This is http://www.essayz.com/a9604101.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %FEAR CHANGE GROWTH NEW GENERATION ACTOR ROLES RULE+960410 %HUMAN ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIAL COMMUNAL IDEAL VALUE+960410 %COORDINATE COOPERATE ANTICIPATE PLAN EXPECTATION 960410 Human coordination and cooperation depends upon the various people who are involved being able to anticipate, predict and expect each other's actions reliably. Patterns of behavior, anticipation, prediction and expectation are bound to change as participants change from generation to generation---as the actors change. Changes in actors in a drama inevitably change the patterns of behaviors in a drama---even if the script, the play, is being "played" over repeatedly. The actors abilities to anticipate, predict and expect each other's actions reliably depends upon keeping the amount of change reasonably small from generation to generation. Excessive change can undermine the possibility of effective cooperation and coordination---and lead to chaos. Thus fear is genera ted by excessive change, and people are willing to put up with quite a bit of "trouble" to keep the challenge of change to a minimum. Revolutions in "scripts" which guide patterns of behaviors challenge the ability of changing generations of actors to engage effectively in cooperation and coordination. The "scripts" entail ideals, values, goals, assumptions, and all languages used to communicate the elements of the "scripts". Thus people who promote change in such elements of 'scripts" can generate fear in people who do not feel secure about their ability to play roles in the drama with out making mistakes in well defined roles. If, due to revolutionary changes, the roles are not well defined each actor is made to feel insecure--- both about their ability to play their "assigned" role, but also about how well they can rely upon others to play their "assigned" roles. If we cannot rely upon others to play their"assigned" roles we cannot predict, anticipate and expect their behavior reliably---and so cannot coordinate reliably. Anything which undermines reliability tends to generate apprehension about the future. We are likely to be willing to put up with much known "trouble" to minimize the probability of encountering unknown "trouble". A known tyrant may be preferable to an unknown revolution with possible unknown future tyrants. Thus, often our dilemma is to find ways to promote healthy change which helps us to transcend known "troubles" while not plunging us into even worse unknown "troubles". How can we promote integrative revolutions while not falling into the trap of generating disintegrative revolutions? W hat are the most trustworthy guidelines for leading us from our present scripts into more integrative scripts? How can we promote appropriate levels of confidence in our predictions, expectations and anticipations---without trapping ourselves in repeating over and over tragic dramas in which we perpetually hurt each other out of fear of change? Clearly security cannot be achieved by preventing change; by generating an ideal world in which there is no need for change. Each community which seeks to generate an ideal state of community which is free of change is confronted by change in its physical and human environment. An ideal and changeless community would be possible only in a ideal and changeless cosmos. The cosmos is not devoid of change, and so an ideal and changeless community cannot exist in a change-full cosmos. We need to learn how to promote and nurture security within the context of a cosmos which is full of change. The ideal community must be dynamic rather than static. The ideal community is in revolution; not facing always towards a past which was the same as the future will be. The ideal community does not back into the future because it is not always facing into the past. The ideal community is in revolution---facing in different directions at different times and so is able to deal with the environment around it in all directions. Security comes not from being in a changeless environment---but from being in open and honest dialogue with people who are being true to themselves and each other about their experiences within a dynamic environment. Through o pen and honest dialogue they can keep in touch with each other about changes, and so can effectively coordinate their behaviors to deal with changes---as well as to deal with familiar situations. Security flows from being confident of our ability to be in communication with each other about changes which are taking place around us---not from any ability to prevent change so that we can deal only with familiar situations year after year. If we try to be in control so that we can deal with familiar situations year after year; we are bound to generate negative motivations in others which will engender revolutionary change which we will be unable to deal with---because we will have alienated ourselves from others; and they will not be open and honest with us out of fear that we will act coercively and violently towards them as we have in the past. They will expect us to be violent---because we have been. They will respond to our violence coercion with violence---because we have taught them to expect us to be coercive and violent. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================