Things change, and evolve, and sometimes - at some point - we have to say that they have become something different; even if they retain the same name.
Cricket evolved, and fused with rounders, to become baseball - and got a different name (justified, in this instance). Cricket evolved, and became T20 - and kept the name (which also, overall seems right... but moving towards the edge of plausibility).
In the modern world, where managers have taken-over from do-ers, there are two managerial trends - one is to rename things despite the fact they stay the same, and the other is to keep the name but obliterate what used to go by that name and do something almost-completely different.
Both are, of course, covertly motivated by the desire to destroy and disorientate everything and everybody.
In Britain many of the counties were renamed in the 1970s - names that went back to medieval, or even earlier, times were obliterated and replaced. In Scotland, Clackmannashire - named after a Celtic tribe - was renamed... Central Region. At a lower level, it is standard routine for bureaucrats to rename organisations - new signs, logos, letterheads etc.
Renaming is nearly always a sign of an organisation succumbing to BS management - the modern European Union is an exemplar, having begun as the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community.
Schools and Colleges that change their names are typically those that have decided to invest in PR rather than substance. Also school 'pupils' are now renamed 'students' by the media, even in the early teens - whereas until a dozen years ago this referred only to those in higher education.
(For all that , the names are often indicative of the true nature of what is going on. When the EEC became the EU is was a signal of aiming at a single totalitarian Euro state. And all the British places re-named 'Mandela' (after either Nelson, or his egregious wife) during the 1980s and 90s were a solid sign of Political Correctness and Leftist subversion/ inversion becoming The Establishment.)
Among Schools, Colleges and Universities; there has been a hollowing-out and near-complete replacement of what these institutions actually do; the same applies to science, medicine, law, the police... the phenomenon is very general, almost universal.
It is most obvious in 'charities' - where the trend has been for all national, wealthy charities to become almost-completely Left Wing lobbying and activist groups, with just a 'front' of their former functions kept-going. Oxfam was originally an Oxford-based organisation for providing famine-relief, 'Barnados' used to run orphanages, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds used to... protect birds, the Salvation Army used to be a Christian denomination. The Army Benevolent Fund used to assist wounded soldiers until shortly before it was renamed The Soldier's Charity...
But these and all other major national charities are now 'NGOs' - whose (astonishingly well-paid) leaderships are part of the we of The Establishment, and dedicated to the strategic and incremental demoralisation and self-damnation of humankind.
We live in a public world in which 'nothing is what it seems' - at least at the level of what gets into the mass media and official communications.
Yet to notice such obvious facts, is supposed to be cynical, negative and paranoid; despite that cynicism, negativity and paranoia in other contexts are the favoured modern attitudes; assiduously propagated by the mass media.
And many of these things are designed to create a background and continual state of angst and fear among the populace - a low-level of consciousness, a short-termist and reactive survivalism.
Let us not, then, dwell upon such matters - but simply accept that this is how things actually are (no point in trying to persuade other people who don't want to know); personally ignore and reject the official and media agendas on the basis that they are always false in some important way - and get on with making ourselves more spiritual and religious people (people who who don't depend on being fed the agenda, who are not addicted to the day's talking-points); and deal with the stuff we actually believe to be important, and know from personal intuition and experience amplified with common sense.
I'm glad you have that final paragraph in there Bruce. I agree with a lot of what you say in these sort of posts, though I often find it hard not to slip into despair. Which I know is sinful. But this modern world we are in can be so ... exhausting.
ReplyDelete@Nick - Indeed - the very worst thing that They do to us, is to generate an endemic and seemingly-inescapable undercurrent of fear and despair - none of the rest is as dangerous as That!
ReplyDeleteThe purpose of being realistic in the modern world (and the fact that realism is about an expanded awareness, Not about sticking to sense-perceptible 'facts') is precisely to escape fear and despair - And if that isn't being achieved, then the exercise of enlightening is being counter-productive.