There is a key difference between change and transformation.
We often speak of "change"--as a potent political slogan, as a permanent feature of life, as a "good thing"--but we rarely speak of the often-wrenching process of change. I think the reason is self-evident: change often involves loss.
This is why
Kubler-Ross's five stages of grief --denial, anger, bargaining, resignation and acceptance--have become an increasingly mainstream model of the process of coming to terms with the losses of declining asset valuations, a devolving economy and a lower standard of living.
But change is not just about loss and grieving, though it may include those attributes; it's also about transformation. While I am sympathetic to the process of accepting losses, it is the process of transformation which motivates and inspires me.
That the Status Quo--dependent on ever-rising debt and asset values, on cheap, abundant energy, food and other resources--is unsustainable, is self-evident to all not firmly lodged in the cocoon of self-deception and magical thinking known as denial. It follows that the Status Quo will devolve or implode within the next 10-15 years, and be replaced by some other arrangement.
Precisely what that arrangement will be is what I term the Great Transformation. The proper way to think about this great social and economic transformation is to think of personal transformation, for as correspondent Bart D. recently observed, "society is a fractal function of the individuals of which it is composed," which boiled down to its essence means the process of transformation scales up from an individual to a household, group and eventually to an entire culture in a self-same fashion.
In other words, the process of transformation is essentially the same all along the spectrum.
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