| Change we both crave and fear it. Change is desired, even demanded as an antidote to boredom: no one wants to repeat the same conversations, or raise ones teenagers time after time, or (as in the movie Groundhog Day) relive the same events until they achieve a modicum of perfection. And death, after all, can be defined as an organism's inability to change as a loss of the ability to eat, to grow, to move and mend tissues. Yet while realizing the necessity of change, we yearn for the supposed constancy of the past and for continuity of family, community, and culture. Especially in today's mobile society, we value objects and activities that somehow represent tomorrow as yet another rendition of yesterday: the Century Farm, our grandparents' antiques, the parades and old-time coffee shops of Iowa's small towns. Objects and events that give us a sense of stability and security. And we seek reassurance that our grandchildren will be able to duplicate the experiences that have enriched our lives, whether that means tasting Iowa sweet corn fresh from the garden or observing the mudbath of a living white rhino (rather than seeing a stuffed specimen of an extinct species). The 18 speakers at CGRER's Global Change II symposium confirmed the dualities of the word "change." Again and again, they announced that environmental change is a natural component of our living earth, that it's a necessary stimulant and always has been so. But while the earth's normal changes do not in themselves warrant a symposium, the abnormally rapid rate and tremendous magnitude of present-day change do. Human-induced acceleration and magnification of natural change processes have been so great that, as former Senator | |
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