Is Change Always Good?
An Exploration of the Philosophy-of-Flux, its Contradiction with Nietzsche’s Eternal-Recurrence, and Correlation with Cognitive/Moral Development Theory
We hear a proverb quite often: “Change is Good”. From media personalities to motivational speakers, everybody uses this mantra. It all originated from Heraclitus’ quote about change being the only constant. In this article, we shall see what Heraclitus meant by change and whether it all fits into the narrative of change being good. We shall explore the philosophy of flux and then see how it overlaps with Niezsche’s concept of eternal recurrence. Then we shall move towards the psychological aspect of change by exploring the Piaget's theory of cognitive development and its extension for moral development. We shall see how these theories correlate with the philosophy of flux.
Life is a constant struggle to swim against the tidal river of nature. Regardless of how much material comfort one provides to the body, it is in constant decay. All the knowledge and experience that one collects throughout life constantly reshapes the mind. So, neither the body nor the mind is ever constant. And if every individual has a constantly changing mind & body then the whole of humanity and collective conscious is ever evolving. This means even if a person encounters exactly the same event in life which he/she had previously experienced, it can’t be the same event because the person is not the same with the same psychological state and the state of the world in which event took place changed as well.
Heraclitus is often attributed to having coined the philosophy of flux. Stoics also believed in such flux and most of the writings of Marcus Aurelius stress understanding the impermanence of things. All life and events are going through a change all the time. Our biological processes are in constant change and so is the whole universe. The process of life is a symbol of certainty in the ocean of uncertainty. The concept of entropy is the basis of all physical phenomenon. Entropy is the measure of uncertainty/change. The entropy of the universe is increasing constantly and leading towards a heat death, — a physical phenomenon with maximum entropy and highest uncertainty, hence no life.
Nietzsche’s Conception of Eternal Recurrence
Nietzsche seems to have believed in the first part of this philosophy which is to say that he believed in the change and the repetitive nature of life events. In his famous philosophy of “Eternal Recurrence”, he claims that nature has a cyclic pattern where life and events repeat themselves eternally.
“What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?... Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?” Nietzsche
What Nietzsche is referring to is not the typical déjà vu of events but rather pointing towards the ubiquity and repetitive nature of life events across all humanity and over all time scales. We can understand this from a mathematical analogy. Let’s say life events are a set of permutations of all possible actions of a person and the actions of all the people in the person’s immediate environment. So, then due to the very finite nature of such permutations, it can’t be possible for such events to be unique forever. They must have to repeat and keep on repeating infinitely. Furthermore, such set of permutations would also be a subset of universal set of events which contains all the permutations of events across all humans. This means life events, no matter how novel one thinks they are, are never novel at all. Conversely, they are mere recurrences of events from a person’s own life or from a ‘process of life’ as a whole.
“Everything becomes and recurs eternally - escape is impossible! - Supposing we could judge value, what follows? The idea of recurrence as a selective principle, in the service of strength” Nietzsche
If we take another analogy from evolutionary game theory and simulation, then we would be able to understand what Nietzsche means here. He is referring to the process of evolution and natural selection whereby nature repeats events again and again, with all possible permutations to figure out what traits are to be kept and what traits are to be discarded. This is how we reached at the current state of homosapiens and this is perhaps how we will evolve into other life forms. The strength here, which Nietzsche is using must not be confused with only physical strength but rather it is the measure of quality of an organism (i.e., the outcome of a fitness function) for survival in a particular environment. The environment part must not be ignored, which is where worst interpretations of ‘natural selection’ happen.
Contradiction with Philosophy of Flux
As far as the matter of cyclic nature of life is concerned, both Heraclitus’s philosophy of flux and Nietzsche’s conception of eternal recurrence are the same. However, they contradict substantially in regard to the understanding of cycle itself. Nietzsche seems to ignore the fact that change is happening not just in space but also in the time dimension as well. There is no reason to believe that such a cycle is strictly a closed loop. For example, it could very well be a spiral than a cyclic loop.
Furthermore, Nietzsche presupposes that change is always moving towards an optimal point. (The prime basis of his philosophy of Übermensch), however, it is not necessarily true. Just because there is a continuous change and repetition in nature, doesn’t necessarily imply that it is leading in a single direction. Even an optimization process can diverge after achieving an optimum point. So, it is plausible that in the next iteration of evolution, one might end up having an Üntermensch than an Übermensch.
The incorrect/incomplete interpretation of evolutionary processes lead Nietzsche to extreme/unorthodox conclusions about Morality. Heraclitus’s notion of flux only states that there is always a change. Whether it leads somewhere better or not is not addressed by philosophy of flux.
“It is not just the individual and the nature, which is not constant, it is the change which is changing itself as well.”
Cognitive development
Heraclitus’s philosophy of flux is also in congruence with the psychoanalytic theories from Jean Piaget. Piaget gave a theory of cognitive development which posits that human cognition goes through a set of developmental phases during childhood and adulthood [1-2]. So, human cognition is therefore not a fixed but is subject to change depending on the acquisition of knowledge and change in the environmental factors. More specifically, he categorized the cognitive development in four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete and formal operational stages.
