Rediscovering the power of being human.

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This is the third and final installment of the series meant to define the basic concepts which DoublePlusHuman.com is about. Here I would like to define social change, something not everybody outright cares about, but everyone depends on and most of all something that keeps happening all the time, every day, slowly but surely, even though not everyone notices it.

What is social change? How does it happen? Is it some sort of a disembodied wave passing across the masses of human beings? Let's begin by seeing what exactly these words actually mean so as to establish the basis for defining the term and the concept it represents, and the way we're going to use it on this site.

What is "social"?

Based on Merriam Webster dictionary the word social generally tends to describe various relations or interactions between individuals or between an individual and a group, community or society. It seems safe to say that whereas "individual" refers to a single human being by itself and in no relation to others, the word "social" refers to all that relates an individual with others and the society at large (as an abstraction representing many individuals at once).

If you do something all by yourself without requirement or expectation of action or inaction on part of another, you're engaging solely in individual action, but if you do something that requires or expects another to behave in a certain way (listen, converse, agree or disagree etc.) then you are engaging in a social interaction.

Social vs Individual

For the sake of precision I would like to make a particular distinction here, however. Even when an individual is engaging in social interaction, individual action doesn't cease to be completely displaced by social interaction. One is a part of another. You don't stop acting as an individual when you begin engaging in a social interaction. If that were true then social interaction would be like another plane of existence where you are no longer you, nor the one you interact with is no longer him or her self, but the two of you are just a mythical "social" being of some sort.

It may seem like a strange and redundant thing to point out, but unfortunately it is all too common for people to on some level and to some extent treat social interactions in exactly such a way, as if the individual ceases to matter. The result are all kinds of interesting and unfortunate contradictions being accepted as normal. For an example, just consider some common social norms on the basis of which certain individual's behavior is discounted and shunned solely because it doesn't fit a particular social paradigm, as if an individual should cease to be himself when in the group.

Ironically, all individuals engaging in perpetuation of such norms end up losing themselves for this mythical group mentality or groupthink without realizing that all they're doing is self repression. They end up empowering those who manage to "rise" above and become like an embodiment of the character of said social norms seizing this opportunity to take control of other's behavior.

Think of the high school cliques and bullies. They are typical examples of individuals almost completely lost beneath the pretension to the particular social image. Those who then absorb all of the characteristics of this social character become the most "popular" ones, the ones who totally "rule", the bullies to whom you either must suck up or suffer social ostracism and shame. It is not however that these popular bullies as supposed leaders of such social clans are any less victim to self repression. The only way in which they rose above others was to play the part too well, but that part is seldom who they really are.

What is "change"?

Change is more than a mythical slogan for a campaign of hope. For something to change it must be altered, modified or replaced by something else. It is a progression from one state of being to another, measured by the difference in certain traits. When the subject of change is what was above defined as "social" it refers to modification or displacement in the processes of interaction and relation between human individuals.

Such social change therefore changes the way individuals interact with each other and relate to each other and can thus only be felt by same individuals. Since it is those same individuals whose actions, the way they approach another, determine the nature of consequent interactions then it is clear that social change cannot actually happen without personal, individual change, that is, the change in the way individuals see others around them and the way they therefore act towards them.

This is where the seemingly strange and irrelevant distinction I made above comes into play as well. If social interaction happened in place of rather than as a consequence of individual action, social change too would be some sort of a disembodied process that people just somehow get caught up in, completely losing their selves in the process. This is mythology. Society doesn't really change and in reality society doesn't exist. The word "society" and the concept it represents is merely a mental alias for a number of individuals.

So when we speak of social change or change of society we are speaking of nothing more than change of many individuals. This is why what Gandhi said of changing the world is so important and so true:

Be the change you want to see in the world.

This is because change of yourself in fact is the change in the world, because when one refers to the world, human world at least, it refers to every individual including yourself.

This is also why we shouldn't be afraid of being who we are and believing things which are unpopular solely because they are unpopular and because the odds of changing the whole world to be what you wish it to be seems so hopeless. It is not hopeless because if you succeed in being that change you want the world to reflect then you've already succeeded in changing a part of the world. And besides, if you tell yourself it's too difficult and begin to conform, what hope for change is there at all? You have essentially just killed the only seed that existed.

Self improvement + personal freedom = social change

This is the complete formula that serves as an anchor of what DoublePlusHuman.com is all about. Everything begins with who you are right now, no matter how good or bad, perfect or imperfect it may be. If any part of who you are contains a desire there is impetus for action since in order to gain what you desire you must cause it. If being able to act in a way that would be able to cause it you must improve a certain aspect of your self, such as a skill, knowledge, wisdom or mentality, you have the impetus for self improvement. In order to gain what you desire you must improve certain aspects of yourself.

Which brings you to the necessity of personal freedom. In order to be able to change, to improve something about your self, you must allow yourself to it and deconstruct all compulsions that get in your way, that make one aspect of you essentially a slave to another like a contradiction that wants to tear you apart. It is this lack of contradictions, personal consistency, which creates personal freedom and in turn leads to personal honesty and integrity. Integrity is nothing more than the consistency, non-contradiction, between all aspects of yourself, from everything you think and believe, everything you feel to everything you perceive with your senses, all in alignment.

As a person with personal freedom you can improve yourself, change yourself to whatever you envision and desire yourself to be. You are on your way to your goal no matter what, because you've erased the mental barriers. You, as such, are thus already changing the world because you are changing yourself. However, if a part of who you are also desires the world to be in some manner a different place, you are merely going back to step one. Remember, whenever there is a desire there must be a set of actions to cause its fulfillment. Thus if you desire to change the world, have personal freedom and change yourself.

Be the change you want to see in the world because by carrying within yourself, in complete harmony with everything else that you are, that which you wish to see in others, you most inspire them to desire that same trait. There is no better way to influence others than by example. Everyone of us, especially if we desire to change the world, should be the leaders and lead by example.

That's how you change the world, in a nutshell. But alas a lot more can be said on the topic and a lot more will be said on DoublePlusHuman. We are just beginning to scratch the surface.

Stay tuned.

Image by Adam_T4