A New Thing

How do we get there?

This is the way we always have done it. That must make it good and right, right? This is the way things always have been. That means we must simply accept them as they are, right? As someone who was grafted into the oral tradition of tap dance, I have spent a great portion of my life navigating the obvious tension that arises between tradition and innovation. That is, what has always been done, and the possibility of a new thing.

How many times in the course of history has the natural disruption that comes from encountering a new way resulted in backlash. Gosh, how many buzz words can I fit in the first seven sentences of this note?! Tradition, innovation, disruption, backlash – how familiar have we become with the dynamic that these words describe? The dynamic, and the experiences many have had with them, sets these words in opposition of each other. If tradition is good, innovation is bad, for example. Alternatively, if innovation is good, tradition must be bad. To go even further, if innovation is good, then disruption is good, and backlash is bad. This goes even deeper. The people who provide backlash against innovation and disruption are considered bad. While innovators and disrupters are considered good. Or, notably vice versa. As each word is valued differently the forces within the dynamic change. I don’t think it has to be that way.

This tension between tradition, innovation, disruption, and backlash is about change. There is plenty of literature about change focused on a multitude of areas of life – personal change, organizational change, and social change, for example. I think it is fair to say that most people wouldn’t invest in change unless they think they are moving towards something better than what they have. There are many stories of people being averse to change, even stuck, but I have yet to hear of someone who purposely made a change that they thought would have a worse outcome for their life from their perspective. The idea that change has to be for the better from the individual’s perspective is key. It sets the responsibility and agency for the change squarely in the hands of the person either engaging in or resisting, but either way being affected by the change.

Here there is another important thing to think about. That is, what happens when the change we are experiencing is “out of our control.” We may initiate many of the changes in our lives – the pursuit of a new job, a new relationship, or a new place to live for example. However, there are often significant changes for which the initiative was not ours. One example might be the larger shifts of economies – contractions, expansions, or the raising and lowering of inflation, for example. Another more localized example might be the moving out and in of new neighbors. This example brings about the loss of the old neighbor and the unknown of the new neighbor. Both scales of change here are out of our control except for the way in which we respond to them, which is important to remember.

For our purposes, a kind of bottom line is the fact that change simply happens. Sometimes more often or in more ways than we might like. Other times, not often enough or with enough variety for us. But there it is, happening even at the cellular level in ourselves and in the world around us. If change is such a constant, then having a way of thinking through the processes of change and importantly the newness that change often leads to can be a very good thing to have.

This week I’m going to use the four words we mentioned earlier – tradition, innovation, disruption, and backlash – in thinking about what coming to a new thing in a good way might look like.

Tradition

Tradition is the organization and solidification of a way, idea, or model into regular activities. Traditions come into being in the same way habits come into being, but are often focused on the social scale, rather than the individual. A tradition evolves from a way, idea, or model that is expressed in an activity that is deemed to be good for the community. The activities might be a gathering, a practice, or a pilgrimage, for example. Each activity points back to something about the community – who the people are. However, these kinds of traditions need continual support, remembering, in order to serve their purpose. Sometimes, in the evolution of a community, some may forget why or how the tradition began, but there it is. Often it retains its meaning, while the genesis story is lost to time. Sometimes the meaning of the tradition is lost to time as well. This is dangerous territory for the survival of the tradition and the formation of the community as traditions provide structure, intergenerational context, and ways, ideas, or models that inform the formation of the community. They are, in a word, important.

Traditions go bad when they work against the ongoing formation of the community. When the traditions begin to serve themselves and not the people, or when the people can’t see the good that the traditions provide, things go bad fairly quickly. However, ongoing inquiry as to the good of a particular tradition for the sake of the people involved can keep everyone engaged, the tradition relevant, and the formation of the community supported.

Innovation

We live in a world in which the idea of change, experimentation, even newness is idolized. Innovators are lifted up among the masses, and new inventions are seen a good first. These social responses often happen with little regard for the consequences of the innovations themselves. The momentum of our time serves those that innovate, adapt, and trailblaze.

And what would the world be like without innovation? Consider all the small things we may take for granted that allow us to have the life we currently have. Someone, somewhere, had to think it up and bring it to life. Everything from modes of transportation, roads, models of distribution of goods and media, even new ideas in the arts – sounds in music, applications of mediums in the visual arts, techniques and technology in film making and editing, and much more. There is even innovation in the practice of rethinking, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Innovation is worthwhile, even necessary, as a response to the context of constant change we live in. It becomes more thoughtful, even compassionate, when coupled with consideration of the consequences on those affected by the application of what is new.

