Change

 I’m not a scientist. I didn’t even take a science class in college, unless you count psychology. My knowledge about science comes from a lifelong interest in scientific topics: in no specific order, plants, space, chemistry, ecology, technology and geology. I read Discover Magazine, thank you Wilda Morris for my free subscription, and listen to Science Friday religiously, pun intended. 

I love to write about nature. It gained an idyllic representation in the late 18th and early 19th century literature, but it can be quite ruthless. Ask anyone who has seen a cat play with a mouse or a flood wash away a car. Nature is not a person, has no emotions, no personality. When the temperature rises to a certain point, ice melts. When trees burn, they release carbon. When animals lose habitat, they move or die.

As a pioneer in Early Childhood Special Education Technology, I learned of the stages of change and the reactions of people to that change. Shawn Galloway(1) characterizes people according to their reactions: pioneers, yes people, crowd followers, skeptics and cave people. 

I’d like to think we have finally made it to the crowd follower stage of development. New books, news items, and even college studies are common, although our country is still divided in opinion. I have already written about Greta Thunberg. Bill Gates says we need to get to zero emissions to reverse the heating. Will anyone listen to him?

Galloway, Shawn, “Five Types of People in Organizational Change”, 1/1/2017, accessed 3/31/2021

https://ohsonline.com/articles/2017/01/01/five-types-of-people-in-organizational-change.aspx?admgarea=magazine&m=1