Integruotas kaitos modelis. Metmenys I

LINAS KONTRIMAS Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania Research areas: history, communication, philosophy. INTEGRATED MODEL OF CHANGE. OUTLINE I INTRODUCTORY NOTES Explaining change is an interesting and risky undertaking. Some changes can be calculated. The laws of mathematics work this way, for example. Some changes can be predicted—which is why lotteries and various miracles tempt us. But the greatest miracle is our own life. It is hard to fit into calculations and predictions. Even greater wonder comes over us when we begin to think about changes encompassing not the events of a single person, but those of a generation, an age, or a millennium. At such a moment, the most important question is not “why.” It should be clear to modern people that everything moves and changes. All the more so because, a good two and a half thousand years ago, the wise Greek Heraclitus proclaimed—panta rei, everything flows. Time is like a river; events rush by in a mighty current, and you cannot step into the same river twice. And indeed—the beautiful river of world-time is constantly changing and flowing away. Not only can you not step into it twice; there is no point in setting yourself such a goal. But the time, thoughts, thinking, and ideas within our minds and souls—all of these form a completely different river. You can wade in this river as much as you like; you need only the inclination and the courage. Why is courage needed? Because here the other question is most important—how. How is it possible to step into and out of this shallow but so enticing river as much as one likes? More than that—how does everything change? How does everything intertwine, merge, break off, join together again, change, die, and reappear? I deliberately do not ask the question “what changes things?” Just as the answer to the question “why?” is self-evident—because everything moves—the answer to the question of what sets everything in motion is also clear to me: some events move because of human beings, some because of nature, and some because of God’s will. It is up to each person to decide who or what is the prime mover in their system of understanding the human world. Straipsniai / Articles 253 LINAS KONTRIMAS HISTORY AND LANGUAGE Almost everything can be fitted into chronological tables. Every action has its own date. Every thing has its own time, beginning, and end. Over the course of our lives, we observe thousands of beginnings and endings: living creatures and inanimate entities arrive, stay for a while, and leave. Arranging things chronologically is an indispensable undertaking in the study of history. Necessary and essential. In general, science has given the human mind a certain stability, orderliness, and calm knowledge. Sometimes even too much. Therefore, when I write that almost everything can be arranged into a scientifically orderly and chronologically structured system, I also turn my thoughts to what does not submit to such a system. That is thought itself, and, for the subject I am discussing now, another essential word is important too—change, transformation. We can say: this thing breaks at such and such a time. But is that really so? Might it be that what we consciously understand is merely the end of a process? The same applies to historical changes. We can claim that an event happened on a specific day. But when we begin looking for the event’s beginning, we find that the event itself is merely the final moment of a process or processes. And also the beginning of other processes. The word brings such phenomena’s disobedience to historical leaps under control. Language is a material bridge between what does not yet exist and what no longer exists. Perhaps, more precisely, a different metaphor than a bridge should be applied to language: it is a meeting place. THREE CLAIMS What meets in language? Language makes it possible to accumulate, encode, and decode information about facts, theories, and ourselves. In other words, all knowledge, having passed through a person’s inner filter, creates theories for understanding and explaining the world, oneself, and so on, from concrete and/or abstract facts. Some theories are reliable, appealing, and generally accepted; others may remain highly localized and distinctly subjective—for example, the integrated model of change presented here is a subjective theorization of how change might be explained. Thus, things that have been spoken and things conveyed through language are brought together into a certain system of phenomena and circumstances. For example, we say “the Renaissance,” we say “the digital age,” we say “Lithuanian culture.” In fact, by saying this, we name a certain system that has facts and theories characteristic of it and unique to it, as well as individuals who recognize that system’s distinctiveness, separateness, and uniqueness. 254 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXVI Integruotas kaitos modelis. Meṅes I Some systems have become history; others are taking shape now. Or they are being deliberately created. This may happen naturally, positively, but another process may also be carried out brutally, by force. The emergence and spread of virtual social communities may serve as an example of the first case. The events in Ukraine illustrate the second: a nonexistent theory of “Novorossiya” is invented; facts are abbreviated or falsified, or created to illustrate it, and this construct is launched into the world through language. INEVITABLE CHANGE The model presented below offers a minimalist demonstration of an integrated model of change. Everything in the world is connected. The arrows represent the domain of language. By the way, by language I mean more than just letters and spoken words. Symbols, signs, and music are also language to me. Integrated Model of Change Submitted on June 9, 2017. L I N A S K O N T R I M A S Kultūros ministerija Jono Basanavičiaus g. 5, Vilnius, Lietuva [email protected] Įžvalgos / Insights 255