Abstract
Permanence has been the dominant cosmological and social model throughout European history. This value model is founded on centralized control of power and truth, and potential success and prosperity for the individual human being is dependent upon acceptance and subordination. New development is strictly controlled and regulated. Successions of civilizations and empires have been based on this construction of being and the world.
An almost diametrically opposite understanding of being was always present, however. In Heraclitus’ model of the world as Change, humans are no longer passive and subordinate receivers but active change- and future-makers. Change is no longer seen as dangerous, but rather as the prime mover of the world and therefore, also the fountain of knowledge and insight. Change is the only eternal truth and value, Heraclitus argues. Thus, strategies for meaningful and productive action must also be eternally changing.
This article discusses the views of Change propagated by Heraclitus and his most famous follower, Friedrich Nietzsche. It shows how a radical change of perspective and aim, a change from models aiming for Permanence to models with a much greater allowance for and appreciation of Change, can lead to explosions of human creativity and innovation.
Introduction: Two Opposing Value Models of the World
For the last 2,000 years, exogenous—top-down—social and cosmological models, based on ideas of stability and Permanence, have dominated Western cultural history and thought. This period has been the age of the large empires; social organizations founded on centralization of power and control of truth, and fortified by programmes for industrialization and technological innovation.
There is, however, another side to this apparent success story. For those who thought and believed differently than the powers that be, the rise of a new empire was always bad news. In defence of Permanence—of centrally defined ‘truths’—virtually millions of people have been persecuted, tortured and killed.
At the same time, an alternative and almost diametrically opposite construction of what makes the world tick was always present. Most of the time, it has been suppressed, and during the darkest ages of Western history, it was barely visible at all. For shorter periods of time, however, it came to the fore and led to increased human social and cultural innovation. This is the understanding that the only eternal truth is, in fact, Change; that freedom from absolute truths can lead to vast improvements of human understanding and knowledge; and that real social and cultural development of the human potential therefore only comes about through the active promotion of Change itself.
A world understood as Change constantly comes into view to the willing and searching actor (Lønning, 2007, 2010; Merleau-Ponty, 2000; Nietzsche, 1968, 1993, 2001, 2003). Rather than detached idolization of predefined truths, the road to creative action therefore goes through the active and rejoicing presence in the world as it develops here and now. Amor fati—loving one’s fate—is Nietzsche’s way of describing this affirmative and creative presence, a concept here explained by one of the philosopher’s many biographers, Robert Solomon (2003, p. 164): ‘Amor fati: to ‘recycle’ the furniture of our lives in all sorts of creative ways, experiment with life and with our emotions in all sorts of ways, and transform ourselves in the process.
Thus, whilst choosing Permanence implies being created, the choice of Change opens up for active and ongoing creation.
This article will probe deeper into this dichotomy and try to show—through the use of literary, philosophical and historical examples of community development—the potentially positive consequences of allowing greater room for Change in the way we construct and understand the world. The human ‘freedom to create’ (Lønning, 2007, 2010) is dependent upon an active awareness and understanding of the world as an arena of opportunities. Our worldviews and ideas of our own roles and responsibilities have implications for the way we act (for example, Ray & Anderson, 2000). In an age where rapid change appears to influence and permeate most sectors of society, proactive actors and communities could greatly influence their own futures.
Extreme Permanence: The Ottoman Empire
To illustrate Permanence as a social and cultural foundation, the Ottoman Empire can serve as example. From his palace at Topkapi in the magnificent city of Istanbul, the sultan—the sun of the universe—reigned over an area that, at its largest in 1680, stretched from the Caspian Sea in the east to Somalia in the south and the suburbs of Vienna in the west.
The Nobel laureate, Orhan Pamuk, has written a fantastic novel from this period. My Name is Red (Pamuk, 2002) shows how Permanence and the attempted rejection of all change was a necessary precondition for the creation and sustenance of this gigantic empire.
