Question
How do bonafide change agents differ from wannabe change agents?
Answer
Change agents are themselves changed by the process of striving for the change they seek to bring about. They enter and exit as very different people. Practically strangers divided by a rebirth in the middle. The more powerful the change in the environment, the more transformed the agents. This is why the asymptotic narrative symbol is a resurrection event, in models like Campbell's.
This is the flip side of Shaw's "reasonable men seek to adapt to the world; unreasonable men seek to adapt the world to themselves, all progress depends on unreasonable men" idea. Paradoxically, these "unreasonable men" who resist personal change but are completely committed to changing their environment, end up being transformed by the effort into something new via Nietzschean transformation. The adaptable ones bend and twist in superficial ways but remain fundamentally unchanged, because the only thing that changes people deep down is trying to change the environment. Change is outside-in more than it is inside-out.
Wannabe change agents aspire to fixed roles in a story of change and are left relatively unchanged by the change unfolding and often left behind, nursing resentments about the passing of their chapter in the story. Wannabes are extras in specific chapters. The real deal people move with the action of the story. They don't seek to change themselves, but accept such change as a consequence of their external efforts.
The wannabes wouldn't be wannabes if they recognized that they play supporting rather than starring roles. What makes them wannabes is that they delude themselves that they have a starring role. Gracefully accepting a support role in a story and withdrawing after your 15 minutes is a rare skill among wannabes. Being attached to a specific role in a story of change ("I start things," "I connect people," "I am the one who finishes") reflects a pattern of deep attachment to a fixed sense of self, which is why people with such attachments usually don't get the starring roles. They audition endlessly.
And damn Seb Paquet, you are quick to pull ideas out of private conversations into the commons.
This is the flip side of Shaw's "reasonable men seek to adapt to the world; unreasonable men seek to adapt the world to themselves, all progress depends on unreasonable men" idea. Paradoxically, these "unreasonable men" who resist personal change but are completely committed to changing their environment, end up being transformed by the effort into something new via Nietzschean transformation. The adaptable ones bend and twist in superficial ways but remain fundamentally unchanged, because the only thing that changes people deep down is trying to change the environment. Change is outside-in more than it is inside-out.
Wannabe change agents aspire to fixed roles in a story of change and are left relatively unchanged by the change unfolding and often left behind, nursing resentments about the passing of their chapter in the story. Wannabes are extras in specific chapters. The real deal people move with the action of the story. They don't seek to change themselves, but accept such change as a consequence of their external efforts.
The wannabes wouldn't be wannabes if they recognized that they play supporting rather than starring roles. What makes them wannabes is that they delude themselves that they have a starring role. Gracefully accepting a support role in a story and withdrawing after your 15 minutes is a rare skill among wannabes. Being attached to a specific role in a story of change ("I start things," "I connect people," "I am the one who finishes") reflects a pattern of deep attachment to a fixed sense of self, which is why people with such attachments usually don't get the starring roles. They audition endlessly.
And damn Seb Paquet, you are quick to pull ideas out of private conversations into the commons.