A Look at Change

 As I was thinking about the nature of change, I realized that change has been the central theme of my entire professional career. The practice of social work is all about change. No matter what area of social work we’re talking about, the primary product of the work is change. In my early days just out of college I worked in a Juvenile Court with youthful offenders. The object there was to provide the tools and consequences to stop these boys and girls from committing more crimes. I moved on to child welfare, dealing with adults who were abusing and/or neglecting their children. Change in those cases is obvious. Those folks had to make big changes in their parenting practices or risk losing their children, sometimes permanently. The stakes are pretty high in that arena. After some years of that, I supervised social workers in a public assistance office. The stakes weren’t quite as high, but the need for change was still significant. Our task there was to assist people to transition (or change) from dependence to a life of self-sufficiency. I understood many of those who needed our help did not cause their own situation- but the need to change was ever-present no matter how you got there.

Then I changed too. After twenty years of social work with the State of Washington, I changed to working in a private agency and back again to child welfare. It was here that I finally began to understand how change really happens. Imagine that, after twenty years of being relatively successful in a profession that deals with change, I finally started to get it.

The first twenty years of practicing social work in a state bureaucracy was more about trying to get people to comply rather than change. In the state bureaucracy, behavior was rule-driven and always accompanied by adverse consequences for breaking the rules. “Go to drug treatment or you lose your kids”-“take that parenting class or see a therapist or I will take this to Court”- “Go to WorkSource, cooperate, or we’ll cut your assistance”-“turn in your papers on time or you’ll lose your food stamps and medical”.  In my next job I learned that real change can only occur when the person: 1. recognizes the need for change internally; 2. is invested in the change; and 3. is part of the process of change. We simply employed a different (and much better) way of dealing with change in human behavior than at my old job. It’s hardly a revolutionary idea- it’s been known forever. The problem is that it is hard to do in a fast paced bureaucracy or with those who have never valued the process of genuine change. This lesson was brought home to me even more by being around people who were going through treatment for addition. Attempting to change addictive behavior is a real study in the difference between compliance and genuine change. It’s so easy to see, because addicts who don’t engage in genuine change can’t hide it very well. The facade of compliance breaks down pretty fast in the drug world.

Perhaps  much more of the human experience deals with change than we realize. Even as most of us constantly strive for consistency in our daily lives, change is the only constant. As humans, our physical and intellectual development progresses at a (relatively) much faster pace than many other species. This is most true for our intellectual development. Our human intellect is the superior intellect on the planet. That is, we have more intellectual capacity than any other species- so our increase in that capacity out paces all other species. But we are social animals too, and social concerns and situations are a cause for constant change. And with all that intellectual capacity, along with emotional and social responses we sometimes make bad choices or get on the wrong course. I think all of us make course corrections, adjustments and changes because we come to understand that the result will improve our condition. There are a lot of variables in our lives; jobs, relationships, economies, politics, environment, etc. that all inform us about the need to change. Sometimes we realize that where we stand, and what we believe is just wrong. We discover new information, or the world around us changes -and we find our old ways of thinking and acting don’t work anymore. So we’re faced with that age-old dilemma of instituting real change, or just going through the motions and appearing to change. It’s a real dilemma for some because real change can be uncomfortable. It requires us to do an honest evaluation of ourselves- and it sometimes requires us to alter our belief systems in order to internalize new behaviors and new ideas.

Today’s Republican Party is a great example of how difficult change can be. They were beaten pretty soundly in the last election because their positions did not resonate with a majority of Americans on very basic issues. They failed the policy test in relating to minorities. They failed the policy test on economic justice and fairness issues. They failed the policy test on women’s issues. They failed the policy test on social issues. They failed the policy test on basic governance by being obstructionists. In other words, most Republican positions were roundly rejected by a majority of the people. They have been out-voted in the popular vote for President in 5 of the last 6 elections. Even in the House of Representatives a million more people voted for Democrats than Republicans this year (only gerrymandered districts allowed a GOP majority in the House). This is a good case for change because the world around them is changing and the old ideas don’t work anymore. Republican Gov. Jindal called his own party “The Stupid Party”. There is ample reason for change if the party wants to survive, but they demonstrate how hard change can be. It seems they only want the appearance of change- not real change. They realize they got creamed at the ballot box- but instead of honestly reassessing their relevance, they decided the best thing to do is try to fool us. It’s the same thing  desperate drug addicts do to maintain their lives without being committed to real sobriety. It never works. Consider these actions since the election: Still haven’t passed the Violence Against Women Act in the House; still haven’t solved the long-term fiscal cliff issues; threatening to let the sequestered cuts happen (against every economic warning for this) instead of considering tax reform; Republican State Houses in four states moving on personhood bills and trans-vaginal probes being forced on women; immigration proposals that claim a path to citizenship, but are impossible to achieve; filibuster on a Cabinet nominee for DOD (never before done in the history of the nation!); and continuous protection of the wealthy while proposing budget cuts that hurt the middle class and the poor. 

Instead of real introspection and change that is internally motivated and genuine, the Republicans say they aren’t wrong- they just didn’t do a good enough job of telling their story. Instead of re-thinking a failed immigration policy, they just repackage the old ideas and send a Tea Party Republican with a Spanish sir-name out to sell it. Instead of denouncing the failed sexual politics of redefining rape, making contraception harder to get, using unnecessary medical procedures against women, and failing to pass a Violence Against Women Act- they just double-down on the same policies while telling us the Party is different now. It shows that institutional change is sometimes the hardest change to achieve, and why institutions tend to flounder so long before they eventually fail. Another prime example of institutional change being so difficult is the case of the Catholic Church. The Church has endured scandal after scandal in its long history with great schisms that had world-wide implications- but they have always successfully resisted change. Today the Church is in a long period of floundering. Church attendance is at record lows in Europe, Catholicism’s home court, because too many closest to the Church simply view it as irrelevant, corrupt, and unwilling to consider real and meaningful change. The same is true in North America. But, change that is not internally motivated will likely never happen- so it will be with the church. As long as the same people (or same kind of people) can hang on to the vestiges of power in the structure of the Church there is no real motive to change. But when institutions finally find themselves with no followers they either cease to exist, or reinvent themselves out of desperate necessity.

Change is always occurring and, I think those people and those institutions that are open to change are the ones that have the greatest long-term success. But openness to change is more than a stated position- the evidence of genuine change can only be measured in actions. A political party that claims change, but does the same things and has the same policies, has not changed. A church that claims to have learned from past mistakes but continues the same practices has not changed. And a person who professes to change but behaves the same has not changed.

I wanted to write about this topic because I truly believe we are in a period of great social and political change. I believe better times are ahead after we get past the tensions, conflicts, and dynamics of change that are gripping us now. I believe that those who are open to our constant evolution and inevitable changes will emerge in a better world.

Thanks for looking in.