Pamuk’s narrative centres on miniature painting as a special and popular form of Ottoman art. The sultanate employed hundreds of miniature painters involved in the decoration of the Koran and other important books. A clever artist could paint a landscape on a fingernail, and it took many years of practice to gain this knowledge. The chief miniature painter at the court was the great master of his age and commanded a large number of disciples who all aimed to be able to copy their master.
The miniature painter was, in reality, a human Xerox machine, searching to copy every single detail. Personal signatures were forbidden and could imply the death penalty. So could the sin of painting the face of another person. The miniature painting was recreated in identical version from generation to generation, and sought to illustrate a world and a set of power relations that always and eternally remained the same; a world where the person has no individual value outside of his preordained role as subordinate sustainer of the vast and unchanging empire and cosmos.
Parallel to the Ottoman Empire, the city state of Venice grows to become a major international power, and also seeks relations with the sultan in Istanbul. Envoys from the city on the sea therefore start arriving at the Sublime Port bringing gifts to the sultan; Italian paintings—with recognizable faces—and technological innovations. After the envoys had left, most of these artefacts were destroyed, many of them in public. Change is thereby forcefully and publicly rejected and repressed. All innovation that can threaten established ideas of how the world is constructed are combated. The power base is Permanence itself; ideas of the eternal.
Emerging changes also threaten the ageing master of miniature painting as well as many generations of unbroken tradition. To suppress change, he does what other masters did before him. From the sultan’s treasure chambers, he collects a special needle. With this, he punctures his own eyes. Now he is able to continue living with the image of the perfect—the eternal and unchanging—within his head, and new ‘masterpieces’ can be created (copied) unaffected by what actually takes place in the outside world.
This is a dramatic narrative that highlights the weakness of Permanence as social and cultural foundation: when Change starts to make its presence known, it has to be actively combated by the use of violence, rejection and/or repression. Change becomes an enemy, a threat, and social and cultural energies are being used on building defence works rather than on innovative and creative future-oriented action. Social action turns introvert and community degradation appears unavoidable.
The Alternative: Change as the Fundamental Ingredient of Being
Worldviews based on ideas of Permanence have been dominant through large parts of Western cultural history. The impulse to a completely different understanding of being was always present, however, an understanding where the human role changes from passive adaptation to established truths to active world- and future-making agency. In this construction, Change is no longer seen as something dangerous that needs to be fought, but as the prime fountain of knowledge and insight. Through becoming part of the processes of change, humans have the opportunity of tapping into this fountain.
The philosopher Heraclitus is perhaps the Western source of the idea that the world itself is Change. In our age, we know him as the first process philosopher, and as important inspiration for modern process- and change-oriented thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche, John Dewey, Robert Pirsig, Gilles Deleuze and Richard Rorty. 1
Heraclitus’ ideas about the world are as radical and renewing today as they were when he first formulated them 2,500 years ago. In fact, Richard Rorty (1999) still calls the Heraclitean construction of the world, ‘the abnormal’, meaning in opposition to the continuing ‘normal’ idolization of Permanence and truth.
Change is the foundation of the Heraclitean worldview. In his perhaps most famous aphorism, running water becomes a potent metaphor for being: ‘The river where you set your foot just now is gone—those waters giving way to this, now this’ (Heraclitus, 2003, p. 27). And: ‘Just as the river where I step is not the same, and is, so I am as I am not’ (Heraclitus, 2003, p. 51). Continuous change is the main driving force of the world, argues Heraclitus. Everything changes. All the time. Everything floats, and any attempt to fixate the world is like catching smoke with your hands.
The metaphor he uses for the driving force of change is ‘fire’; eternal fire changes the world continuously. Fire represents the living, the emerging and the always new. It is a demanding force, however. It will always need new energy. The dead, the object and static represent that which has burnt up. So-called truth or Permanence can, therefore, only ever be remnants of a fire that continues to burn somewhere else: ‘All things change to fire, and fire exhausted falls back into things’ (Heraclitus, 2003, p. xix). Man faces the same challenge, he argues, choosing the world as it potently evolves, or choosing the static, the impotent and that which is already burnt up.
