This longish rant has three parts. Part 1 deals with removing the Klingon Cloaking Device covering what passes for reality today; Part 2 deals with the psychology of resistance to change; Part 3 talks about what wants to happen but is being blocked.

But before I start, a couple of notes. If you are easily offended by the unvarnished truth – then stop reading right now. This may hurt your snowflake fee fees[1]. This blog is an abbreviated version of a much more detailed analysis replete with refences and bibliography currently under construction. Happy to share with you if you wish.

Someone who read my set-up piece last month speculated that I was framing up Armageddon. Not being well-schooled in that mythology, I did some studying. Well, dah! Maybe I am. You may want to check the motivating spiritual perspectives of Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo, and Mike Pence to name a few. Anyone want a side Order of Opus Dei? Appears to me they are actively working to bring about the Gog/Magog confrontation.

Part 1 – “You Can’t Handle the Truth” COL Nathan R. Jessep

Now that the Cloaking Shield has been lifted, what is the reality?

President Trump is NOT the causal element in our strife-torn world. He is a symptom. This disease vector has been active since 1980 in the United States and has metastasized in the last decade. A good anthropologist could, with some study, see the same patterns emerging in England, Poland, Israel, Saudi Arabia, China, Brazil, Philippines … well, you get the picture.

Common wisdom among the punditry class has it exactly backwards. The President isn’t promoting his “deny, deflect, distract” bullying persona to shift attention away from himself. Nope, it’s the PMS Class[2] that is using HIM, as THIER useful idiot, to deflect attention from what they are promulgating. Don the Con is being conned. Such a rube.

The cloaking device is activated and maintained by the media (cue picture of Robert Murdoch or David Koch here). Never mind the man behind the curtain, watch the idiot on center stage. Stay focused on that while we rob you blind and insidiously rot representative democracy from inside.

IMHO the cancers of hate, greed and delusion have metastasized everywhere. Buddhists call these “the three poisons” and they are viewed as the root causes of all other negative mental states that block awakening and enlightenment. I jokingly refer to our current cloaked state of perception as “an Age of Endarkenment.”

The real deal isn’t what is front and center in the ad revenue-driven media mind, nor the pre-adolescent Twittersphere. It’s what is going on off to the side, all of which I rather spelled out last month.

You don’t agree with me? Keep asking two questions. Where’s the money coming from and going to? Who stands to gain in personal power? And maybe oh yes, why are the sheeple so stupid?

Part 2 – What Gets in the Way of Change?

Just what is that these scions of society (insert gag reflex sound effect here) are resisting? I’ll get to that in Part 3 but I want to give you a new lens through which to view what some call the “resistance” on the Left and the foggy image of “return to greatness” on the Right. This is the scary part because it portends a very dark, black path.  Does “She’s going to go through some things” ring a bell?

What we see and hear every day is really the behavior of fighting against change – a change so large and encompassing it provokes a massive response. Why is this so frightening to the entrenched establishment. Because it not only threatens their personal power and status among their peers, but the very reason for their existence. Not to put too fine a point on it but what’s coming calls into question their very relevance. They know they are headed toward the dustbin of history and they don’t like it. So, it gets very stupid.

What’s Going on Inside Their Bubble Heads?

When faced with a life situation that requires people to change their behavior, attitudes or ultimately their fundamental belief systems, people resist. It’s not so much they are resisting the change, they are resisting having change forced on them. They will resist with varying levels of reaction. The deeper the change required, the more severe the reaction. And we have some deep stuff happening here.

Until folks realize that the pain to remain in the current state is greater than the pain to be suffered in making the change, people will resist. But there are varying levels of change. For example, think of the pain involved in:

• “Weight Watchers” requiring behavior and attitude adjustment
• Military indoctrination requiring complete behavior and attitude adoption of new peer group.
• Addiction recovery requiring not only new behaviors, attitudes, and social group but also an acceptance of new beliefs – the proverbial “come to Jesus” moment.

See the pattern? You go from “merely” modifying routine behavior to a spiritual epiphany. Let’s scale that.

This diagram shows the severity of resistance scales from mild curiosity to outright hostility.  It begins at the bottom (we call this Level 0) – meeting people where they are currently. Next up is Level 1 and so on. Experience tells us that it takes approximately six months of concentrated personal development work to move through these levels. So, beginning at Level 0 where people are curious about what you are offering to Level 2 and removal of all resistance would be a 12-month process.

And the next level up (Level 3 – Disrespect) would be work on trust as a foundation that usually is a team process. And so on. I think right now that the PMS’ers are at the “Anger” level. The danger is moving into “hostility.” It will take the average Bill and Betty Six-Pack about three years to move from mild curiosity to outright hostility. Gee, you think there is a pattern here?

Basically, folks are locked into a response pattern. They are locked in there because they stopped developing new capabilities and capacities forty years ago. Their mentality is frozen in time. You gotta grow or you gotta go, me thinks. In the interests of brevity, let me move on. But not without a closing observation.

