Miguel,
Sparknotion – Think Differently.