This interplay between burning fire and ‘fire exhausted’ tells us that the flame can always be lit anew. It is only through active participation, however, that one can act along with this prime driving force of change. Both Heraclitus as well as the thinkers who followed his lead put heavy emphasis on human agency: life enfolds through the eternal challenge of ‘forming or being formed’; being the one who lights the fire or being consumed by it, or even having to settle with its leftovers. The fire in the soul burns night and day, through strife and struggle. The only fate possible is the one that is created through your choices and actions from day to day (including the choice of being formed): ‘One’s bearing shapes one’s fate’ (Heraclitus, 2003, p. 83).
Creation and control of one’s fate is dependent upon being conscious about change and the room for innovative action that it creates. For the process-oriented thinker, the independent and truth-challenging reflection therefore becomes the primary source for new truths. ‘Truth lies inside myself and not in the outer world’, said Heraclitus, and thereby pointed to the power of intuition and the necessity of not taking anything for granted.
Lønning (2007, 2010) has shown how the creation of new values implies a reflective and meditative search beyond established truths and norms. The search for this new starting point unites many of the process-oriented thinkers that followed Heraclitus. Friedrich Nietzsche investigated the potency of Dionysian ecstasy (Nietzsche, 1993; Sokel, 2005); Robert Pirsig (1992, 1997), the dynamic quality as the fundamental building block of world and being; and Gilles Deleuze (see Hallward, 2006) sought beyond the defined social self for what he called the heartbeat of being; the birthplace of change and renewal.
In the end, however, these are all expressions of the Heraclitean fire; the creator’s eternal search beyond the horizons for the fertile and the unknown. This is real bottom-up change. It is always mine, as it is based upon my own values and interests as they unfold in the world. This is also fundamental proximity to change; the opportunity ‘to create change instead of being created by it’.
‘Expect the unexpected,’ says Heraclitus, ‘otherwise you will never find it’ (Oech, 2002). This aphorism is an attack on our predefined expectations and stereotypes. We take too much for granted—we concentrate on what already is, or, as Heraclitus probably would have said, what was—and we therefore lack the ability to see the changing, new and unknown.
Roger von Oech (2002) has developed a comprehensive creativity programme based on the ancient philosophy of Heraclitus. The philosopher’s argument that the world is eternally changing, secretive (see Geldard, 2000), and therefore unpredictable, is a brilliant foundation for understanding and acting in our age of rapid change, says Oech (2002), and so is Heraclitus’ call for continuous alertness and innovation as well as a playful and explorative attitude to life. A reflexive and critical relation to one’s own attitudes and viewpoints is also necessary if one is to harvest from the many opportunities created by eternal change:
How can we prepare ourselves for the unexpected? I suggest that we (1) loosen our preconceptions about what we expect to find in any given situation; (2) pay special attention to the anomalous rather than ignore it; and, (3) use what we discover as a stepping stone to something very different. (Oech, 2002, p. 35)
Change as Creation: The Nietzschean Perspective
The struggle for change and the ‘freedom to create’ (Lønning, 2007) is an ancient, and in fact ontological, struggle. It takes place at all times, and in all societies, when the new and emerging fights for room and existence against established truths and the powers that back and control them.
It is for his many perspectives on this ongoing combat between the established and the new that Friedrich Nietzsche became one of the most influential European thinkers of all times. Nietzsche showed that even though the established order is most often supported by the powers that be—socially, culturally, militarily—change and creation are nevertheless ever present potentials in the human world.
To describe how this potential can be actualized, Nietzsche revitalizes Heraclitus after more than 2,000 years, but he also takes the old master’s thoughts to a new level through his focus on human action as a prime instigator of change (Gemes & May, 2009). Like Heraclitus, Nietzsche dismisses the idea of eternal truths/values: ‘There are no facts, everything is in flux’, he says (Nietzsche, 1968, p. 327). All truths are therefore only temporary, and also merely surface phenomena.
