Can you spot the change in this video? Most can’t — and most don’t notice the world changing, either

By David McElroy · June 15, 2011

We all trust our senses to keep us aware of what’s going on around us, but sometimes things happen gradually enough that we can’t even tell major change has happened until it’s too late. Watch this video and see whether you can see the change happening right in front of your eyes. I didn’t notice until at the end when the change is made obvious. Of course, when I watched it the second time, I knew what to look for.

That’s the way change in the world works, too. When you’re looking to the future, you almost never see what’s really coming. But when you’re looking back at what’s already happened, it’s easy to spot the change and to believe you would have known what was going on if you’d been there.

It’s easy to think the German people in 1932 must have known what Adolph Hitler was going to represent. It’s easy to think that the U.S. president who made the early decisions to commit the United States in Vietnam must have known what it would lead to. It’s easy to think that the intellectuals and liberal-minded people who supported Fidel Castro in Cuba must have known the kind of brutal dictator he would be.

The problem is that the German people didn’t know Hitler would become a mass-murdering thug who would try to conquer Europe. President Dwight Eisenhower didn’t know that U.S. troops would end up being caught up in a long-running quagmire where they would be dying for no good reason and that the war would humiliate the United States in the end. And Casto’s supporters didn’t know they were supporting a man who would brutally repress Cuba. They just believed they were supporting change from the current dictator.

We’re not nearly as good at perceiving what’s around us as we think we are. The illustration to the right is a well-known example of how different people see identical things in very different ways. Is it a white vase or is it two black figures of people looking at each other? This classic English TV commercial illustrates better than anything I can think of the notion that we’re blind to what’s taking place around us, especially if we’re been taught to look for one particular thing. (Here’s a whole collection of other examples of our blindness to change. It’s worth watching them all.)

So this is sort of interesting, but what does it have to do with the future? It’s simply this. Most people today believe that the future is going to look pretty much like an extension of what we see right now. They believe that we’re generally going to continue to be ruled by majoritarian states, which claim the power to make pretty much every decision for the people who live in their boundaries. But what if there’s a different future? What if we’re all paying attention to how many times the team is white is passing the ball — and we’ve missed the moon-walking bear? (That won’t make sense unless you’ve seen the TV spot linked in the previous paragraph.)

I believe the era of exclusive statist control of the world is coming to an end. We’re entering what I call a post-statist era, during which we’re going to see a transition to small enclaves being set up to operate under systems other than traditional nation-states. For a long time, the state will continue to dominate, but as those non-traditional enclaves become successful and attract “customers” to live in them, we’re going to see a shift in how the world is organized.

The changes that are happening are subtle. You’re not going to see them reflected on your evening TV news. (Does anybody still watch the evening news?) You’re not going to see it reflected in your newspaper or online news site. You’re only going to see hints of it here and there based on experiments such as the current one coming for Honduras and in ideas from people such as Michael Strong (free cities) and Paul Romer (charter cities) and Patri Friedman (seasteading).

Change is coming. It’s hard to see. But if you’ve been warned where to look, you can be a part of it if you choose to.

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It was five years ago tonight when Lucy first rode in the car with me. She was on her way to her “forever home” with me that night, but she didn’t know it, so she was terrified. It was a much happier and braver girl who took a ride in the car tonight so we could go through a drive-through window and order a hamburger for her — to celebrate five years with me. She had a great time. If she could remember five years ago tonight, she would be proud of how far she’s come, too. If you’d like to know more about Lucy’s journey from scared dog to brave queen of the household, here’s something I wrote after her first year with me. I’m hoping this girl will have many more happy years with me.

I’ve never been attracted to skinny women. There’s nothing wrong with someone who’s naturally thin, but it’s never been my preference. What has shocked me, though, is the judgment I’ve heard from women all through my life — about themselves and others — about who’s “fat.” I concluded long ago that most women in our culture have been brainwashed to believe that skinny is attractive — and that anything other than skinny is ugly. I first assumed that I was the oddball — for preferring women with bigger and heavier bodies — but I’m coming to the conclusion that most men naturally feel this way to one extent or another. I just ran across new research by a couple of Northwestern University psychology professors that shows that women seriously overestimate how much a straight man will be attracted to a skinny woman. In a perfect world, we would all be at a healthy weight, but when it comes to attractiveness, too heavy is more attractive than skinny. At least to me — and to a lot of men, too.

Years ago, I heard a question that seemed very insightful at the time. You’ve probably heard it, too. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? The question is intended to help you uncover things you really want to do, but which you’re afraid to try — for fear of failure. In an interview today, I heard the great marketing guru Seth Godin give a different point of view. He said the better question is to ask what you would do even if you knew it would fail. That struck me as far more insightful than the original version. We ought to be doing what we know is right, not what will maximize our success or praise from others. There are some battles that are worth fighting even if you believe you’re doomed to failure. Those battles are often for love or important ideas or our children. Some things are simply worth fighting for — and the truth is that you might win anyway. Do the right thing. Take the chance.

The more I understand about myself, about human nature and about the nature of reality, the more I realize I’m a radical by the standards of both Modernism and Postmodernism. Seeing the things which I’m stumbling toward makes me an enemy of many of the core ideas upon which contemporary culture is built. It exposes the culture as a monstrous lie — like a dangerous infection that’s slowly destroying what human were created to be. My “inner observer” has always known that truth was found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, but I’m slowly finding words to explain what has merely been instinct until now. The Enlightenment was humanity’s great leap forward, but shallow and arrogant thinkers for the next two centuries threw away the fruits of that achievement. We can’t go forward as a species until we go back to correct this intellectual and spiritual error — and part of that is acknowledging that our collective attempts to do away with our Creator will always fail.

I’ve come to believe that some of us — including me — aren’t very good at knowing how to be happy. I don’t mean that in the sense that happy talk and positive thinking should be able to make us happy regardless of the circumstances. I mean that some of us had so much experience with being unhappy when we were young that we were trained to be unhappy — and that being happy is an unconsciously uncomfortable thing. When I look at times in my past when I should have been happy, it rarely lasted. I believe now that I found reasons to be unhappy — and caused real problems for myself — because being comfortable and happy felt so foreign to my programming. If I’m right, this means that some of us have to do more than just change our circumstances. It means we have to learn how to accept the happiness that we unconsciously fear we don’t deserve.

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