Change and the Search for Terrestrial Intelligence

Change is hard. 

Have I mentioned that before?

Not just hard to do, but hard to see and hard to grasp.  I came across the superb blog of Giorgio Bertini; who covers an amazing amount of topics, all related to helping change agents.  Just look at his category cloud.  I doubt that it is just me who finds change massive and near-overwhelming.

So I'm progressing very slowly.  Here is an update on latest thoughts.  If you are new to THEE: see the graphic showing levels of WILL that also forms the framework for Personal Endeavour.

Is CHANGE the right name for Level 3 in the Root Hierarchy?  It seems to work but that does not mean it is correct.  When I was finalizing the Levels of Will, there were two levels causing me trouble.  Level-5 was then called "Naming".  It was probably because I was preoccupied with the significance of naming for the Taxonomy.  But when I worked on the Levels of Communication (Primary Hierarchy) I realized that Naming was its Level-5.  L-5 is typically a creating or shaping level that controls actualizing but is not itself actualizing in nature.  As it was part of Communication, and the Root Levels had to emanate the Primary Hierarchies, changing Root-Level-5 from Naming to COMMUNICATION was easy.  Rather obvious now.

That left me with Root Level-3.  I want this name to be obvious too.  Completely and totally obvious.

For a while I called this level: "Process".  People hated that name.  It was no joke.  So I couldn't leave it there.

But just look at my recent blog about Whitehead.  He thought process was fundamental.  And, as I wrote there, so do I.

You may ask: What about Components of Creativity that were derived from combining the Personal Endeavour levels?  I think Process could have been adjusted to target change, just as the other higher levels were re-stated.  Or adjusted to something else, perhaps revealing what is currently obscure and still misunderstood.

The other idea to do with change is Identity.  This is something of a hobby-horse of mine.  It is so important and generally missed.  But identity relates rather closely to process and change.  Identity means the sameness of something and that depends on repetitive processes.  So Identity and Process are not far apart.  Change is about moving from one identity to another identity.  That process is probably the main reason why it is so hard.  Because what exists during the in-between state?  It must be non-identity.  Something that isn't itself: is it chaos?  Not quite, but some further thought is required to clarify this.  

I'll probably keep rambling on about Change. 

If you have the secret, just pop it into your Comment, would you?  I would greatly appreciate that.

WK