When resistance to change comes from your power/status being changed by an uncontrollable outside force you can expect hostility. But that hostility can be directed inward or outward. Inward hostility is depression, hopelessness, alienation and ultimately self-harm actions, marked by increases in  suicides rates, opioid addiction, alcohol abuse. Go check the stats and you’ll see what people are doing. (Hint: look at the geographic distribution.)

Let’s move on to what is wanting to happen – that thing that scares the shit out of “resisters.”

Part 3 – Someone Hit the “Reset” Button

Paraphrasing Warren Buffet’s comment about bull stock markets:

“Democracy is like sex; it feels best just before it’s over.”

I’ve been writing for a while about the on-rushing wave of fundamental change that is sweeping over the old industrial order of our world. I believe that what is occurring—what has everyone’s thoughts and fears all twisted up—is more than a routine swing in the “business cycle.” No less an expert than Jeff Immelt, former CEO of General Electric, said it best: “Someone hit the re-set button.”

In this blog I’m going to quickly drill deep down on just what this systemic the re-structuring will look like. This is the “what wants to happen” part. Let me begin by examining the basic characteristics of transformation – yes, transformation and not mere “change.”

What is a “Transformation”?

Fundamental transformation of anything has four basic dimensions: it is irreversible, it is substantive, it changes your identity, and it shifts the purpose of leaders – this is what scares the bejebus out of the PMS’ers.  

Transformations are irreversible: We’re now changing in ways that go beyond mere shifts in opinion. The interaction of technological, personal, and organizational forces is giving us an education that obliges us to view the world in a completely different way. At the end of this transformation, we won’t be able to give up the new knowledge and revert to our old ways of knowing. Butterflies can’t go back and become caterpillars again. There is no “wayback” machine.

Transformations are substantive: Transformations create new realities that are greater than the sum of their parts. For example, you don’t transform by moving into positions of more power and authority; you move into positions of substantively different, and often richer, kinds of power and authority. Kings evolve into presidents, CEO’s into talent managers. This is why we are perplexed at the moment because it seems the exact opposite is happening. Think of it as Mercury in retrograde: it appears to be moving backwards but it isn’t. It’s just our vantage point relative to the move.

Transformations change who you are in the world: If everything around you is changing in substantive and irreversible ways, then who you are in the world must be changing too. Identity is a most powerful force in our lives; all transformations (if indeed they are transformations) involve a change in identity. Key to this new way of being in the world is who you are in the world in relation to others. In the world we’re transforming into people are no longer defined by their “job” or their company affiliation; they are defined—and they define themselves—by the social network(s) in which they are enmeshed. (Don’t go by the baseball caps they have on – those are just a mask.)

Transformation shifts your purpose: Right now, we see an emerging awareness that there is an interconnected web of existence. The important question then becomes: What is your purpose within that web? From an economic point of view purpose today must include more than “commercial profitability.” Now it also includes environmental and moral considerations. And, if I may, an obligation to be in service of your fellow man.

Putting Transformation into Perspective

History has given us numerous examples of fundamental transformations. The shift from medieval to modern civilization is the one we all share as a cultural history. There were others too: for example, think about the earlier shift from a Greek cultural dominance to a Roman one. That was far more significant than most of us today can even imagine. And we have all seen transformations at a personal level, e.g., recovery from addiction, a religious conversion, shifting one’s lifestyle after a severe accident or near-fatal disease. Our point is that we (as a Western society) are currently moving together through another profound transformation.

Individuals, communities, and societies will never be the same. The changes we’re now experiencing are affecting how we earn our livelihood, how we learn, how we organize our communities and, even more fundamentally, how we see ourselves and think about what we are doing on this planet. If, as I submit, these are the characteristics of “our becoming,” then, looking at the events around us through this lens should help us focus on investing our time, energy, and resources into efforts that will further enable the transformation, not fight against it.

To be clear (I love lawyer talk – here’s lookin’ at you Rudy baby,) let’s take one last look:

Purpose. Again, in my humble opinion, purpose must now include more than profit for companies, and, for communities, must be more than simply a place to live and to consume goods and services. And it has to be about stewardship of the environment and investment in structures and processes that build social capital. Compassion and grace for those around us, and for those we can’t even see on the other side of the planet.

Wrap Up

The Klingon Cloaking Shield has kept us from seeing the real nature of resistance to change. This change (I prefer a more fundamental word – transformation) is what is being fought against. The Old Order must fall away. Evolution marches on and humankind must adapt or perish. Embrace the transformation – step into it, go with the flow.

My guess is that older life forms like dinosaurs didn’t embrace change or perceive its onset. And they calmly lumbered around stepping on those little furry mammal things scurrying about in the weeds. Then Whamo! There it was.

Take us out Don. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yHTpGog0IY

---

[2] Sister Rebecca coined this phrase. Pale, Male and Stale (PMS). Take a closer look at our current political (and corporate for that matter) leadership. The snark in me says we are experiencing massive “man-o-pause.”

[1] Pure snark. Feelings of those habitually offended by inane comments.