A Season of Change

Within the last few months the theme of 'change' has come into the speeches of presidential candidates, particularly Barack Obama's. Thinking about it, change is nothing new. It's the only constant thing, one philosopher observed. Yet it has become important at this time in America. Why now?

Superficially, there has been constant debate about the Bush administration's policies and actions, and we're tired of the controversy. We're tired of the infighting. We're tired of trying to talk to somebody who won't listen. We're tired of authoritarianism. We're tired of a war that has no end in sight. We're tired -- and quite upset -- that somebody in the name of freedom and democracy has pardoned himself from the rule of national and international law and turned America into something it should never be. It's time for a change.

Yet something deeper must be going on as well. The Bush administration has outright resisted changing to what the people want. Many people -- members of Congress as well as citizens -- were initially for the war but now oppose it. Many Republicans are distancing themselves from Bush and McCain; on one level this is merely a device in an election year to guarantee more votes in November for themselves, but on another level the 'party line' is slowly dissolving more than just election-year politics.

For more than ten years there has been a movement seeping through the psychotherapy world that has spread worldwide. Initially proposed by Prochaska and DiClemente and incorporated in the research and application by Miller and Rollnick, it is a model of 'change'. The five steps in the cycle are Precontemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, Action, and Maintenance. This model is being ever-more successfully applied in the treatment of substance abuse and mental illness. What people who become familiar with the model are realizing is that change applies to everything.

A feature of this model is that ambivalence is natural. It is largely absent in the Precontemplation stage (where somebody doesn't realize or want to acknowledge that something should be changed), peaks in Contemplation, decreases in Preparation, and decreases even more in Action and Maintenance. It never goes away for good unless the person goes into denial that anything needs changing. Going back to the observation about people initially being for the war and are now opposed to it, this is a good illustration that many people were ambivalent at the time the Administration was gearing up for war, and this ambivalence was capitalized on by limiting factual information and exaggerating fear-provoking material to sway the ambivalent to their side.

An example of Precontemplation is what was mentioned about the Bush adminstration not changing to anything that the people want. They see nothing wrong with their agenda or style and so there is no reason to change. The problem, from their perspective, is that a change is needed in people around the world so that they understand the the threat that terrorism poses. It wasn't a priority issue before the Bush presidency, but is now named as the number one issue.

Another illustration of Precontemplation, also coming from recent campaign dynamics, is that many conservatives are saying about the race issue "there's nothing to discuss". They don't see a problem. They don't want to see a problem. Trying to push them into Action when they aren't even prepared to acknowledge the problem is guaranteed to result in a fight.

I don't have enough insight and room here to go into all the details included in these thoughts, so let's go back to the current Presidential candidates advocating for change. The election cycle itself has pushed the nation into the Preparation stage for change: it's inevitable. The candidates are cultivating their images to Prepare people to vote for them. Action will occur in November when the election is held and in January when we change the guard.

What is important is that we become familiar with the process of change, and that we make sufficient preparations to decide on and enact a good change. Again, Miller and Rollnick give us a rather simple exercise to help. What it amounts to is a pro-con list, this time in four quadrants instead of two columns. What is considered is 'What is Good about how things are now', 'What is Not So Good about how things are now', 'What would be Good about changing it', and 'What would be Not So Good about changing it'. All bases are covered.

While this would be a good exercise for individuals to do prior to voting in November, it would be critical for the media to do this from now until then -- factually -- to help the nation Prepare for the election.

In a democracy if the citizens don't participate or don't prepare themselves sufficiently for voting it is likely that they will be manipulated into electing someone who has an agenda that isn't the common good, someone who will capitalize on the ambivalence and inaction of the people to work the change that they want for themselves or special interests. The process of change requires work. And it can't be handed to a candidate to promise without the citizenry doing some work of its own. Obama may be promising change, but We, The People need to Prepare him to do the job for the common good. We didn't do this for Bush. See where it got us?