Created: 1/03/02
Of Cultural Change, James T. Kirk, and the Status Quo
      When I was a Cadet Officer, I believed that Cadet Officer-ship could be summed up in a very few catch phrases:

        "If not me, who? If not now, when? "
        "Cadet Officers try to change the world; sometimes the best of them come close."

      Or, when a Senior Member asks the question "How Can I help?" The Good Cadet Officer replies "JUST STAY OUT OF MY WAY!"

      This semester in Graduate School (Fall 2001), I learned that these ideas overlap the business buzzwords of constant improvement or cultural change. The only thing is, people don’t like cultural change. In fact, the general trend of individuals and organizations is to avoid change because it creates a fear of a loss of power, position, prestige, etc[1]. As you can guess, this makes any kind of improvement nearly impossible; everyone is in fact busy at work, trying to keep up appearances and stop changes. I’ll call that "maintaining the Status Quo." According to Dictionary.Com, Status Quo means "The existing condition or state of affairs."

      Ten years later, when I look around the Michigan Wing of the Civil Air Patrol, I don’t see that spark to change much anymore. Looking through my old regulations, I just can’t find the references to change that I used to think were there. Most notes along those lines were phased out in the 1970’s; the most recent I found was in CAPM 50-3, published in the 1980’s and phased out in the late 1990’s.

      So if the regs only offered a passing glimmer, where did I get this idea from? Then, this weekend, I was reading this essay by Issac Asmimov ...

      "But how can one take change into account correctly, when the vast mass of the population stolidly refuses to take into account the existence of any change at all? (Thus, most Americans, far from planning now for 1990, have shown by their recent actions that what they want is to see 1955 restored.)
      That is where science fiction comes in. Science Fiction is the one branch of literature that accepts the fact of change, the inevitability of change. Without the initial assumption that there will be change, there is no such thing as science fiction, for nothing is science fiction unless it includes events played out against a social or physical background significantly different from our own. Science fiction is at its best if the events described could not be played out at all except in a social or physical background significantly different from our own.
      That doesn’t mean that a science fiction story should be predictive, or that is should portray something that is going to happen, before it can be important. It doesn’t even have to portray something that might conceivably happen.
      The existence of change, the acceptance of change, is enough. People who read science fiction come, in time, to know that things will be different. Maybe better, maybe worse, but different, Maybe this way, maybe that way, but different.
      If enough people read science fiction or are, at least sufficiently influenced by people who read science fiction, enough of the population may come to accept change (even if only with resignation and grief) so that government leaders can plan for change in the hope of meeting something other than stolid resistance from the public. And then, who knows, civilization might survive."


      So, am I saying that this desire for change was created just by SF? No. I'm just saying that reading the right books as I grew allowed me to overcome my fears of change and focus on the benefits of it. I just finished up creating a list solely of Science Fiction books that quicken the pulse, inspire the mind, and make you think, which you can read Here. (Note my age recommendations by each book.) In fact, eleven years after I joined CAP as a Cadet, five of the books on my list called Professional Development for CAP Cadets are science-fiction. I think I might have finally figured out why.


Reference:
[1] Donaldson and Siegel, Successful Software Development