“Plus ça change, plus ça reste la même chose” – The more things change, the more it stays the same.
It is worth rethinking this French expression for a moment. So, let us think about change. How much have we as humans truly changed over the stretch of, let’s say, two millennia? Again, I am not asking you to think about technological growth, my focus is specifically on our inner growth as human beings.
Augusto Roa Bastos said that the things that have come into being, change continually. Change is inevitable, it is an aspect written in the DNA of time. Nonetheless, there are things we change, but it actually never changes. We continue to strive for a world in which we may live according to strict ethical and moral codes. We have done that for thousands of years, but everything is still the same. Why do we still, in a predominantly democratic world, tolerate tyrants, dictators, wars? We are driven by the wrong impetus, we continue to make the same errors.
Everything just stays the same. When are we truly going to change? I think that as soon as we start to realize that we are predominantly stagnant in our moral and ethical growth, then maybe we will be able to come to a point where we will stop making the same errors and then will we maybe start changing our ways for the better and dispel the dictum which says that everything actually, amid constant change, stays the same.
The power is inside each one of us to change the way in which we interact with other people and the world at large. The power is also inside each of us to desist from becoming stagnant in our growth – ethically, morally and humanely. I believe we can, collectively, change the things that tend to stay the same.
They say the world continuously transform,
that this has always been the norm…
But I think this view is very lame,
for everything seems to simply stay the same.
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