Judge a sudden change by the problem it solves, not how it looks

Before calling a change in yourself or someone else a breakdown, ask what problem the new way of living is handling.

Pourquoi ça marche

Graves’s opening says many people see a moral breakdown in society, and he reads that as a sign of human health and intelligence rather than a collapse in the fiber of people. In his account, people are learning that values which were good at one period no longer fit, and have not yet understood the new ones. This page extends that reading to a single person’s change that looks like breakdown from outside. That extension is the page’s own, not Graves’s.

Comment faire

1. Describe the change in plain words, without the judgment word: what they now do that they did not do before.
2. Ask what problem that new behavior seems to be solving for them.
3. Write down what the change costs you, separately from what it costs them.
4. Decide whether the thing to address is the change itself or the way it is landing on you.

Données probantes

The passage is Graves’s unindented opening, not one of the indented, editor-marked passages. It is his description of social change, which this page applies to individuals. (anecdotal)

Applying a reading of social change to one person is this page’s interpretation. Reading a change as healthy does not mean every sudden change is growth, and Graves himself says the future cannot be fully predicted.

Sources

• Graves, C. W. (1974). Human nature prepares for a momentous leap. The Futurist, pp. 72–87. Reprint edited with embedded comments by Edward Cornish.

Erreur fréquente

Treating a dramatic change as a verdict on the person’s character, which makes it harder to ask what problem they are now solving.