Acting on your opinions will necessarily generate dissonance. When deploying a new way of looking at reality, it will discern things, people, and habits. These ideas are part of the people around us. And when we shift away from the comfort of norms, we generate confusion — an essential tool in growth and change, but not without cost. The acute moment is when change is palpable, but the upside is not yet realized.
Nurturing conviction in moments of change is helpful because it allows us to imagine a future not yet here and remain consistent when culture and people around us try to preserve a status quo.
For change to continue, it must (1) exist in meaning and (2) energize language. Tired language is the enemy of change, especially change that persists after ‘we leave the room.’
Deconstruction, the act of looking for meaning within language, is the best way to weigh words for value. The space that deconstruction generates allows for rearranging ideas, knowledge, and, eventually, a way of being.
As Donella Meadow said, a system is designed to do what it has always been doing, and language is the highest (shared) meta-system.
If we want to create cascading value, language must maximize meaning, and meaning can only come from opinions. It is an inner occurrence, put robust enough language, shared with enough affordance, using the right medium and place.
This week’s prompt is: what do you imagine?