More strongly than any other philosopher, however, Nietzsche emphasizes the power and potency of active human agency in turning the eternal processes of change into forces for positive social and cultural development. There are basically two ways we as humans can relate to a world that is always changing, says Nietzsche, and introduces the idea of ‘eternal recurrence’:
What if some day or night a demon were to steal into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it you will have to live once again and innumerable times again; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unspeakably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!’ (Nietzsche, 2001, pp. 194–195)
For those who choose passive adaptation to change, the world will only repeat itself. It will bring nothing new, and ‘every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything…must return to you’. If the world has no inherent meaning, however, it presents ample opportunities for the creator, argues Nietzsche. What he really wants us to do with his metaphor of ‘eternal recurrence’, says Robert Solomon (2003), is to provoke us to scrutinize our own lives, to start taking responsibility, to affirm and celebrate the world and its many opportunities, to live life as creators and therefore, to live it in ways that we, in fact, would want to experience it once more.
Through the voice of his famous demon, Nietzsche’s presents his readers with two fundamentally different attitudes and approaches to the world: passive adaptation—being created by change; or active agency—being the force and instigator of change and creation. This dichotomy permeates Nietzsche’s writings, and also his ideas on how the world, in fact, can be made a better place for future generations.
The idea of ‘owning the truth’ is the most dangerous and destructive idea in human history, Nietzsche argues. These ‘owners’—the defenders of Permanence—have a long history of destroying the tremendous human potential for creation, and they are also the prime instigators and causes of human war and suffering:
…if all those who have thought so highly of their conviction, brought to them sacrifices of every kind, and have not spared honour, body or life in their service, had devoted only half their energy to investigating with what right they adhered to this or that conviction, by what path they had arrived at it, how peaceable a picture the history of mankind would present! How much more knowledge there would be! We should have been spared all the cruel scenes attending the persecution of heretics of every kind, and for two reasons: firstly because the inquisitors would have conducted their inquisition above all within themselves and emerged out of the presumptuousness of being the defenders of unqualified truth; then because the heretics themselves would, after they had investigated them, have ceased to accord any further credence to such ill-founded propositions as the propositions of all religious sectarians and ‘right-believers’ are. (Nietzsche, 1996, p. 200)
All self-proclaimed holders of truth are part of the force that Nietzsche declares as his primary enemy, ‘gravity’ (Nietzsche, 2003); all ideas that define human beings as predetermined and passive receivers. Gravity, thus, closely resembles the cultural model defined as Permanence; ideas of eternal truths that prevent affirmation of the world, life and the future, as well as moral rules buttressing the established order. This is Nietzsche’s ‘herd mentality’ (Nietzsche, 1968), a process whereby human beings relinquish their creative powers and rather choose the life of the bee (Nietzsche, 1979). Through our desires to establish conventions and predefined truths, we enclose ourselves in hives with thicker and thicker walls. In fact, says Nietzsche, we imprison ourselves and our creative abilities.
The herd mentality represents an even greater challenge when change, sooner or later, is bound to affect both individual and collective, Nietzsche argues. To become submerged in the herd, the individual has to give up the life of the creator and accept ideas of Permanence and collective truths. But what then when these are not true anymore? What happens when the old Gods die?
To answer this question, Nietzsche introduced another of his seminal perspectives, nihilism: ‘What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; “why?” finds no answer’ (Nietzsche, 1968, p. 9, emphasis in original). And:
The nihilistic question ‘for what?’ is rooted in the old habit of supposing that the goal must be put up, given, demanded from outside…One wants to get around the will, the willing of a goal, the risk of positing a goal for oneself; one wants to rid oneself of the responsibility… (Nietzsche, 1968, pp. 16–17, emphasis in original)
Nihilism is too long for those externally decided values and truths which one’s life—mistakenly Nietzsche will claim—have been built on. It is to lose hope both in the present and in the future as all predefined explanations have failed. Nihilism is loss of belief in what the world has to offer, and can lead to resignation and/or decadence.
