Gradualism

Change can appear to happen out of the blue. And while the appearance is illusory– from nothing comes nothing, as the Greeks well knew– it occasionally happens that an idea or event or a chance occurrence creates such a disruption that the network as a whole must adjust itself to the new reality.

A new idea, if it catches on at all, usually does so slowly and brings about no major modification of the culture. But it can also take hold quickly and produce dramatic and lasting consequences. Relatively sudden turns do happen, even while gradual change remains the norm and continuity, in any case, remains.

Transitional periods exhibit more dramatic changes. But the point is often exaggerated and the impression given that a particular episode caused such a violent upheaval that it must be utterly without precedent. History contains many surprises but no miracles. And while a given occurrence will sometimes initiate a cascading effect that is dramatic and unforeseeable, conversational continuity remains.

Any cultural element becomes more by being shared, exchanged, refined, or otherwise taken up into an economy of artifacts. And it’s the condition of any living culture to remain in some measure open to challenge, from both within and without.

Received elements are not frozen in time but are interpreted anew by each generation and are brought into new combinations that suit the requirements and the preferences of the time. Interlocutors in this general process don’t always share the same agenda and often speak past each other but the larger picture remains one of shared participation in a way of life and a struggle that is had in common.

Homo sapiens is at once a biological and a cultural being. Even force relations in the realm of human affairs are inseparable from meanings that are, in every case, socially shared and negotiated in the conversation that is a culture.

A turn within it is often misjudged as advancing or retreating, depending largely on its bearing upon the present, and should be regarded, in the context of its time, as arising from and leading to a particular set of historical conditions which bind human beings into an historical community.