Everybody like the idea of effecting change, and not only because they can use “effect” as a verb. Teachers exhort their students to go effect change. Politicians call upon countrymen to effect change. I think, on its own, that this is terrible advice. Why? Bad effects. (Note the parallelism - you can’t get that ish in a Bush SotU speech.)

Not to go all Burkean on you - Long live the Whigs! - but if we have two arguments, one for maintaining the status quo and one for change, that seem more or less the same in their benefits, we ought stick with the status quo.  The effect of the change is only an expected effect, while the status quo is a known quantity; given our natural risk aversion, Burke’s argument is borderline tautological.  I think history, particularly that of the Twentieth Century, bears this out.

We count those who got women the vote, ended colonialism, and fought for civil rights among those in favor of change.  These are all good things (though I must note that the 19th Amendment was soon followed by the 21st, and thus women’s suffrage appears to have pushed us gentlemen back towards the pub).  Often forgotten, however, is that communists, fascists, jihadists and the rest were also agents of radical change.  If we tally up the utility on each side of the ledger, it wouldn’t suprise me if we’d been better off rejecting all radical changes proposed during the 20th century.  If anything, young people in particular err on the side of “change, change, change!”  The call to effect change needs to be tempered by the call to preserve what is worthy.

But…but…surely we need someone to argue for change?  Surely some changes, like the granting of civil rights, are worthy even if initially unpopular?  Every new idea needs to build from one early, crazy believer into conventional wisdom, does it not?  But given the wild uncertainty of what these changes bring, how can we bring ourselves to support any of them?

And that is exactly the point.  The calls for willy-nilly change that one often hears proferred to young people mean nothing without some advice on how to interpret the good and worthy changes from the evil and ineffective ones.  Don’t kill all the activists, then: just the mindless ones.

I like this. It appeals to the old curmudgeon I’m growing into.

Society values the people who get out and change things: visionaries, politicians, executives. While the people who just do their jobs and keep things running get short shrift: mechanics, bus drivers, butchers and grocery store clerks.

Yet, if the changers decided to stay in bed for a month, no one would notice. If the maintainers did this, we’d all starve.

I think the reason the changers get most of the attention is they’re always breaking things.