Nihilistic attitudes grow ‘because we have chosen passive adaptation as the model for our lives’; we have given up and/or transferred our own basic freedom to create (Lønning, 2007) to a collective force outside ourselves. When this fails, we are left naked, and the fall and loss is potentially a total one. Our life has been a lie and the future appears to have nothing to offer. Permanence/determinism is therefore the point from where nihilism develops.
Enters Zarathustra and the Free Spirits
Nietzsche does not stop at this pessimistic conclusion, however. Rather, his perhaps greatest feat as a philosopher was to demonstrate how nihilism can be overcome. And again, his pervasive dualism between passive adaptation and active agency becomes highly relevant.
Nihilism has, in fact, two widely different implications and meanings, argues Nietzsche: ‘Nihilism. It is ambiguous: A. Nihilism as a sign of increased power of the spirit: as active nihilism. B. Nihilism as decline and recession of the power of the spirit: as passive nihilism’ (Nietzsche, 1968, p. 17). It follows that ‘only an active and radical nihilism can defeat nihilism as decadence’ (the passive version). Radical nihilism means the revaluation of all values (Melberg, 2003). Only by erasing the predetermined, predefined and ‘true’—by actively combating all socio-cultural structures that prevent free sight and action—can nihilism be defeated.
Where passive nihilism is decadence and resignation in the face of losing the old values, active nihilism is the rejoicing and jubilation: the world is once more open to radical change and creation, the void can now be filled with new content that affirms life, the future, the human potential:
Indeed, at hearing the news that ‘the old god is dead’, we philosophers and ‘free spirits’ feel illuminated by a new dawn; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, forebodings, expectation—finally the horizon seems clear again, even if not bright; finally our ships may set out again, set out to face any danger; every daring of the lover of knowledge is allowed again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; maybe there has never been such an ‘open sea’. (Nietzsche, 2001, p. 199)
Active nihilism is thus a programme for human liberation; for the removal of Permanence, predetermination and predefined truths. Nietzsche’s entire philosophy is a never-ending struggle to develop conceptual tools to support active human agency and continuous creation in the struggle against Permanence (‘gravity’).
The struggle for a landscape without predefined tracks and routes is a struggle that requires strong determination and will, Nietzsche holds. This landscape may appear dangerous to ‘the herd’, and there will be both sanctions and suffering. The reward is potentially immense, however, and it comes in this life, here and now. This is the ability to see further, to gain new meaning and knowledge, to get closer to the world and the many fantastic opportunities it may hold for the active ‘knowledge seeker’ (Nietzsche, 2001, p. 181). All human beings have this potential, says Nietzsche, and tells his reader that ‘…in any event you possess in yourself a ladder with a hundred rungs upon which you can climb to knowledge’ (Nietzsche, 1996, p. 134).
At the same time, only a few of us will ever explore this opportunity. Nietzsche’s works are full of references to the ‘heroes’—or ‘free spirits’, 2 as he calls them (Nietzsche, 2001)—who take on the challenge. The free spirit—a character distinguished by extreme determination and will—is the prime agent for change and innovation in the Nietzschean cosmology; people who constantly try to break through the surface to find new meaning, who seek to climb higher than the others to gain new perspectives, who are not limited by established norms and rules for what is allowed for a member of this particular community, but rather search for new knowledge due to their own intrinsic motivation to celebrate life and its many opportunities.
Nietzsche saw Zarathustra—the ‘great liberator’ and ultimate free spirit—as his most important gift to the world (Nietzsche, 1999). Through this figure, Nietzsche demonstrates how life—if the will and motivation is strong enough—can be made into an ever-changing journey to new meaning and knowledge.
