Change?

Does human nature change? Can it? Those ques­tions have haunted me since I was a child. From a social point of view, I have come to the con­clu­sion, that on a grand scale, the old adage that “the more things change, the more they stay the same” is true. I have watched peo­ple and elec­tion cycles since before 1960. In the end, noth­ing much has sub­stan­tially changed. A few forms have come and gone, but it is the same old human­ity on the same old planet. Our cars and planes are faster, but the basic man’s suit has not changed since the begin­ning of the last century.

I had lunch once with a for­mer class­mate that had gone from being an obnox­ious fun­da­men­tal­ist preacher to being an obnox­ious athe­ist col­lege teacher. Every time I think of the con­ver­sa­tion I smile. He has gone from rid­ding the world of “sin­ners” to rid­ding the world of reli­gion. He has not actu­ally changed one bit. He has only changed forms. He is still a know-it-all with a “holy” cause. Iron­i­cally, he was paid much less as a phi­los­o­phy teacher than he had been as a min­is­ter. It takes a lot more ded­i­ca­tion to be really negative.

I am also laugh­ing at myself. I was the class clown and rebel with a Bible in my stu­dent locker. Mom said I was born laugh­ing, and I am sure that I will die laugh­ing as well. The Gideons gave me a small Bible in the fifth grade. They did not have to do that, I had already stolen my brother’s. I smile when I think of that too. Yes, I have always been a tad sneaky. In the end, I do not think we are judged on our basic per­son­al­i­ties — only on the way we aimed them. Some­day my rigid for­mer fun­da­men­tal­ist friend will look in the mir­ror and see that only his mask has changed — he has not. Do any of us?

Fifty years later, I still read the Bible a lit­tle bit. My humor-laced per­son­al­ity con­tin­ues undaunted. I still live in a coun­try that goes through the motions of reform with­out really chang­ing. I won­der if the same can be said about all of the other insti­tu­tions within which I have worked. Maybe change is our own illu­sion. Maybe it is some­thing wished for that never really hap­pens. It may well be that we are just what we are. The best thing we can do is love peo­ple no mat­ter what and be pos­i­tively cre­ative about the few changes we might be able to make.