Monday, May 16, 2005

A Quote and A Historian’s Rumbling

I read a great quote today in my newspaper and it made me think. This quote is attributed to John Maynard Keynes, the father of modern economics and could be found in his book, General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. The quote is "The difficulty lies, not in new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify into every corner of our minds". The reason this quote got my attention is because for so long, I believed that the reason people resist changes is because of new ideas, which are so revolutionary and contradictory to what they held and believe. It turns out, people resist change because the old ideas define who they are. It is a part of their lives and a core foundation of their existence. The source of their capability that worked so well for them. To even think that it is wrong would tantamount to a denial of their existence. Interesting, for in the larger world history, this denial is expressed in the form of a struggle between an emergent idea, an emergent system, an emergent future civilization against what is current, against what is proven, against what is the way it is. It is the eternal clash between the new and the old manifested as a revolution that influence the course of history.

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