Like Nietzsche himself, Zarathustra eschews all systems and pre-established connections (for example, Melberg, 2003; Wainwright, 2009): ‘This is my way—where is yours? This I answered those who asked me for The Way. For the way does not exist’ (Nietzsche, 2003, p. 131; author’s translation). This is Zarathustra’s challenging message to us.
It is impossible to remain indifferent to Zarathustra. He tears apart all that we have believed in, all our collective truths. And he does it on purpose, because settling in with the predetermined is also to resign. Only the eternally alert can develop the human race to more maturity, he argues, and therefore we can afford neither essentialism nor any absolutism. Liberation—here and now—can only come through revaluing all values, through challenging the established, Permanence, ‘the herd’, all tradition.
Like the evangelical Jesus, Zarathustra wanders the earth with a flock of disciples trying to convey a message to humanity. Like Jesus, he is working to promote the best in man, those positive sides that a better future can be built upon. But here the resemblance ends between the two. The future kingdom that Jesus preaches is in ‘heaven’, whilst Zarathustra’s is in this world and this life here and now. His main message, furthermore, is that the human race can only be lifted to see its potential here at earth if all gods, devils and everlasting ‘truths’—that is, all Permanence—are banished and expelled.
Jesus’ human being is created, Zarathustra’s free spirits are themselves creators. Jesus claims that we humans are too weak to take full responsibility, and he offers to take it for us. Zarathustra, on the other hand, argues that it is only through taking full responsibility that we can, in fact, realize the human potential. A better future will materialize when the human race realizes its fundamental freedom to create, to change, to produce new values and meaning, to continuously revalue all existing values.
Jesus told his disciples to gather all peoples under one banner; his own. Zarathustra’s message is again the opposite; when people start to gather around him, he asks them to leave, to go out and create their own meanings, to find their own personal and idiosyncratic ways through the world.
This is a community of the dedicated, engaged, the willing. ‘Nietzsche’, argues Schact (1996, p. ix), ‘… had long yearned—and continued to yearn throughout his productive life—for a higher humanity with a worth great enough to warrant the affirmation of life even in the absence of any transcendently supplied meaning’. At the same time, community remains a problematic concept for Nietzsche. He sees sociality as vital to human well-being, but in its wake, ‘the herd’ and Permanence is always a danger. As a metaphor for what Nietzsche sees as the forever unsettled relation between individual and collective, Zarathustra’s relation to his own followers remains ambivalent and strained. ‘I’, says Zarathustra, ‘want companions, not disciples or subordinates.’
Nietzsche’s philosophical project is a constant combat with the forces of Permanence, and through the voice of Zarathustra, he tries to show his readers that a community of the active can, in fact, exist. Nietzsche’s community of free spirits is always developing, always changing, continuously alert and seeking for new knowledge, always revaluing and creating.
This form of community, says Nietzsche, does not have to be synchronic, but can, as change itself, be understood as motion through time and space. Each act of liberation in the present can have positive repercussions for the future. In a world of eternal change, this is the closest we, in fact, come to permanence, everlasting truth and immortality, he argues:
If one now goes on to consider that…every action performed by a human being becomes in some way the cause of other actions, decisions, thoughts, that everything that happens is inextricably knotted to everything that will happen, one comes to recognize the existence of an actual immortality, that of motion: what has once moved is enclosed and eternalized in the total union of all being like an insect in an amber. (Nietzsche, 1996, p. 97, emphasis in original)
Choosing Change can Bring Change
Through this ‘motion’, creative action which may have been motivated by an individual’s search for knowledge and/or affirmation of life can thus have direct or indirect side effects that can cross time, space and generations. Past, present and future are thus connected though continuous creative action.
Such ongoing processes and discourses can have tremendous social and cultural effects, and can even create new cultures and communities if they are left open and free (Lønning, 2009). American novelist, Eric Hoffer, once said: ‘In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.’ 3 Hoffer’s point here—a point illustrated also in our discussion of the Ottoman Empire—is important: Permanence and Change are opposite constructions of being not only as essences but also as consequences. Whether the one or the other is the true nature of the universe is a question we will probably never be able to answer. More acute, then, is what principle/value we choose as foundation for our individual and collective socio-cultural constructions.