Disruption

With the advent of every new thing there is a disruption to the status quo. The disruption has nothing to do with the value of the new thing. It will happen regardless of whether the new thing is good or not. The disruption is simply the experience of the old way, idea, or model being challenged by the new thing.

When I teach on Oral Traditions, I like to give this example of an intergenerational disruption. Imagine a set of parents listening to a particular kind of music that has, in a profound way, shaped their lives. The music has reinforced the ways, ideas, and models of what life might be like for them, and their family. Here come their kids, now in their teenage years, starting to make different choices in the music they want to listen to. It’s a new thing. The kids are exploring different ways, ideas, and models, as expressed in their generation’s music and it disrupts the world of the parents. The parents respond, often arguing with their kids about the style of the music. What kind of music (or garbage) are you listening to? We can imagine one of the parents asking. What they are really responding to is the disruption of the tradition of music listening that is integral to their conception of the family identity.

In many industries today, being a disruptor is considered a badge of honor. Searching for areas that are calcified to shake up, is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is not necessarily a good thing either.

Backlash

I like to think of backlash as the force of a magnet trying to pull an object, currently being pulled away from it, back to itself. Habits of thought and action are like magnets. They like to hold us to themselves. When we try to pull away (innovate or change), we experience tension between the force pulling us toward the new thing and the force of the magnet (disruption). If we respond with the energy of the force of the magnet, back towards the old habit of thought and action, we express the backlash.

Another way of thinking about backlash is our body remembering the old way, in the midst of experiencing a new thing, and not being happy about it. This is quite common during major life changes – moving across states or countries, for example, or entering into a new relationship. The body will remember how things used to happen and without much conscious effort proceed in thinking and acting in the old way, while existing in the new thing. This is internal backlash. We bump into the reality that the old way may not be applicable anymore. We might pine or mourn – yet we are already in the new thing. Our body simply has not caught up.

Backlash is often seen as a negative attribute. It can be severe, fueled by anger, and have little regard for its own impact on others to be sure. However, one way to approach backlash is to think about it as a filter. There are a few questions that we can pose here, but all of them really revolve around a similar idea. There are things in the past that have indeed been good for us. In light of this new thing we are in now, is there anything that I should remember from the past?

A New Thing

I’m sitting at dinner with a few friends and the conversation turns to transformation. We jump around a lot in our conversation. We touch on the challenge of change, especially at a social level; the seeming requirement of old things to pass away for new things to be born; and somehow land on the idea that envisioning the new thing is a key aspect in entering the new well. How great of a new thing must this new thing be for us to be willing to let the old things pass away? How much desire for this new thing must be there for the challenge of change – the resistance – to turn into ease, even comfort in the process? There is an underlying assumption we made as we spoke that no one brought up. That is, we must trust that even what we can’t see of the new thing is going to be good.

That’s just it. A new thing is new. We can’t see everything ahead of the new thing coming to life. If it is truly new, it isn’t related in any way to whatever is old. Especially whatever we might be used to. If it isn’t related to whatever is old, we are caught without a frame of reference, a grid, or any similar way to ground ourselves in the new thing. How then might we begin to be okay with what a new thing brings?

When the world around us is changing, when new things abound, we might consider changing our frame of reference for the sake of walking into the new thing well. Trusting our own expertise and past experiences limits our field of view, especially if we are truly desiring to enter the new thing. Trusting something larger than ourselves may make a world of difference here. The propositions of Jesus provide an explicit who that we might keep company with as we experience entering what is new.

For the follower of Jesus this takes on a specific dimension of thinking. Being with Jesus, with the Father, and with the Father’s active Spirit, can dramatically shift our experience of all aspects of change. Instead of holding on to traditions for their own sake, we hold them lightly for the sake of the love they allow to grow in us and in others. Traditions become more malleable and their initial purposes clearer. Instead of driving towards innovation for its own sake, we seek to be involved in what God is already doing – the new things God is always working to bring about in our own lives and the lives of our neighbors. Instead of experiencing disruption as a negative, we become curious about the formative aspects of disruption – what is being removed to make space for what is new? What needs to be let go of for the new thing to be grasped? And lastly, instead of reacting with or to backlash we become curious about the magnets in our lives. What am I being drawn back to? What kind of feelings and thoughts does this new thing bring up for me or others? How might I honor those feelings and thoughts while still moving towards the new thing?

I’m going to be exploring more about how the idea of who we are with can dramatically shift our experience of change as we become who we are to become. In the meantime, as a supporting subscriber of The Notes, you can continue a deeper exploration with me, with guided questions based on this week’s note at Asking the Questions.