Is Change a Good Thing or A Bad Thing?

Is Change A Good or Bad Thing?

Change happens constantly throughout the world as it has done since the first day of the universe. Everything in our world is constantly changing and advancing in technology. As we learn more about ourselves as humans and advance in technology, we change. Change is a very difficult thing to take a side on. There are changes for the good and changes for the worse. All change contributes somewhat to advancing us and even change that is bad in the immediate can help us in the long run. The changing technology and culture can help many people in the end and can help us live together peacefully.

Before there were cultures and civilizations developed, people were nomads. They followed food and hunted and gathered to survive. The best of the best were the ones that got to eat and the weakest had to do without. This unfair hierarchy didn’t allow for a lot of people to survive, because there was a limited amount of food and those that weren’t as good at hunting or gathering or were weak, didn’t get what they needed to survive. As people changed their ways and began to domesticate things like crops and some animals, society became fairer. People could get seeds and domesticate crops and animals, which provided food that they couldn’t get otherwise. This also allowed for the advancement for society with the formation of laws, writing, and government. This changed early civilizations and people for the better because there were feuds and wars and killings over food and land.

That kind of change starts for the better and ends up benefiting everyone in the end. There is another kind of change that can end up good for people in the long run. This kind of change starts out bad or dangerous. When the Nazis came to power, they started World War Two and killed millions of people because they thought they could. They changed society in Germany and Europe for the worse. The Nazi government took away freedoms and persecuted people because they could. However, once the Nazis fell from power and Germany was defeated in World War Two, we saw what they were really doing. People became aware of the crimes that the Nazis committed, and wanted to do something about it. This lead to the formation of international laws and warned us of the things that could happen in the future if we are not careful. The change that at one point killed millions of people helped us advance our laws and society and helped us understand how to prevent things like this from happening again.

As we grow and change there are also terrible things that change with us. Warfare has gone from two countries fighting on a battlefield to terrorism and attacks on civilians. As we fight these new battles we have to change our strategy in the fight. As weapons of war have change the tactics have changed. Two hundred years ago men were still standing in line or charging positions and devastating each other. Now warfare has become more elite. It takes less soldiers to perform a task and some missions that would usually put a soldier in very high danger can now been done by a robot or a UAV, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. This however doesn’t eliminate the danger, but it decreases the amount of soldiers and servicemen in danger.

The change in technology has helped people with many problems. New technology has let us produce solutions to problems like water scarcity. Millions of people don’t have clean water to drink, but a change in technology could help this. There is an invention, called the Life Straw, which allows people to drink directly from usually bad water sources. The straw has a filter inside and removes over 99% of bacteria and 98% of water borne viruses. This allows people to get clean drinking water, which helps the overall community. Life Straws are relatively cheap and can be donated to areas with very high levels of sickness from water borne diseases.

Change can also be good on a personal level. When someone gets addicted to drugs or starts smoking cigarettes, the best thing for them to do is to change their ways and get rid of their habits. There are many methods and places that are set up and designed specifically to help people change from their drug life to a clean life. Therapy and rehabilitation makes it easier for people to quit using drugs and some people come out and help other people that have the same problems. This type of lifestyle change helps not only these people but it makes the community a safer and healthier place.

Sometimes these changes that can help us in great ways don’t happen very fast. It takes years to develop things like LifeStraws and UAVs that could possibly prevent the deaths of many people, and changing your life after using drugs is never an easy process. It takes time, sometimes a very long time, to find something that works better than what was before. It took thousands of years for cavemen to figure out that you could domesticate plants and animals, which eventually helped us form the basis of our advancement today. Change is made when we take time to experiment and discover new things that can positively benefit humankind, not when we decide this is what needs to change so let’s change it. Changing and forming governments and laws takes time to figure out what works best and suits everyone fairly. The United States government didn’t just appear from nowhere on Jul 4, 1776, and it continues to try and find what works best for the world and the country in today’s world.

Change can benefit all people if we allow it to happen. When we discover something new, we need to accept that change because it may advance us or help us in ways nothing else could. Forming the first laws, writing systems and governments was the first step and from there the changed we have made has been endless. We have changed our ways and laws based on crimes that were committed against humanity and we changed the way that we protect and defend ourselves using new machines. All good change is centered toward the goal of living safely and peacefully together.