Sensorimotor stage is the first stage of cognitive development. It is when child starts to experience and manipulate objects in the environment in order to get sensory feedback by interacting with the physical world. The second stage is preoperational stage in which child learns the symbolism and their attachment to real world. Which means child can imagine a world of object without an immediate presence of objects. This is also the stage when language is developed. The third stage (concrete operational) is when child starts to relate different objects, events and phenomenon and tries to reason about them. This is also when child learns rules of engagement with the world, learns the cause-and-effect and the consequences of actions. The fourth stage is the operational stage. It is when a child can, not just reason about the present but can hypothesize, build models of the world and starts to predict the future. This is when the abstract/advanced reasoning happen. The formal stage is the continuous stage of learning which happens throughout a lifetime. It is where an individual gains the ability to simulate possible scenarios and chooses the optimum one, all in their head instead of executing them in real life.
The Cognitive development model by Piaget is a psychological expression of philosophy of becoming. The formal operational stage is also the testament of the philosophy of flux. As a person gains more knowledge, experiences/experiments more of the physical/conceptual world, one starts to move in the river of consciousness. So, a man is indeed not the same man (both physically and psychologically) as the time progresses. However, this doesn’t necessarily imply that one most certainly moves in a unidirectional path towards optimality. For example, one could gain destructive/false knowledge, can develop psychological/cognitive disorder, and end up deteriorating cognition rather than improving it.
Moral Development
A notable work from Kohlberg [3] builds upon the Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and constructs a model of moral development. Such model categorizes morality into three major stages of the psychological/cognitive development: preconventional, conventional and postconventional. Each stage has two directions/orientations, resulting in a total of six stages.
First stage of development deals with reward and punishment kind of morality. It is when a child learns the consequences of their actions and therefore, engages in a certain behavior or stays away from it depending on the external stimulus. It is similar to the conclusions of the reinforcement theory experiments done by Ivan pavlov on dogs.
Conventional morality is formed when a child forms social bonds with others. For example, when a person becomes a member of a group, a nation, a tribe or is romantically attached with somebody else then one starts to develop a morality which is dictated by belonging. This kind of morality is often seen amongst people in friendship networks, religious groups, nations, marriages etc. One is compelled to do the duty or is under pressure of becoming “good” in the eyes of the peers.
Postconventional morality is the final stage and most developed stage of human morality. It can take two directions. After one attains knowledge of how societies function and why morality is needed in the first place, one starts to do the moral deeds not as a form of exhibition/validation/approval but as a most optimal action for both the society and the individual. One direction of such morality leads to the ‘social contract’ theory in which individual understands that some individual rights/freedoms are to be withdrawn in order for the safety/survival of the collective. This form of morality is motivated by an individual’s desire to do good for society as a form of a bargain.
Another dimension of such morality and the last stage of morality is in which a person is able to entertain the thought of individual actions and their eventual consequences for the wellbeing of all the individuals in society. One understands that an individual is part of the whole and every action that one takes affects not only oneself but everybody in one’s environment. So, doing moral deeds for society is indirectly doing good to oneself. This kind of morality is motivated by the individual’s desire to stand up to one’s own moral principles and values.
Just like the psychological development, the moral development stages also tell us that an individual moral development is not a static entity, but it is in a constant process of becoming as well. So, as in the philosophy of flux, moral development is also subject of change. And change moves in both directions; good and bad. So, one can regress morally as well as one can improve morally. For example, suppose one is at the highest state of morality (i.e., abides by the social contract or the moral contract with oneself) but after living a life of betrayal by society, one can regress morally and can become selfish. Similarly, moral values in societies can change as well both in the positive direction as well as in the negative direction. For example, traditional values (e.g., honesty and hard-work) are no longer considered valuable in contemporary society. A complete moral degradation can lead to collapse of societies altogether.
“Change is neither good, nor bad, it just is.”
Conclusions
Both the philosophy of flux and Nietzsche’s recurrence are the philosophies of becoming, in contrast to the philosophies of being. However, there is a difference in the conception of change. Most probably, Nietzsche misunderstood the change as only a physical phenomenon within a closed loop/cycle which only concerns an individual. However, change is not just happening in physical dimension, and it is not only affecting an individual, but it is the change across time dimension as well and it is happening in the collective consciousness as well. Furthermore, it is not just the individual and nature, which is not constant, it is the change which is changing itself as well.
The flux is not limited to the change/decay of physical body, but change happens physically, psychologically, and morally. This means even if events in life do repeat themselves, they are not the same events because the state of the world changes and it is not the same person with the same psychological/moral state who experiences those events.
Contrary to the popular belief, change is not always good. Change is neither good, nor bad, it just is. In some cases, it can lead to positive outcomes for certain individuals and in other cases it can be disastrous. In fact all natural disasters are acts of change. All Heraclitus pointed out is that the individual and the world in which the individual exists is always changing. It is not necessarily the case that one would have better outcomes as a result of a change.
This also has a direct effect on the concept of identity. If a person is always an act of becoming then there is no constant unique self. Instead an individual self is formed by taking a series of steps from a true self through cultural practices, knowledge acquisition and experience over a period of time.
Understanding the philosophy of flux and the repetitive nature of life shows us how uncertainty prevails in the universe. Life is a constant struggle for creating certainty/order in the darkness of uncertainty/chaos. The very next moment can be the moment of death. Death is the biggest change there is. This realization should make one humble and compassionate in all walks of life instead of making one proud and jubilant of the change itself.
References
[1] Piaget, Jean, Boring, Edwin G., Werner, Heinz, Langfeld, Herbert S., Yerkes, Robert M., "Jean Piaget.", A History of Psychology in Autobiography, vol IV., Worcester: Clark University Press, pp. 237–256, doi:10.1037/11154-011
[2] Magali Bovet, “Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development and Individual Differences”, 1976
[3] Petersen, Naomi Jeffery, "Child Development Theories". Encyclopedia of Educational Leadership and Administration., 2005