Saturday, February 23, 2008
Status quo
The power of the status quo.
The status quo is a powerful thing, as it has been there, done that, is a point of reference, and what people are used to and conditioned to think towards.
The Chinese say, the first to arrive is the master. Indeed.
To the people conditioned under the status quo, it is what they have been brought up to know, to understand, and accept as a way of life. The fact that it is the status quo shows some meaning: it must have a reason behind it, hence it is the status quo.
If we do not think deeply towards it, it remains. The status quo.
To the people who have no or little interaction with the forces of the status quo, or people fed up with the status quo, change then becomes the attractive option.
Change means new. And new sounds nice, much nicer than old. Change means breaking loose from the chains of the past. Change means clearing the cobwebs of the yesteryears, and escaping the clutches of history that binds us down. Change means you stand out from the crowd, and change makes you the creator of something, rather than the follower of something. Change makes you a person with ideas, rather than a person who copies them. To the eternally subconsiously optimistic human mind, change looks attractive. Change looks good.
Change looks attractive, but how do we go about doing it? For those who are fed up with the status quo, are you fed up with the whole process? Or are you fed up by just bits and pieces of it? How do you identify the seperate components that fed you up? Would your fed-up-ness of the status quo cloud your judgement on these components, and spread it onto the whole status quo? Do you want change for the sake of it, or do you want change because you have sorted out the components as mentioned? Would you throw the baby out of the bath water?
For those who have little interaction with the status quo, what makes you so sure that the status quo failed because of its system, not because of its people? Are you making illogical links and creating illogical scapegoats? Do you want change simply because of your own agenda - your own mental status quo? And the very fact that you have little interaction with the status quo, who are you to judge on it? How do you come to criticise the status quo? By pure imagination? By hearsay coming from a few biased opinions? How can you be so sure of your criticism, so sure until you reject the defenders of the status quo as pure conformists?
For the defenders of the status quo, how do you know you truly like the status quo, and not purely conforming? Is your defence of the status quo borne out of habit? Do sentimental feelings attached to the status quo cloud your judgement over the true benefits and costs ? Or put simply, are you plain lazy to think and accept whatever that was thrown down upon you by the predecessors? Did you ever try to cleanse yourself of all that, then try to think objectively upon the true value, if any, of the status quo?
As John Edwards once said in the presidential debates, whenever the agents of change come forward, the forces of the status quo rise and repel these changes.
The incumbent versus the revolutionist. The experience of the old versus the optimistic promise of the new. The corrupted yet full visualisation of the defenders versus the uncorrupted yet narrow imagination of the change agents. The feel of stagnation versus the anticipation of flow and movement. The comfort zone vs a risky unchartered path. Incretmentalism vs Overhaul.
Everyone feels that they are open to ideas. But are they truly open? Have insufficient information, experience, sentiments, personal bias cloud their judgement? Has the judge's own mental status quo reject diverging ideas at the first reading? Or is the judge just using the consideration (yet subsequent quick rejection) of differing opinions just to make himself feel that he is open when he is truly not?
It is not possible to be completely neutral, but it is totally possible to be respectful of the opposite camp. When you do not respect, you would not be respected. Simple as that.
lowtide blogged @
11:26 am
