It Hasn’t Always Been This Way
Recognizing and acknowledging this truth can change your life.
One of the most fascinating elements of conservativism, to me, is how they want to go back to a simpler, better time. Realistically, of course, they want to go back to a simpler, better time that never existed (save in a few minds).
The reason this fascinates me so much is because that desire ignores progress made. Not just social progress, though. Technological progress. The world of the ridiculously idolized 1950s is nearly as different to us in 2024 as the world of 1950 would have been to the people of 1850. Alien, vastly different, utterly unfamiliar. What’s more, the reality is that this would go in both directions.
So much of what we have today is utterly taken for granted. Whatever device you’re reading these words on, for example, didn’t exist only 25-30 years ago. I have friends who have never known a world without smartphones, e-readers, computers everywhere, and instantaneous global connection and communication.
However, I remember. I got my first PC in 1985. It was an Apple IIe with a whopping 128k of memory, a duo 5¼” disk drive, and a green screen. My iPhone is exponentially more powerful and probably 1/24th the size. Many of my friends didn’t have their own PC at that time.
This is proof that in my lifetime alone, it hasn’t always been this way. Yet the false narrative often maintained by many of our so-called leaders and the collective consciousness pushes us to believe otherwise.
Why? To maintain their false sense of control.
Humans, being
A hundred years ago, the First World War and Spanish flu pandemic were recent events. Only a third of Americans had telephones in their homes. TV hadn’t been invented yet. About 15% of Americans had cars. Hell, nearly half the USA didn’t have electricity in their homes yet.
Just a hundred years before that, even telegraphy and radios hadn’t been invented, electricity for power and light was nonexistent. You were utterly reliant on either your own skills or your local community. The world was out there, out of reach.
Today’s world as we know it was unimaginable to the people of a hundred years ago. The people of 200 years ago probably would have found the world of today both terrifying and utterly alien. The point I’m making is that it hasn’t always been this way.
“It” applies to many, many aspects of our lives. Take the 9-5 workday. That’s only about 100 years old. This is thanks to labor unions demanding better, less strenuous, and life-sucking conditions.
“It” applies to politics. The two American political parties haven’t existed throughout all of our nation’s history. The GOP began in 1854 and the DNC in 1828. The positions that dominate the two parties have not always been what they are today. The Democrats were arguably far less liberal before the 1960s. For those doing math at home, that was only about 60 years or so.
“It” applies to education, community, entertainment, information, and everything else material you can conceive of. The first screw was made of wood. Modern screws are made of steel, titanium, and other metals now.
No matter what “it” is, it hasn’t always been this way.
It hasn’t always been this way
There is a pervasive idea in the collective consciousness that how things are now is how they have always been. Thus, working to change them is troubling, problematic, and going against tradition, long-standing beliefs and values, and other similar false narratives.
That’s the key. All the ideas of “tradition”, this way being the eternal way, and the like, are based on false narratives. This concept was invented at some point along the way and accepted by the collective consciousness as being. Then, many so-called leaders in politics, business, and religion cling to the false narrative for their own power.
Not so long ago, how people lived was, truly, simpler. However, not in the way conservatives argue for. Simpler applies to how our communities and family units within those communities were all you knew. This way eroded with the Industrial Revolution and expanding globalism. The local community was overshadowed by a bigger world becoming increasingly more accessible. That led to individualism that was utterly unheard of for the vast majority of humans up until the 1800s or so.
For a far more detailed look at this and other concepts about the evolution of the human race, read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.
There is one single, major reason why it hasn’t always been this way.
Change is constant
The one and only constant in the entire Universe is change. Change can, will, and does occur, whether we like it or not. Some is subtle, some blatant. Change can creep up on us and happen around us before we even realize it began. Or it can happen in the blink of an eye and have devastating consequences or take us to new heights.
Change, as such, terrifies people. So, rather than embrace it and/or accept the reality of it, people fear it. They resist it. Worst of all, they cling to how it was – at least in their minds and individually perceived realities – and claim that’s how it always was to justify inequality, intolerance, hate, and other negative and destructive concepts.
When change occurs, you always have a choice. Go with it, resist it, ignore it, redirect it, accept it, reject it, and other options. Recognizing that it hasn’t always been this way can be scary, but it can also be empowering.
Take control of your life experience
The collective consciousness of our communities is necessary because nobody lives in a vacuum. All human beings coexist with other human beings. Even the most introverted still need people in various ways.
The other reason it’s necessary is to establish common ground for balance and equilibrium. Without the collective consciousness, society would crumble because money would lose all meaning, traffic lights would be ignored, arguments would lead to more frequent spur-of-the-moment, rage-induced murder, and the like.
One problem is that you cannot change the collective consciousness. At least, not directly. That’s because all that you can control directly is about you and yourself.
That’s almost entirely an inside job. This means you control your thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, approach to situations, attitudes toward people-places-things, and ultimately who, what, where, how, and why you are.
Though that might not seem like much, it’s everything. Through that control, you can choose your life experience.
Yes, to some degree you need to work in the framework of the collective consciousness. However, that doesn’t mean accepting that it’s always been this way. It hasn’t always been this way, because past individuals did things that eventually impacted the whole of the collective consciousness. However, that always begins with individuals.
Recognizing and acknowledging this truth – that it hasn’t always been this way – can change your life. When you take control, change your life, and do things like take a positive, proactive approach to things, others might be encouraged to emulate you. In that way, the collective consciousness can more readily embrace change and let go of limiting beliefs, values, and the like.
Thus, individually more empowered, our so-called leaders lose relevance. That lessens the false narratives that disempower more than empower us.
It’s advantageous for everyone that it hasn’t always been this way.
Recognizing and acknowledging that it hasn’t always been this way isn’t hard
It’s all about working with mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, and intentions to direct your actions.
When you recognize and acknowledge that it hasn’t always been this way, you can free yourself from the tyranny of expectation and having to conform to societal expectations and such. Knowing that change is constant and ongoing and that how things were will never be the same again, you can work with change to take charge of your life experience and choose a positive, more proactive approach.
This empowers you, and your empowerment can empower others around you.
Taking an approach to positivity and negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way that opens more dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can explore and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
The better aware you are of yourself in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can spread to those around you to their empowerment.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the five-hundred and twentieth (520) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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