I have returned, and with all difficult tasks finished I can finally focus on the things I really enjoy doing. Which are, in no particular order: writing; watching Doctor Who; obsessing over my nutrition and last but definitely not least ‘turning the wheel’. Naturally it is this last subject that will be the focus for today’s philosophy lesson.

Men abhor change. Let this truth be known to all. Simply put, the overwhelming majority of people dislike most, if not any, form of change. Call it anecdotal evidence if you will, but nearly everyone I know has not substantially changed in any way. They still work the exact same job, eat the exact same food, but more disturbingly; they still have the exact same daily routine and have not done anything exciting in over a year. And with ‘exciting’ I don’t count your two week stay in a 4-star Greek hotel, those are about as exciting as clipping your toe-nails.

The reason for this is something I have considered long and hard and after long deliberation I have dubbed it ‘Social Inertia’, although I’m sure some psychologist came up with it before me (please tell me if you know which). Because I don’t know how to describe the term with words alone, I will invoke several examples of the phenomenon and hope the point comes across. Consider one or multiple of the following scenario’s; you have just started college/university, you have just started working at a new job, you have just joined a new (sports) club. What do all these things have in common? If you’re answer is ‘they’re new’, you’re halfway there. What is even more true is that all are accompanied by the same alien feeling. In all three examples you may feel uncomfortable because you, for example, don’t know anyone. Now isn’t this an odd feeling? Isn’t it an awful feeling? Yet why do I only rarely see people talk to strangers? And if they do, why do people tend to form small groups of friends instead of forming small groups of friends and getting to know the rest of the class/department/team? Bam, Social Inertia is a bitch. Although it must be said that joining a club is a rather different league, seeing as the person probably actually made the effort to join something.

What I’m going at here is that people tend to resist change. For a grand scale; look at the political theatre of many democracies. How much has actually changed in the past 5 years? For a more personal scale; do YOU have anything at all that you’d ‘like to do’ but don’t because you’re either think you’re not good enough (athletics, dancing, chess etcetera) or because it requires some (initial) effort?

Then we have the other end of the spectrum. Some people would laugh at everything written above. These are the people that thrive on change. These are the travelers and adventurers of the world. They are the explorers of old and the fun people with active (traveling) lifestyles of today. Unfortunately these people tend to have shorter attention spans and will typically get bored by repetitive action (e.g. keeping the same job) after several months to a year. But this is all irrelevant, for I claim these people have more fun in life. I base this claim on nothing but personal observations and anecdotes though, so you may take it with a grain of salt. On the other hand, it is the bases of my entire worldview.

You see, I seem to have taken the short-end of the universal lottery with my personality. Combine someone of category A with category B and you get a person with high Social Inertia (general shyness etcetera) but who also bores quickly. Hence I formulated my philosophy of ‘Turning the Wheel’ from the introductory paragraph. Turning the Wheel, or simply Wheel-philosophy refers to any change, ranging from very good to moderately bad (I specifically state moderately, losing a limb is never a good thing). Turning the Wheel for me involved changing cities, getting actually hobbies and doing stuff I would have never thought I could do (acrobatics, juggling) a year ago. Unfortunately for me, after 7 months I already feel the cool stony grip of boredom approaching, thus more wheelturning is needed. A major change in diet functioned well as my last ‘fix’.

The mental image of a rotating wheel serves another purpose. When a rotating wheel comes to mind, it may either swirl in place or move over a surface. Consider the wheel riding uphill. As you turn your wheel, taste the variety of life, gaining experience is unavoidable. Hence, riding uphill you are not only having more fun, you are also improving yourself, which is always desirable over stagnation. This because for every improvement you gain skills, and every skill makes you a more interesting person.

Now I wish to close this delirious talk of a madmen with a simple message and/or creed;

The Wheel Must Turn.

Always try to improve, always try new things, always learn new skills, but above all; never feel complacent, never stagnate progress, even bad progress may be better in the long run than stagnation and inertia.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.