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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In the Birmingham suburb of Hueytown, the Golden Gophers of Hueytown High School had just defeated the Eufala Tigers in the second round of the state playoffs Friday night. It’s not a game that will mean a lot to anybody outside those two communities, but it meant everything to the players and coaches involved. After the game, Hueytown defensive coordinator Trent Campbell was celebrating with his victorious players when he noticed Eufala offensive lineman Dallas Ingram distraught and alone. Campbell left his players to console the distraught Ingram and photographer Dennis Victory caught photos of the pair together. “My reaction was to go see about him, because I’ll see my guys on Sunday and next week and the rest of their high school careers, but that’s a young man we watched on film for a week and studied and he’s a fantastic player,” Campbell said later. “And it wasn’t too long ago when I played my last high school football game and I know what that feeling is and you sort of never forget that. I went to tell him what a great player I thought he was and what a great game I thought they played and I wish nobody had to lose that night because it was an incredible game.” This is what sports at the high school level should be about. Winning is great and winning is fun. But humanity and decency last longer.

I have changed radically about some things over the years, but probably none of those changes have been as great as the ways that I feel about people who are viewed as evil or criminal. When I was young, I was eager to see criminals or foreign political enemies killed. Today, I don’t view such people though rose-colored glasses and I don’t view them as blameless folks who are going to turn their lives around if we just think happy thoughts. But I can’t celebrate the death of anybody, even if he might deserve it in some ways of thinking about it. Even if it’s sometimes necessary to kill someone — and those cases are often debatable — I regret the death of someone who will now never have a chance to discover love and change his life. There are some evil people in this world, but I can’t celebrate their deaths.

There was a time when I was idealistic enough to believe that if a writer expressed his thoughts clearly and simply enough, any bright and honest person would understand his point. I know better now. We all bring so many unconscious assumptions to the things we read that we often see what we expect to see instead of what the writer intended. This is incredibly frustrating to me as a writer, but I’m trying more and more to just say what I need to say — as clearly as I know how — and then ignore the inevitable responses which show that others perceived something which was not intended. I have to write for those who “get” where I’m coming from, not for those who see my words through personal filters that change my meaning. I hope my intentions are clear to you and I hope what I write can be useful to you, but if not, maybe my work just isn’t right for you. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

I found out this evening that someone I casually knew killed himself last Wednesday. I didn’t know him well — and I never found him personable — but he had started work a couple of months ago at a restaurant where I go. He was a 26-year-old who struck me as a confused and unhappy person, but I didn’t think much about it since he stayed to himself and resisted my efforts to chat with him. It turns out that he had a history of depression and had a lot of gender confusion. He seemed very androgynous to me and I learned today that he presented himself as female in some situations. He was rejected by a romantic interest last week, so he went to the woods and killed himself. His body wasn’t found for three days. It’s tragic how miserable people around us can be and how we so rarely know the truth about things they struggle with.

I’ve been with people for most of this day, but I feel lonely tonight. I’ve had things on my mind for the last few days that I feel the strong need to talk about. I need someone to share my thoughts with — someone who’s interested in ideas and how they affect us. Someone who gets excited to discover new things and can find joy in seeing new ways those things might change our lives. I feel lonely tonight because I painfully remember what it feels like to have that — and I’m craving that sort of connection. I miss having someone I can call and say, “I’ve been reading something and it’s sparked some thoughts I want to share with you.” Those sorts of conversations have lasted for hours for me in the past — or for thousands of words if it’s an exchange of mail — and it feels wrong that there is nobody who wants to hear such things from me tonight. I used to think being lonely was about being alone, but I understand now it’s a longing for one particular person. The loneliest place to be when you need one person is in a crowd composed of people who cannot be who you need.

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