Many would argue that this choice is culturally constructed. We can see how the human response to this fundamental challenge varies through time and place. In many American Indian tribes, the holy, Manitu, is closely connected to an understanding of proximity and eternal change (Pirsig, 1992). At other places or at other points in human history, we find extreme examples of cultural models where everything is preordained and the room for internal change minimal or even non-existent.
Establishing and sustaining ‘eternal truths’—and the concomitant combating of change—has created large civilizations and expanding empires. At the same time, we have historical examples of how the choice of Change as collective discourse and socio-cultural building block can lead to a rich flourishing of human creation and innovation. The free and public thinking that characterized ancient Greece has had a decisive influence on Western cultural and ideational heritage. What was the reason for this tremendous explosion of creative thought and reflection? This occurred, says Nietzsche (1993), because of a lack of predefined and established truths. All values could be discussed and potentially revalued, again and again (Nietzsche, 2001, 2003).
More or less, the same happens in the heart of Europe 2,000 years later. ‘Renaissance’ means ‘rebirth’, and what we see is the rebirth of the free reflection that founded ancient Greece. With Florence as its starting point, a creative explosion spreads across Europe. Reflexive man is reborn and lights up a dark and stagnated continent trying to recover from many years of inquisition—Permanence in its most extreme form.
In The Island of the Day Before, Umberto Eco (1996) shows how this period of European history was characterized by a liberated, explorative and challenging relation to being and the world. The one and dominant truth—Permanence—has lost, and human life and being opens to become a project of liberation and a journey towards new knowledge.
The contemporary focus on the power of human creativity, innovation, and thus agency, indicates that we ourselves live in an age where ideas of Permanence are being constantly questioned and challenged. Modernity’s large-scale ideologies and narratives have, at least partially, been supplanted by the far more local, small-scale and human-near narratives of post-modernity (Bauman, 1993; Jencks, 1992; Lønning, 2003). We may hope that room for Change, and thus for homo ludens (‘playful man’), will continue to grow. Only through freedom to experiment with new ideas, locally and globally, will we humans be able to find those new and much-needed—sustainable—paths into the future.
Change is the Only Eternal Truth
Human history has no example of permanent Permanence. All large civilizations and empires that have been built on ideas of Permanence have sooner or later been consumed and/or overthrown by the subtle but yet pervasive forces of change.
Thus, the core of the Heraclitean message—a message reiterated by Nietzsche—is as follows: Change is the only eternal truth and value. Strategies for meaningful and productive action in a world of change must themselves be eternally changing. This is to act in accordance with the wise counsel of Italian Duke and writer, Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (2007), who argued that if you want something to stay as it is, this something has to change.
These are challenging and demanding strategies. However, the alternative would be to act in a changing world by the use of strategies adapted to yesterday or something that once was, approaches that would make us unable to make productive use of the opening and potentials that change always produce.
Change is an aspect of the world, and is in itself neither good nor evil. We as humans construct change as a moral concept/process, and it is this construction that decides our attitudes to it. Change can be our friend, says Heraclitus, and we have nothing to gain by making it an enemy. Being friend with change is to turn it into a tool for the promotion of our own local values and interests. If, on the other hand, we make change our enemy, the focus and energy we could have invested in innovation will have to be used to build defence works.
Participation in a world of Change requires continuous creative and innovative action, as this world in itself is always emerging and new. Albeit being ‘abnormal’ in the West (Rorty, 1999), these ideas are more ‘normal’ in Eastern philosophy and religion. In this ancient Buddhist hymn, it is argued that being part of change can also lead to happiness: ‘All things in this world are impermanent. They have the nature to rise and pass away. To be in harmony with this truth brings true happiness.’