World Crisis of Too Much Change

Can Social Change Overwhelm Society?

There is in some quarters a sense of malaise in Western societies. Some believe the society must change to fit new ideas. Others believe society has changed so much it is no longer their home. Identity has become a source of separation as much as belonging. Social change is the fissle material of the polycrisis, the world crisis that I am exploring in seven dimensions in this series of essays.

The polycrisis is haunted by fears of social breakdown and anxieties that our models of society have already broken down. Often these fears find their way into projections, or the rejected shadows in Jungian terms. Social collapse is a nightmare, and a post-apocalyptic dystopia. It is rarely predicted for our own societies, our managed, Western liberal democratic societies. But it is projected onto others. Russia is predicted to fall into the chaos of civil war. The Global South is always presented in Netflix and Hollywood movies as seething, violent realms of social chaos. The projections also are pushed onto ever-changing groups of outsiders within our societies - refugees, deplorables, the marginalised, the deplorables, the anti-vaxxers, the Putin puppets.

The grand masters of the polycrisis like to celebrate social change For some, change becomes their purpose in life. But for others, especially since Brexit 2016, there has been a concern that change has pushed too hard against the limits of people’s tolerance. Societies need change, or rather “change” emerges effectively from common social processes. But societies also need continuity. There needs to be a certain level of predictability and mutual intelligibility of social relationships, processes and institutions. We need to be able to speak a common language with those we talk with or make requests of. We need security, to know our houses will not be raided or our streets set on fire. We need stable assumptions to raise families and to make plans for our lives.